Musa ensete maurellii no 2 - planting 🌿

                     Musa ensete maurellii no.2  The red leaved one .

  It is too tender to leave out over winter . Now in the ground and looking good .  

Musa basjoo , the green leaved one in the foreground , survived the winter . Only occasionally put a cloche over it . 

Going to throw some chicken pellets down around them both , to give them a bit of a boost !

   The wind has died down now , I got a load of washing dry on the line .

Feeling tired but happier than I was yesterday 😊💐🌿

          🌧️  More rain on the way !  🌧️🌧️🌧️

                   Peace and Love 💐

                          Debbie x

Potatoes in Tubs - update 🌿

 Always a joy to see a squirrel here . We so rarely see them . She is enjoying some peanuts .We can see teats on her tummy and she is a little plump . I think she may be expecting or maybe even have a litter of kittens somewhere close by . 🤍

It is so cold today. The sun is shining but the wind is bitterly cold .  I did get a load of washing dry on the line though , which makes me very happy .

Potatoes in Tubs - update  🌿

For quite a while , I thought that nothing was coming up ; but wow look at them today !

     Time to earth them up !         I'm not completely covering them .

  This will do for now.

      I will probably give them another layer or two before harvesting them .

The children will be doing this and learning about where their food comes from .

Robin keeping me company in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture !  ☺️

Other news - It's just been full on , with bringing on the tomatoes , sweet peppers and cucumbers , picking the lettuce and baby kale leaves for salads .

Potting up some lovely new Hostas and getting things ready to move the tomato plants and maybe the Sweet Peppers into the greenhouse  .

 I need to make room to start sowing sweetcorn , courgettes , butternuts and beans in the shed . It is all go now !

 No time for embroidery .....note to self  " make time for me ...yes ME tomorrow .

                            Epimedium x perralchicum

The pretty Epimediums are flowering and I am splitting a few up . I want more !

  

 Pretty red heart shaped leaves  , spread by underground rhizomes  .The dainty flowers last such a long time . 

  

 First buds of the year appearing on the Epiphyllum ! And a Monstera delicosa that I rescued from someone giving free stuff away on their drive ! Goodness me that pot was so heavy and the plant about six feet long . I had a job getting it all into the car .

 It is now in the greenhouse on the side where all my shade loving , rain forest Epies , ferns and jungly plants are . 

              🌿🌿☀️ Very happy plant and very happy me ! ☺️🌿🌿🌿

Musa ensete maurelii are still undercover , I have started to give them a little rain water . I will drag these out and plant them up next month , depending on the weather . 

 Musa basjoo is the more hardy one , planted outside . Mine is only a baby but seems to have come through the winter . No pic...I'll show you tomorrow !

I shall leave you with a photograph of some of my lovely Cowslips  .

 

           Weather -  ☀️ It's been sunny , blustery and blinking cold ! ❄️

            

                                          love Debbie x

                  

                                       🌱🌿🕊️🌿🌱

  

Storm Benjamin

 

Told you it was going to rain !  🌧️ So Storm Benjamin wasn't too bad here . It rained hard during the night .....I didn't hear any thunder . Now there are squalls coming in and it is a bit windy now and then . 

It has passed now . We might even see the Sun ! 🌤️

I hobbled up to the shed on my walking frame . Got to make space for the hanging basket .

All my lettuces and kale withered away while I was in hospital . 

I can't bend down to plant them , so ....anyway ....I threw them into the hedgerow . 

I'm still thinking about rescuing them now .  

I  shoved everything along to the end , the Epies , baby Agaves and pathetic pumpkins .

Anyway an hour later , it took me over an hour to do this ten minute job .

So now there is space for the hanging basket .

Normally, if I had been feeling up to it , I might have taken out the succulents in one long block and left it there on the bench and re-planted the basket with Wallflowers and Universal Pansies .

It has been so difficult with both of us poorly and in and out of hospital . I am so , so tired .

Trying to stay positive ...... my son in law dug out a nice big hole and placed a tub into it , to keep it open . The idea being , that  next year I can just easily drop in my Musa ensetii"Maurelii" the red leaved banoonah  .

                             Bobbin the Robin approved !

               Dinner-plate Dahlias that my daughter gave me are enjoying the rain .

                        Love and Peace  🤍 Love and Peace 🤍 Love and Peace 🤍

                                                            Debbie 💐 x

Thinking Days

 

                          The sun has returned . 

         My Achilles ankle is hurting so am not allowed to do much for a couple of days .

Meanwhile on the bedroom windowsill - My Turmeric plant is looking fabulous ! 

My only thought now is  of how big it is going to get and can I get it through the Winter months . Will it be happy on the windowsill or should I take it up to the greenhouse  ?  🤔

                                   The smaller weirdo plant is Ginger ! 

Anyway the lovely leaves of the Turmeric reminded me of the Banana plants outside .

I should be taking out the Musa Ensete maurelii - ( the red one )  sometime soon  and moving it into it's overwintering shelter .

