Hello and welcome back again to my blog!
It has been a busy week here, with the start of the week dedicated to clearing a new area in the garden (full post about that below) and the latter end of the week caring for an unexpected arrival…
Meet Teddy, who was found by the Mr at 6.30am on Thursday morning as he was about to leave for work that day:
Teddy seemed very confused, he was wandering around in circles in our street and banging into obstacles.
Cutting a long story short, I scooped him up into a fluffy blanket, a kind neighbour lent us a spare cat travel box and I took him to the vets as soon as they opened. He was confirmed as unchipped but neutered, blind and very malnourished. He had a full blood test, which came back completely clear, though the vets initially struggled with taking his blood because he was so malnourished 😦 He has feline resorption teeth disorder and will be going back to the vets in two weeks to have teeth removed.
The name for Teddy came about straight away after I scooped him up and could tell that he was one of the sweetest, most gentle and most affectionate cats I have ever met or cared for.
Since Thursday, we have been taking care of Teddy as a priority, so no further gardening has been done. He is settling in very well in his new home with us and has already been left alone for short periods of time and has done well, so I am hoping next week to mix in my usual routines and checking in with him from time to time.
I am working freelance at the moment, so I have a great deal of flexibility, which means we should see him settle in well over the coming weeks!
Please bare with me during this time 🙂 I am hoping to keep to my usual twice a week blogging schedule.
Now that the Teddy announcement is done, on to today’s post…
Clearing a new space: Teddy’s Garden
As the title of this post alludes to, this new area of the garden is now named ‘Teddy’s Garden’. I had other names in mind before this, but I decided this new name just fit better.
Over the last week (and before we found Teddy), the Mr and I worked on this new area together. The old compost heap took up all of this garden space and we needed to move to the new compost bays in The Woodland Garden.
Post about the new compost bays here:
Before we started, the old compost pile was looking like this:
As you can see, the pile had grown as tall as the greenhouse! The green bags you can see pictured are compostable garden waste bags, that we use for collecting our kitchen fruit and vegetable scraps.
We ended up working on this project across 3 days in total, with just a few hours here and there per day.
I finished off the remaining section on the final day by myself, by just working very slowly bit by bit with a small bucket and a hand trowel, as I can get a sore back from repetitive heavier digging when it is done days in a row. Doing that actually didn’t take long at all, was rather nice in the sunshine and was really low impact!
At this bottom section of the pile, I found that we had a really good amount of ready-to-go compost for a good few inches, so that has been put into the fourth bay of the new compost bays for now. I am going to use that compost around the garden and for potting up plants this year.
The growing stick pile…
When we were clearing the compost pile, it soon became apparent that we have a very large pile of sticks from the hydrangea and the budleija that we pruned in previous years, both of which still haven’t decomposed:
I decided to keep these to one side for now, and we are going to use them in another project soon 🙂 We need to prune the buddleia again this year, so more sticks will follow every year and it makes sense to have an area where they can be used each year.
We also have a large pile of vines from when I cut back the honeysuckle in The Wild Borders this year. Similar to the stick pile, I have plans for how I will utilise this material:
You may also notice that we also have two large white bags pictured in this area:
These were way too heavy to move. They are filled with soil that was dug up from the front gardens, and one bag is filled with old sod (grass) that I dug up from The Woodland Garden a few years ago. That grass has decomposed now and has made lovely loamy soil. The soil from both of these bags will be used for filling raised beds in The Fruit Garden and potentially in this new area.
I have plans for how I will be using this new area this year, and I will be working in stages to get to the point where it is ready for planting and growing, but clearing the compost pile was another major stage!
The first stage for this area was completed recently when the Mr and I cleared all the paving slabs from the pathway: The start of a major project and planting snowdrops
That’s all for today! I hope you enjoyed seeing this new area of the garden (and Teddy) – there’s much more to do in this area in the coming months, so I hope you will enjoy seeing how it develops.
Until next time, happy gardening 🙂
The Charming Nook 
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