Loads of rain

You would never believe that the weather of late has been fabulous. It's been raining now for 48 hours straight - and it's freezing. As you can imagine, we've been holed up inside so there's not much to report from the garden. The house has let us down again and has started to leak. We woke up this morning to find a puddle of water in front of the front window and lots of wet plaster. So first thing in the morning I was out in the pouring rain and gales fighting with some plastic trying to cover the offending area until the weather eases and I can get a better look at where the water's getting in.

There is some good news - my green and red bell peppers have germinated and I have some new sprouting shoots. They've been looking iffy for some time now as they've been sitting on the Kitchen window sill for far too long now without doing anything. Also the water butt has been refilled and now has water up to the brim proving that I've fixed the initial leaks - there's just a small leak around the feeder pipe that I can see now and that's easy to fix.

Water use in the garden

Since installing our water butt I have been amazed at quite how much water we actually use in the garden, especially with the hot weather we've been having. When it comes out of the tap you don't really notice how much you use. When you're emptying a water butt every few of days you soon begin to realise that it takes a lot to keep the garden green. I'm pretty sure that before summer finally gets here I'll be initiating stage two if the LGIS (Lavendon Garden Irrigation System). Stage two means another water butt to gather more water and potentially a dripper system for the greenhouse. I'm hoping this will be a more efficent system of getting water to the plants instead of using the watering can as with the can a lot of water is wasted as it misses growbags etc. Exciting stuff!

Unseasonal weather

Here in the UK it's been a lot warmer earlier in the year than normal and my plants have got a bit confused. They're all flowering much earlier than normal. For example look at the lovely Clematis flowers that have come out in the garden. I hope they last the whole summer. It's going to get a much hotter than this!

Sleeper Bench

When we first moved to Lavendon Garden we discovered 3 old bits of railway sleeper sticking out of the ground laid out in a way that suggests they used to be the legs of a seat. A few months ago we took the decision to make something out of them rather than digging them up so today we took delivery of a new railway sleeper to use as the bench seat. It's in place but a bit wobbly so I'm probably going to have to bolt it to the legs. It's really comfy.