Post-Christmas Garden Procrastination.

Hello there.

I didn't feel inclined to the panic and rush of a New Year's Eve/Day blog post so feel more relaxed to attempt it now. Such is my relaxation I am beginning it on Sunday afternoon and will be hopefully completing it tomorrow. All my men return to school and work tomorrow so as well as starting this I will mostly be ironing so I can have a me day from 8.15am until 3.15pm when I will probably be fetching our youngest from rugby.

FYI, it is now 11.5am on Monday morning. Just had a nice surprise as Jon popped in to get a brew to go whilst collecting some tools for a job, I've done a few jobs around the house and now here I am.

So where to begin? A belated Happy New Year, Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.

...and little about last year.

We had our best Airbnb year to date including hosting family members in all 3 listings over the Christmas period; we received this lovely card from one of the couples on January 4th.

 

and we started preparation for creating a full-blown business out of the listings by having new signage made; very exciting.

I made my first attempt at hanging baskets for the listings and also improved the planters and I was very happy with the results.

The third of our listings had its first visitors in July and from then on was busy right through the year give or take the odd week; we didn't expect that at all. Here is the link.

We are super excited that we already have bookings for the 2020 National Esiteddfod which is taking place in Tregaron, just eight miles away from us from 1-8 August.

In the garden, even though it was neglected slightly due to the first item on this list, I did get a great, continuous harvest of red and green lettuce, my best garlic yield yet, the first very successful growing of Spring cabbage and cauli, although there were harvesting issues with the latter. Here are some other minor treats from the veg patches.

Just before Christmas Jon got round to a little project in the kitchen. We bought a job lot of Laura Ashley tiles and he did a fab job on the sink area.

Now, onto the title of this post. I am so suffering from said title at the moment. I just cannot get myself outside but today I thought I would go out and look at the state of pay. I took a few photos when I went out to feed the chooks; they got a few extra treats over Christmas and although they are in low yield mode just now the eggs are massive.

Here are said chooks; we put down some of the bamboo in the week as they were laying behind it and I had trouble retrieving the eggs; they also have something different on which to chow down.

This is the rather gloomy view of the growing area - not an attractive sight at this time of the year to be honest.

I have fresh compost in the six tyres as well as the other two large ones; there is still some work to be done there. I did manage to cut back the raspberry canes before Christmas but not much else...

Obvs not much sowing and growing happening just now. Here are the onions? These are planted in the right hand side of the bed in the far left of the above photo. They have been constantly brought to the top by the rain and then got at by birds, possibly. I'm leaving as is until I get some February planting sets and then I will sort out the bed; at least one seems to have taken!

Also in the same bed on the left hand side is the garlic; this sort of had the same problem but has taken much better.

Whilst looking for evidence of snowdrops at the far end of the garden, which I found yay, I also spotted some of the garlic cloves which had taken flight, by one means or another, from the bed and across the fence!

Outside the polyhouse (far too embarrassed to show you THAT) are the planters I had nearThe Snug last Spring/Summer; they are happily coming back to life; I have to be very honest and say there are new bulbs which I have not got round to planting yet.....

On the way back up to the house I spied some buds on the Magnolia Strallata. This is my very favourite thing in the garden but I only wish it was in flower for a longer time.

This is how I very much look forward to it showing later in the year.

So that is a little ramble about stuff. 

Last night I began some planning of what will go where in the growing area. Not even THINKING about sowing anything yet but do like to know where things will be. Trying to make sowing and growing easier for me this year, manage my time better along with looking after the Airbnb listings. I don't want the former to fail whilst the other is thriving - just need to be organised which I really am good at normally....

I do need to order the February garlic and decide which spuds I'm growing this year but that is about it for now, despite the seed catalogues regularly flying through the door at a fair rate of knots! 

Jon brought home a mahoosive amount of wood for logging just before Christmas which should keep us in wood beyind next Winter. It came with some lovely composted down wood chips. Hoping to get this on the beds when we have a dry spell in a couple of weeks; we have already given a good few barrow fulls to our next but one neighbours and they are very happy with it.

Along with this I have been going through the multitude of seeds I have collected; I'm ready to give some away to a deserving project somewhere hopefully in Mid-Wales. I've just cancelled both of my gardening magazine subscriptions; it's part of the cutting back on the budget as usual at this time of the year - every little helps - and this is also where most of my seeds come from.

Right, getting on for lunchtime now so hope this reaches you with not too many mistakes and that you enjoy my first ramblings of 2020. I'm also returning to my Slimming World group this evening to deal with the food slump I have found myself in.

Bye for now, Lou.xx

A Big Old Catch Up.

Hi! Well, how good has this weather been, although I did see somebody on social media saying it wasn't right to be this warm in February, meaning that the planet was warming up, I think....

On Thursday it was my youngest's Ysgol Eisteddfod, school Eisteddfod. He recited a poem, in Welsh, for of the categories and came 2nd; he also won places in two writing classes. Very proud of him.

On Friday I had a delivery of my bare root fruit canes and some blueberry plants and seeds from Thompson & Morgan.

Sorry about the last photo being a bit scew!

At the weekend our Airbnb guests enjoyed the sun. We were really very busy with that as well as jobs around the house and outside.

Jon was doing the first cutting back of trees near to the roadside. 

There is more to do but with help as we'll have to take care of the passing traffic. 

In the afternoon he took the boys down to the river for the first try out in the kayak we bought them for Christmas.

On Sunday I manged to get into the garden. Yay!!! I sowed my February onions, variety Sturton in one of the large tyres. After it being suggested to me I've planted 5 of my existing strawberry plants in a drainpipe.

I may suspend this from the rafters of the poly house. I still have a couple more along with the 12 that came in the fruit order.....!

Last Friday I sowed the following: 

Sweet Romano peppers x 4 pots of 2 seeds
Sunflower Pacino (pots as above), these have been put in the conservatory, one of the Sunflower seeds is showing its face.

I've sown a couple of other things which are in my homemade propagator again, but I'll spare you the details as its early days yet. 

Cornflowers and Field flowers in the chimney outside the poly house and I'm looking forward to those coming up as they were lovely last year.

Yesterday, after the two sets of guests left,  I got myself outside. I discovered the other day that one of my rhubarb crowns have survived when I thought it had been flattened following some work in the garden. This morning I saw signs of the second one; they are very small!

I decided to clear the space properly, which included exposing the Wild Garlic I could smell as I was working, and to build something to protect said rhubarb. The area was a BIT over grown....the crowns were planted somewhere in the bottom left of the photo so was a little tricky to find them.

This is how it looked after a bit of work.

And here is what I am chuffed with. I used branches left from Jon's tree job on Saturday and made pegs to twine them around.

I am ridiculously pleased with myself. I just really hope after all my hard work that the crowns survive. If anybody has any advice for me it would be really appreciated.

The boys were busy too, one helping our elderly neighbour with some logging and the other sorting out some kindling for the store.

That's about it, apart from since I began planning this post I now have three Airbnb bookings for this week, and it is not quite the end of February!

Weather gorgeous again today so after getting both rooms ready this morning I'm having some lunch then going out into the poly house where, about 2 hours ago, it was 29 degrees. I plan on taking up the blueberry bushes from the garden and putting them in planters along with the cranberry I was given at Christmas. I bought ericaceous compost yesterday for this job.

Bye for now.