A Sunday in the Garden.

Ahem.  What I am about to show you is not a garden. It is a piece of land, no, a swamp, or a bog.

And this is on a good day !

There are lumps and bumps and holes with water, lots of it. 

Nevertheless, it didn't stop us from planting a few trees and soft fruit shrubs there last March.  Sink or swim ! In total, on our land which is about 3.5 ha, we planted roughly 350 native trees.

That was very hard labour as it is either rock or bog. Most of the trees have survived so far, despite the fact that the grass and weeds sometimes grew higher than the little beggars.

Yesterday we were going to take up some of the trees and all the fruit bushes that we planted haphazardly on the break-a-leg-twist-your-ankle piece of land. When the men with their yellow machines come in, somewhere next week, we will have that particular plot drained, dug a pond and added loads of composted cow dung (from our lovely neighbour, Bernie's cows).

Before digging up the plants we went for a little stroll on the land. And no one, no one  is ever doing that without Xena coming along.

 This garden bench is placed so we can sit there and watch the chickens' shenanigans.

We have two little streams (when it's not raining buckets) meandering through the land and running along the bounderies.

Poor Bert. Carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. 

 Bog Myrtle 

The amount and variety of wildflowers on the land is amazing and we wouldn't want to disturb the ecosystem too much. A biiiig part of the land will stay wild, even if we will give a snip here and there over time, especially the gorse and rhododendron.

Right ! That was just the shortest of strolls, because there was work to be done. It didn't take too long.

The plants will be okay for a while in the recycled bags of the pig feed, as long as we prevent them from drying out.  They will thank us in the long run.

We then went indoors for a drink before we would tackle some planting out of hydrangeas, etc that I still have in pots. 

Our friend, Jo phoned to ask if we were doing something that afternoon. Why ? You know, you always have to ask why, because people might suggest you do something that you don't want to do....

Jo was going to bake a cake and did we want to come over for a cuppa and yeah, cake.

Hmm..dilemma.  Work in the garden or going for a visit and eat cake. Difficult choice.

We downed tools. There is always tomorrow !

Patricia xxx...x