Some Wind/Rain Damage and Some Re-arranging

Hi, this is Roger. Thanks for dropping by. I thought you'd use the noise, but next door are having the whole house refloored, so carpets and other types of flooring. I think they're doing the whole house. The guys were here most of yesterday and back again today. Overnight, or yesterday, we had heavy rain most of the day, and we also had quite strong winds. The valerian has suffered. I will deal with that. Hopefully, we'll repair that and not lose those fallen over bits. We'll stand them up again. I haven't got enough stands to do the whole thing, so some of those round the back might be lost. This is worth having a quick look. That really does look like it's come from another planet to me. Very strange blooms. Nonetheless, we've got some. We've got some more to come. We've got some nice new... whatever they're called. More coffee. Other wind damage that we've got is over here on the planted border. This group of plants here did this last year. They flopped. If I recover them now, they should stand up straight. These are the mycomas daisies, and those are phlox, I believe. They both will flower. Also, the wisteria has flopped. It's come away from the fence. I will trim it back. It will grow again. It's also overhanging. It's overshadowing some other plants. We've actually got some roses coming out now. These are very attractive. They've got no fragrance whatsoever. Typical modern rose. Some of the geraniums are coming through now. Here and here. These are very attractive. We've got our poppies coming and going. The poppies are growing into quite substantial plants in places like there. If you look at how many buds and seed pods there are. I think we will have a good splash of poppies in this border next year. With any luck. The other thing that's interesting is this fern. It's the only one like it. I don't think I've got another one. I think this is the only one, unless there's a little one somewhere. It's different. Look at the bronze. They've got feathers on the end. Very unusual shape. I think that's the only one like that. These are the more common things that you find. In most woodlands and roadsides. The hearts tongue ferns are coming on now. Now this stuff is... What the hell is it? Red Campion. And it's going to bloom. These are going to be bloom spikes. It grew quite well last year. What I didn't realise when I got it from... Who did I get it from? Carol or Helen? I can't remember. Helen, I think. But either way, I didn't realise it was a biannual. So it grows one year and then the next year it flowers and dies. But it seeds readily. So we need the blooms to get the seeds, if you see what I mean. And this fern is very attractive as well. This is another one that I think is the only one. Right, things going on today. I've still got all that ivy to clear up. And basically the whole patio is going to get rearranged. First of all, I need to have a sweep up. And get it clean again. All the work that Hannah did, it really upsets me sometimes. That damn tree has just made the whole thing into a mess again with all the catkins. Now with the weather we've just had, the pollen and the catkins have now finished. So apart from the odd twig coming down, dead twig or something, we shouldn't get any more debris from that tree until the autumn when the leaves start to come down, when we start all over again. So if I have a good sweep up now, and then all these tubs and things, and the bonsai stands, everything is going to get totally rearranged. Going to completely change the layout here. But I can't do it until I've cleaned up. The bird feeders, they've had their last lot of seeds. So when the birds have finished this last little bit, that'll get put to one side and we'll stop feeding. They don't need the food in the year. Now work I've got to do outside here, is stop things like that flowering, is this area here. We've got all that red campion coming up. And there's London pride in there, there's other things in there, and there's other stuff like ivy, there's some weeds, and this creeper thing with the purple flowers. There's stuff starting to take over that whole area. The ivy's encroaching, so's the bamboo. I'm going to have to get in there and deal with that. Now I was going to do it a while ago, but I played my back up doing whatever I was doing. Oh, cleaning out the alleyway for the gas meter to be changed. But yeah, I need to have a good go at that area there. And obviously there's parts of the decking that I can't walk on now. I can sit on the edge of it, but some of the boards are gone, they're disconnected, so if you tread on one end they flick up in the air, like the cartoons do. Right, so this is really the before look. This is where we are at the moment, and we'll be rearranging everything, putting stuff into new positions. Oh, the Satsuki azalea's got some blooms on it. They sort of sprung up on me. Not many, but a few. See, that wasn't bought as a red plant. The blooms on that on the picture were not red. They were stripy. So that basically wasn't what I bought, but the blooms are attractive, so we're OK there. And then at some point we're going to have to do some work on the bonsai, the June prune for the Aces. You can see what's going on, which is good, because that has been repotted after far too many years' neglect from not repotting when I should have done. So the roots have obviously picked up, and we've now got growth extensions, which means that it's turning back into a bush. So if we don't do a prune and get our layers back, we lose the overall effect of being a