Gardening

[Stanley]

We're certainly into a growing spell Wendy. My mint is rampant!
Nice pics of a good garden P. Sorry I bullied you and called you a wimp.....

[plaques]

No problem especially with all the help that I've been given. Or as Isaac Newton said... Standing on the shoulders of giants.
Thanks everybody.

[Stanley]

Steady on P! Go and mow the lawn.....
Must do some spot killing of weeds on the bare patch in my front garden.... The mint smothers everything else. Yes, I am idle, I use carefully placed Roundup on them.....

[Stanley]

You want mint? Compare with the 29th of May pic above..... Rampant!

[plaques]

Starting at the back garden which is south facing and enjoys most of the morning and early evening sun. As with most gardens you never get or even want everything to be out at the same time. The pink bush is a rhododendron gives a lovely show at this time of the year but once it has lost its flowers its the scruffiest bush in the garden. The trees tend to cast a lot of shade and anything that needs full sun tends to have a hard life.



From the far corner over the rhododendron this is a view down to the greenhouse and the vegetable plot. probably the only thing that grows with any success is rhubarb. Just peeping over the greenhouse is the main road through Colne.


Between the edge of the lawn and the greenhouse is the rockery slope, about 9 feet high. Again heavily shaded but we do our best with it.

[Stanley]

I am suitably humbled...... Nice pic posting as well.....

[Tizer]

A lovely garden, Plaques! Thanks for showing it to us. And congratulations on mastering the posting of images too.

[plaques]

To finish the garden sequence here's some pictures of the front garden.
The telegraph poles show the far limit and the background is the top of Whitemoor. The little white dot, centre picture horizon is Weets House Farm at the top of Old Gisburn Road.



The same front lawns taken at 90 Degrees facing east.



A view down the side of the house looking towards Barlick which is just over the hill.



A shorter version of the above view with Lake Burwain in the centre.

[Stanley]

P, in the interests of accuracy, Foulridge Lower Reservoir please! I remember when the local house owners put a notice up at the roadside naming it Lake Burwain and someone, either the Council or British Waterways forced them to take it down. I suppose it put the value of the houses up......

[plaques]

Yes I know but we have got to attract the tourists somehow. Even Google maps has it as Lake Burwain. How many people know that the lane down to the boating club is 'Smithy Lane' and not 'Shirtneck Harry' ?

[Wendyf]

Seems an appropriate moment to post this newspaper article from 1879 -"Foulridge & It's Lakes"

[Sue]

Really lovely garden. My dream but not in a suburban 1960s bungalow

[Stanley]

I love it Wendy, a bit flowery, he would have made a good copy writer for the tourist board! Love the quote "where (there) is a branch line to the somewhat too notorious town of Barnoldswick", (Are you married or do you live in Barlick....)
I was surprised to realise that the version I looked at was an article on One Guy. Is it from the old site? (I couldn't open the attachment without signing up to something on Firefox....)

[Wendyf]

"I was surprised to realise that the version I looked at was an article on One Guy. Is it from the old site? (I couldn't open the attachment without signing up to something on Firefox....)"
I have posted it before, probably on the old site. Its a Word document, so if you don't have Microsoft Office then Firefox might have been offering you something to open it with?

Here is a LINKto the article on the old site.

[Marilyn]

Just beautiful, Plaques. Thanks for the pics...
Do you have a ride on mower?
And do you make your own compost?

[plaques]

Just a bog standard petrol push mower. The lawns are relatively too small for anything bigger. I once had a self propelled, three speeds etc, but it was too heavy to maneuver into corners and the like. I never try to cut them all at once its much easier to spread the cutting as the weather permits. We compost everything we can, leave it about three years then dig it out. At one time we used to take about four ton a year of horse muck from a pal across the valley then someone stole his tipper trailer, that made it really hard work. We have held back since then. Some people would consider all this garden too much work but as long as it gets me outdoors I'm happy.

[Tizer]

Stanley, Wendy's document opened OK for me in Ubuntu & Firefox so it should do so for you too I wasn't asked to sign up to anything. But note that it's a Word document, not a web page so Firefox asks you whether you want to open it in your office software or download the file. I just ticked the option to open it in LibreOffice and it did so.

Plaques, no wonder you have to divide up the gardening work and spread it out. As well as lawn mowing you've got all those shrubs to prune. I'm glad you can cope with it. I mow the lawn but I've had to cave in and get a gardener to do most of the heavier jobs now because I can't hold up shears, loppers etc for long. We compost all the non-woody stuff and put the woody bits in the green wheelie bin provided by the council for about £35. They collect fortnightly. For us, composting is more a way of getting rid of waste than making a useful material!

[Stanley]

The garden last night getting a good wetting. It's green, tidy and useful.... All I have to do is spot treat the weeds.....

[Sue]

This weekends rain has further converted my garden into a tropical rain forest and what few fliwers survived the last rain are now damaged beyond repair . It all looks very luscious and very very green, but not the garden of my imagination when I planted all my new plants.

[Stanley]

The plants have time to recover Sue. We have been lucky and escaped the damaging rain.

[Sue]

I am afraid I will have to cut them back before we go to France Stanley or the house will look neglected and empty. Perhaps the second burst of growth will have some flowers. They do sometimes.

[Stanley]

Nature has a way of recovering Sue....



You want green? Valley Gardens this morning......

[Tripps]

I've also noticed that everywhere seems extra green this year. Could be something to do with the fact that it has rained almost every day.

I think the harvest will be good this year, though there is still time for it all to go wrong.

[Stanley]

It's certainly been a kind season so far....

[Tizer]

Yes, so kind that everything is growing too fast, including the algae on our patio. We got the gardener to power wash it and you can see the before and after colours!