22.04. Sizzling hot April day

Hello! Is it nice weather in your part of the world at the moment? If you live in the UK, especially in the South East, you probably have been enjoying the same glorious weather as I have the last few weeks, if you live somewhere else and have been expecting great weather, but haven’t seen any lately; now you know where all the good, warm weather has ended up! The news here has been filled with reports about people who booked their holiday for Easter for going abroad, people who booked it months ago, when we had the coldest winter in 100 years. Now they are calling back home to family and friends in the UK, complaining that the weather is better back here than where they are on holiday, in Southern Spain, Turkey and other Mediterranean countries! Well, we certainly were due some good weather, I just hope we won’t get all in one go, like we did last year in June. It was great for about 3 weeks, and that was it. I wouldn’t mind having this weather until late October :-) Only minor issue is the cost of all the water I have to pay for, to water my garden, but that is a minor issue, because in this warm weather I don’t need much gas for heating, so I save a lot there.

It was 28 degrees late afternoon today, lovely, just the kind of temperature I like – not so hot that I can’t get anything done and I didn’t need a cardigan outside today :-) I got some more Cuprinol for the second flowerbed in the next door garden today; staining the logrolls and making the bed is going to be the job for tomorrow I think. I also have some serious plans for getting some of the plants in pots out of the pots and into the ground. With this dry weather, plants require a lot of watering and attention when they are in pots, especially large plants in small pots, and if the plants dry out every day, even if they get watered every evening, they tend to get stressed and not thrive very well. These plants will get a better and more comfortable life in the ground; I just need to make a decision about where they are going! Some of these plants are several years old...because I haven’t been able to decide where to plant them...decisions, decisions...

Oh, by the way, I have updated the garden section on my web-site - it has been a rather neglected project this year, since I started blogging... too much of my time has gone to this writing and not enough to my web-site! But I finally finished the winter section; the spring section will come in mid to late June. If you are a regular visitor here you might have seen some of the photos on the garden section before, but not all of them. It’s well worth a visit anyway! Here is A LINK TO MY GARDENING SECTION on my web-site, where you can follow how my garden progresses through the seasons. I have been taking pictures and writing about my garden since 2004, so this garden diary is now 7 years old and it is both interesting and fun to look back on what I have done and what I have had success with and what I didn’t have success with! ....well, there have been a few mishaps, I must admit that, for a number of reasons. One of them is several hot summers where I lost plants to drought, but also the fact that I don’t use fertilisers on any plants except the roses and some of the spring bulbs. If a plant die because they are not fed, or don’t thrive, I chuck it out and put in a less demanding plant! But if you want to have roses you need to feed them something, so all the roses get a handful of slow-release feed once a year, that’s all. The spring bulbs get dried chicken manure pellets. And, oh, I forgot, the Lily of the Valleys get tomato feed, after flowering, to get them to flower better next year, but now you know my whole fertilising routine :-) So all in all I probably use twice as much money on keeping the pests away as I do on fertilisers for the plants! I have discovered a great ecological product for keeping greenfly and red spider mites at bay; it smells terrible, so much so that I can’t mix it up indoors, I have to do it outside or the stench will linger for days! But it works, for a few weeks at least, and then I have to repeat the process. But it is a much better alternative than all these chemical sprays I used to use in the past. Not that it is any cheaper though, it works out practically the same in price. And the warmer weather we have, the more I have to step up my war against the pests. Keeping the garden next door will help a bit though, both in terms of pests, slugs and weeds, as a kept and tidy garden will have less pests that can stray over to my garden, and less weeds will blow their seeds over to me. See, I didn’t take over next door garden just because I had nothing to do...far from it, there were several good reasons for it! :-)

Tonight’s post is going to be short and sweet, but I will have some more photos for you tomorrow I hope. So nip back tomorrow for an update and some photos from both my gardens. Take care :-)