The battle of the weeds continues

It's definitely spring and heading fast into summer. The weather has been glorious - sunny balmy weather with sprinkles of rain just often enough to put every growing thing into overdrive. As a result, the crabgrass, nettles, ivy and other weeds are all relentlessly advancing across the garden. The last few days has been a pretty solid fight, armed with handfork, trowel and large amounts of bark chipping to get the majority of the main areas under control. We've weeded, turned soil and laid out over 5 cubic metres of bark chips - and planted lots of new plants.

As weeding is not the most photographic activity, I haven't really blogged much about it. But here are a few pictures of the end result. I'm hoping that in a few weeks, after a bit more of this, I will have an extra special end result and have lost a few pounds! It's certainly looking pretty good on W - I think I need to do some catching up with him on the heavy lifting.

I'm also really looking forwards to the middle of the summer when all the little pots planted will be much larger and have jumped on the springtime explosion-wagon.

The other joy of spring is all the fruit trees bursting into flower - we have a wonderful display on the main pear tree which is a lovely sight of an evening. All the trees in the orchard have survived the winter flooding - we worried for a while that we'd lost a couple due to having their roots in water for too long when the field drain blocked and flooded the fields. The flowers are coming out in their own pattern - the cherries have bloomed first, and the apples are following along closely.

The crab apples are gorgeous - I'm counting on them to bring us our first crop of fruit this summer as they are excellent pollinators for all our apple varieties. Roll on the summer!

Restoring a grand old table, part 1

We have inherited the most beautiful picnic table you've ever seen.

It's huge, it's so heavy that four of us can't move it, and it's top is made out of a single complete slice of a very large, very mature tree. You can see the growth rings so clearly, marking every year that this giant stood and watched over the earth.  Sadly, now that it is a table, it has had very little love and care over the last few years, and the top is cracking badly, the edges of the table are crumbling away and there is mould and lichen and rot building up in the crevices.

With all the work that W has been doing with wood, he's been falling more and more in love with the beauty of wood when it's loved and cared for - and this restoration has been high on his priorities. With spring here, and summer barbeques coming, we both really want this baby back at its full beauty.

We spent a lot of time researching how to best rescue it and had advice from many different sources. Many people suggested powerwashing it - but the surface is so broken, we are both quite worried that power washing will degrade it further. It also won't address the way that the surface is flaking in a consistent and gentle way.

We decided to start by sanding it sufficiently to remove the rotten and broken layers, and I will be spending a lot of time clearing out the crevices with a dental pick and a craft knife. W started  on the side that was most rotten and you can see just how much difference it's made already.

After a day of hard work we now have  the top and sides rough sanded. Here it is, halfway through. We still need to do the legs and the base, and I have to get to work clearing out all the crevices .I've started work on it, and I think I will need to use my trusty crafting dremel on some of the larger ones but many are so narrow and deep that we probably won't be able to do much beyond removing surface material. I really want the table to have a chance to dry out before we treat it with oils & wax to stop the rain from damaging it further. We are toying with a plan to put a frame around the table with waterproof covers so that the table can breath and dry out a little before we move  - or maybe we will just pitch a large tent over it. Either way it needs to be easily removable so that it doesn't add to the problem by creating an even moister environment that it sits in over extended periods, and it can be easily shifted on sunny days.

Here she is sanded roughly at the day's end - can't wait to continue! If any of you have done a project of this sort, - restoring old timber like this -  do let us know in the comments of what you think would be the best approach. I want this beauty to last another few decades yet - or longer!

Spring weeding

Spring has definitely arrived in Holland - and the weeds & nettles are growing like crazy. We have a massive infestation of crabgrass and buttercups are running rampant. Keeping up with the weeding seems to be an impossible task!

Last year we spread out a *lot* of bark chips - about 4 inches deep - across the main flower beds. We didn't do any great amount of weeding and I expected to be having to do lots and lots and lots this year. Surprisingly, it's actually not been bad - and even nettles seem to have died back. I am wondering if this is going to be the magic organic solution I've been looking - using mulch layers to kill off the large amounts of weeds  we are still tackling. With 5 cubic square metres of bark chips, I might just make it around 2/3rds of the garden again. Definitely will make it onto the to-do plan. Sadly it didn't work on the buttercups - they have just come back ever more enthusiastically than before.


