What to do with Annie

With two of our chickens passing away recently we have been deliberating what to do with Annie.  She has shown no signs of illness but she is not doing so good on her own, she is quite upset and distressed at being alone and having no friends around her.  We have decided to try and re-home her to somewhere she can live out the rest of her days in retirement but will have friends around her.  We contacted Heronfield Small Breeds Farm and Animal Rescue Centre, which is not far away from us, and they agreed to take her in.  We will miss her but we have had to do what is best for her.  Bye bye Annie.

Annie is the dark grey chicken in each of these photos.

R.I.P. Star

After we lost Ginger, one of our chickens, we noticed that one of our other chickens, Star, was not herself.  A few weeks after Ginger passed away we noticed that her droppings weren't normal and she was not herself.  We sought Veterinary help and he thought it might be Cancer and he gave her some medication to ease her suffering and she did perk up a bit but she had lost a lot of weight and I think it been too much for her and I found her this morning in one of the nests in the hen house.

This now means that Annie, our last chicken and the dark grey one in the first photo, is all alone and we need to consider what we are going to do as its unfair to keep a solitary chicken.

The Harvest, 2019

With the back garden renovations that have taken place this year and us going away on holiday I was a little late this year in planting up the raised vegetable bed.  Following some problems in previous years with the carrots I decided to try growing them from seed rather than seedlings and so I decided to do this with all of the vegetables. 

I bought carrot seeds, beetroot seeds and runner bean seeds.  I didn't plant up until the first week of June and following the instructions on the packets I planted carrots and beetroot outdoors and within 24 hours of planting the seeds we had nothing but rain for a couple of weeks, a lot heavy rain.  The runner beans had to be sowed indoors and they were growing quickly.  I transported them outdoors and planted them in their growing place.

Some of the carrots started to sprout, but not many and the beetroot were a total no show.  I left it a few weeks but still nothing so I planted more seeds, thinking that maybe the first lot had been washed away with the sheer amount of rain we had had.  I kept looking in hope and eventually we had a few little leaves appear in a few places and out of about 300 seeds planted I counted about 40 tiny seedlings.  They were doing OK for about a week and then all of a sudden they just disappeared and not a single beetroot was grown and harvested this year.  I love fresh beetroot and I was devastated, given the glut of beetroot harvest we've had the past two years.

We didn't fair too well with the carrots either this year, I had to plant additional carrot seeds where there were large gaps where they just didn't germinate but we've not exactly had brilliant weather this year, its been quite wet, or at least that's what it seems to have been.  One thing we did do with the carrots this year though, and that was to get nice straight carrots!  I did make more carrot top dye again this year and I used it to dye some Jacobs fleece.

As for the beans, they went totally mad and I was harvesting huge amounts of beans every couple of days.  I'm not kidding, take a look at the photos, that is the same pile of beans from two different angles and that was the biggest single harvest but every couple of days I was harvesting half to thirds of that amount each time.  The freezer was full of bags of sliced, blanched runner beans.

The back garden is all done

Now that we are back from holiday and the kids are back to school I took myself off to the local garden centre to get some plants.  I didn't go with a definite idea of what I wanted exactly but I did know the kind of thing I was going to look for and go from there.

There were already a few plants that managed to survive, 3 roses, black mondo grass and geranium (cranesbill) and Liatris.  I bought a Verbascum - Dark Eyes, Dianthus - Passion, Poppy - Moondance, Petunia - Nightsky and a Garvinea.  I also bought some more solar powered garden lights from Aldi.

I also bought a large gothic style planter for the tomatoes that my father-in-law gave us.  We weren't planning on having tomatoes this year because we don't have room for them anymore so next year the planter will be used for something nice.  Believe it or not that gothic style planter was a lot cheaper than a plain terracotta coloured one, both of them plastic type of material.

Petunia - Nightsky

Verbascum - Dark Eyes

Poppy - Moondance, Dianthus - Passion, Oxalis, Lavender, Garvinea, Geranium Cranesbill

R.I.P. Ginger

Whilst we were on holiday we put our 3 chickens into boarding care for the week with a local place that looks after your animals whilst your on holiday.  We've used them before without issue but since last year they have changed hands and whether it is something to do with that or just coincidence but one of our chickens has been very poorly since we picked them up and sadly she passed away today.  We have to take our own food for them and she seemed perfectly fine when we dropped them off.

