Jandra's weblog » House and garden

Fry

Jandra — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 18:16:30 +0000

Our rosy-red minnows have only been in our brand new pond for a few weeks, but there’s a male busily protecting a clutch of eggs underneath a tiny pond-lily leaf. They may hatch any time now. Exciting.

Black gold

Jandra — Sun, 15 May 2011 19:45:46 +0000

We hope that this black gold (a.k.a. compost) will do much to improve our sandy, dry soil. It’s not only for the vegetable garden, but also for the ornamental garden, which is now shaping up nicely. The pond is mostly finished (it has water, plants and a few tiny fish) and DH is now laying a 10 cm layer of compost on the soil around the pond. After that, we can start planting. Oh dear… we need a plan…

Pond

Jandra — Mon, 09 May 2011 07:46:23 +0000

After months of preparation and shuffling around paving stones and cubic yards of sand by DH, we now have a flower garden layout. That means that the crater where we wanted to create a pond, could also actually be made into a pond. Lovely. A well deserved icecream was consumed to celebrate!

Bluetit in magnolia

Jandra — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 06:48:28 +0000

This morning I spotted a bluetit seaching for insects in our magnolia stellata. Such a cheerful sight I wanted to post the picture, even if it isn’t that wonderful (small bird, big distance, average zoom lens).

Lovely weather

Jandra — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 20:01:30 +0000

Today we had a very productive day: DH built 9 meters of high fence to replace the one that went down in a storm a month ago. I spent the day weeding, repotting a nectarine tree, planting onion sets (in trays under glass), planting out 4 strawberry plants (Mara des Bois) and doing some cleaning out in the greenhouse. Very satisfying, but we will both be sore tomorrow!.

New floor

Jandra — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:22:20 +0000

Finished greenhouse

Jandra — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:24:12 +0000

Building

Jandra — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:02:14 +0000

We’ve started, but it started raining

Greenhouse??

Jandra — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:45:34 +0000

It looks way too small, packaged like this…. Hopefully I’ll be able to show a picture of the assembled greenhouse in a few days, but the weather has to cooperate to make that possible.

Garden dreams

Jandra — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:06:35 +0000

Despite low temperatures and the remains of snow and ice, the calendar insists that spring is coming. I really want to get gardening, but before any serious gardening can take place there remains a tremendous amount of work to be done. Remove lots of paving and improving the soil (at the moment it’s very sandy and almost no humus.

The picture is of the greenhouse I hope to buy shortly.