What did you do in your garden today?

[Marck]

Then it must be a trick of lighting and perspective. The second appearance looks much smaller and darker.

 

[Sean Regan]

Then it must be a trick of lighting and perspective. The second appearance looks much smaller and darker.

There's no lighting, it's infra red. I guess because the second time it's further back on the roof of 'arry's house it isn't transmitting as much heat.

 

[Sean Regan]

I accidently lost the first video on Youtube. So here it is again, plus the one from last night. It arrived at almost to the minute of the night before. Check out the times on the videos.
I was going to call him "Mickey" my wife said that was to obvious, so now he's Marcel.

 

[Sean Regan]

.

Just a bit of leaf collection front and back gardens. My new Grizzly blowervac makes the job so much easier.
Then the repair of waneylap half panel behind the teahouse just ther batons and cap at the top.
Then gave the lawn a dose of iron sulphate, where moss is trying to establish itself.

 

[Sean Regan]

Nothing today,
But around 9.00pm last night 'arry set off the patio PIR. Must have decided to come out to have "a check on his estate."
So we saw him do a tour of the patio but he didn't visit his food station. He then wandered back into the azaleas, so probably went home. He was looking OK.
I put some wet food out for him around 10.00pm, but when I checked this morning he hadn't touched it.
I've chucked that away and I'll leave out the other half of the sachet tonight.
If he ignores that, I'll just carry on leaving the dry food out, in case he feels hungry.

We've not seen Marcel for a couple of nights.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Hoeing and improving the soil generally in the new flower bed, taking out lumps of clay putting in the good stuff. We put a white buddlia and a Michaelmas daisy at the back last year and there is a group of Verbena Benariensis in the more established thread next to it. The sunshine has brought out the butterflies, and they are all over them. I saw peacocks, red admirals. tortoiseshell and frittilliaries as well as various whites. Meanwhile the ivy, which grows up the washing line post and is trimmed into a big lollipop, is in full flower and surrounded by hundreds of flies and bees of all sorts with a great big hornet patrolling round and round for something to pick off. So alive, amazing stuff.

 

[roadrunner]

I've been planting my Fall garden, planted some Borage and Mustards yesterday and will be sowing some Brussel Sprouts today, then taking a long bike ride on Sunday

 

[Sean Regan]

Just a bit of mowing, weeding and vaccing.
Though I did swop over the central feature of the garden.

The sambucus has been "relegated" to the small patio and been given a haircut now it's lost its leaves.

It's place has been taken by the mimosa. It just takes seconds to swop them over. It's taken years for the azaleas in the same bed to reach this height. Didn't help that one died on me earlier in the year and had to be replaced. The idea is that they are supposed to hide the tub without being too much in your face.

The damaged areas in the lawn are recovering after a fashion, from the attention of neighbours' naffin' cats. The seed I laid in
the bit under some rhodos just beyond the lantern is growing well. I pruned off quite a few yellowing leaves on several rhodos.

Still have a few roses coming out.

Even these in "the alley of shame" are doing their best.

'arry triggered the trail camera last night around 9.30pm. He must have made his way up to the rockery, as he disappeared out of the frame.

 

[Sean Regan]

It should have been a golf day today, the forecast said the rain would clear up late morning.
But as it was chucking it down at 7.15am. I didn't bother. At 9.00am when other members with whom I usually play would have arrived, I got an e-mail saying the course was closed as the greens were flooding. "Inspection first thing tomorrow." So people would have gone home. At 11.00 am I got another e-mail saying the weather had improved enough to open the course!
I wouldn't have been best pleased had I gone and come home again.

Anyway.. I decided to attend to a garden project, as there's nothing urgently required in the garden.

The pergola rail that was one side of the koi pool had these ornamental panels in it, I made out of plywood with a jigsaw.

The problem with plywood is that as you cut them with the saw it disturbs the laminations and no matter what you do these days to protect it, water eventually gets inbetween them and they rot. I think I've replaced them three times in thirty years.

The matching ones in the tea-house I made from the same roofing ply I used to build it and are still perfect after 34 years. You can't get the same quality wood these days.

So early this year I removed the panels as three of them were beginning to disintegrate and Itidied up what was left and made new frames.

I can't get solid wood wide enough to fill the spaces (the height is about a foot) and I wasn't going to use plywood again.

So I've decided as a "project" to make some ornamentation similar to the hardwood rondels I made to cover the coachbolts on the two pergola posts of the one on the back of the house. I've just got to think it through as to how I'll connect it to the top and bottom of the frames.

I've bought some soft wood window sill. It's about 9" wide. It's not cheap, a couple of quid a foot. So I can fettle something to go in the middle of the five spaces.

'arry made an appearance on the camera around half eight last night and went into his feeding station and ate some of the cat food I'd put out for him. So we're pleased about that, as it's the first time he's ate something in there, for nearly two weeks as he's been staying in his house, apart from a couple of times now in the last three days.

 

[DrMike27]

It is winter rye time in the low desert! Dethatched the old Bermuda grass, spread perennial rye all over the yard, and then topped with 32 ft^2 of topper soil. Only took about 2.5 hours to get it all done. Then again, I only have 900 ft^2 to deal with.

Bonus: If you zoom in on the play house, you can see my ‘wild corn’ growing on the left hand side. Planted sweet corn last fall before I had to turn that plot into a playground and it never sprouted. Now this fall they just sprouted. Doubt I’ll get anything because they are already popping out the pollen up top, but still cool to see.

