TO PRUNE OR NOT TO PRUNE.......

Woke up late this morning, C got J ready for school and took him - bliss. I made myself a cuppa and prepared for the day ahead.  I knew I had a lot of pruning to do around the garden, but this cough is dragging me down and I was not sure if I'd have the energy to do much!

C came back and we started work in the sunshine.  I began with the quince shrubby/bush thing in the turkey pen, which was all over the place and obviously hadn't been attended to for years!

I pruned it to within an inch of it's life, I hope it comes back.  There was dead wood on it also, I have pruned according to RHS Wisley guidelines.  I don't currently have a photo of the final stub!



















Once done, I left the pen and went for a mug of tea! Aah, lovely, needed that.  Then I went out again to attempt to tackle the bougainvillea!! What a mammoth task that is going to be.  The plant is quite old I think, but again, it hasn't been pruned back for a good few years.  I need to cut it  back hard so it can bush up again with fresh growth.  I began on one side of the fence, some of the branches actually grow through the fence and they are ones I don't want to cut back!  Then I got fed up with getting spiked by the massive thorns, so I went around the other side.  The tangled mess was awful! it's going to take me a few days at least to tackle this.

The tangled web of bougainvillea.

I have made a small dent in it all, but it's a start at least.  More to do tomorrow.

Samuel Sprat (right) in the bougainvillea.

After trying to tackle this I felt completely worn out, so it was cuppa time again!  I can't wait to shift this cough, perhaps I will have more energy in a few days.  

whilst drinking my tea and nibbling on a biscuit I suddenly realised that we hadn't done the darn olives AGAIN..!! They'll have to wait till tomorrow. Groan..

Later this afternoon the chickens were let out of the run to peck around the veggie plot, whilst C lopped down the apple tree, which was, unfortunately, rotten.  It hadn't produced any decent fruit since we moved here, and it looked like it was suffering from about 3 different diseases!  So the landlord said get rid of it.  We are hoping to replace it with two new fruit trees - species to be decided!

Once C had cut it right down, we could see that the rot went right through the tree.  It had damage on the trunk and the leaves have always been in a sorry state, the apples it produced were small and always plagued with insects etc, so bye bye tree, you will be good for fire wood.

A sad moment, we found our hedgehog dead today! it looked like he'd been poisoned, the local farmers put all sorts of nasties on their fields around here.  Shame.  C said we should keep the next one we find so it doesn't get poisoned! We'll end up with a hedgehog farm next!!!!!!