My gardeners have arrived. (The man down the road walked them up to our house yesterday and left them in the parcel box. He rang, to get them straight away. Paid by paypal. Life sure is different at present.)
The pink one is the only one with a name. Evil Edna. She is a Buff Barred and the other 2 brown ones are Colombian Black Tails. {Kev} also recently got some of these, it would seem they are very popular right now. I wanted a Sussex, but in these times you take what you can get and be happy about it. Little bit of a scuffle last night trying to get them to use the ladder to get in the house. Evil Edna decided that she was having none of it and was pecking both the other 2 and myself. Hence the name.
They have been out this morning in the run and already seem to have got the hang of getting slugs. There was much glee and throwing it about and then they all descended on it like they didnt have any food! The dont seem to like the water dispenser and keep pecking the top furiously. I might change it to a metal one as it could be their reflection.
They are 17 weeks old and wont lay for a month. But they are already doing the job and are scratching the heck out of the area. When they have done a thorough job there, we will move them on.
Chicken house is up.
Nesting boxes
It looks rather cosy.
Here you go {Dave}I am proud of this. This is one of the clumps of crocosmia (Lucifer?) that I dug out of a huge mess in the back garden. Ripped it apart with my hands and then scrapped the soil back with the trowel and dumped the partial bits in. Heeled them in and told them, 'you are on your own, if you live, then you can stay there'. They are all coming up, in the parts of the borders I dumped them in. Pleased with this, if they will flower it will be another thing, but they are green and coming up, so it fills in a bit of the dead space. As you can see, huge amounts of leaf litter here. When I start to get some home made compost I will chuck that about like mulch and home things get on a bit better. For now, I am happy with these ones surviving.
Astlibes, no idea what their name is, they are a purple colour. I managed to get 2 really manky going over plants last year in Morrisons super market for 25p. The big one I will divide into 3 at the end of summer and dot the other 2 somewhere else. They remind me of purple sprouting broccoli right now. They should be frondy later.
Some of the crocus have lines and dots on them, I am wondering if they have become a hybrid?
Also another reject that was almost dead last year, a yellow hollyhock. It seems to be fighting to come up this year. I thought they were an annual. Lets hope for some colour.
And I think this last one is also a reject and is it is primula? I dont know but it resembles an onion or alium seed head.
Hope you are all well.
At present, everyday I am pulling at least one soup plate like this of sycamore seedlings. They are everywhere. I have had to use tweezers to get them out of the down pipe and drain on the porch.
The neighbours have just come home with a huge chicken run. This has raised it even more if we should get hens. I am still in two minds we still have so many other things to do. Then I swing the other way and think could they help in the garden scratching about and getting rid of the millions of slugs all over and the grubs, weevils that have killed all of my lavender plants. I have no idea what they are, but I would think chickens would eat every single one of the little sods.
If we were to get some chickens, my veg raised beds would need to be somewhere else. You see, I cant make my mind up what to do. More fire wood to move and stack.
Here is a picture of the density of the moss. I think we will take everyones advice and just mow the lawn and not try to get rid of it as it will just leave the whole garden bare. You could comb it. At the very top of the picture you can just about see the tiers on the garden. there are 2. I am thinking of trying to plant them as they are nigh on vertical and extremely hard to mow.
Nothing else to report. Same as everywhere else with the Covid 19. No toilet paper, no paracetamol, no canned tomatoes and no pasta on the shelves. Due to the type of working contracts we take, I always have enough in to see us through as we never know when a contract could end suddenly and we need to eat from the stores.
I am going to take this opportunity of staying home more, to change some things in the house to make them more efficient. Silly little things that I have not got around to doing since moving in. For instance taking the shelves out of a cupboard so I can store the vacuum cleaner etc rather than it keep falling all over the place in the utility room. Something small, but it will make a big difference to every day.
I have just read that the government is going to push that all people over 70 self isolate for up to 4 months! Honest, all the older people I have spoken to, seem to think they are invincible and nothing will touch them. "Oh I have lived through the war!". And like I pointed out, "well you didnt at 80 plus and not with heart failure and breathing problems!". I am just really quite worried and stressed about it all to tell the truth. My cousin is going to go ahead and get married but do it by webcam. Have a party later. the hotel have cancelled with them as the evening do was for 600 in London. It is going to affect everyone.
Be safe everyone, stress and the not knowing what is going to happen, can and will make people do things you dont expect. Stay home as much as possible.
Be well my friends.
