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This is my entry for the Steemit Community Garden Journal for May being run by @simplymike. Amazingly enough, I'm managing to get two entries in a row! Last month was first attempt and this now my second try at a garden journal. I'm not a great gardener by any stretch of the imagination.. but we do things in the garden that seem to resemble gardening... and now I'm also taking photos as I go, so that by the end of the month I have a gallery of garden photos to choose from!

The Front

Well... honestly, the less said about the front garden... the better. We are in this holding pattern where we are expecting to renovate the front (to include a half underground bike storage) whilst completely rethinking the entire garden. Possibly the pavement will go, and there will be new plants on the edges to replace the current ones (both dead and alive!). So, at the moment, it looks like a disused derelict plot....

However, I am still trying to do the minimal amount of weeding and de-mossing to keep the oldies in the neighbourhood from making "observant" remarks when they see me.... like "I love how you are letting your garden take care of itself!".

The Back

Strawberries and Shit...

Around the start of the month, my wife had sent me to the garden centre to pick up some manure for the garden.... which she said that she would deal with. Over the next two weeks, the bags of manure made it from the garage in the front through to a neat pile in the back garden. Where they have been sitting... thank god, it isn't my procrastination this time! Anyway, these last couple of weeks (and coming ahead), my wife is the crazy busy one... whilst I'm playing more of the stay at home dad. So, in the end... I did this job! Adding my own choice of strawberries in the mix as well... well, if I'm digging then I get to choose what goes in!

So, we had three bags of manure... for the three sides of the garden. Ideally, we would have done twice as much... but it is pretty heavy riding the bakfiets with piles of manure and two kids already... so, an extra 3 bags would have meant that the kids would have had to run next to the bike. So... my instructions were to lay the manure and mix it into the existing soil.

Well... that is about as riveting and action-packed as it gets. The manure is in the soil... and mixed. Who said that gardening isn't a spectator sport?

So... half the strawberries went in empty space under the grape vine. This was the area that was going to have some bulbs (from last year...), but seeing as that never happened... (and now seems to be a running joke for my garden...), I have repurposed the space for the strawberries.

Meanwhile, the other three strawberry plants went in on the other side... by the Blackberry bush. There is some method to this madness... this side gets pretty full sun, whilst the other side gets about half sun... so, I'm curious as to which side will do better. More excitement in the garden... it's like a battle to the death... or the most and best strawberries. I should make a reality TV show out of this!

Still Hanging on...

The red leaved Japanese maple (?) is still hanging in there. There appears to be life in the bottom part... so my wife has stayed the execution order for another month to see how it is going to go. I've given it a hand by cutting off all the dead parts... I might cut off even more later. Let's see if it survives for another month... maybe it will appear in the next Garden Journal!

Fruits?

The little cherry tree looks like it will be having some fruit this year. This is the first year with fruit... and the first full year in our garden. I'm curious to see how they will turn out... I'm not expecting anything fantastic, and more likely than not we will be just feeding the neighbourhood birds.

It is also attracting some ladybirds... which seem to be helping to keep the aphid problem at bay... for the moment at least!

The grape vine is also promising some fruit for later this year... the trelli are holding up well, and appear to be staying attached to the wall and haven't spontaneously combusted yet. I will need to start tying the vines again... with the rain, they get a bit heavy and start to lean off the wall.

Chore reminder....

So, this is the pressing task of the next week... we have this ivy growing under the hedge. When we first moved in, it was everywhere through the garden (actually, the garden was very very different to what it is now...) and through the neighbour's yard. When we started with the garden, we hacked it all back to just the lower part of the hedge (where the hedge doesn't have leaves). However, ever spring and summer... it just goes wild... and starts spreading everywhere again... which means that I have to cut it back pretty severely or run the risk that it starts to take over again...

It shouldn't take too long... we had that year where our neighbour and I spent an afternoon just slaughtering it... and since then, it has been under control. However, it does mean reaching in spaces like this... where there are spiderwebs and such. Now, there is nothing dangerous in there... and I will be using gardening gloves... but growing up in Australia... sticking your hands in a place like that is just asking for trouble. I know that in Europe, there is no danger... but I still can't shake the feeling that something bad is going to happen!