Today, I had a go at shifting the buttercups and crabgrass in the main beds - 6 loads of weeds out, 15 loads of bark chips in and things are starting to look quite pretty! I will need to add a lot more layers, but I don't think I can push any more wheelbarrow loads without collapsing in a heap today.  Trying to get every single buttercup root bulbs is remarkably hard with gloves but hopefully there's been a high hit rate and we won't have such a flourishing colony later in the year.

Luca had a wonderful day chasing the frisbee around the garden, in between weeding stints. He hasn't quite got the hang of 'give' but he definitely worked out 'fetch'!

Raised garden beds for vegetables

To go with our gorgeous and hopefully very fruity orchard, we want to be able to grow our own vegetables and greens. I love organic vegetables but here in the Netherlands the selection is tiny, and in our more isolated neck of the woods, it's often pretty tired looking. So, I've opted to grow my own again - and believe me, fresh off the stem veg are WONDERFUL!

We spent a lot of time thinking about where to put our vegetable garden,There is a lot of space that has no plan yet, but I am still playing with lots of ideas and I didn't want to block off any potential options.  W finally pointed out that we have two large areas  that have no particular use in the foreseeable future - the riding ring and the starvation paddock. We don't want to remove them, as they are part of the value of the house as a horse property, but we don't have horses. Just perfect for raised beds, with a good sand base to make sure the drainage is good and lots of sunshine.

We did a lot of research on different ways of making raised beds. I was particularly looking at how to limit the need for watering in the middle of summer - I don't mind doing it once or twice a week, but I know from past experience that I don't have the will power to water every day. Two different types appealed : one is based off 'hugelkultur'  and one that had a water retention base layer. So, with lots of space to play in, we decided to try both!

 A hugelkultur based raised bed has a core of natural materials that absorb water and decay over time providing a continuous flow of nutrients into the soil. You can make the raised bed by heaping soil over a long pile of branches and sticks or over straw bales, but as we have lots of branches and twigs in a giant heap in the garden (the last owner really wasn't a gardener type) wood was going to be our base. With W's passion for wood working, the beds were going to be made in wood, and as I'm not getting any younger, I wanted them to be tall enough that I didn't have to do all of the maintenance on my knees. W chose a white deal plank which hasn't had any chemical treatment. We both realized it means we will need to redo them again in about 5 years, but I don't want any preservative chemicals leaching into the soil. Each bed is 240 cm by 120 cm and is made 3 planks in height. His first task was to cut and prepare all the planks to the same size, something that the Makita mitre saw made quick work of. He also used a kreg jig to pre-drill holes for screw in the end planks, two per plank edge. The long planks had a square piece of wood attached into the inner corners as strengthening, indented just enough to make room for the cross planks to run across the front. ,

With all the preparation complete, it was time to move out of the workshop and start doing assembly in the starvation paddock.The sand is pretty uneven, so the assembly was pretty difficult - we quickly decided to move back to the concrete to find a flat surface to work on. In this picture you can see the placement of the crossbracing corner piece., Each of the short planks on the rectangle are screwed in to the long planks on the interior diagonal courtesy of the kreg jig. It is then double secured with two screws from the outside into the cross bracing post. Rinse & repeat until all four corners are complete and you have a wooden rectangle without top or bottom.

We then used a weed control membrane to line the bottom of the box and tacked it into the box using a staple gun. I decided to go with a porous fabric rather than a waterproof liner, as I have learned the hard way just how much water the Dutch weather throws at us here. In a drier climate, I suggest you use a waterproof base, but make sure you pierce it below the root level. Capillary action will keep the upper layers of soil moist enough, but a few punctures will make sure you don't saturate the soil to the point that roots rot.  We lipped the membrane quite high up the side of the box, mainly because that was the width of the membrane, and I decided it wouldn't hurt to leave it like that.

