Restoring my Herb Garden - part one

 The first thing I had to do today was to lop off that palm branch that has been bashing the top of my greenhouse in this weeks gales .

                             Done !

 Then my thoughts turn to what was my lovely herb garden ...now choked with grass and weeds . 

 The herbs are still in there ....somewhere  !

I am leaving the Bluebells and the Cowslips , rescuing others if I can .

  Lemon Balm , Sweet Woodruff , Thyme , Marjoram , Rosemary , beautiful Lemon Verbena and Rosa gallica mundi versicolour (probably spelt wrong !) 🌿

 

    A few Cowslips that I will replant somewhere else ...and Sweet Woodruff. 

I love Sweet Woodruff the best , it smells so sweet as it dries....mmm heavenly !

    

 ✨   Dried Sweet Woodruff under your pillow for sweet dreams .✨

 There is one nice clump of Foxgloves , I will leave that for the bees . 🐝🐝🐝

Made a good start . I filled the wheelbarrow then just threw the weeds onto the path to collect up later .   😜

The Rose is in the foreground . 

Between the rose and the Phoenix canariensis palm , is one very out of control Artemisia vulgaris /variegated Mugwort .  This is one herb I can do without .

  

Just putting a sprig of this under your pillow will induce horrendous nightmares ! 

 Growing ten feet tall and it's roots spreading to take over the planet ...Out ! Out ! Out !   

 

 Oh ! Maybe I'll put it into a tub of it's own . You never know when I might need it for some magic spell  ✨✨✨

    

 I couldn't move the wheelbarrow it was SO heavy . So I filled up three sacks to take to the tip and will do some more weeding when I have rested and recovered .

   The ground is starting to dry out and becoming hard to dig , so I may wait until we get some rain to make it easier to dig and finish the job .

  

 I will do a quick sweep up tomorrow morning . ....honest I will !  😜               

                                         Bye fer now !    

                               Love and Peace 💛Debbie x

Spuds

 A sunny day with a cold Easterly breeze . I got the first lot of my potatoes planted . One small quantity of Pink Fir Apple , nice for salads and the other ones are Maris Bard I think . I lost the label and cant remember the name , but they are first earlies . I am still waiting for some Charlottes to be delivered .

 I was delighted to see three Red Kites flying over into the next field where a local farmer had  just been muck spreading . Magnificent  bird of prey !  Not a terribly good picture I,m afraid , but now I know they are here again , I will be ready with my camera for next time they fly over .

 My daughter is getting interested in Herbs and wanted to know which herbs I am growing . So I promised her that I would have a bit of a tidy up in my herb garden and see what might be coming up .
  I had quite a difficult job of pulling up those blooming  Stinging Nettles , my hand is quite sore with stings .

 I am glad I cleared them away though , as coming up beneath them is my lovey Variegated  Lemon Balm . Held overhead in the shower to release it's scent or make a refreshing Lemon Balm Tisane .
Also Sweet Woodruff is showing her pretty leaves . This is also spreading fast amongst everything , but it is another herb that I love , for as it's leaves begin to dry , there comes such a lovely fragrance of almonds . This is very nice to stuff into tiny herb pillows , to put in drawers or for sweet dreams placed under my pillow .

                  Oregano useful in so many recipes I love this fragrance !

  Thyme ! 

I could not be without this in my garden , for both culinary and medicinal use .

                 Five clumps of Thyme , because the bees and I love it so much !

                  Spearmint running free ! I love it and cant get enough of it !
Elsewhere in the garden I have Peppermint , Pineapple mint  Corsican Mint , Bowles  mint,  Penny royal mint , Chocolate mint . I love them all !

                                                      However ........

Variegated Artemisia or Mugwort ...why the hell did I ever buy this thug of a plant ? Oh I know , it looked so pretty with it's variegated leaves in it's tiny 3"pot at the garden centre !  They shouldn't even sell this wretched plant  . I will have another go at pulling it all out again tomorrow !
    Every year I try to get it all out , it is a real nightmare of a plant !
 In fact it can actually give you nightmares . I tried it ! I put some under my pillow and it's true , it does ! Horrible !
  Some people say that it can help you remember your dreams , I would rather not have this herb in my garden at all !
         Rant over .

