Claudia's Birthday

Happy birthday to my long time penfriend Claudia, whose birthday it is today.

In honour of the event, I took a day off work. I did enough overtime last month to buy a day off so here today is my day off. The day started well, we had a hire car so took some stuff to the dump and then off to Homebase (10% off day!). It looks like we're going to paint the garden fence while the weather is good so we got some paint and some other bits and pieces for the summer DIY programme. Of course, I can never leave the garden section alone but came away with not very much, considering: a loganberry, a chilli plant "Apache" and tomato plant "Shirley". Also got some garden misc stuff - drip trays and a sack of dirt.

Back home and out into it. Raked the lawn before mowing to clear out the winter detrius and moss. Then did some planting out: 12 chinese broccolis have gone into the veggie patch at the back, Shirley got planted onto the sunny side as did the Loganberry (between two raspberry patches). I potted up the chilli and stuck it in the greenhouse, it will probably be happy in there.

Our neighbour was also out doing her garden so we swapped: I gave her some strawberry plants and she gave me some viola and "blue plant" seeds. They've gone into a dirt tray in the greenhouse, see what happens.

The little red kales pot I've divvied up and potted on individually, same with one of the tomato seedling pots (the Roma). I also did some long intended repotting, dividing the mint into several pots and tipping out the thyme pot, taking a breadknife to the roots, removing the moss and repotting it in fresh soil. I just hope I don't kill it!

The problem with the pear trees: the Red Williams has blossom all over it; the Beurre Hardy has none. How are these supposed to cross pollinate? At Homebase today I tried to steal some pollen from a flowering Conference pear in the garden section by swiping the corner of a tissue through some of the flowers. When I got home I wiped the pollinated tissue over some of the Red Williams flowers. No idea if this will work or not.

Tomorrow I'd like to get on and do some more weeding. I might go through my seeds tonight and see what is there that I either haven't planted or have planted but with no results.

Despite the niggling backache, I feel so much more satisfied with today's efforts than I would after a day at the office!