Category: Yardening

#961 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Yardening2 Comments

More white wall painting on a cooler, more dull day. Infinitely more difficult than the textured but plain walls of the pre-holiday planned painting. This is a daft job. One that should be done in the winter when the plants are dormant. But that does not fit in with my, self-imposed, end of June deadline. Everything planty is pulled forwards and pushed to one side.  This blog is being written while paint dries. I can already predict that there will be a lack of paint that will call time on this project.

Interesting nail art.

White walls and morning sun make interesting photos. The one below fails on many photographic rules and parameters but I really like it.

And then just like that a cloud and shadow changes everything.

Since the Greek holiday I have been enjoying playing around with my digital camera and my phone. They talk to each other now. I love the unpredictability of their relationship.

All funny little observations against white walls. Which I must now return to.

#960 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Yardening2 Comments

Serendipity struck yesterday in a moment of parking misery. The peninsular we live on was very busy yesterday. The sun was up the ferries were busy and it was school sports day. I had left my home parking spot early in the morning and struggled to find one to return to at 9:30 in the morning.

The night before I had discovered this old chain dumped by a high tide on a small beach. It was much to heavy to carry home.

In all the parking shenanigans and with some anxiety, for others trying to park to catch a ferry, I decided just to reverse a little way down a slipway at the same beach to just remove myself from the melee. A lightbulb moment. I couldn’t carry the chain but I could gently load it into the car. A few links at a time.

This morning I have repurposed it to train my Wisteria along so that ultimately the plant will wend its way around the outdoor cooking area and onto the garage roof.

One teeny tiny Wisteria shoot has been introduced to the old chain.

I hope they like each other .

The main plant is flourishing after a few weeks of yardening turmoil. Some things did not survive a weeks neglect. Anythng that will provide cool green shade is on my wish list. One of the beach bars in Greece really raised our yardening goals last week.

Carefully planted trees in a courtyard, their trained branches minimally supported by a pergola and grape vines growing along the edges.

Yardening perfection.

We are a long way off but a work in progress is progress.

Meanwhile the middle aisle of Aldi has provided us with Solar festoon lights. Nature is at long last providing enough sun to light up the yard at night. Small victories suggesting that summer has arrived.

#939 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Paintings, Yardening2 Comments

Another day, another paint pot, another direction. I had no idea how to paint one section of the yard walls. Complicated by mixed surfaces and under colours. I decided to use colour blocking , beloved by interior designers. Who knows how that is going to work out.

But the big reveal is the, almost psychedelic, colours that appear when painting white on a west facing wall in the morning. Nothing like that happened when I painted the north facing wall at any time of day. A most odd sensation. I sense the big old chunk of concrete that forms a seat is also going to need painting. Whilst waiting for paint to dry I let the digital tweak make some patterns from my paint pot .

Time to do that next coat.  This blog will grow as the day progresses and I need to let paint dry…

And as it turns out, sunshine and shadows quite like my colour blocking.

“What is the point of doing anything in life, if you know what the exact outcome will be.”

#937 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Paintings, Yardening1 Comment

What does a blank page in the diary and a favourable weather forecast predict for me in June. More white wall painting is the answer. A job where radio, podcasts and pondering will be my only companions.

Convoluted meanderings of the mind.  I am very grateful to not be a perfectionist in the sense of this article.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jun/03/im-a-recovering-perfectionist-heres-how-i-embraced-the-joy-of-good-enough?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0lvZCpm1yDsptmXi83nLboujvNPrCN_oy17VpQwcRIi1iBu7UrILDbruE_aem_AbC73IqsBP4kO2UKVKib_ovRpJFnkY_wwZDxwVEgpeis9dgSldBfeRETx76rzQuoU3-COBfRdrwpFFeLnXe_L37k

I slide about on the ‘good enough’ scale. White wall painting needs to be fairly close to the perfect end of the scale. Aesthetically pleasing and competently executed will do for me.

Creatively I love happy accidents, these are not born from perfectionism or control. Being a little casual is the thing and knowing when to stop is the golden rule of being creative. Knowing when to stop is not a retrospective skill.

With the potential of a whole day to paint walls white, knowing when to stop is going to be essential. There is going to be a nail biting moment when I am going to need to be creative. Impossible to imagine I know, but when it happens the blog will be the first to know.

#935 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, YardeningLeave a comment

A milky sunset to say farewell to May. Where did that month go. Normally my favourite month, this year May has felt shorter and less productive than usual. I think my dissatisfaction is just weather-related. First World problems!

The hard graft in our yard is done . Everything is back in place and just tomatoes and courgettes to be planted into their summer positions.

There is an element of both fantasy and fact with our back yard.

Very firmly rooted on the Devon coast, we have learned over three years that Mediterranean planting is the way to be successful in the yard.

The fantasy.

