24 And a Bit

In the end I couldn't resist doing something in the garden last Friday. The wind dropped and the sun came came out in the late afternoon and I decided to do a hatchet job on the buddleia at the bottom of the drive. And then I took the loppers to the sycamore in the verge on the other side of the road that seems to grow quicker than bamboo. We now have our view back from the bench looking west to the fields and hills beyond.

Since the end of the snow it has actually been very dry here so I decided the time had come to make inroads on the high bank. And I have been working on it all week, making up for its neglect last year due to veggie patch creation.

Debris clearance of last year's sedums, asters, alchemerias, crocosmias, origanum...
Digging out nettles before they get a grip - great time to do it as the ground was quite soft which let me pull out lots of roots.
Hard pruning back of the honeysuckle so I can now see my garden ornament faces again.

The time had come - now or never this year. Up to the top, pruning as I went to clear a couple of routes.

Another hatchet job on a buddleia that was swamping out a rhododendron.
Lopping back the lower conifer branches to make passageways to the path at the top running along the back of Margaret's barn. I even got Paul up there today to saw off a large branch that was growing horizontally squashing a forsythia.
Bag upon bag of moss/conifer dross/buttercups/brambles removed. And every bagful meant having to clamber down to empty the bag and then clamber back up...

Clearing the path up to the top from the right hand side of the fruit bushes area that I made a couple of years ago. I am quite well hidden up there.

Sidetracked today into clearing out more moss/brambles/conifer debris from the back of the fruit bush area. This would make a nice little woodland plant area when I run out of other things to do...

26 hours but now it looks good. At least for a while. If I have any energy tomorrow I may climb back up with my camera.

The snowdrops are still thriving and covering the lower half of the high bank. Up the top and the foxgloves I planted a couple of years back appear to be spreading. And there seem to be a lot more bulbs up there than I realised - daffodils, autumn crocuses and I am guessing bluebells.

Thanks must be given to Margaret for letting me dump the conifer branches at the back of the quarry, and thus saving me having to negotiate a way down with them...