Recycling?

If you read Martyn's blog you will know that we had a bit of a mishap with our greenhouse. A pear fell from a branch overhanging our garden greenhouse and smashed one of the very large panes of glass.

Replacing glass with glass on the greenhouse roof is just about impossible - no let me rephrase that - IS impossible and so we - the Royal we that is - sent for a large sheet of acrylic sheeting. It was cut to size and wrapped in lots and lots of bubblewrap.

Now, I was worrying about how our peach tree - that started life as a nectarine - would fare over winter. It did make it through last winter but having sampled its fruits I would be really upset if it was damaged or even killed during the coming - it must come mustn't it? - bad weather.

I'd decided that I was going to wrap the pot in bubblewrap to give it some extra protection and so the packaging material from the acrylic sheet was just the job.

The peach pot has now been wrapped in about four layers and I had plenty left over to also wrap up the pot in which the mini kiwi is planted - although that has been popped in the greenhouse for winter.

After all that wrapping I still have some left which I will be able to throw over the perennial cuttings once the weather turns frosty!

The wrapping is folded over the top of the compost but can be opened up if we think the tree needs some water. The pot does have little feet that raise it off the ground but we have also popped it up on some bricks so that if we have lots of rain and it finds its way into the pot it will hopefully drain out easier.

So that's the best we can do for the plants - now we just need to sort out some lagged piping for our central heating boilers condensate pipe to avoid a repeat of it freezing up as happened last year only a week after being installed. Hopefully British Gas will sort that out for us this week!

Not to be outdone

We went to the plot for more harvesting and tidying but the first thing I did was pop around with my camera. Seeing as I posted a collage of the flowers still giving some colour on the plot it seemed only fair that I should do the same for the plot so here it is:

Lots of the annuals have taken quite a while to get going this year. The cosmos are very short but have decided that it's not too late to send out a few flowers.

The pink stocks and calendula were sent to me be from Australia by Diana - the Malay Kadazan Girl and the candytuft came from Bilbo Waggins. They sent me other seeds too but these are the ones still flowering. (I'm afraid the snake beans didn't like this summer's weather, Diana!)

Does this one look sad to you?

As usual the tubs in our garden that have been cleared of summer plants have now been planted up with pansies. One of my favourite nurseries always has trays and trays of pansies at this time of year.

They are usually really good plants and are sold in trays that hold of 15 plants each in their own pot. The trays and pots are really useful too for growing on vegetable plants for the plot.

I bought a tray for us and one for my sister. Don't you think the colour range in each tray is brilliant. It should be as I spent ages moving plants from one tray to another until I got a tray where no two pansies were alike. There's always lots of yellow pansies so anyone late buying their plants probably end up with a tray full of yellow flowers.

The pansies are now planted up in their tubs.

But look at the one at the front of the tub on the top left - this one:

Don't you think that it looks sad? Maybe it is thinking of all that cold snow that could well cover it up just like it did its cousins last year. Let's hope it doesn't happen!