                    More lovely Oregano and a very sad old lavender bush .
 It needs to be replaced now , it's just become way too straggly and woody.

 In amongst the Mint, Oregano and Lavender is a beautiful old variety of a rose .

                                         Rosa mundi gallica versicolor
                                    This is how it looks in the summer .
                 I really have to get in there and tidy up my herb garden.
        The rope ? Oh ! That is there to slow me down as I go up that path to the greenhouse .  It can be slippery at times . I dash about far too much !

                                                      Rosemary
 I love Rosemary and have it growing in several places in my garden .

Verbascum Mullein has found it's way into the herb garden. I will leave it , because once again the Bees and I love it so much .

 We started to get a bonfire going , but decided the wind was blowing in the wrong direction and didn't want to annoy our neighbours .
  No risk to harming hedgehogs , as we started the fire from scratch, from the ground , bringing in branches and as I said , we changed our mind and let it go out in the end .
   This is where we are going to create a much better and more productive Fruit bush zone .
   I,d love to have a proper Fruit cage over it all too . Something for the future . At the moment we have three or four Blackcurrant bushes and Raspberries which are just out of control popping up all over the place . I love Blackcurrants , the queen of English fruiting bushes in my opinion .
 I have a couple of Gooseberry bushes waiting to be planted out , they will have to be put into bigger pots and be planted out next Autumn hopefully as I cant see this being ready anytime soon !

 The Cowslips are flowering , so pretty and Primroses down the lane  .

Planting out my Mint cuttings .

                              It's beginning to look a lot like Autumn !
  It certainly been very gloomy and drizzly here ...the odd torrential shower ,  even the odd rumble of thunder !  I have pulled out my thermal vest to wear and my dressing gown ....and last night I filled my old stone hot water bottle for the first time this Autumn ...and a little rug was laid on the cold bathroom floor to keep my toes warm .
  However , I do love this time of the year  and it is a good time to rearrange and plant new things into the  garden so they can get their roots down and settle into the still warm earth before Winter .

 I have had lots of cuttings of various herbs rooting away in glass jars on my kitchen windowsill . 

 Lots of different Mint varieties.  Peppermint for my tea , Pineapple mint , Applemint, Chocolate mint , Gingermint , Pennyroyal , Bowles mint and I could never have enough Spearmint to go with my boiled and buttered new potatoes or mixed into a sumptuous salad . They all smell so good too !

 I want more  of it !  It roots so easily , even this tiny piece is beginning to put out roots . A few weeks ago I potted some of  my rooted cuttings up and now they are ready to plant out .

 I weeded this area in front of the cottage , my hands are still stinging from the Stinging  Nettles ! I hope I got all of them out , they have such long strings of yellow roots riddling through the earth , but I did the best I could .

 It is the perfect weather for doing this job today ....and this area is quite damp , pretty much most of the time , which all of the mint family love .

Here's the Chocolate Mint that I bought from the Trerice Manor House plant stall the other day . The sales assistant let me have it slightly cheaper as it looked a bit sorry for itself .

 I planted all my rooted cuttings out , but then decided to just re-pot the Chocolate Mint to bring it on a bit more .

  When I tipped it out of the pot , I could see that it was quite root-bound too .

   So now it has a slightly larger pot and I,ll probably divide it up next Spring .

The next job I had to do was pull this huge cloche out of the shed , repair it as best as I could , fix up the fence and cover the Agave from all this torrential rain .

 I put a couple of branches over the top to hold the cloche down and stop it from blowing away .
  I don't want it to get too wet and then for the weather to suddenly turn very cold or freeze . Agaves can take being cold but cant take being cold and wet .
  I will pull this off when it stops raining , the fence makes it easier to just drop the cloche into .
 If ever we are issued with a severe gale warning , then I put rocks on the edges of the cloche to hold it down too , but the branches do a great job done like this .
  So that's my lot for today in the garden , and my husband  has been chopping logs to go into the wood-store ....an excellent job done today !

                         So , it's Autumn again , I do love Autumn so much !

 Time to clean up , have a bite to eat , put my feet up and do some more of my Autumn embroidery  .

                                  Autumn blessings and joy to you !