Clematis pruning rules and fat-balls for the birds
Hi friends!
What a week it's been - all the glamour round these 'ere parts, with vomiting bugs and a sleepover guest demanding in no uncertain terms to be returned to his Mama without delay (I don't blame him. I want my Mama too). Green shoots are appearing everywhere, and oh my GAWSH the hippeastrum blooms are OFF THE CHARTS! Here's a v bad picture of one but I'll share more later on my Instagram and Pinterest if you want to gawp.
Monday: It's becoming the Monday mulch. And I'm very nearly done with all the bags
Tuesday: I prune my clematis. I used to be royally put off growing clematis because of all the mind-boggling pruning instructions. If pruning instructions are more than a paragraph long then TALK TO THE HAND mkay? Eventually I read the instructions, and kind of distilled them down in my head into a thing that works for me. Here it is:
Is your clematis one of the large, evergreen ones that flowers early in spring? If so, then leave it alone.
Is it starting to flower in late spring and early summer? If so, then perform some surgery in late winter or very early spring, removing all the dead stuff and cutting any living shoots back to just above a good strong bud – the bud you like the best.
Does it flower in the summer and early autumn? If so, then this is the easiest one to prune, just hack the whole thing back to just above a the bud that’s nearest to 20cm above the ground, also in late winter or early spring.
Wednesday: I've been enjoying the desiccated heads of the verbena bonariensis, and the height that their coarse, spindly stems give to my still-very-young garden. I notice though that there are lots of new side shoots budding up all the way up the stems, and I don't want the plant to put lots of energy into growing these shoots, only to be hacked down imminently. I want new growth from the base really (and there's lots of it) so it's time to get rid of the old stems, so that the roots can put all their might into growing the new ones for summer glory. Off they come, snip snip snip.
Thursday: I finally get around to finding something suitable in which to plonk my newly-potted ivy plants that I've decided are going to live indoors. Cache pots are having a thing right now, due to the house-plant frenzy that is gripping instagram and the world, so I walk into H&M home and see stacks of them. Ivy is now in my bedroom and sitting room, looking rather glorious, but I'm wondering if I've just pushed those poor plants too hard (they are half-dead...glorious, but still half-dead). I'll take my time and see what happens, but I may have to cut my losses on these.
Friday: I weed. It is DEEPLY satisfying. Just five minutes-worth of naughties and I am a new woman. Easily pleased, me.
I was going to make fat balls for the birds today (in fact I was going to make fat balls yesterday!) but I was thwarted by the lack of lard in my local supermarket. People obvs don't make pastry any more, on a whim...they PLAN pastry-making activities. Whim-pastry is no more. It's probably a bit awful, but I struggle to feel sad about this. Having spent most of my twenties totally baffled by my mother who nourished everyone valiantly solely courtesy of M&S on the basis that life was entirely too short to be making pastry et al, I'm now completely with her. If you LOVE doing it, then cool, but otherwise, let someone else do it for you, and stick to what you love. Back in bafflement times, I had no children and my Nigella Lawson's 'How to Eat' was my preferred bedtime reading...all that lovely seductive prose....about FOOD. I'm not ashamed to admit that it completely turned my head, and that was lucky, because it taught me how to cook (something I wasn't able to watch my mother doing, unless putting chicken kiev into the Aga is cooking). Luckily, I can buy pastry, ready rolled, in a cardboard box #winning! But I digress. As I sit here and type, I still don't have lard, so here, dear friends is my recipe for fat balls anyway, and perhaps I'll make them next week.
Fat balls for the birds.
I've made these several different ways, but I'm going to share the quickest and easiest way here, in the spirit of five minute gardening.
You need:
Bird seed (available at all the garden centres)
Lard or beef suet (available at the larger supermarkets - see above)
Small yoghurt pots
String
The ratio of fat to birdseed should be 2:1
Once you've weighed everything, melt the lard in a saucepan so that it's just liquid (not bubbling or anything). Take it off the heat and mix in the seeds.
Put a hole in the bottom of each yoghurt pot and thread a length of string through the hole, knotting it at the base of the pot. Fill the pots up with the mixture, so that the string stays in a straight line and up out through the mixture at the top of the pot, and put them in the fridge to harden. Once they do, you just need to snip the yoghurt pot away with scissors and hang the fat ball off a nearby tree.
Hanging fat balls like this is infinitely preferable to leaving a ball on a bird table, as it means the big brutish birds (and the squirrels etc) can't get to it so easily.
All the good stuff, to all of you, as always
xx Laetitia