Garden Upsets

9 - 11 March 2020

A few strange happenings in the garden, which seem worth recording.

 The water-retaining gel that I decided to add to the little plugs of creeping thyme finally got a thorough dowsing with rain overnight - and erupted right out of the paving. 

 I used a little too much, perhaps!  

 Our fat cat.  We think he has another source of food, because he is growing enormous.

 One evening, I went out while it was still light, and left the gate open to drive back in easily.  Big mistake.  Next morning we found little hoof prints in the damp soil ...

 ... and Dave's birthday present ornamental plant had teeth marks in the leaves and had been pulled right out of the ground.  Clearly one of the sheep had got in, but incredibly luckily, it hadn't stopped to eat our entire crop, but must have panicked, and tried only the inedibles.

 Dave rigged the trail camera, but it only showed a fox in the night.  The gates were firmly closed, of course.

All four goldfish seem to be flourishing.  The are all visible here as little flashes of gold.

Making an exhibition

8 March 2020

In honour of International Women's Day, our art gallery/bar in Lefkada asked seven women to submit three or four works each for an exhibition.  I was very flattered to be asked to contribute, along with 'proper' working artists Paris and Lucy as well as four other local women.

 The poster - Greek version

 Opening night - me taking a selfie with my soil microbe tapestry 'Pay Dirt'.

 Two other of my four pieces, 'I Want to Grow Old with Bees' and 'Rainforest'.

And another selfie, with 'In Defence of Nature'.

There was a bit of a theme of ecology and the natural world in my selection.

Growing things and gravelling

6 - 8 March 2020

We tend to walk round the garden two or three times a day - maybe it's displacement activity, given the alternative is shovelling more gravel!  Today we found lots of exciting developments:

 Blossom on the new almond trees.  We planted them partly because almonds are always the first trees to bloom in spring.

 Our first cauliflower, unexpectedly emerging from dense leaf cover.

 Back to the gravelling.  

Dave is filling barrows with large gravel - to go in the drainage ditch section near the house walls ...

 .. then back for tiny gravel which ...

 ... he deposits in heaps on the paving slabs, after I've fixed any wobbly ones, for me to sweep into the gaps.  The tiny gravel was recommended by the workforce as it should lock together in due course and hold everything firm.

 The sheep raiders (not ram-raiders, hehe), demonstrating why we have gates - it wouldn't take them long to eat everything we have planted.

 The table area outside the music room door, all gravelled up.

 Into the gravel, away from the main thoroughfares, I am planting little plugs of creeping thyme.  The idea is that it will grow between the paving slabs and soften the all-grey stoniness.

I made a small mistake by adding some tiny chips of water-retaining gel. 

 which, in one place, had obviously attracted (probably) vermin, as the plant and soil was all dug out.  It won't be pleasant for anything that has eaten the gel, I'm afraid.

 On another walk around - we find the first of the water-tank cover vines has pushed out through its wax dipping and is showing the first leaves.

 Me, brushing the gravel into the gaps, again, and again.  It turns out to be a large area of paving!

A small turnip harvest.  Lovely miniature turnips, great when saute'd.

Sending the rubbish 'away'

4 - 5 March 2020

As environmentalists, we know there is no 'away' where rubbish is concerned.  But we had a heap of ten years of waste that could not be re-purposed, re-used, recycled or burnt, so a small man with a small truck arrived and started piling it high.

 Dave and I did what we could to help

 Mostly gone

 The truck, disappeared under the mountain of waste.

 Paving from the north, facing east.  Kitchen window visible.

The same day, the workforce finally finished - well past the deadline of mid-Feb I was given, so we were very grateful they had been allowed to get the job done, in the teeth of all the other work awaiting them.  

We are overjoyed to have it finished, and with such lovely curves.

 North-east corner, from the wooden terrace outside the kitchen door, showing the heart-shaped bed and field kitchen, and ramp to the house for bringing in barrows of logs.

The washing-line path, behind the heart bed.  At last - level ground from which to peg.  To celebrate, we put up a new line, as the old one was more a series of knots than a line.