She will be sadly missed by her hen-house mates, who we will be keeping a very close eye on to see if they get ill as well.

The garden is coming along and the neighbours are getting greener.

Since my last post I have finished painting all of the fence panels and the other side of the back gate and the two panels across the back of the garden.  We have also erected the shed over the weekend and made a start on painting that too as well as installing a small gate to stop the dog from going down the bottom of the garden and weeing everywhere killing all my plants.  We had one there before but thanks to a certain person messing with the fence it got wrecked and we had to remove it.  We put one back on so that I can reclaim that bit of garden back and she will no longer get under our feet when we are in and out the back gate bringing things in.  We have also bought two small cheap fence panels to replace the rotten ones that separated the garden and provided shelter for the chickens.  Its not what we wanted to get because what we wanted to get you can buy in multiples of 5 panels and we only need 2.  It will do for now.

I actually fell asleep on the sofa the other day after painting 5 more fence panels, that is not like me, but it has been very hot as well.

I'm still seeing jealous faces and hearing grumbles from a certain local couple and I am still laughing at them for their childish behaviour over us improving our property.  It needed to be done and it's what normal people do from time to time to maintain their homes.

So, the new huge shed is up so even more green eyed monster looks from the neighbours and we have dug over the vegetable garden and laid a bit of a better path between the shed and the little garden using the stepping stones from the main garden that just kept sliding everywhere.  We will sort that part out with something else or just put extra bark chips down and walk on that as it is.  The doors weren't on the shed when I gave it a first coat of paint so they had to be painted first and then I gave the whole thing a second coat of paint as in the last photo.

I've tidied up the little garden at the bottom properly now, ready to plant up when we get back from our impending camping holiday.   I did give it a quick tidy after the builders left because they had completely covered up my black mondo grass at the back, the thing that looks like a scrumpled up black plastic bag and there were piles of clay, stones, bricks and rubbish all over this little garden after they left.

I bought these garden light/sculptures a few weeks ago from Aldi, only £14 each.  They spin in the wind and they're solar powered so they light up at night.  I have noticed that the green eyed monsters have a large sculpture in their back garden, different to these but along similar lines and at the local garden centre its over £150.  Wow, I wouldn't pay that for a garden sculpture, not to put in a garden around here anyway!  I also noticed they were selling the same ones I bought but they were charging about £40 each.  Guess who doesn't shop at Aldi because she's too posh to shop there and guess who now has these same sculptures in their garden after I put mine in.  Yep, green eyed monsters!  So, guess how much they paid.  Ha ha ha ha ha.

Painting the new fence

Oh dear, we seem to have some green eyed monsters living very close to us.  The looks we have had since we put the new fence in.  What???  How dare we make improvements to our home and garden so much so that ours now looks better than theirs.  I've overheard them whispering to our direct neighbours about the new fence, asking who put it in, hinting that its not in straight, that the posts are leaning blah blah blah.  He needs to put his head on straight because I've had a spirit level on those posts to double check and they are perfectly straight, as is the fence, but what clearly isn't straight is our neighbours shed, its higher one end than the other.  Nope, not our fence on the piss mate, its your best mate's shed.

We really have had some stares and looks of them, really jealous looks as well.  Grow the hell up, you're not the only ones allowed to have nice things in your garden.  Gees!!!!

So, one of the things that has put the cat amongst the pigeons is that I have started painting the new fence at the back the same blue that I painted the front fence last September.  They looks they gave me back then were hilarious.  I just laugh at them because they're reactions are so ridiculous!  At least I get free entertainment.  Today though, I had been out there painting for literally less than 5 minutes when I could hear them whispering just the other side of the fence.  I'm not deaf or hard of hearing so could hear everything they said.  I was painting the back gate so it wasn't like there was blue paint seeping through to their side or anything but it took all my strength to stop myself from saying "Yes, I AM painting it Tardis Blue, you have a problem with that?  Cos tough shit, its our house, our fence, not yours so mind your bloody own business".

