Down the garden in September
All of the photos were taken in September, 2001 as part of a series the gardening year. There are links to other photos at the foot of this page. September was very wet, and there was not much I could do in the rain in the garden.
This is the apple tree in the middle of the back garden, with lots of apples but we have started picking them now. It was a good year for eating apples, but strangely not for cooking ones. Still, there would not be enough storage space if everything had a good year. We ended up with 69lbs of apples from this tree. I made a picking device from an old remote grab, and mounting it with extension cables on the end of a long pole. With this and an extension ladder, there was not much that I could not reach.
This is the newish tree at the back right of the garden. It did nothing for several years, until we noticed it was being deprived of moisture by a big bush near by. We hacked back the bush, and the tree started to prosper. I prefer not to use pesticides in the garden, or only sparingly, and usually never spray fruit trees. However I did spray this when it seemed to have apple scab or something similar, and we ended up with a good crop, of mostly blemish free apples. We did not start picking until October.
Sorry for the white strip at the top of the photo - I have only just noticed it. I thought I would show elderberries for a change, because I seldom mention them. Neither of us makes elder flower of berry wine, and so they just get ignored. Elder trees seem to grow quickly like weeds, but its a very soft wood and is easily trimmed back. Apple is quite hard.
September concludes with two photos of a garden modification. Jamie got himself a little car to get to and from the station. To avoid blocking in, he had to park in our reversing space, but then we missed the turning space - it is easier and safer not to reverse out on to the road.
I knocked out a length of hedge at the edge of the drive, to build a better space. This shows Jamie's car, and the first of two, 1 ton bags of pebbles for the new surface. The pebbles cost about £ 32 per tonne including delivery and the bag.
This is the new parking space awaiting the pebbles. September was a very wet month, and I had to wait for the soil / mud to dry out before rolling and final levelling. This is viewed from the side garden looking towards the drive. Usually the Citroen is parked further down the drive so access to the new space is really unimpeded. See October for the final version.
I kept the turf and used it to raise and resurface a bit of a dip in the side garden beside the green house. This used to get quite soggy if we got a wet winter.
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