Back From Holiday

I’ve been away on holiday for 17 days and despite employing a garden waterer, it is always surprising how much the garden grows, how much the weeds grow, how much needs dead-heading / cutting back, how much general attention the garden requires.

I suppose one hardly notices the changes in a garden if you see it every day. It must also be true that I must put a lot of work in to maintaining the garden on a daily basis. I guess that at this time of year I probably do, at least, an average of 1 hour an evening during the week and, at least, 3 hours a day on Saturdays and Sundays. Over the period of my holiday that would amount to, at least, 24 hours of lost gardening time! And 24 hours of gardening to catch-up on!
Since my return a couple of days ago, I’ve made a start on catching-up:

• Mowed the lawn, which despite being told that there has been wet weather in my absence, looks parched in places.
    

• Cleared the pond of weed and thinned out the Water Lily but more needs to be done.

 

• Tried to control the Golden Hop (Humulus lupulus ‘Aurea’), this has tried to strangle some of its neighbours. I will need to give it another spray against mildew.

 

• Removed some competing Colocasias from around the Bananas (Musa & Ensete).

• Given liquid feed to plants growing in pots and to the bananas, Colocasias etc.

• Given the Tree Fern trunks a thorough soaking. The large Tree fern, now in nearly full sunlight since next-door removed a large tree, has definitely got smaller fronds this year. I think I will need to investigate some form of automatic, drip watering system to keep it moist during the summer months.

• Removed dead flowering stems from a variety of plants including Hostas.

• Cleared general leaf litter from paths and pulled-up the largest weeds but still a lot more to be done.

 

• Staked tall plants that are lolling about – I’m hopeless at this and always leave it too late. The worst offenders for ‘lolling’ are Verbena bonariensis.

 

And . . . . Loads and loads more.

 

Anyway, normal blog service will resume soon. However, the next couple of posts will likely be about my recent holiday which I will do as soon as I have sorted the hundreds of photographs that I took.