bonsai. So, yeah, we've got some work to do, starting with the sweep up, get it back to clean again. I'll film again when I've rearranged everything, so we'll have another look later on. So I'll see you in a bit. OK, I've moved a few things around. I've had to stop now, even though I haven't finished, because my back is twinging. When it gets like that, it's time to stop. I've had to lose some of the red valerian, because where it had flopped over, it had actually broken at the base, so there was no point in trying to stand it up. I've moved the buddleia from there to round here, simply because where it was, it's too big. And round here, it's fine, it gets some sun, and quite honestly, this is the area the butterflies often come, whether there's a bush there or not. Now, we had rain nearly all day yesterday, and I moved a couple of my bonsai, and they're almost bone dry. So the old adage that you still have to water them every day in the summer because the rain don't get down in there, absolutely true. That copper beech blew off the bench twice in the high winds, lost quite a lot of its media, so I pruned it quite hard, even though I hadn't planned on doing that, and topped it up, so it's heavier now, for a start, with all those things on it. Now, this Himalayan honeysuckle, it looks like I've knocked her. Yeah, see, once they bend, they won't come back up again. So, it's growing OK, it's not a problem, but I've moved it across where the buddleia was, simply so some light can get in there. Now, unfortunately, the red campion is drooping. I'm going to try and do something about that in a minute with one of my stands, and see if I can at least get it to stand upright. These bits round here are OK. I've cleared a lot of the ivy out, and that annoying creeper, having just noticed I've missed a couple of bits. But, yeah, we have a new place to dump stuff. Nobody can see it, including me. Right, only we had to go back in and get the gloves. I found some brambles. Wonderful. Saw I sprung a leak, or a couple. That's the problem, that is a wild blackberry in behind the shed, where we just can't get at it. Now, I could use a really, really heavy-duty chemical, and kill it right back. The problem with it is it has lousy blackberries, but it has a wonderful blossom coming soon, and the bees love it, so I'm reluctant to destroy it. Unfortunately, the birds like the blackberries, even though I don't, and they poop the seeds all over the garden, so we get little blackberry bushes coming up all over the place. I'm out of breath. Right, so I've had a sweep up. These are the stands I was on about. You put them into the ground, and then if you've got two of them, they make a circle at the top, and they can hold quite tall plants in place. Now, I've rearranged the tubs, so this one, quite honestly, just didn't do it, because it's so heavy. It needs to come away a bit, because the... Oh, that is heavy. I've got to move it. I don't know if it does this sort of thing, because the geranium's coming up behind it, and the geranium's important to me. So I've put the fuchsia that we dug up, the pieces of the fuchsia that we dug up, round here so that it gets some sun. As you can see, it is actually growing now. Not all the pieces are growing, but I think most of them are. So we will have a nice fuchsia bush there in a tub, and as it starts to push on, I will be trimming it so that it bushes and doesn't grow huge, big, long stems like it did in the border where it was. I've brought the geraniums out to get some sun. Where they were hard-pruned, they're all shooting out now. So we've got new growth coming, so they'll push on with a bit of extra sun on them. They like the sun. And that tall campanula made a big mistake. It self-seeds, what do they call them, biannuals. And when I brought it round here, I cut the flower spikes off to reserve the energy into getting it to root. But there's at least one flower spike left. I should have left them on. Silly me. But I didn't know at the time. I only found that out when I looked it up. Right, so I've cut the wisteria back and taken it back in so that it's not overshadowing things. You can see where I've used some of my stands to get things to stay upright. It's really annoying when you do something like just push two wire ends into the soil to do a good job holding some plants up. And nearly every time I hit a rock. So I had to take it out and start again and move it round a bit. Things like that when you're tired and it really does annoy you. Anyway, we've managed to get most of the plants upright and hopefully they will stay that way now. What else did I do? Right, rearranging stuff. My Deesa orchids are now outside. They are in the brightest position without the sun actually touching them. So on the edge. The sun, as you can see where the shadow is, it's coming down over the roof like that. So it just misses them. So they're in bright light now. We've established a proper watering and feeding regime nowadays and hopefully the combinations of all the things I've done will actually get them going now. I've had to prune my trident maple quite hard. That was over a metre tall simply because it blew over. And that's what happens when you get long leggy stuff and the pots are quite dry. The actual trident maple bonsai that's on the end here. So not really room for these three. But there will be when this one's had a bit of a prune which it's going to get soon. And then I changed the bonsai stands round a bit. I moved that one round 90 degrees simply because it doesn't warrant two trees on it. That could do with being in the middle, not