Now, I did say I was painting the fence and not myself didn't I?

The first place I started was the bottom corner so that once its dried and we can see if it will need a second coat of paint or not and then we can make a start on building the new shed as soon as hubby gets to his day off if we can and then finish painting the fence afterwards.  I've painted four 6ft x6ft fence panels using a brush today in the blazing hot sun. In the meantime, I can carry on painting the rest of the fence.

New fence

With the neighbours from hell gone and we now falling back in love with our home and garden we decided that now is the right time to replace the rear perimeter fence in its entirety as it is rotting, is a bit of a mish mash and looks a mess and I'm sick of looking at it.  To aid recovery of my mental health it needs to go and be replaced with nice new stuff that looks great and I can be proud of and happy to look at.  We have plans to renovate other parts of the garden and a nice new sturdy fence is integral to that work also.

We are responsible for the cost of the fence on the right hand side as you look out from the back door and also across the bottom.  The owner of the house next door is responsible for the cost of the fence on the left hand side of our property (the right hand side from his back door).  We approached him about it, and after several messages back and forth, some a little heated, he finally agreed that it needed replacing.   

We understand the stress he went through with her not paying rent for the last 12 months of her time here but we put up with her for 9 years. 9 years of sheer hell, parcels going missing, things being thrown over into the garden breaking our stuff, her kids and their friends climbing into our garden breaking and stealing stuff in the early years, cars damaged, harassment, being followed around shops, all night parties, loud music, loud voices and shouting all day every day, lies being spread about us, the constant bad smell of cannabis being smoked, rubbish and broken furniture littering the local area (which coincidentally all stopped and totally disappeared after she left making the area much nicer).  I think after that, and that is just a small amount of what we put up with from his tenant, that to ask him to replace the fence that she destroyed is not an unreasonable request.  We are also getting rid of the trellis from around the top, which added height and helped stop kids climbing over and instead we are adding a kickboard to the bottom so that the total height remains the same, just more solid.  Security strips will added to the top edges once its finished to help prevent anyone from climbing over.

We had already booked for the fence to be replaced before he gave us the go ahead for his side.  May Day weekend starting on the 3rd May, as we knew that the neighbours the other side would be away from the crack of dawn on Friday morning and less likely to be any "issues". We had had a few issues with the neighbours boyfriend on the other side ever since he moved in a few years ago.  We had replaced the fence on that side when we moved in 12 years ago because it was falling over and we had a young child and I was pregnant with our next.  At the time we couldn't afford much so it was only cheap fencing but it was better than what was there and it was upright and straight, until he moved in and messed with it.  Everything in "his" garden, its actually her house, has to be pushed right up tight to the fence, screwed to the fence with the longest screws ever, meaning that the screw ends are protruding by a mile and we have to cut them off for ours and our kids safety but by doing this he has pushed the fence over and out of alignment.  Time to get it straightened and re-aligned and claim some of our garden back whilst he isn't here to argue and throw a tantrum.

Whoops! I've written war and peace but that was the situation we were in. So, first up, some before photos. We had already removed trellis for plants that was attached to the fence and installed two new garden arches for the plants to grow up as this is better for the fence, better for us and better for the plants.  We also removed both sheds from the bottom of the garden that had seen better days and put everything into storage so that the guys could build us a nice big flat concrete base once the new fence was in.

This view is of the side shared with the landlord of the property that had neighbour from hell. No kick boards on either side which meant weeds and grass from neighbours would creep under the fence into ours, not for much longer though!

This view is of the fence with neighbours in their 60's looking towards our house.  See how the trellis is pushed over by the door, which causes issues with us opening the door fully.

This is view of side with neighbours in their 60's at the bottom of the garden.  See how straight the fence isn't!  This is where its really been pushed over and distorted.  Wait for the aerial photo further down!

