The 'slash and burn' approach to gardening.

After my enforced lay-off last year, I realised the garden could cope without micro-management and besides, natural wildlife havens are all the rage these days. But now it is looking extremely ragged around the edges, as ivy and laurel continue to rival Japanese knotweed as my most successful plants. So it's out with the secateurs and loppers before the avian estate agents advertise my garden on Twitter!

Marmalade Days

It's that time of year again when the kitchen rings with the sound of knives sharpening and the house is suffused with the smell of oranges. Fortuitous too because the central heating has been on the blink so at least the kitchen has been warm and cosy as the cauldron bubbles away. Apologies for that rather tortuous sentence construction - there is something wrong with it but I can't for the life of me see what. The low temperatures are rendering my thought processes sluggish. Hopefully they'll have a similar effect on the reproduction rate of the garden pests ( see previous posting).

I've seen various questions posed, over the years, about the best gadget for slicing citrus peel. No doubt big business has the appropriate gizmo but I find a sharp knife does the best job. Try it, and you too can seize up with assorted aches and pains! 

Despite still sniffling with my first cold in nearly 2 years, the ridiculously spring-like weather drew me to the garden and the raking of the fallen leaves ...... and when you've got an oak tree as large as I have then that's a lot of leaves. It also gave me a opportunity to check the lawn mower was still working as I use it for shredding; the theory being that the leaves rot down quicker for mulching.

This time last year I was counting the number of so-called hardy perennials that had succumbed in the arctic conditions. This year, thanks to a mere handful of frosty nights (so far), I've got forget-me-nots in bloom since before Christmas, the crocus are beginning to open out and I just know that the slugs and snails are girding their loins ready to devour anything green and succulent that I want to keep. Why don't they like dandelions??