Update after a few weeks off

4/5/2010
There were loads of us today so we were divvied up into different areas and I was put in the conservatory and tasked with doing a bit of mulching to keep water in the soil. There was a particularly vicious plant that caught my leg every time I tried to get past it, so I was relieved when the mulch ran out. Afterwards Lucy and I filled up the phormium planters at each end of the lawn with more mulch, and then in the afternoon we headed back to the sloping areas we'd been working on a fortnight ago to keep on weeding. The beds are full of Acer seedlings so Andrew and I are planning to pot a few up and see how they turn out. Unfortunately the beds are also full of Phytophthera and so most of the conifers were struggling or dead. A climbing hydrangea was doing well, scrambling along the bed rather than climbing, so we cleared it of dead leaves and ivy. My fear of ticks hasn't gone away - apparently the trees down there are full of them so I debated wearing some sort of protective armour or tucking EVERYTHING in where possible.

11/5/2010
Today reminded me of what a great invention insect repellent is. The midges were out in force in the woods during the afternoon, making the work almost unbearable. We were working in the top woods, near the magnolias we mulched earlier this year, but this time we were de-weeding around Rhododendrons. Creeping buttercup was the main target, but there was plenty of hairy bittercress, plantain, wild strawberries and sticky stuff (my name, I know it goes under plenty of other names depending on the region) too.

Earlier in the day I'd started off in the conservatory, weeding and sorting out a corner with a particularly rampant vine. We weren't sure what the vine was but it has red tubular flowers with yellow tips, and the leaves and stems smell of vinegar when broken (as happened often - it's not a tough plant). They were crowding out a strelitzia that was also being slowly overtaken by self-seeded Geranium maderense, so we pulled them out and cut back the dead strelitzia leaves; hopefully it'll recover now it has some air and light. There was evidence of vine weevil grubs everywhere - echiums came up with little effort and revealed half-chewed roots and bases; most were growing new roots however so we put them back where we'd found them.