Looking pretty

3 March 2020

With the old gravel dug out, we were able to start spreading the new clean gravel: arduous, but pleasing.

 New gravel goes in - Dave transporting it, me with the easy job of raking smooth.

 Meanwhile - our first waterlily leaf breaks the surface in the pond.  Hurrah!

 Our bi-coloured gravel frontage.  The grey is brand new, the pink was dug out of the ditch and spread around.  I expect after a while the colours will homogenise.  

 The renewed ditch on the west side - with sunken stones covering the wires and pipes, and some large round pond stones to add visual interest (and because we over-ordered and and have to find something to do with them).

The workforce have gone round the back of the field kitchen and reached the washing line path.

Lots of gravel shovelling

2 March 2020

We didn't want to get too much underfoot for the workforce, so Dave and I decided to tackle the gravel down the side of the house.  The drainage ditch there has had a lot of soil washed into it over the years, so some of it had to be dug out.

 Until the workforce reach the area under the washing line, we can use it as a dumping ground for soiled gravel, it needs the gravel to stabilise it anyway, so it saves using new, clean stuff.

 One part of the washing line path crosses with a barrow-route to the log store, so I used some large rocks to edge it and built a ramp of rubble and gravel to be paved with the rest in due course.

 This is the area down the west side of the house.  Very weedy, and with a temporary and unstable covering of water pipes and electric cables that needs fixing.

 Taking a break from digging and barrowing.

 This is the external corner of the bathroom.  We were busy digging out the old gravel, pulling up weeds and laying the copper lightning cable into the earth, and I was a little weary.  Luckily, there was a handy seat made of rock jutting out from the wall, just where I needed it.

Back in September 2013, when my son Richie came to stay and help for a couple of weeks, we were at that corner with building the wall.  There was a jutting bit of concrete ring-beam that the contractors had done wrong and needed covering.  I had just built round it when Richie appeared with a large flat, but softly rounded stone and said it was to be put on top in case a seat was ever needed just there!  Very prescient, Richie.

Miles of stone

29 February 2020

Work continues with laying the huge slabs of stone on sand for the terrace around the east side of the house. 

 Today, the workforce completed the path to the gate into the neighbour's field.  There is now a huge pile of rubbish to be taken away, but we cleared it back enough to get the stones in place.  Where the path crosses the sewage inspection hatch, they laid the thinner, blue stones in a little square, so we can find it again!

 The outdoor kitchen is now mostly surrounded

 This is the area directly under the washing line.  It has always been a tricky area to walk along while looking up at the pegging, so I'm hoping it will be a huge improvement once paved.

 Behind the field kitchen, a mains water supply to a hose manifold.  We are not planning to have a tap as such over the sink, just a hose feed.  At the last minute, we remembered that we needed a hole in the wall under the sink for a waste pipe!  The workforce are very long-suffering!

 This is the time of asphodel - they are everywhere.  Statuesque, beautiful plants, that turn up wherever they please.

 Dave has had delivery of something vital to keep his bike functioning. I took this photo because he had strung the back wheel of the bike off one of the beams over the front door so he could run the motor while testing.

One of our few ornamentals - planted behind the pond - proving its worth as a bee-attracter.

Signs of Life

27 - 28 February 2020

Signs of life in the water lilies - hurrah!  Dave keeps saying 'be patient', but I'm worried we may have killed them by washing all their soil out, and then planting in water too deep for them.

 This is the best water lily - most are showing new growth: little maroon leaves, but this one is reaching for the sky!

 While the marginal calla lily now has two pure white blooms.

These cabbages are the ones from the old kitchen salad bed.  The one that has had a new stone wall built around it to make it a knee-high raised bed.  We were wondering if we could wait till these matured before putting the rest of the soil spoil heap into the bed, but they are moving too slowly, so we have tried relocating them. Dave doesn't hold out much hope that they will survive.

Finally, on Friday 28th, we had a day full of rain.  We took the opportunity to do some errands in Lefkas Town, then returned after lunch, lit the fire and settled down to listen to the pitter-pat of rain falling into our water storage facilities.  Hurrah!