This photo shows how he pushed his shed so far into the fence that it pushed it over and originally the drain pipe went straight down but he had put two bends in it and then faced the end of the pipe towards our property, which explains why our path is always wet, slimy and icy in the winter.  On the other side of that pipe is a bolt which went through the centre of the original fence post when the houses were built in the late 1960's and where the fence post that we put in 12 years ago was aligned against and screwed to the wall so at some point he has moved the fence post and wedged the pipe between the fence post and the bolt, I kept saying I thought it had been moved, crafty git!  Needless to say our team of guys managed to move his shed over a bit and that pipe was turned so that the water now runs off under his shed and to ensure it couldn't be turned back concrete/cement was placed over and around it to keep it in place and divert all water that comes from his roofs away from our property.

 A few photos of the new fence before a few comparison photos side by side of before and after.

The photo on the left is what it looks like by the back door now, not as far over as it should be but not hanging over so we can't open our back door properly.  Head on view looking at fence with neighbours in their 60's.

View taken from my daughters bedroom, ignore the moss on the utility roof that I've pushed into piles with the broom from the open windows toward the edge that hubby hasn't removed yet. Bloody Magpies, they pick it off the main roof and toss it down with a thud! Second photo shows the new concrete shed base.

Now for the before and after.

What a difference, isn't that much better!  We still have to decide what we are doing about the little divider fence but we will do that ourselves when we know what we want to do.

Its straight again, and we've regained a few inches of garden back, not what we had originally but its better than it was.  The path is where its always been and years ago that bit of garden was wide enough to plant Hebe shrubs in.  The before photos shows its hardly wide enough to put a few daffodils in thanks to the antics of him next door.

Aerial view of before and after.  The fence should have been moved over quite a bit more to the right but because of his structures and paving next door they couldn't move it as much as we and they would have liked, not without having to go through a lengthy court process to force him to dig some of it up and its just not worth that much hassle.  It has been moved over by a few inches, as much as they could, and the main thing is that it is now strong, well concreted in and he can't mess about with moving it anymore.

All we have to do now is paint the fence and get the new shed built.

The bees are back!

Do you remember my excitement last May when I discovered that we have Mason Bees making use of our insect house?  Well almost 12 months on and the eggs they laid last year are starting to hatch and we once again have small bees frantically flying around the garden.  They are not wasting any time in getting to work on creating the next generation either.

They are really small, although my camera zoom will make them look quite big.

Oh so pretty - in the garden

I am really starting to enjoy my home and garden again, I'm slowly falling back in love with it after 9 years of the living hell of a horrid neighbour and her kids.  It's peaceful once again, which is what we loved about it when we bought the house 12 years ago.  Obviously there has been a bit of noise from the landlord having to put his house back together but the good news is that his own daughter has recently moved in as she needs somewhere to live and he's had enough of terrible tenants and I can't blame him for that.  I've not met her yet but she's quiet and you rarely hear her two kids.

Anyway, we have flowers in the front garden, all those bulbs that I planted last September are flowering.  I have seen a few bulbs on the surface, half-eaten, bloody squirrels!!!

First of all, the two trees outside of our house are in full bloom and they are beautiful.  We used to have three trees but a couple of years ago a large truck tried to drive along the walk and in trying to negotiate around the trees the steep embankment just behind them they got themselves stuck and ended up backing into the tree, cracked the trunk from the base all the way up making it unsafe and it had to be cut down.

This is my view from the upstairs window in front of which I sit and knit or crochet. There is a large tree behind it in the distance.

In our own front garden we have various flowering bulbs and a magnolia tree that are in bloom.

I particularly like this batch of photos that I took with my Canon camera, yes, amazingly I took these, they're not stock photos from the internet, they're just so much more focused and detailed than those taken with my mobile phone.  There are a couple in the batch above that I took with my camera too but most were taken with my phone.

I've taken the front garden to task

I've gotten thoroughly fed up of the mess that the front garden has gotten into in recent times, a lot of this is due to the fact that I fell out of love with the house and felt vulnerable and threatened in my own garden due to the horrible neighbours living next door.  I know that I have mentioned her and her kids before now, well, they are still here, they haven't moved out, more's the pity.