Once the frame and membrane was complete it was time to fill the lower layers with branches and rotting wood. This was probably the most exhausting part of the day! Not because it was hard to collect and fill with the wood, but because every branch is perfectly designed as a dog chew - and Luca wanted to play - continuously!

One afternoon of focused work and the first three beds are assembled, lined and have their wood filling. We need to get soil delivered, spend another afternoon with a wheel barrow and spades doing the final filling - and then it's planting time! Tomorrow it's time to do the other beds and those will be with a water retention base style. For the rest of today, it's time for a hot shower and a relaxing drink whilst watching the sun go down in blazing colors.

Land below the sea - waking to the flood

One of the facts of life when you live in the Netherlands is that unless you are lucky, you live below sea level. When 2/3rds of the country is recovered from the sea, it's kind of a given. Where we are, the land started to be recovered in the 17th century with windmills lifting water from polder to polder - so it has matured and grown a broad eco-system. In some of the areas around the Ijsselmere, which were recovered as late as the 1980s, the plant variety is still surprisingly low and there is a real dearth of mature trees. The water has been removed, but it still has to be continuously cleared out and  the Dutch have built the most comprehensive system of interconnected ditches and dykes you have ever seen. As a land owner whose land abutts a drainage ditch, by law I have to have it dredged and cleared every year unless I build solid shoring along the edges of the land.

It's been raining. Quite a lot, in fact. Yesterday, the riding ring had standing water in the sand - this morning we woke to flooded fields . With a set of cold frosty nights approaching the last thing I wanted was the newly planted fruit trees to be sat in a pool of icy water and have frostbitten roots. I want that orchard, and it needs roots to be able to grow! As so often in this house, an emergency task rises to the top of the list and everything else has to go on the back burner until the situation is resolved. We pulled on our yard boots, prayed they were waterproof enough and headed out to the fields with poles, a drain cleaner, and a spade.

Between the two fields there is a deep ditch, which seemed to have been deliberately dug, so our assumption was that there should be a drainage pipe buried in there. After much paddling and digging around with frozen hands in ice cold water, turned out to be correct as an assumption. We headed down to the edge of the field to see if we could see an outlet : no visible pipe. What we could see were bits of broken plastic pipe, spread along the bank along with this autumns dredgings.

W to the rescue - initially digging out where we think the pipe should be until we found the shattered and collapsed remains of it.

Once we'd found both ends and cleared the collapsed exit, it was clear that the collapse had caused the rest of the pipe to back up with silt and mud - and that no water was going to come through any time soon. So we set to work with the flexible drain cleaner and an extended plastic pipe trying to ram the mud blockage through

We plugged away for about 40 minutes with absolutely no joy - it really wasn't shifting. The Dutch gods of the waterways were not happy and not willing to help out until W provided a blood sacrifice to satiate them. The pole that he was jamming into the top end of the pipe snapped and sharded, cutting his hand deep into the webbing between finger and thumb. I was down at the ditch end, and as he cursed and jumped around the field making pained noises, I heard the wonderful sound of rushing water as it came tumbling through the pipe .



The water's draining away steadily - let's hope that by tomorrow morning my fruit trees have dry toes again. We will have to re-lay the pipes again - its pretty clear that the current pipes are pretty knackered and worn. Given the frost forecast, I want to leave that til the spring if we can!

Autumn's gold

Some of these posts may seem a little bit out of sequence because I am playing catch-up on a summer's worth of work in my blog. But the autumn weather has been beautiful - grey clouds shooting across the sky, winds whipping around corners, catching leaves and scattering them across the garden like stolen treasures. It's a constant battle to keep the concrete clear of leaves so that the cars have grip and grass disappears overnight in a golden blanket. 

I just had to share a few pictures of my 2 favourite men playing in the leaves. Luca's been having a complete blast and is burning up so much energy kicking up the leave piles, that he's curled up asleep from about 6 in the evening onwards. As you can see, it's not just Luca having fun!

Quick tool update - the  Stihl kombisystem has come into play again. We were super excited to find that it has a leaf blower attachment. It's cheaper than buying a standalone leaf blower - and because the base engine has to be capable of cutting brush, it's much more powerful than most blowers on the market. I'm also grateful for the ear defenders - it doesn't get any quieter!

