Monday, 11 April 2016

Brilliant Weekend

For us this was a brilliant weekend. For the last six weeks we've had the worry of cancer hanging in the air. In Saturday's post I got the results that the biopsies I'd had taken showed no evidence of cancer. What a relief!! The last six weeks has been a very, very long six weeks.

The weather was decent over the weekend too with plenty of sunny spells and only a drop of rain late on Saturday evening. On the plot that gave us chance to get our early potatoes, Casablanca planted. I would have like to have dug over a bed earmarked for our early brassicas bought from Marshalls but the soil was too wet and claggy so I decided it was better left to dry out a little. Looking at the weather forecast for next week that might be a little bit optimistic.
We spent some time continuing our spring tidy up, a bit of weeding, strimming and edge trimmer. By the time we left on Sunday afternoon parts of the plot looked fairly tidy especially with our fruit bushes starting to leaf up.
Now we need that weather forecast to be wrong.


Posted by Martyn at 09:43 5 comments

Saturday, 9 April 2016

Just Right

Friday was another day of sunny spells but once again it often threatened heavy showers which didn't materialise. It did keep us from doing any gardening. I really do need to get the grass cut again if only it would dry out.

It's a few years ago that I did a hatchet job on one of our camellias. Unfortunately it had grown too well and was crowding out other plants. With that in mind back in the summer of 2011 I decided a bit of pruning was required. When I'd finished our camellia looked like this.
After pruning in August 2011
Now five years on it's back at its very best.
April 2016
The trouble is that it can't be allowed to get much larger or it will once again be taking up too much space. I'm hoping that some careful pruning rather than a major hacking session will keep it in bounds.
Posted by Martyn at 09:43 0 comments

Friday, 8 April 2016

Staying In Day

Thursday was another mixed sort of a day with some sunny periods but we often had dark clouds threatening heavy showers. We certainly had fewer showers than Wednesday but the temperature was disappointing and in the breezy weather it didn't feel so warm outside.

It was a day for doing a bit of catching up. I'd taken a couple of videos at the weekend of a dunnock collecting nesting material in the garden and our frogs doing what they do in our pond. These two videos have now been edited and uploaded to YouTube and Facebook.


We've also been working on updating our websites into Adobe Muse which is quite a task. I think I've now got the main parts of my websites changed over to our new software although I'm sure I'll have to tweak a few things as I spot things that aren't working correctly.


Posted by Martyn at 11:38 0 comments

Thursday, 7 April 2016

Typical April Weather

Tuesday was a cool, cloudy day and windy at times. Wednesday was much more typical of what we expect in April with showers through the day and into the evening.  
The showers were certainly short and sharp with one particular shower of hail almost turned our little pebble garden white.
The leaves of the daffodils were struggling to stay upright in the gale force wind that blew whilst the hail lasted. In between the showers we had some decent sunny spells but it felt cool outside in the breezy conditions.
Posted by Martyn at 09:10 0 comments

Tuesday, 5 April 2016

End of the Crop

A rather strange day weather wise. We had a little bit of overnight rain which dried up slowly through the morning. By lunchtime occasional sunny spells were developing and we decided to do a little bit of tidying up outside at home. Then some thunder in the afternoon but no more rain. I decided to sort out the last of our overwintering potatoes, onions and shallots stored in the garage. There were quite a few casualties fit only for the council recycling bin. Some onions had lost their insides completely and only some dry outer skins remained whilst other were a mushy mess. The best were saved and hopefully they'll last us a few more weeks.
There's always a few spiders about in the garage but this one struck me as being a bit on the large side. Once disturbed it headed for the freedom of outdoors very quickly and it certainly didn't want its photo taking.
It was then back to sorting out the last of the potatoes. Lots had started to shoot and were only fit for the recycling bin but I managed to salvage a box full which didn't look too bad. For good measure I removed any shoots that had started to grow.
As soon as we get chance we'll be planting our first early potatoes on the plot. Hopefully this will be in the next couple of weeks.
Posted by Martyn at 09:54 2 comments

Monday, 4 April 2016

The Ossett Gravel Snail

It wasn't too bad a weekend with Sunday the much better of the two days and becoming the warmest day this year nudging the year's highest temperature up to 15.9°C or 60.6°F.
I'm sure like us most gardeners are troubled by slugs and snails devouring seedlings and young plants as well as mature crops. Now one of the  solutions suggested by many a TV gardening expert is to put some grit around young plants as slugs and snails don't like crawling over any sharp materials. Perhaps eggshells are supposed to work the same way.

Well a bit of sharp gravel doesn't deter the Ossett Gravel Snail. Want proof?
Clearly a little bit of sharp gravel is no deterrent at all to this particular snail. I found it crawling up the side of the garage this morning. I'm not sure what it's looking for to eat other than a bit of alga from the surface of the gravel.
One thing for sure is it's a long way down.
Posted by Martyn at 10:10 4 comments

Saturday, 2 April 2016

A Cold Wet March

The first day of April wasn't anything special with a dull start to the month and some light drizzle at times. It was a cold start to the day as overnight the temperature fell to 0.0°C or 32.0°F.

March turned out to be a cool month for Ossett with only the bitterly cold and snowy March of 2013 been colder over the last six years. The average temperature for March was 6.3°C or 43.3°F.
It was also a wet month turning out to be the wettest March over the last six years with 79.0mm (3.11") of rainfall. We'll need a dry spell of weather to help the plot dry out ready for spring planting.
It wasn't a windy month for us which makes a welcome change. High pressure dominated through the middle of the month bringing us some settled weather but which was often cloudy rather than sunny. Perhaps the weather will pick up a bit for April so that we can get on with some sowing and planting.


Posted by Martyn at 11:10 0 comments

Friday, 1 April 2016

Web Site Problems

I thought I'd post something about updating our websites. As you may be aware from some comments Sue posted on Facebook, Serif software have decided that they will not be updating their web design software any more and so we have been on the lookout for alternative packages.

It looks like we will be changing from Serif WebPlus X8 to Adobe Muse.
I'm expecting it will take us a while to become reasonably familiar with the new software. As a first step I've attempted to convert my existing websites from the old to new software. I've found that Adobe Muse is very poor at creating tables and as I make use of lots of them on my website it is going to take me a while to get to grips with the software and the best way to work around this issue.

Of course it's not only tables that are different as navigation menus, links and methods of formatting text are all different let alone the way images are imported.

All this is my way of saying that if you log onto one of our websites and find it isn't working properly please bear with us while we get to grips with our new software. Making sure that all the previous links work correctly and open up the desired web page is quite a challenge.

Posted by Martyn at 09:00 0 comments
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