Something had to give.  It either gets left in a mess and I put up with it or I muster up the physical and mental strength to tackle it and the neighbour.  I decided that I would tackle the garden and her if need be.  I had not got many plants left due to things they were doing to them, lack of care from me, the hot summer we've had and being choked out by what I thought was a creeping Sedum that turned out to be a similar looking weed.

I took advantage of the plants being thirsty to saturate the creeper in weed killer a couple of times over the school summer holidays to try and kill off the roots too, drink it up buddy!  Inspired by our recent visit to the Isle of Wight and seeing all the lovely plants at Godshill Model Village I had already planned the garden out in my head and set about ordering all the plants in, which were due for delivery Mid-September, which gave me a few weeks to get it into a condition where it can be replanted up.

The weed was pretty much killed off on the surface so I raked off the dead foliage, which allowed me to see what plants were actually left and I have to say, not many!  Before digging the garden over and getting any roots out I painted the fence blue and was entertained by some of the neighbours facial expressions as I did so.  I just carried on painting chuckling to myself.

The first photo shows the overgrown garden, the other photos show the garden raked off and the fence painted.  As always, our dog had to get in on the photos.

A few plants survived and some of these were moved to different positions whilst I can, such as all the lavender is now planted either side of the path by the door, the poppy has been moved forward, away from the fence, to allow for a larger shrub to be planted behind it so we can still see it once everything is grown.

These are images of the additional plants that have been planted in the garden.  A few shrubs, a few smaller plants and lots and lots of bulbs in a range of colours and styles.

I will have to take photos next year of it all in colour as it should look brilliants against the blue fence.

We have bees!

A couple of years ago we bought a wall mountable bee house from Aldi to see if we would get anything use it.  We almost forgot about it, it certainly wasn't used last year by bees but this year they have moved in.  Hurrah.  I've only recently bought my new camera and have not got used to it yet so I apologise for the poor quality and the lack of clarity but you can see them coming and going.

What we have are Mason Bees.  Industrious little no-sting solitary bees that are far more efficient at pollinating than the honey bee but they don't produce honey.  What they do is go collect pollen and they fill those little tubes, constantly returning to the same tube until they have filled a section of it with enough pollen and then they lay an egg and then seal it with dirt to create a cell and they do this until they have filled the entire tube.  Once they have filled one tube, they move onto another one and do this until they are finished laying eggs.

Update:  On 7th June, on BBC's Springwatch, Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan done a feature on Mason Bees.  Its really interesting and shows how the bees create the cells and even shows the grubs that have hatched from the eggs.  The section runs from 15:20 to about 21:45 and includes information about the Great British Bee Count, which I took part in this year and found to be both informative and really enjoyable and thankfully I am not a "wafter" or "panicker", I am very calm around bees and so was able to participate easily.  I learned that there are far more different species of bees around my garden than I could ever have imagined.

Produce from the garden

I've been harvesting the beetroot for a few weeks now, pulling up a few at a time, cooking them and dicing them to be used on salads and in wraps etc but its time to harvest some of the carrots.  Hmmmm, they are interesting aren't they?  I've never seen carrots like these in the shops, they must be a new variety that we've discovered.

They are full of Celtic knots and big noses.

Which came first, the chicken or the carrot?  Ooooh, Ooooh, Ooooh, I need a wee, carrot and them we have a weird little fat one that looks like a dolls or a babies hand, we had a few hand shapes ones actually.

Aye, aye, what have these carrots been up to in the garden then eh?  These are the naughty boy carrots.  Despite their weird appearance, the carrots are actually very tasty.

We're not doing any good with the beans this year, not enough for a meal from them this year.  Very disappointed.  Tomatoes aren't doing great again either as the insects are getting to them again.  Potatoes will hopefully do better this year and I'm hoping for a better crop from those. 

The carrot tops have been chopped up and soaked for three days in preparation to be boiled up and then the tops scooped out and the liquid kept to make a natural dye.  Beetroot is doing really well and I've been keeping the water from cooking those to use as a natural dye too.

What are we growing in the garden this year?