We've been using an old silo bin as storage for our compost and garden waste - it drops about 2 feet down below ground level and is well contained to stop leaves from blowing out. With every run to the silo, I feel more and more like Smaug the dragon building my own personal gold mountain.

Marshmallows 'n' meat - building a fire pit area

As we planned the first tranche of work on the house - the 'must do before the house is fit to live in' work - I got a message from W : 

'I want one'

Clearly, this was indeed a mission-critical component, and no red-blooded Dutchman would ever move into a new house (even a thatched one) without a substantial flame source on which he can char large amounts of meat. Being a nice person, and well, wanting the Dutchman to feel welcome, I agreed and broached the subject of the additional workload with the 4 man work crew - I, D, A, & M.  I expected groans of dismay and complaints that actually I was asking them to do far too much in far too little time. Instead, they all agreed immediately with the vitality of this home component and dived into planning. Evenings were spent poring over scribbled diagrams with approximate measurements discussing the pros and cons of different building approaches, all with bottles of beer in hand.  Finally a design was chosen, a location was sourced and our collection  of random spare bricks started to get put to a good use. 

We had a lot of shaped bricks that had been used to make a pattern in an old driveway which D used to make the corner stands. I loved the beautiful curves in the initial bench base, but wasn't so sold on the decision to have the bench's positioned so that you saw nothing of the garden but stared at a scrubby fence through the fire. With great innovation, D promptly set to work on making it a 3 bench rather than 2 bench barbecue site which made everyone happy  - extra seating to move around as you try to avoid the Smoke Fairy. D used a concrete mix that was quite high strength and self mixed here in the garden. You can buy ready mixed bags that you only need to add water to, but they cost a lot more that buying some Portland cement, some sand and a mixer. We used a Dutch brand - Swinko - but something like this one should also work. Although you can do this all by hand, the mixer makes a huge difference to how much work it is to prepare everything before you can even get started.

After a day of laying bricks the main benches and their stands were all in place, and D has started on the central circle for the firepit. We invested in heat resistant cement to help withstand high temperatures here - ordinary concrete may simply crack and break when exposed to heat & flame. As we knew we were going to be putting a cast iron fire pit for the actual cinders, we didn't have to build the whole circle with it, and just made sure the inner areas were secure. Because we were going to have a tripod stand for the grill and for hanging pans from, D left 'footholes' at the base of the ring to keep the tripod secure and safe from being tripped over in the dark.

Here's the completed barbecue area, with the brickends planted up with aromatic lavender and rosemary - lavender to brush against, rosemary to sprinkle on your steak or chicken breast on the grill. And of course, once you've built a firepit, you have to test it and just *HAVE* to roast marshmallows on it. So here's a quick picture of the crew testing marshmallow and beer combinations at the day's end. 

It's seen a lot of use since, with all ages enjoying marshmallow in various forms of toastyness.....and yes, they had meat on the grill as well. 

Orchard time - part 1 (getting diggy with it)

The Old Apple Orchard, Wisbech St. Mary
by Michael Shirley

One of the main reasons I chose this house was because I wanted to be able to grow my own fruit and vegetables. I've been a long time reader of sci-fi and fantasy, and in most fantasy novels the protagonist wanders through an orchard and takes refuge sitting in or under an old fruit tree. I love the old orchards you see dotted around both the Dutch and British countryside, with gnarly mature trees spaced out irregularly across a field which is grazed by fluffy cloud-sheep. I tried to get apple trees growing in my old UK home, but never really had either the time or the space to make a genuine orchard. Most trees take up a lot of space and resources in an urban garden unless you aim for mini-varieties, such as 'ballerina' apples, which I did . There is also  growing trend in multi-fruit trees where you can have multiple different varieties grafted on to a single root stock , so can have more options in a smaller space. The lack of space didn't spoil the joy of being able to harvest your own fruit and eat perfectly ripe, perfectly fresh luscious plums and apples during the summer. And it's particularly exciting to be know that the varieties are heritage ones, not something you would be able to purchase in a supermarket or grocers shop. For those of you in the UK, I highly recommend the Brogdale Trust which is the home of the National Fruit collection and sells a wide range of heritage trees.  However, I've always wanted an idyllic grassy orchard to spend a summer afternoon reading in, and the lure of a field I could plant up was far too much to resist. 

