Carrying on with the rescue mission - and other things

We had some nice weather this weekend, so I took the opportunity to get on with the rescue mission of the flower garden and to do one or two other useful jobs.

 I have now finished digging over the pond bed, although I notice that there are still quite a lot of buttercup plants in there.  I'll get in and weed those as time permits.  I also notice that there is morning glory growing with enthusiastic abandon all over the first bed I rescued - it used to be called the shrubbery, but now has fewer shrubs in than it used to.  I'm not sure what to do about the morning glory. It is all but impossible to dig out and nearly impossible to kill by chemical means.  But I must make some attempt to keep it at bay otherwise all we end up with is a bed full of morning glory and nothing else!

The cornflowers are revelling in their exposure to air and sunshine

Looking down from the garden door

I have started the rescue digging of the second flower bed. I think this may also be something of a challenge. It is VERY overgrown with grass, buttercups and alpine strawberries but again, there are some plants we would really rather keep

And I've been clearing up alongside and on the main path.  Still lots of moss and weeds to get out, not to mention some pretty plants that have colonised the path.  But we've bought some stocks and some snapdragons to put next to the fence, plus there are still lots of alyssum and lobelia seedlings. So it should look attractive even if only for a single season.  I'll look into getting some cottagy perennials next year. I do want to get rid of as much of the moss as I can, though.  The path has been extremely slippery for the last year or so and I think that's largely down to the moss.

The Under Gardener has also been busy. Not only has he been up on the allotment, weeding, hoeing, grass cutting and watering, he's also been weeding the fruit bushes down between the kitchen garden and the orchard

He's weeded and tied in the red and white currants

The black currants still need doing ...

... as do the gooseberries

And the lupin is now in full flower.  I have made a space for it up by the tumbledown shed. Really, really must remember to move it this autumn!

All of this weeding has, of course, generated a positive mountain of grass, weeds and other garden debris.  Alas, our garden waste bin is permanently full.  It only gets emptied once a fortnight and as soon as it has been emptied, we fill it right back up again!

A model of Mount Everest, made in grass :-D

We have bought a load of cottage style seedlings ready to plant in the spaces created by all the digging.  I've planted out some replacement foxgloves. The rest are waiting along the wall by the garden door (and hiding my culinary herbs!)

I spent yesterday morning in the potting greenhouse potting on various seedlings. They were all looking quite happy when I went down to inspect them this morning. So I am hopeful that in another couple of weeks we will be able to plant out our sweet corn, capsicum, zucchini, watermelon and various other plants.  We suddenly realised that we didn't have any cucumber plants, so we have bought a packet of seeds for a late planting, and a seedling of baby cucumbers (not gherkins!). We'll pop that into the greenhouse on the allotment with the pumpkin seeds and see what the salad cucumbers are like when (!!) they fruit