January Already!

Just opened up my blog writer and saw that I’d started a blog entry entitled Christmas Approaches; this is as far as I got!

December is here already and I’m wondering just where November went.

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It’s now well into January and the feeling hasn’t changed, time is flying so a quick catch up is required.

November is when I scheduled the garden tidying.  Usually the month is relatively dry and warm, but not this year.  It rained; not disastrously as we’re seeing in Australia but always just enough to keep the ground waterlogged.  The pottager has just been abandoned as the soil is far to claggy to walk on but one job I could get on with was the annual pruning of the mulberry trees, (ornamental variety not fruiting variety).

I try to get these done before leaf fall as it’s usually heavy rain or a frost that causes them to all fall at once and large wet soggy leaves are more difficult to move.

First up is the ‘before’ picture; all the current year’s growth has to be pruned back.  This is because once the trees have been pollarded this way, the joints between the new growth and the original tree are weak and if allowed too grow further branches there is a danger of them breaking off.  Since my car is quite often in the vicinity of these trees, a branch through the windscreen is not something I want.

Each trailer load of branches was then shredded and the shreddings used to make a pathway between two raised beds I’ve put in.  I know it will rot down but as I still had one side of the bed to screw in place I needed to put something onto the soggy soil so I could put the rest of the bed in place.

As you can see it was a lovely day out there and the butterflies were taking advantage of the sunshine too.

Voila!  The finished trees.

Spurred on by my success with the trees I set about collecting the other leaves falling over the front lawn.  At this time the grass was still dry enough to go over it with the lawnmower and pick up the leaves that way. 

The mini tractor and trailer came into their own again – I’d never of got everything done with the tree pruning and the leaf collecting without it, the traipsing back and forth with the wheelbarrow would have tired me out way before I’d finished.  Before I started on the leaves I had to make a leaf cage and although I’d not thought about it before, I somehow managed to make it just wide enough to back the small trailer into, which made unloading so much easier.

This year’s leaf collection.  I’m looking forward to lots of lovely leaf mould  in a couple of years.

That brings me up to the 23rd of November but I think it’s long enough for one post so…To be continued…. (I hope )