As I'm trying to do a lot of the renovation of the house and grounds on a tight budget, I've had to be a lot less picky about varieties, and to focus more on price point in order to find sufficient trees to get the first field started. I've found that Dutch garden centres have mass clearouts of old stock at the end of the autumn season : most people don't want to spend a lot of time in the garden over the winter and it's obviously better to get some money for plants than none. I think I may have gone a little shop-happy with the sale prices! Unusually they are also selling off their tree stock, despite the fact that October - Dec is the best time to plant trees.

With most fruit trees, it's not enough to buy the trees. You need to make sure you can actually get fruit from them.  Hold on to your seats, folks - we are about to go super technical and deep dive into a hidden world of apple tree sex. There's a lot of similarity in other fruit ( pears, plums, cherries ), and in order not to bore you I'm going to stick to apples which is the majority of our stock.

Let's start with genetics! Most apples are 'diploid'  - have two sets of chromosomes. These chaps are the norm in fruit stock. A few are self pollinating (happy chaps!) - can create fruit from their own blossom - but most have to have pollen from compatible partners, and are often picky daters. The key to attaction is all in the timing : early bloomers will pollinate other early bloomers, early-mid will pollinate early mid etc through 4 groups. Although there is some crossover between groups, you are gambling that the season is clement and that the blooms are around at the same time. Some apples though are 'triploid' - three sets of chromosomes. These chaps are essentially mules - sterile. They don't pollinate other trees reliably if at all, but they can be pollinated by other trees. So,good to have for the fruit, but don't count them in your pollination rota.

With the potluck approach to buying trees, having a list of pollinating groups is super important. The Royal Horticultural Society have a useful PDF which you can print or save on a phone or a tablet to take with you when shopping. It's a little limited once you cross out into the EU as suddenly there are lots of varieties which aren't commonly found in the UK. That said, with a bit of extra google help and the assistance of the garden centre staff, I have pollinating partners for most if not all of the trees. Those that are missing will have to be a special order at a later date - but definitely this winter, before it's too late to plant trees.

Planting is simple if  hard work : the soil is fertile, but has large lumps of clay in it. For each tree, we needed to dig a hole that was at least a yard wide in each dimension and boy did people feel that the next day! Then add lots of lovely compost, some fertilizer, the tree itself and bed in with the soil previously dug. A lovely tip from a knowledgeable digger - if you are digging through turf, you can place the turf layer upside down ontop of the tree hole to help keep the non-grassy area clear. The grass will die off, and will act as a supressant, slowing down the regrowth of the grass back into the hole. And  with such young trees, keeping a square of clear land around them is important to give them the best start in life. We staked each tree on the side of the prevailing wind - discovering as we did that the prevailing winds in this part of North Holland are completely un-intuitive and definitely completely different to the UK. to attach the trees to the stake, I am used to rubber tree bands and was surprised to find that the nursey recommended using what looked like safety belt material from car seat belts. I decided to give it a try and it's up and supporting the trees so I won't get the opportunity to see if I can upcycle it from a car scrapyard - but it seems like a clear re-cycling opportunity , rather than buying from new. For the couple of remaining trees still lacking a tie, I will be using the tried and tested route of old laddered tights.

After a couple of weekends of hard work - made much easier by some very kind helpers both times -there is now  the start of a beautiful orchard at the bottom of the garden. W is even starting to look like a young farmer !

Toy shopping part 1 : mowers

For the grown up children in the family, the most fun part of the renovation has to be all the wonderful new toys that they get to play with. With 9600 sq metres of grass to mow, a small electric handmower really wasn't going to cut the mustard - and all the renovation work needs tools as well. July saw a massive shopping spree with some very happy gentlemen wandering around hardware shops with more glee than a posse of 10 year olds in a Lego store.

It's been an interesting balancing act : ensuring that the tool is utilitarian & effective, yet at the same time is good value for money, hardwearing enough to stand up to the wear it's going to get, and has enough engineering to reduce some of the hard work out of the equation. 