The green one is Musa basjoo - this is the hardy one . I'll talk about that in a bit ....more thinking to be done  🤔

I looked through my records to remind myself of when I usually do this .  🤔

So here I am digging it out ....it seems that I did this around 25th September  .

So I have a couple of weeks still to get organised  .

I need a couple more bags of good compost . I take them up with as much of a good root-ball and earth as I can and put them into their tubs with lovely fresh compost to get their roots down into . I water to settle them in then that's it really . I hardly give any watering over Winter . They ( I actually have two of these ) are then dragged into their shelter zones under cover . They have light from the overhead corrugated plastic roof . 

                                Musa basjoo -  the hardy one .

At least I hope it is ! I kept it under cover last winter , because it was , I felt , too small . 

This year I am going to be very brave and leave it in the ground  and make some kind of a frame to go over it . 🤔

Scary !   

Then I had an idea !  🤔💡 🍇🌿😃

The old grapevine arbor/arch . I had twice tried to put it back up , but it just keeps falling down and is very rickety and broken in several places . We were going to chop it up for fire wood , but now I'm thinking . 🤔

 If we cut it down by a third , it could make an attractive (in a wonky kind of way ) shelter to go over the banana plant !  😃

Might even paint it ! 🤩

Anyway , as you can see , I haven't really done much about this area that I was recently saying needs smartening up .

Well , this is because it's not one of those garden make-over shows and Rome wasn't built in a day !

... and I've been really busy doing this !

Clearing the pathway/route up and around this shrubby slightly sloping bed , so that I can prune the bushes and trees ...I need to check on a newly planted red leafed Acer that is up there in front of the Holly tree .

There are a couple of  trees that have got to go .

🕊️And we have a new dovecot to replace the one that was smashed down in the storms last year . I need to clear out the remaining broken bits of the base of the old one . 

I was heartbroken when that came down in the winter storms . My sweet heart daughter and son in law bought us a lovely new one . 🕊️

There is a lot of thinking to be done here too  🤔

I'm going to clear everything back from the Cornish hedge , take out any Sycamore and Sloe bushes that are germinating  . They are a real pain ! I think I have cleared most of the brambles in this first part of the way . 

Possibly that fir tree is on it's way out .

I will dig a large hole while the earth is soft , wet and easy to dig and next year I think that one of the Red Musa Banoonahs will look quite splendid here . 

Lower down than I usually plant it .🤔 It should look nice with the Cornish hedge behind it .

More thinking !  🤔 At the moment I can easily climb up onto this bed and there is a little step , it would be better if it was wider . 🤔 So , I am going to move some of the rocks around , to widen that step .

You can go now if you're bored ....

So I printed out a picture of this , numbered to rocks and cut them out .....to help my husband visualise what I am planning  .

Then I moved them into their new positions ....

That's just my keyboard underneath the picture ....so I cut out a bit of the undergrowth to fill in the gap .

...and stuck it where the new widened bit of the step will be . 

I would like to take out number one and two , and make it a little bit bigger still but Ricardo is not sure about that . 

                      It's o.k ....everything will be okay.....I know what I'm doing . 

                                 Debbie knows what she is doing ! 

                                                  I is knowing !                    

                                                     🌿☀️🌿    

Musa Ensete "Maurelii" - planning where to put them this year 🌿

 Beautiful sunny morning , blue sky , freezing cold Easterly breeze ! brrrr !

So a quick walk around the garden . Apple blossom now appearing .

Peony lutea that I grew from the lovely shiny black seeds my brother gave me  .

                           Enjoyed the heavenly honey fragrance of my Azara tree .

                                    The Gunneras  are also waking up .

I wonder who will be nesting in the birdhouse this year ? 

The cold wind was blowing too hard to get a good picture of the lovely red Acer .

                                         Out with the spade and dig a big hole .

I am trying to decide where to plant the Banana plants this year . I want it to look fab from several different angles . I put the post in there so I can walk away and get a better idea of it . 

The Azaleas and Rhododendrons will all be putting on their show any day now . The rose at the front needs to be cut hard back because I want it to flower later and I will need to cut off that Holly bough .

This area is on a slope , so I really have to be sure to plant things higher up the slope than I at first think . If you don't have a sloping garden, then you probably won't  understand what I mean .

There is a strange tendency to plant things too far forward .  I get a better idea from the upstairs windows of our cottage  . It needs to look good for me from my bedroom window .

The Bananas are still in their shelter zone and look dreadful at the moment due to the man not coming back to fix the new woodshed roof .

Anyway..... Musa Ensete "Maurelii" The gorgeous red leaved bananas .

 I am waking them up gently , watering them just a little bit every now and then and they are beginning to respond . I will be planting them out in about three weeks time . I like to get the hole dug while the earth is soft . 

And now I've had enough of this freezing cold breeze . I'm going in . I'm lighting the fire and am going to enjoy a nice cuppa tea and do some stitching .

                                           

     Little schooner embroidery update -Flower of the Fal - See over on my Cornish Needlework Blog .

                                                    Have a beautiful day !  🌞🦋💚 x