So, in a brief few hours on sunshine yesterday, I started my garden tidy. Well, hubby started it while I sat at the patio table sowing some hardy annual seeds. As you can see, it was warm enough for a refreshing glass of shandy! These seed trays will go into the cold frame over winter and shouldn't need pricking out until early spring.
During a clearing of an untidy border, this little chap put in an appearance. My internet searches have identified him (or her?) as a common frog rather than a toad. But if any herpetologists out there know better, then I'm happy to be corrected.
As part of the tidy-up, I braved the tying-in of this years new tayberry shoots. It put me in mind of wrestling a particularly spiny snake. This lovely plant has grown three impressive new shoots during this year and these will fruit in 2013. I implemented my 'Loch Ness monster' formation again, which looks a little convoluted, but allows me to train 3m shoots onto a 1m length of fence. I also buried the end of the longest shoot to experiment with a bit of 'tip layering'. Hopefully I will have a baby plant to pass on to a deserving garden next year.