The first item on the shopping list was the ride on lawn mower : the previous owner had committed to leaving behind her old one, but had changed her mind and sold it pre-d day. We are lucky enough to have a super family store near us that stocks an amazing range of these items : Breider Tuinmachines is one of Noord-Hollands best little companies in my opinion. The store is generally manned by father and son, who are helpful, cheerful and more than willing to advise on options.  We still had to go through a steep learning curve about what's good and what's not good in mowers : 

• Do you want to mulch or collect your clippings? 
• Collecting leaves a much neater finish overall and when you have to drive over areas of non-lawn, means you don't end up with needing to brush them down/remove cut grass from pathways.However you do need to constantly run back and forth to the compost heap, unless you choose the same approach as the last owner who randomly dropped the clippings in the weed banks as she drove past. 
• Mulching puts the grass back into the soil by dint of chopping it very finely, but you are guaranteed to be traipsing grass clippings back into the house for the next day or so - and the animal paws will all be green!
• Are the blades at the front or in the middle? 
• At the front gives you much more visibility when cutting and it's much easier to ensure you cut straight lines and maintain your pattern, but the price tag is higher
• Many lawnmowers are now 'zero turn radius' with big swivel components at the front which allow you to mow much faster and to spin on the spot at corners  - but again, higher in price
• Middle is cheaper and fine if you are doing long lengths of repeated cutting
• Does it have reverse? Essential if you have lots of trees and bendy areas to manoever around
• How quick is it? How powerful? Although you would normally mow at about 4mph (7mph on ztr's) when you are zipping from location to location, you really notice the lack of speed. And if it's slow when mowing and it's a big area.........
• How hard is it to clean? Because you will need to clean the blades and declogg the grass cuttings from the blade housing. 
• Can you tell if you are about to run out of fuel? Not that much of a problem for us, as you are never that far away from the house, but if you had a very long plot it might be a worry!
• How big is your mowing area - and how big is your blade? A small blade can take a mighty long time and it's amazing how much it adds up!

 As it was an unplanned purchase and not in our initial budget structure we decided to opt for a secondhand Husquarna ride-on with a 6 month warranty. It's not been trouble-free, but Mr Breider drops in after he's done in the shop and fixes it promptly every time. With it we also got a set of noise cancelling headphones, something that I'm super grateful for after an hour of boucing around trimming the orchard fields.

Of course, it's not enough to just use the ride on  - you can't get close to the canal water on the sloping edges and you can't get too close to the flowerbeds for fear of cutting the few remaining flowers. So we also had to get a petrol powered Flymo. It's an entirely different experience than an electric Flymo, and reminds me so much of the hovercrafts that I used to ride between Dover and Calais on day trips. It gently hovers just above the ground whilst belching fumes until it warms up. It's super efficient at cutting grass and building forearm muscles at the same time.

So, take up gardening, save on gymn fees, get fit! Who knew?

Hobbit eating plants - the extermination of Butterbur

When you get the keys to a new house in the Netherlands, you have to undertake a walk around accompanied by the departing owner and the estate agent to ensure that nothing has changed since you last saw it in the offer stages. You troop ceremonially to the water meter, the electricity and the gas meter to take note of the readings and the estate agent annotates it on a pre-prepared form and asks you both to sign to agree that the readings are correct. Presumably, this is normally quite an ordinary process - and it is eminently sensible to ensure no unhappiness later on.

As you can imagine, it wasn't quite that simple here! The mains water stopcock and meter are in a concrete bunker out in the front garden. It's buried deep in a mass of Butterbur (petasites hybridus) which was a small and delicate plant when I first made the offer. By the time all the contracts and legalities were ready to close it had swollen to enormous proportions - a lot like Tolkein's innkeeper in Bree. It was so large that the agent & W had to dive in and hunt for the bunker like Victorian explorers looking for the source of the Nile . With such thick foliage so close to the edge of the canal, the leaves acted as perfect hiding places for swarms of mosquitos all starving during the sunny daylight hours. I react horribly to mosquito bites so clearing this out as quickly as possible rocketed up to the top of the to-do list.