Open fencing/ trellis on the walls has given us the height for climbers. In the week since the work was finished stray climbing plants have found their way into our garden from friends and a new Wisteria has been bought. My finger hovers over a Bougainvillea on a nursery website. To be honest my finger hovers over a lot of things. A great big bucket of exterior white paint might actually be the most sensible starting point. Or I could take the fantasy to a whole new level and lose some of the walls.

Which would be a waste of good trellis. So for June, a bucket or two of white paint it is. Welcome June.

#902 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Yardening1 Comment

May 2nd and it is still raining. We have had this Buddha for some time. A long enough time for a fair amount of wear and tear. In a few moments of dry weather I gave Buddha a quick spray job of rose gold. On close inspection Buddha has become a bug hotel. Spraying Buddha was inspired by a Buddha factory and wholesale Buddha Emporium that we stumbled on in downtown Bangkok, this time last year.

We couldn’t take photos in the factory but Buddhas great and small were being moulded, built and sprayed in a  production line and were for sale in wholesale numbers. Some were so big they were created in pieces.

Buddha 10 years ago in South London

My old, blue, tatty Buddha probably started life in such a place.

Tatty no more. Sprayed a bright golden coat and now waxed to give some protection against the relentless rain. The bugs who stay in this unusual bug hotel were unbothered by my renovations. This morning Buddha was adorned with webs of all shapes and sizes each one adorned with twinkling raindrops.

#896 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Yardening1 Comment

When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?

Don’t we all take risks from time to time? Carefully judged most often but sometimes not thought out at all. Yesterday, I was tired after a few hours of computer work. I decided to sweep the yard, clearing all the moss dropped by nest-building birds. In doing so I knocked some rotting wood from a raised bed, full to the brim with these small rocks. Should I remove all the wood and accept the consequences?

Several hours later and many many shovels full of these rocks I unearthed a perfectly acceptable concrete seating area.

Currently not a thing of beauty but nothing a power washer can’t sort out. I am somewhat perplexed as to why anyone would turn this into a stone-filled raised bed. But my tiny bit of risk  taking paid off. I don’t even want to know what the concrete is hiding. We will sit here in the sun oblivious to the mystery.

The Buddha with the fractured skull seems very happy with the new location.

So now to dispose of many bags of grotty old rocks…

#632 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Yardening2 Comments

We have had a busy weekend in some glorious weather. There was just an hour or so on Sunday when we could sit in the yard and enjoy looking at the results of our replanting and reorganising, of the pots and planters.

Apparently Hugo needed some time to consider if plants were in their correct locations. Some had been moved to save them from his wee, I’m not sure he appreciated that plan. But he did appreciate us getting out a sun lounger for him to gain a higher perspective of the yard.

He also appreciated the cup of tea that we made to rehydrate after gardening in full sun.

Unlike us his paws and fingernails were not grubby with hard work and soil. We jokingly call him the yard supervisor, I think these pictures suggest that that is exactly what he considers himself to be.

Just when the garden supervisor was on a break his mature good looks got him spotted, again, as a potential dog model. Let’s see how this unfolds,as a pup he modelled neckerchiefs. He retired after only one campaign.

#416 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, YardeningLeave a comment
Leviathon grasping a tomato.

The Leviathon is not really grasping a tomato and this image is the random image for Advent + 2022, but were Leviathons real and enjoyed grasping tomatoes, then there would have been a queue of Leviathons making their way to our back yard this year. Taking the tomato plants down marked the end of 6 months of ripe, red tomatoes being produced outdoors in our yard. Before this year I had not ripened a single red tomato outdoors in any garden I have ever had. It has never been a bumper crop but steady production from the end of June until now. The plants were even putting out new flowers when I pulled them up.

These last few are nestling under some bananas in the hope that they will ripen. Failing that it will be fried green tomatoes on toast for Sunday breakfast. When I got up this morning I had forgotten that the tomatoes were under the bananas. In the dimpsy light before daybreak and without my glasses on the tomatoes looked like fat shiny piglets suckling under a giant yellow sow. Quite startling until focus and the kitchen light reminded me what I had set up yesterday .

#410 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, Serendipity, YardeningLeave a comment

Today is almost certainly the last day I will be able to harvest a red tomato 🍅 grown outside in the backyard. This is hugely significant for two reasons, I have never before achieved growing even one red tomato outdoors in any garden during my lifetime. This year our new location and probably the warmest year on record are the factors that have made this possible. Not newly sprouted green fingers on my own fair hands. The warm year had made our yard positively Mediterranean until late October. Since then the yard has grown a velvety carpet of mould. Like the set of Tolkiens’ ‘Middle Earth’ in the Lord of the Rings film franchise, everything is cloaked in green flock. The spring clear-up is almost certainly going to involve a pressure washer but maybe nature or the predicted cold snap will remove the green tinge in the next month or two. Today’s tomato is not a thing of beauty, I already know that, but in the spirit of Advent+2022 I can share a very pretty tomato from November, never before the subject of a pondering.