Sarah Cawood

Inside Sarahs Notebook

Garden Tales

Monday Feb 06, 2012

I have made a horrifying discovery: at 8 months pregnant, I simply can't do as much as I used to be able to do:(!! If I get on a cleaning roll, I have to have little sit downs in between projects. Awful. I will endeavour to keep on trying to get fun content on here though. I got sent a lovely recipe from my friend Melanie Rainbow (had to name her because it's such a pretty name!). Thanks Mel! It's a cake that looks like a box of chocolates! So cute. I'm going to make it for Andy's Valentine's gift on Sunday. If you'd like to have a go, the recipe is here.

So, I did manage to get in the garden and give it a bit of a going over just before the snow came. Now I know it might seem like madness: cold, damp and miserable but according to my Gardening Through The Year book, you need to get the Wisteria (that pretty purple flower that climbs all over the front of some people's houses and all over the back of mine) pruned in January to encourage abundant flowering and I love the way it looks so much that I didn't want to jeopardise that. Of course, it was folly to get up a ladder and do it myself in my condition so naturally I dispatched the OH up the to do it for me, bless him. Thanks Babe! While he got busy with the secateurs, I got to the weeding and leaf clearing.

I think I've mentioned it before but a great tip is to weed when the soil is quite soggy as its much easier to turn over when it's like that. You can dig some leaves into the soil or leave them on top (the worms will eventually pull them underneath the surface and help aerate your soil) but it's important to make sure any dead leaves are cleared from any grass as they form mats that smother the lawn and invite diseases. I'm fairly sure my lawn is buggered anyway, as you can see from the photos: Mama Cawood says that it'll come back but I'm not so sure: the price I pay for having a very clay based soil is that every winter it gets water logged, impacted and ruined. Andy went over it with a garden fork to aerate it a little but I don't hold out much hope. I dream of having a beautiful lawn but the reality is that they are very hard to cultivate and keep. Boo to clay soils!!!

So, it was a bit cold and a bit soggy out there but I was followed around my weeding trails by a little robin, keen to get his beak around the earthworms I was bringing to the surface: that was a cheering sight! And then I happened upon a male blackbird in my pyrocanthus tree guarding a nest. Hopefully you can make both the bird and the nest out in my photo. I was SO excited about my little wildlife discovery but after monitoring the nest for a couple of days, it now seems like its been abandoned. Andy and I thought maybe that the male blackbird had lost his Lady Blackbird and was hovering by the nest grieving:(((. He seems to have gone now and I don't have the heart to see if there are poor little abandoned eggs in the nest. I hope my cats didn't get their grubby claws on Mummy Blackbird. I'm also hoping that we get some more wildlife out there in the Lily Pad garden at some point. I do love a bit of Springwatching:-).

In the meantime, I await the arrival of my spring bulbs with baited breath. That's another reason I wanted to get out there and tidy things up: so that the bulbs have a half decent chance of not being overshadowed by weedage;).

Just before I go, a massive TA! to Telly's own Kirsten O Brien for todays awesome daily tip. She is a neat freak very much after my own heart:).

So, that's it for now really. I'm off to try and prepare some food for this evening: I may be sometime.....Oh and if you're having a bimble around here after seeing my piece in OK! then hello!!! Nice to see you, have a look around; there's lots of lovely stuff to look at here at sarahcawood.co.uk.....

Until next time!

Sxxx