Finding motivation

Hellebores in the sunshine.

I have been struggling to get motivated in the garden this year, it’s not been the weather, although the last few days with two storms have been pretty grim. In January we had quite a bit of sunshine and some nice crisp days with lots of beautiful sunrises and sunsets.

Sunset

I have been busy being creative for my customers with new borders and new vistas but my garden hasn’t changed and I have only ordered my seeds for the allotment today. Unfortunately my polytunnel blew over in storm Eunice so I don’t have anywhere to sow them yet, but it’s a start.

New vista so you can see across the two borders from the top of the steps, I’ll come back to this another time.

Before

I have cleared this bed to create a herb garden near the kitchen door.

I despair when I look at my own patch, there is so much to do, but today I sowed some vegetable seeds in a customer’s, only slightly broken, greenhouse and did a bit more to the allotment.

Strawberry runners growing in the gravel.

I have decided to dig up my strawberry bed because strawberry plants don’t really have a very long productive life and they are really diseased as you can see. They came up more easily than I had expected as it turns out they are also suffering with vine weevil grubs eating the roots. I will replace with some new stock somewhere else, probably not as many.

Compost heap

Lines of compost, dug soil and old strawberry plants.

One of my many jobs to do is make compost bins but meanwhile I am combining digging over and turning the compost pile and topping up the raised bed with the good stuff.

There was even a bit of sunshine today!