Thursday 19 January 2017

Moss Busting!


A little burst of very early flowers in a corner of my garden this morning.  It was cold first thing, and I wanted to get out and garden, but had to wait until the sun came out a little bit, so I sat at the kitchen table and reorganized my family history folders - or at any rate, made a start on it, as everything was higgledy-piggledy.  I'm a bit further on with that now anyway.


I intended to dig and weed along here - not much fun as there is a lot of clay in the soil here, and all it seems to grow well is a good crop of Creeping Buttercups!  I made a start and suddenly thought, I had intended to clear moss from the walls too - if I scraped the wall which is the back of the woodshed straight away, I could wash it down and once it had dried off sufficiently, get a coat of paint on.  So this border got abandoned for a couple of hours whilst I cracked on with the scraping, scrubbing and painting.

Before coming back to this spot I also cleared some of the gravel area in the yard, by the house, but when I wanted to cut back the clematis there, do you think I could find my (expensive) secateurs?  Nope.  We searched everywhere for them.  I am worried I was doing something with them, got called for a phone call, then distracted, and they are rusting somewhere in the garden, but as they have red handles, I should have found them when I searched out there . . .



Above and below, as you can see, the borders and beds got abandoned last autumn (it always happens) and so I have a LOT to clear before the next viewing.



The woodshed wall AFTER I had de-mossed it.  As you can see, a fresh lick of paint was called for.



Here it is after, but because I still couldn't find the secateurs, I couldn't deal with that tangle of ivy on the post which has the outside water tap.  So instead, I cleaned and prepared the side wall of the woodshed and got that painted.


The bottom of the front wall of the house was also growing a lot of moss, so I took the scraper to that, and below, a stretch of it is ready for when the builder comes to repaint the house.



Just for a change, here is a lovely old Ewenny dish I bought at Auction recently.  It will be on our stand at the Botanic Gardens Antiques Fair at the end of the month, along with some other lovely pieces of Ewenny.

4 comments:

  1. I had hoped to do some garden tidying this month--its going to take a month of sunny Sundays before the sodden ground is dry enough to walk on.
    Lost pruning snippers--our best and sharpest pair went missing this past summer--I'm sure Jim misplaced them somewhere in the shop--he is quite certain that I took them into the garden and , as you say, put them down somewhere--orange handles, so they should have been an easy find if that was the case.
    In Kentucky when bulbs thrust up in January they inevitably get frost-nipped in February!
    Doesn't fresh paint have a cheerful effect!

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  2. Sharon - I am going to buy a new (cheaper!) pair of secateurs today in the hope that my others will turn up. If I lose scissors and replace them, the old ones always turn up shortly after . . . It was SO annoying though. I could remember using them to make the Christmas Wreath, but that meant that they HAD to be in the house. Sigh.

    The garden was abandoned in the Autumn as from September onwards, life was absolutely HECTIC with buying and selling for the Units and Fairs. I need to get more of a balance this year, but ending our Carmarathen Unit should help that.

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  3. My garden borders are driving me mad! They have a lot of that creeping grass - the sort that comes up in long handfuls but never quite disappears. I missed the Autumn tidy-up because I was struggling with a very painful knee; since then I have been into hospital for a total knee replacement and am now still recovering, with heavy jobs banned. On sunny days like today, I am itching to get the gardening tools out and tidy those borders, but . . . .
    More physio today - not looking forward to that. But hopefully a relaxing hour on my bed afterwards.

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  4. hooray you've got some snowdrops too now!

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