In The Nick of Time

The raspberries are swelling and colouring up and we'd not yet got them tied and netted. Any day soon we knew we'd come home to find them stripped, all the fruit nicked by the starveling starlings and the squirrels. There was nothing to do but to get on with building that frame we'd been planning for oh, so long.

It was a struggle in the overgrown, confined space. We got hot and bothered, we swore a few expletives, we snapped a few fruit laden canes in our endeavours, oh tragedy. Still, 'tis done, things WILL be better next year.

A disgruntled Garden Tiger; we moved it out of harms way for the duration of the frame building works. ♥ It's so fluffy! ♥

We spotted a two-spot :)

Yes, sadly those are the misshapen leaves of our plum, it has pocket plum disease, aaaarghhh. What to do?

Wakefield Ironmongers

Wakefield Ironmongers

ironmongery is sold per piece

We popped into our local ironmongers Wakefield's, on Lea Bridge Rd, today to purchase strainer screws for a support for our burgeoning raspberries. We ♥ that you can buy nails by weight and ironmongery is sold per piece so no need to buy more than the job at hand requires.

We ♥ that most purchases are wrapped in newspaper and come with a hand written receipt. No matter our shopping list they've never yet not stocked whatever we've thought we needed.

Rooftop Garden

We ❤ the Queen Elizabeth Hall roof garden; kudos that it is still thriving after three years and with so many people using it, so we nipped up to take a peek at the John Lewis 150 years celebratory roof garden as we were passing by. We liked the hundreds-and-thousands Mexican fleabane sprinkled through the planting; sweet. It was fun to get a quirky view of the rooftops of London Town. We thought the number of friendly staff chaperoning us up the stairs unsustainable and crossed our fingers and wished that more bare rooftops would be planted up as green roofs.

If You Go Down To the Woods Today

We took a walk through Epping Forest today to take a gander at the Flag Irises; ours in the pond back at Plot 57b are refusing to bloom :(

Canada Geese chillaxing on Strawberry Hill Pond.

We ate our packed lunch in the magical circle that is Loughton Camp...

... and were entertained by this monster beastie; a black arion, Arion ater (?).

The last of the ducklings on Lost Pond.

The Drive

With all the rains the clay pits at Wake Arms were fill to brimming.

A Spring Watch moment! Peacocks perhaps?

We stopped to admire the Red Campion and we spotted a hairy shield bug :)

We passed by Queen Elizabeth's hunting lodge, too late to go in and show you inside. Another day perhaps.

Progress Report

We potted up our Brian Hood pail with Mrs Pollock as she was a little of what we fancied.

We took the snips to the parsnips and snipped off the leaves riddled with celery-leaf miner.

"Off with their heads!" We snipped the tops off the broad beans,snip, snip, in the hope of thwarting the black fly.

We snipped the leaders of the 'Old Fashioned' to promote side shoots.

We planted the last of the beans: 'Bob and Mary' a climbing bean and our lucky dip 'Snake' dwarf bean.

All the while this crab spider (?), Philodromus albidus (?) marked our every move.

We rigged up this trellis to support our 'Agnes' cucumber plants. We're not sure it's quite right. For starters, it looks clunky; perhaps we should have used string. Cucumbers are a first for us, inspired by our Hastings friends we're planning to try our hand at pickling gherkins, fingers crossed. The planting was a bit of an after-thought and the cucumbers may well be swamped by the two courgettes that are already established. Time will tell.

Here is an update on how our garden grows:

The first of the 'Kelvedon Wonders' are rambling, the perforated 'Purple Top Milan' are persevering.

The bean bed

The root bed

Bank Holiday Breakfast

Seasonal Distractions

Today, on our walk along the Thames Path we spotted our first flag irises of the season...

... the coots and the moorhens had already called dabs for premium spots amongst the detritus.

Columbia Rd Market

"A fiver your tumbling toms there. If you don't like the look of 'em, you can eat 'em."

"A fiver, any colour you like, as long as it's lilac."

"A steal at a fiver a tray, they're all stolen."

"You can keep the bees; they're free."

Stall holder with a tray on his head: "It's doing my head in! Only a fiver a tray."

We went down to Columbia Rd Market today for a laugh ...

... and to get some geraniums to plant up the Brian Hood pail we bought at the Canal Cavalcade last weekend.

Roses and Castles

Today we went to the Canal Cavalcade and admired the roses and castles.

We walked from Little Venice to Angel and delighted at the painted pots of geraniums and herbs balanced on the houseboat rooftops and the container gardens of the moorings.

May Bank Holiday Project

We marked this May bank holiday by building an insect hotel. We purchased the reclaimed ridge tile from a local roofer's merchant, the logs were cut from the fig tree we felled to allow more light into the garden. The insect hotel is built on the slab laid over our dear, departed cat Dudley.

It will be interesting to see who moves in.

We planted up the next batch of Kelvedon Wonder.It is essential to make sure the paper pots are completely earthed over otherwise they will wick moisture from the roots of the seedlings.

We earthed up the Red Dukes.

The Medlar is in bloom.