The garden has been essentially untouched for quite a few years - my best guess is that it's been at least 6-8 years since anyone tried to challenge the Butterbur in it's encroaching growth or the bountiful swathes of nettles that have spread throughout the entire garden area. Our first plan was to cut back the top level , dig out major corms and see if that would hamper the growth of the (at that time) unknown plant. I duly assigned A & M to doing getting out there with the Stihl Kombisystem brush cutter and a fork, shovel and wheelbarrow. 4 hours later, the area cleared was approaching one foot square and the gardening army was exhausted. There had to be another way! That said, plant identification had happened, and I was rapidly realising that I may have a larger problem on my hands than I originally thought. 

I really didn't want to start using chemicals in my garden, but faced with this challenge, and a very limited time window with large amounts of human resources we finally opted to strim everything back to ground level, wait for the first regrowths and to spray with weedkiller. The picture above is what it looked like 3 weeks after the spraying : virtually no dieback and ever expanding leaves. It had to be the good oldfashioned 'dig it out' way. This plant has the hugest roots - and sends thick meaty runners across the ground and long tendrils deep into the soil. We've been through 4 forks - all with bent tines, already. In desperation, I imported a Spear & Jackson Neverbend Professional fork with a 10 year from the UK in the hope that it might last a little longer than local Dutch brands - it lasted about a week longer, and now I'm looking forwards to seeing how well the guarantee is upheld. 

After two months of digging we have managed to clear back as much as we dare, without destabilising the banks of the canal, but already the damn thing is growing back despite our best efforts. We went nearly a foot deep and it's still rooting! We will keep digging through the winter, and hopefully in the spring we will be able to re-grass the whole area.

It's not quite the Hobbiton Green I'm dreaming of yet - but soon, soon!

Getting tulip & daffodil ready

The Dutch are famous for their tulips  - starting as early as 1637 when at the peak of the 'tulip mania' a single bulb would sell for as much as 10 times a craftsman's annual income. In the late spring, It was the first great economic bubble and despite it's subsequent collapse, the Dutch are still master tulip growers. The  Noord-Holland climate is perfect with cool damp springs that brings forth  a living kaleidoscope of color . Driving along the motorways, you pass field after field carpeted in glorious colors. Over the space of about 6-8 weeks from mid March to late April the vista constantly changes as different bulbs burst into bloom. Sadly too, sometimes you see fields where the tulip guillotines have been running - where the farmer has removed the flowers to encourage bulb growth and left the aisles between planting strewn with fading petals. 

                          

I was house hunting at just that time - and was super excited that the area around the stolpboederij has many tulip farmers. Being able to watch and smell the fragant harvest develop from the house windows is a wonderful treat to come. There are some additional perks as well : lots of farms have buckets with freshly cut tulips for sale next to honesty boxes during the blooming seasons and you can fill your house with flowers in every room for just pennies. In the winter, they often sell the bulbs as well, and I took advantage of another 'too good to say no' deal to buy a bunch of tulip bulbs to go into the garden.  They are a mystery variety, so I have no idea what color they will be - looking forwards to a spring surprise. 

This autumn week is grey and damp, and it's definitely getting close to late in the season for planting bulbs. I have 150 mixed daffodils to plant as well as my tulips so we decided to focus on getting these all in the ground before continuing with the rest of the garden. The canal bank down the side of the  house is steeply sloping and hard to mow, so it seemed like a great candidate for a bulbfest!

We started with one traditional style bulb planter and a more advanced one with a 'release' handle that widens out the sides to allow the soil plug to drop out and cover the new bulb. Despite the extra technology, the soil has a high clay content and clings grimly to everything, so it took more time to push the plug back out, than to get it into the planter in the first place. After about 30 or so bulbs, we were both sore wristed and wondering how on earth we would get to the end. Thankfully W had a bright idea and pulled out our recently acquired post hole digging tool - it drilled out the holes super quickly and made in the process crumbled the soil as much as possible given the clay content. An hour and a half later, accompanied by an excited puppy who tried to dig up as fast as we planted, it was all done. The bank doesn't look a lot different - I can't wait for spring!