....words to sum up last week

While the weather is being less than helpful and clumps of mud the size of- oh, I don't know- hippos, have been tracked in and out of the house, huge progress was made in my garden:
After avoiding even looking at it for weeks, I've finally tackled the large bed of luxuriant ground elder growing along the wall, uncovering a small horde of (free!!!) allium bulbs and dill seedlings.

From this...

To this! Room for a Hinnonmaki yellow gooseberry, a tayberry teepee (the idea is to train the canes in a spiral-cone shape. Fingers and toes crossed) two cardoon seedlings and maybe my plum or pear tree.

Whoo-hoo! Free plants! I found two seedlings of dill and bronze fennel. Okay, I may have also sown about 50 of my own but still. I found these. Like food off of someone else's plate, they'll taste even better.

My scavenged brick-and-bits walkways are almost done! Good bits of brick and flattish-stones are getting harder to come by but all the trouble of hunting them out of various rubbish piles is worth it as they're saving the paths from becoming total mud mires.




I've found a wild gooseberry and saved it from certain squishing by diggers, discovered four rhubarb crowns growing in the overgrown garden next door and tackled overgrown fruit trees.

Before. Dead limb, half broken branches and about 20 little plum suckers were jostling for space.

The light has gone but already, it's so much better. I suspect that two of the smaller plum trees on the right are actually rootstock suckers which have sprung up in between the two rows of pear, apple and plum trees, so they may also be taken after they fully leaf out if they prove to be robbing too much space and light.

Most of the plum blossom has dropped, now is the turn of some of the later pears and what I think are two apple trees. Ever notice how pear blossom smells fishy?