Friday

While weeding the front bank today I spotted these caterpillars.

They are Mullein moth caterpillars Shargacucullia verbasci

Apparently they grow to about five centimetres in length, so I will have to watch them grow.

Unfortunately someone across and a few houses down the road decided to light a fire mid day, so that put paid to anymore gardening for the rest of the day...and of course meant all the windows also had to be closed as it was quite windy and blew straight over in this direction.  I really don't know what is wrong with some people!

There was an amazing moon to be seen this evening, but again I was reminded that I left my tripod in NZ, so I must try and get another one, as it is a shame not to be able to get better photos of the moon when it looks so amazing.

The excitement!  This will hopefully make my life a bit easier when watering the back garden.  Actually I got two of them.  Hubby ordered them and had them sent to me.  Better than doing umpteen trips with the watering cans.

On my walk this afternoon I was pleased to see all the walking tracks have been strimmed. Makes it much more pleasant.  No more stinging nettles to battle through.  Even the tracks along the coast line have been done as well.

An interesting looking fungi growing through the wire.

Vibrant oranges.

Last Day in March!

Gosh how did the end of March get here so quickly?  

I left for my walk before breakfast this morning.  Normally I like to eat breakfast first, but I thought I would try an earlier time for my walk.

Through the woods I go, an old stone wall, the remains of what would once have been a park wall I believe.

Who you looking at?

A waterfall, albeit a small one...

and another...the track to the beach is getting worn away by the water.

Fossils in the rocks.

Shadow

The bay to myself, it was bliss.

The blue of the sea against the blue sky of the morning, just fabulous.

2.5 miles walked today.  

I've walked approximately 63 miles this month.

I've been on the IOW 8 weeks today!

In the garden this afternoon I attacked a new patch of ground.

Before

After.  I will dig this over again.  I am not sure what I am going to plant here yet.  Might be parsnips, I am not sure.  I wish I had some boards to border the garden, but no wood was left here, just old carpet! lol  Could have done with some boards of wood being left, or even stakes would have been good.  Hard work!  Was pleased when I finished.  

It has been another really lovely sunny day.  Just a patch of cloud in the middle of the day when it looked like it might not be so nice, but then the sun came back out again.  

Friday in the Garden.

A productive few hours were spent in the garden on Friday - split up to before lunch and after lunch.

I wanted to clear a space next to the wooden compost bin as I am getting another for my birthday and wanted them to go side by side.  There was all sorts of rubbish partly 'buried' in this space, rocks, bricks, an old metal trap (?) plastic plant pots and an old carpet just dumped.  I dug the carpet up and the other rubbish and have started different piles ready to be dealt with.  Some will have to go to the tip I think, some will break down - the small roots etc, and the wood we will eventually put in the chipper machiney thingy that we don't have yet.  Yes great technical terms there, the name of it escapes me at the moment.  I also need to do a brick/rock pile as they are currently along the brick wall.

All ready for the new bin when it arrives.  I wish there had been space for the two plastic ones to also go side by side, but there isn't so I may rethink what I will do with either the second one, or both of them. 

After lunch I planted out some seeds in the vegetable beds and the glass house.

I've planted some of my Dad's Dalmation beans and my friends Blue Lake (I think that is what they were called) in this bed as well as some carrot and spring onions.

In here I have planted some spinach and salad vegetables.

Various seeds planted - tomatoes, cucumber, courgette, radish, and sunflowers.  

I really don't have any idea what I am doing as it has been some years now since I have grown any vegetables apart from beans, I probably need to read my gardening book a bit more, but I just wanted to get going and by doing I will learn.  

I also started trimming around the fruit bushes.

I used my garden shears to cut round them and had my sleeves rolled up as it was quite warm...of course I forgot about the stinging nettles, and now several hours later, my forearms are still tingling and stinging from them!

I forgot to take after photos, but still have some more trimming and clearing to do, so will hopefully get that done in the weekend.

It was really lovely working out in the garden today.  It is a big garden and there is a lot of clearing of rubbish to do, but it will be worth it and it feels good when you are making progress.

Decorating, Gardening and General Update Ramblings.

This Last week we had our lounge redecorated.  The last time it was decorated was in around 2005 if I remember rightly.  It needed freshening up and after the windows had been serviced and then painted this year it needed to be done.  We decided to go for a lighter colour than we had, but when the decorator put the paint up that a local shop had mixed, it was a completely different colour!  It was green instead of a very light yellow.  The shop refused to exchange it or refund and unfortunately as we hadn't paid the shop directly for it it we didn't really have a lot of comeback.  If we had bought it we would have stopped our Visa payment, but the decorator paid for it and then we paid him, and as it wasn't strictly his fault, and he is a good guy and decorator, we just had to swallow it.  But despite our efforts to support and 'shop locally' this shop has now lost any future business from us.  It was quite clear that it was a completely different colour.  In the end we decided to just play it safe and go and purchase the original colour we had on the walls which is 'Daffodil White'.  Fortunately I had remembered what it was!  It is now looking much better as the green just really didn't suit that room at all.

In the garden I have been quite ruthless with the pruning of my roses.  They had become far too big and straggly, so I have cut them right back and hopefully I haven't annihilated them and they will come back next year okay.  I have also really cleared out the bed beside the house as that had also got very unruly and overgrown.  Hope to plant a few wintering flowers in the spot if I can find something I like.

I've actually been staying up at my son and daughter in law's place while they have been away and have done a fair bit of gardening there as well.  I worked on their front garden, it was very weedy and had stumps and roots, and various unwanted saplings coming up, so I dug all of them out and dug the garden over.  

They live near a canal so I have been enjoying some walks along the canal (have already posted two of my walks) and also a lot of footpaths through fields and have been enjoying walking those as well.  They are very lucky to live where there are so many lovely walks to do straight from the house - especially without the constant roar of the horrid M25 which is what we have round here.

The fields are starting to get a bit muddy now so boots are needed, but still very pleasant to walk them.

I had a bit of fun using the black and white setting on my camera.

To be able to walk round such beautiful fields and the canal on a daily basis has been wonderful.  Wish we had such nice places to walk here at home.

Back home now.  

We had the plumber come out yesterday to replace a radiator valve that was replaced earlier in the year!  It was faulty so it was replaced under warranty which was good, and while they were out we had our kitchen tap replaced.  This proved to be a much longer job than expected, for a variety of reasons.  We ended up not using the tap we had bought for the kitchen as it turned out it was a quarter turn tap, which I hate as they are far more difficult to control the flow in my opinion and when your water pressure isn't very good, which is the case for our hot, it meant that it had very poor flow indeed.  Not only that it didn't sit right on our sink and wobbled.  Fortunately we had bought another and that had proper taps that you can turn and adjust the flow as you want, which meant the hot water flowed a lot better too.  Not only that but it sat on the sink unit much better.  We will return the other tap as it really was not fit for purpose.  Not only that, it should have said on the packaging that it was a quarter turn tap.  He also fixed our under sink water filter so we were able to reinstate that which is good.  So my above sink filter that I brought home from NZ with me, has been 'retired' for now.  It means we have more space which is good as well.  

This post is more for my records than anything else, so that I can look up the names of paints etc we have used and when things were done around the house.  It has proved an invaluable record for things like this.

I can't believe just how fast the year is going past.  I need to book my ticket to NZ in the next couple of weeks...I have been putting it off for a variety of reasons...as whenever I go, I never want to come back to England again!  It is so lovely spending time with my family, and so hard to leave them.