What a beautiful day we've had here in Northern Brittany - a typical autumnal day - but not particularly cold, light sunshine and a breeze - ideal for getting many of the jobs desperately needing to be done somewhere near complete!
Many of the perennial plants were needing to be cut back - such as the large areas planted with Helianthus and Echinops - the best way that I've found is by taking some hedge trimmers to the base of the stems - when they're dry it's easy work and amazing how quickly you can get through them. It's a lot quicker and a neater job is done than when using a pair of shears. I've also done this when clearing patches of brambles - trim back an area and then pull the ones you've trimmed back with a spring-tined rake and attack the next bit until the patch is cut and by that time all the brambles will be in a neat ball to place in your wheel barrow and off to the bonfire heap - no horrible lengths of bramble to claw into your legs and arms and a much less of a painful way of removing these horrors! All said and done I don't ever remove them all as the fruit is delicious to eat and provide much needed food for garden birds and visiting wildlife.
After a hard day's work I took a few more pictures of our garden to share with you.
What a beautiful day we've had here in Northern Brittany - a typical autumnal day - but not particularly cold, light sunshine and a breeze - ideal for getting many of the jobs desperately needing to be done somewhere near complete!
Many of the perennial plants were needing to be cut back - such as the large areas planted with Helianthus and Echinops - the best way that I've found is by taking some hedge trimmers to the base of the stems - when they're dry it's easy work and amazing how quickly you can get through them. It's a lot quicker and a neater job is done than when using a pair of shears. I've also done this when clearing patches of brambles - trim back an area and then pull the ones you've trimmed back with a spring-tined rake and attack the next bit until the patch is cut and by that time all the brambles will be in a neat ball to place in your wheel barrow and off to the bonfire heap - no horrible lengths of bramble to claw into your legs and arms and a much less of a painful way of removing these horrors! All said and done I don't ever remove them all as the fruit is delicious to eat and provide much needed food for garden birds and visiting wildlife.
After a hard day's work I took a few more pictures of our garden to share with you.
4 comments:
Hi Miranda, hope all's well. Just catching up with blogs after being away, and good to see these autumnal postings from over the Mare. Love the shape of the Maple.
Hiya BR - thanks for your visit - I've been very busy this last month and haven't visited any blogs for ages... as the nights start to draw in here and weather keeps me away from my gardening work I may hopefully get a bit more time for this- I miss seeing what's happening everywhere! Hope all's going well with you - Miranda
Hi Miranda. You for sure have a great garden, and the pictures in your blog is beautiful.
Thanks for visiting Signe - glad you liked my blog and my pictures too - Brittany is a beautiful place!
Post a Comment