Last year we had a bumper crop of runner beans, a few potatoes, carrots and beetroot.  The cabbage and cauliflower growing was a waste of time because it became caterpillar feed.

This year we are trying dwarf beans in the hopes that we will have a crop of beans but not be over-run with them.  We are also trying beetroot again with a variety called Pablo, some multi-coloured carrots which are basically orange, yellow and white and then we have tomatoes, potatoes and strawberry.  We have had strawberries growing for a few years actually but they always get eaten by the slugs and snails so this year we have put them in a hanging basket to see what happens.  Slugs and snails can't climb up thin air can they?

I didn't actually take a photo of the hen house last year to show you what it looks like, I just took photos of the hens.  It has a run which goes underneath the sheltered house.  The beans this year are in the big red tub that used to have the strawberries growing in and the strawberries are in a hanging basket.

A couple of bags of potatoes and the chickens being nosy as always.

We also have flowers in the garden.  I won't show the lavender as that's in another post but here are some of the flowers we have growing too.  First is a scented rose that I've had for years, so long that we bought it with us from our first house to this one as it was in a big planter originally.  Its now planted in the garden properly and gives us a good display every year.

We have a massive shrub/semi-climbing rose from David Austin Roses called Spirit of Freedom.  Its beautiful, the flowers are ginormous and  heavily scented.  The only problem is that the flowers are so heavily that they usually hang down towards the floor and you can only see their beauty when you lift them.  I have a multi-coloured Spirea, it flowers white and pink on the same shrub and then that is Cranesbill Geranium and both are usually covered in bees.

In this last photo, I have two photos of a pink flowering plant that I have no idea what it is or where it came from.  Its not invasive, so I've ruled out it being a weed, when its overcast or dark the flowers close up tightly like they've been rolled up.  Then we have Campanula, which is pretty in masses of clumps but is very invasive so has to be controlled a lot.

Getting chickens and harvesting the vegetables

We are back from our camping holiday just outside of Wells, Gloucestershire and have been and got some chickens.  We have been advised that our house should be able to accommodate 4 chickens so we have chosen 4 different breeds.  Ranger the ginger one, Bluebell the grey one, Sussex the white one and Rocky Road the black one.  We have called them Ginger, Annie, Star and Roxsy.

The place we had them from has a return policy whereby if you have any problems with any or all of the chickens you can take them back within a given period of time.  We had issues with Rocksy, the black Rocky Road chicken where she was squawking loud all of the time and physically attacking the other hens to the point of there being blood everywhere.  We took her back and she was put in a special "ASBO" enclosure that they have for problem chickens, where they can keep an eye on their behaviour.  Our hen house became peaceful with the other hens getting along together really well with Ginger, the smallest of them, being in charge.

As you can see, our raised vegetable bed is green, with the runner beans being good producers.  The variety are "Gigantica" I think they were called, my father-in-law got them for us and they are big runner beans.  Quite a lot of them have grown in funny shapes due to lack of growing room and with me being only small I have to keep getting step ladders out to reach the tops of the bean plants and find all these beans that have been "trapped" and grown weird.

Whilst their plants have produced beans for them ours have gone mad and I've been harvesting them twice a week, cooking half of them and blanching/freezing the other half.  We have over 11lb of sliced green beans in our freezer so you imagine what kind of crop we have had this year, so many in fact that when I close my eyes at night that is all I see, they've even been calling to me and they must know my name as they have grown in shapes of the letters, J U L I.  They obviously come unstuck when it came to the last letter though but I suppose growing in the shape of an "a" is a tall order.  Amazing!

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the cabbage and cauliflower.  We have not had anything from them as we have been blighted with millions, and I mean millions, of caterpillars.  I got excited and took a photo of a purple cauliflower as it started to grow but it didn't get much bigger than that before it was covered in caterpillars.

We did plant some potatoes in bags and we did get a few from those but not very many.  Tomatoes, we had a few but mostly the insects got to them before we did.  We did get a few beetroot and carrots though.  Its the first time either of us have grown vegetables and its a big learning curve but at least the chickens are laying eggs so we have a ready supply of fresh eggs to enjoy.