Ravendale House

Today was another glorious day, cold with blue sky and sunshine, so we decided to go for a walk along the lovely lanes of rural Lincolnshire that surround our home. What could be nicer on a winters afternoon? We chose the shorter of our ‘circular’ walks which is about 3 miles. There isn’t much to see at this time of year, but it was still good to be out in the fresh air.

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I love feeding the birds in the garden, and get great pleasure from watching their antics on the bird-feeder during the winter months. I give them a variety of food, mainly mixed seeds, peanuts and oatmeal supplemented by the occasional helping of cooked potato, cooked rice and bread.

Here is a list of birds that have been seen in, around or over our garden in the last 10 years.

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Today was another nice day, so I decided to prune the clematis and solanum that grow together up the side of the kitchen window. I usually do them about now, and they both look a real mess when I’ve finished, but it’s not long before they begin to put out shoots and very soon they will both be thriving. In fact the clematis already has lots of buds on, so I’m not a moment too soon.

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It’s always a good feeling when the first snowdrops appear. There’s been one brave little soldier flowering on his own by our backdoor for several days now. I don’t quite know how he came to be there all on his own but there he is.

I noticed today that the big clump at the back of the house have appeared, so that’s a good sign, though I often wish they were in a place where we could see them more easily from indoors.

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I might have been pleased with Billy the shed the other day, but I’m not so pleased with my apple trees today. Something is eating the bark from round the bottom of them. Could it be rabbits? I don’t know, I haven’t seen bunnies in the garden since last Spring and there are no droppings apparent on the ground, but something is certainly eating my trees.

We bought these 10 apple trees about 5 years ago so they’re just nicely getting into their stride, and we’ve had some tasty apples already. They make a lovely apple walk between the bench and the arch so we can’t do with losing them now. I need to protect them against whatever it is that is eating them alive.

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Last Autumn we bought a shed, it took us 3 months to work up to it, but finally in September we took the plunge. We needed the extra storage space so we could safely make room in the garage for the new car (Mazda MX5) we had bought in June.

The problem was, neither of us really wanted a shed, we’d both have preferred some kind of summerhouse or log cabin, but we couldn’t afford either of these so, after much soul searching and lateral thinking we decided it would have to be a shed or nothing.

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At last, a nice day and I can actually do some proper gardening. I haven’t been able to do that since way before Xmas.

January is a funny time of year really, too early to do some things, too cold and wet to do others, so I decided the best thing was to do some digging. Apart from anything else I need the exercise after all these weeks of inactivity.

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Here’s the story of how we made a new garden from scratch. It’s not Sissinghurst and it’s not Kew, but we like it and we hope you will too.