 

[wkevinc]

Nothing much at the moment so i watch videos of this guy from Canada

Honestly, the first 21 seconds of that blew my mind right out of my other end. You can literally just create a plant from a freakin' log cutting?! Wow

 

[wkevinc]

Just a bit of "house keeping."

Pruned off all the "spikes" on the acer in the front garden, I prune it to lollypop shape each year but a few branches grow at a much faster rate than others, so it looks a bit odd by September.
It'll get a much harder prune once the leaves fall, to stop it getting too big. I do this every year.


Then a bit of "garden management."

Removed the rose in front of the brick gate pillar in the front garden. It was very woody, always suffered from blackspot and was a bit of a mess. It was forever dropping petals. One fewer job.
I spread the end azalea out as the rose branches were compacting it. Now you wouldn't know the rose was ever there.



Reduced the roses on the new patio to ten, as it was too crowded. So now two in their ceramic pots are on this small patio.



Moved the old bird bath from the corner of this patio.
Now it's on the bigger stepping stone between these two tree azaleas.



Had a good sweep up of the leaves in the front garden that have already fallen from the big acer and then swept the paths and patios in the back the garden. Missing my Flymo garden vac/blower I'd bought in April that went O/S last Sunday week. After a lot of hassle it's being picked up on Monday and I'm getting a refund. I won't have another. I'll get something else. I bought it to replace "a cheapo" I'd bought ten years ago which was still working, but I was always having to dismantle it every few weeks (a couple of dozen screws) to remove a build up of mud around the impeller. A right pain. With the Flymo you just need to undo a big knob on the top to open it to get to the impeller.

'arry our hedgehog has given us some concerns. He only ate a bit of his dinner on Sunday, ate nothing on Monday and Tuesday night and the camera didn't pick him up. So on Wednesday afternoon I checked on him. Not something I like doing. He was tucked up in his bed and tightly curled up by the time I lifted one end of the roof of his house. But I could see him breathing. So I guessed he was OK. At leasdt he hadn't wandered off and died somewhere. That would have distressed my wife (and me a bit).
He came about 10.00 pm last night and ate some of his dinner.
(I provide a 85g sachet of Sheba cat food every night plus some hedgehog pellets in a separate bowl).

Tonight he arrived at 8.00pm and ate some. Then went back towards his house, but later, something triggered the PIR on the side of the teahouse at the bottom of the garden, so that could have been him "on patrol." He may come back later for some more of his food. He has in the past.

Dude, from America, your garden is absolutely gorgeous. More importantly, YOU HAVE A HEDGEHOG?!! Please post pics of him sleeping contentedly and/or being cute.

 

[Sean Regan]

Dude, from America, your garden is absolutely gorgeous. More importantly, YOU HAVE A HEDGEHOG?!! Please post pics of him sleeping contentedly and/or being cute.

I do know that some people in the USA keep them as pets, but "ours" isn't really ours. we don't interact with it.
Over the years we've had hedgehog visit our garden.

We've got him/her as we found it as a young one collapsed on our front lawn during the day back in April. I put it under an azalea with some water and meal worms in the back garden. I went back later asnd found he'd curled up in a ball having eaten the mealworms and drunk the water. We think he was dehydrated.

I returned again a few hours later and he'd gone. I thought he might have crawled away and died as there was no sign of him. Then the following evening I looked through our lounge French windows and saw him drinking the water in one of our pot movers. This was our first photo.

So I gave him some mealworms

For the first couple of weeks I know he was living under our summerhouse, my trail camera caught him "practicing his tightrope act," on the wall next to it. "We think he wanted to run away and join the hedgehog circus."

But eventually he moved into the house I bought him.

It's under some azaleas between our patio and the side fence. I made a bigger roof for it as there was evidence of previous damp in one corner after some heavy rain a few weeks before, though by then it was quite dry inside, (as it was in the photo after this one).
The new roof just sits on top of the old one. I put "doorstop feet" on the bottom and it sits on a paving slab so is well clear of any water. I was leaving bits of hay outside on the paving slab now and again which he dragged in to build up his nest.

This is the interior of his house. I took this photo when he was "out to dinner." You can see the old damp stain in the corner

This is his feeding station near our French windows. A plastic box with a four and a half inch entrance.

The garden is totally enclosed of which he has the run. The camera wherever I position it would pick him up at sometime during the night.
He regularly came to his feeding station every evening during the warmer months. But now he's "practicing for hibernation," so he doesn't come as often, but he'll find enough to eat in the garden, slugs etc., if he's hungry. But I always leave dry food and water out for him just in case.

 

[Sean Regan]

Too wet to do any gardening, so I thought I'd make a start on the rondels I want to go in the pergola balustrade. Which will be similar to the ones I made for the pergola on the back of the house.

There's probably a computer programme that would make a template for me, bu I made do with a pencil, a ruler, some graph paper and a soup bowl.

Fortunately, you only have to do "half a job" as by folding it over you can achieve near symetry by cutting out both halves together.

Just a case of transfering it onto the wood.

I can tidy it up when I'm cutting out the "petals" with my jigsaw.

Ideally you really need a bench mounted jigsaw, so you can move the wood around the blade.
I have to make do with my twenty year-old hand held jigsaw.
But as it's just for the garden, I can get it, "near enough."

Once I've done one I can use that for a template for the other four. "But none today."

 

[Sean Regan]

Wasn't happy with the outer shape of the first template.