slightly offset. And these help stop too much light getting onto parts of my grow room where there are some shady orchid types. These two I changed round. That one was on there. I brought that round here so that I can see it and we can see the blooms. Satsuki azalea. And another maple that needs a trim. And this staging I just pushed back. And the reason is I need a gap here where I can get at my steps and my bags of grit that I use for various things. Now the reason the bag is still out here and my bag holder is that that's as far as I've got. Sweeping does my back. So I got as far as there. This is the bit where Hannah would take over and she's good at picking all the stuff up. I'm all right at doing the pruning and she normally does the sweeping and picking stuff up. Well I've done the sweeping and that's where I had to stop. So I've still got to pick that up. But on a fresh day... Oh look, chaffinch. They are a pretty bird, aren't they? I don't know whether I can zoom in. Nope, I moved my hand. Too late. Anyway, so that's as far as I've got. We are going to have some foxgloves out soon as well. Those are self-seeded. So it's funny how the self-seeded ones push on much better than ones you plant. And it's probably because they get the best start and they don't get any root disturbance. Looking up the back there while I was in there doing some pruning there's quite a few foxglove seedlings in the back there. So that should be good. And then we've got the foxgloves that I planted up here which are promptly drooping because the sun's on them now where I've moved the plants. They're not in the shade anymore but there's a couple there that were planted. They came from hell and they were planted this year. But they're pushing on and hopefully again if they seed because those are wild ones from her forest area if they self-seed there then hopefully we'll have a nice stand of them next year. There's some more somewhere. Where else did I put some? Oh, they were up in the corner here, weren't they? These two here. Those are pushing on much slower. So anyway, I'm out of breath now. I need a drink. And I shall have to sit down now in my comfy chair and hope that my back will recover ready for tomorrow morning. Now, the weather says it might be rainy tomorrow. I will wait and see. You know what it's like round here. They say it's going to rain and it never does. It'll be nice if it doesn't because then sometime during the day I can pick this lot up providing my back's not too bad. But that's a quick job. There's not a lot of it. I've just had enough today. It gets to a point where I know nowadays to just stop. So that's what we've done. Done a bit of tidying here. Oh, I'll show you this. This is two types of laurel, this hedge. And it hasn't been cut back this year. Now the bit on the end is one type. Don't forget this is not mine. It lives next door. It just hangs over here. And then this lot here has all got to be cut back. But it's coming into bloom. And at the end of the day the bees like it. So that's why we didn't cut it back too early in the year. We'll let it bloom and then cut it back another time. Possibly in the autumn when most of the plants are sort of starting to die back. But anyway, there's a lot of bloom. The trouble is they last a very, very short time. Anyway, it's some extra bee stuff. And we like that. I'd prefer that hedge wasn't really there but there's nothing I can do about it. It's next door. It's a mature hedge. But this hedge was cut back to the boundary at the beginning of last year. So that's how much it's grown out. It's grown out right across this bush, right across the alleyway. And I have to keep cutting it back of course because it's hanging over my side. So, do you know what? It's a horrible thing to say but I wish there was a disease that killed oak trees that just took that one out and they had to cut it down because it was diseased. I'd love to see the back of that thing. The amount of extra work in this garden as a consequence of somebody else's tree. But that's how things are. Nothing I can do about it. You could sort of say it provides some shade but it doesn't. The only shade it provides is when the sun comes up first thing in the morning. And that's shade I don't want. Anyway, I've got to go and get comfortable now because I'm certainly not at the moment. But yeah, it was surprising. No matter how much rain we had yesterday some of the tubs and some of my bonsai were nowhere near hydrated enough. So, you know, as I didn't water this morning I thought, no, everything's been soaking wet from yesterday so I didn't bother. Now the ground will be more than wet enough. That'll be fine. But things like tubs and stuff the rain gets into the top half inch and stops. So we will have to get out and do some proper watering tomorrow. Anyway, we didn't lose the valerian but we lost about half of it. And we shall see. I mean, it will shoot out. There's lots of side shoots coming out and where the bigger bits were broken off those side shoots should push on now and give us some later blooms. It's not lost by any means. But yeah, you can see that the direction of the wind at the moment is cutting across the garden quite a bit. Anything that sticks up. It's not blowing from the right direction at the moment. So it normally comes from the south-west and it's more south-east at the moment. Anyway, I shall leave it at that. Leave you with the maple against the blue sky. Always a nice combination. A tree I didn't even know I had the first year because it was buried in that bamboo. See you next time. Thanks for dropping by.