In my garden: February

I told you about the blue skies yesterday and today I'm showing you them. The buds on the pear tree almost look like lights waiting to glow, don't they?  While I let MOH have a go with our new leaf blower, I escaped and snapped a few pictures, and it's good to see the colour starting to reappear in the garden.

As well as the start of some Spring yellows, there's plenty of pink. These hellebores are just about visible from the house, and they've spread over the years. There was a red dot visible from the house that I was keen to investigate, and when I got close I realised it was either a very late or very early flowering geranium.  Clearly trying to steal the show from these hellebores, but its time will come.

At the very end of the garden, the camelia I bought back in 2015 has put on lots and is much bushier than it has been in previous years. There's also quite a few flower buds, so I'm hopeful there'll be a pop of white about as far away from the house as you can get. 

As is becoming tradition, I could resist a photo in my favourite corner, the sleepers have dried out a lot since I was last here, but it's still not the weather to sit down and enjoy the view. To the left, was ironically an ice plant, nestled in among the lavender.  I'm hoping it's feeling right at home, but I'll be happy for it to be slightly less cold right now please!

There was one discovery which you might have already seen, and that's my first daffodil, and there's plenty more to come. There was a suggestion on my Facebook page that I cut it and pop it in a vase before the snow comes. That did cross my mind, but I couldn't quite bring myself to cut it, although daffs in the house should be obligatory.  Once I start buying those bunches that haven't even thought about opening, they become kind of addictive and our dining table, and plenty of other surfaces, are rarely seen unadorned.

As I headed back down the garden the fatsia caught my eye, the flowers looked particularly sputnik-like, and as I got close up (as I do) I spotted the picture I really wanted to get.  I can't decided if they're dancing in the sun, or if the leaf on the left is tickling them, either way I love this photo!

But then again I love the fatsia and am a total convert. Every garden I have from now on will most definitely be having its own fatsia. 

I'm also hoping for some slightly warmer weather, as well as the obvious reasons, I also want to get started sowing some seeds, and I'm hoping that I won't need to head out into a snow-filled garden to clear snow off of the greenhouse roof, which has to be my least favourite gardening job! 

A quiet blow for my leaves

Brrrr... It's a tad on the cold side right now isn't it? I know I was tempting fate by anticipating wind this weekend, but I didn't necessarily need, or want, the cold weather to accompany it. But at least it was dry. And the skies were blue. But still it was cold.  My two concrete hares in the garden looked as if they were quite enjoying their blanket of leaves, but we were keen to get the leaves off of the slate.

There was also a pile of leaves gathering along the fence, and while the euphorbias (and weeds) are valiantly doing there best to grow through the leaves, I'm not sure they're doing the patio much good.  That really eaten and and almost lacy set of leaves belong to a weed, with no doubt a huge tap root. I'm not sure what's eating it, but it's having a pretty good go isn't it?

But first, leaf duties

Wellies on, gloves on, blower at the ready and I was set. I was expecting my new Stihl BGA 56 Blower to be quiet, but I wasn't expecting quite so much power from this lightweight and relatively small garden tool.

My plan was to blow the leaves into orderly piles, and that generally worked, but the grass also got a bit of a blow and it gave the impression that it was clinging on for dear life.  All the grass stayed in place, of course, but it was noticeably moved. 

Once the leaves were in piles, they were quickly bagged and set aside to do their thing, and provide fantastic leaf mould in a year or two.  Where this blower will come in handy will be retrieving leaves from our flower beds, as you can see from the photo below I've been giving the leaves fair warning!

It was still chilly though out there - the joys of having a north facing garden - even though we were wrapped up and with glimpses of sun there were only short bursts of work. We've still leaves to collect - mostly in the flowerbeds now.  If the snow takes hold as the forecasters would have us believe, they might have another week's grace.

But parts of the garden are looking much less leaf covered, and smarter for it too. We know there's little chance of us capturing every single leaf in the garden, so it'll be a bit of an ongoing project. But one that's a whole lot more fun - and productive - than doing it by hand!

* This is a collaborative post, but all views and opinions are my own.

Anticipating wind this weekend

A week or so ago I unboxed a new garden tool from Stihl, which I'm fully expecting to help us tame the leaves in our garden.  You can see from the first photo in my conservatory plans post just how many trees we have in our garden (just) and how they're all pretty much bare right now. As you know all those leaves have to go somewhere and I can tell you it's not up, it's most definitely down and along some. We've leaves covering the flower beds, in the slate (much to MOH's disdain) and quite a few have sought solace together in random sheltered spots around the garden. You know the places that you'll twist and turn to get into and then struggle to turn and twist to get out of without dropping the clutch of leaves you've gathered. 

Yes exactly.  Collecting leaves by hand is often a futile task, and one that kills your back, even more than digging I think. 

But leaves are good. Well rotted down leaves are good, so in a year or two's time, the leaves that are creating quiet chaos in our garden will be the stars of the show, providing valuable leaf mould. We've a leaf mould compost bin over on the allotment as well as a smaller bin in our garden, as we gather sack fulls of leaves. And as we'll use most of the leaf mould on the plot, it made sense to "make" leaf mould there, of course the challenge is to get the sacks of leaves over there in the first place, but that's a small logistics matter...

Did you know that the simple black sack is your friend when it comes to leaf mould?  

Making leaf mould is one of the few things I use black sacks for, and I buy the cheapest ones I can get hold of. Before I fill it with leaves I take great joy in laying the sacks out on the grass and stabbing them with my garden fork. The leaves need some air, and I tell MOH that it's good for his grass too...

If your leaves are wet then simply fill your sacks and tie the top and leave in a quiet corner of your garden until you find them about the same time next year, when you can give them a look and see how they're doing. Depending on what kind of leaves you have, they may take longer to do their thing, but it won't be long before you've got some fabulous homemade goodness to use in your garden.

But back to my new garden tool

You'll know I'm an advocate of STIHL, the company and its products and am already the proud owner of a compact grass trimmer which now I regularly "wrestle" MOH for. It's his favourite too, but don't worry I do pull rank and claim it back as my own, most of the time... Sometimes it's just as well to let him get on with it, while he's happy.

The new tool I've unboxed is a compact cordless blower, hence the prediction for more wind to come at the weekend.  Once again it features a 36V Lithium-ion battery and Stihl's quiet technology, which they say on their website means you don't need to wear ear protection. Remembering my visit to their Competence Centre in Kufstein and the work and testing they undertake on their products, I'm looking forward to hearing - or rather not hearing - what they've achieved with this model.

Like the grass trimmer before it, this is easy to manage and designed to be easy to use.  There's a couple of other features which I'll be testing out at the weekend, these include the length-adjustable blower tube which can be adjusted for whoever's using it to ensure that the blowing force (now get me) remains at the optimum level to make short work of those leaves and twigs.

The blurb says that everything you need to operate the blower control functions and the safety locking lever are incorporated easily into the handle, which has been designed so it's easy to use for both right or left-handers. I'm sure that for many lefties, that's music to their ears. 

So let's hope the weather is as nice as it was last weekend (sadly I don't think I'm going to be that lucky), or at least let's hope the only wind around is the self-made sort courtesy of my new leaf blower! I'll let you know how I get on, but in the meantime if you want the technical details they're readily available on the Stihl site.

* This is a collaborative post, but all views are my own.