The garden’s really coming along, the little planters we bought for the patio really brighten the place up.  We had a couple of BBQ’s last week during the nice weather and it was really pleasant sitting out there surrounded by the flowers.  The grass in the front has come through pretty much all over the soil, but at the back it’s very very patchy and I think we’ll need to do some extra sowing.  I suspect the birds ate a lot of the seed.

The big apple tree has a thousand apples on it, more than ever before which is odd considering we pruned it really close before the spring.  Grete is frantically picking up the small ones that drop (probably about 10-20 a day, seriously) and keep the thick down before they all fully grow and drop.  It’s a huge job getting them off the ground when they’re big and slightly rotten.  The small apple tree seems a little sick, the leaves went brown and pretty dry although it looks like it’s recovering and starting forming apples.  Hopefully it’s nothing serious.  The cherry tree we bought has done – nothing.  Not a zot.  No change at all.  Not sure if it’s dead or alive.  The Acer is healthy enough and looks happy surrounded by the lush grass.

The little plants in the big borders look lonely, but we really only stuck them there since we had a load of spares.  The shrubs are growing and hopefully next year it’ll look a bit more even and full.  The plants in the front are slowly spreading as we hoped they would and it should look spectacular when they all flower next year.

I’ll post some photo’s in another update when I get time to sort them out.

Before Grete had major back issues for half a week, and before I really accepted I should be resting due to a potential hernia, we cleared/dug over the back and front garden areas ready for some grass seed, and then put the seed down.

It took ages for it to show through and we’d started to assume the pigeons had eaten it all – but then a couple of days ago we spotted a thread of green!  It’s odd though, if you look down vertically onto the soil you can’t see the grass, if you look at an angle you can and if you look at it horizontally, it’s clear to see!

Back garden

Front garden

The front doesn’t look as good because neither myself nor Grete have been in any condition to get out and keep it weeded, but hopefully the grass will pull through.  The back is looking excellent and we hope the grass will stop the soil washing down the bank in the first sustained heavy rains we get.  The other side of the apple tree is on the same kind of slope and the grass keeps it all in place.

The apple tree has gone crazy as well, I thought the pruning would keep the apples away this year but the tree appears to have decided to wreak revenge by growing twice as many apples.  The thin branches are dropping under the weight of the slowly forming apples already.  I suspect I’ll have to take action to get rid of them before they mature otherwise the branches are really going to suffer.

Our apple tree (heavily pruned) is budding.

I picked up a book earlier and nearly made it into the lounge to do some reading, when on a complete whim and mostly because the sun was out, I dragged my lumbering body outside and pruned our two biggest trees.  By pruned of course, I mean heavily chopped back.  And by heavily chopped back I mean massacred.  They do look a lot better though – hopefully I got them before they expended too much energy waiting for spring and they’ll survive.  I suspect they will since the huge tree at the bottom of the garden was ‘removed’ and it still manages to grow back each year.  Grabbed some photo’s of the trees, the pile of wood we now have to get rid of and our troll, who’s settled into the garden nicely.  Click for full size pictures.

Grete sorted out tree out today.  It’s only small (since our house is small) but it’s bright (fibre-optic) and shiny and festive.  Here’s a few (bad) photo’s.

Before

During

And after

And two cool shots while Grete was turning the tree to put the beads underneath.

We’re ahead of the game this year, kind of.  Although we’re always late starters as far as Christmas is concerned, this year we’re better than normal, and as of today, it’s officially Christmas in this household.

• We got an advent calendar (chocolate naturally) before the 1st of December and hung it up before the 1st of December, this is essentially a Christmas Miracle come True.
• We bought presents for people the weekend just gone and some of the ones we have to post are already wrapped, and we’ll be posting them during this week.  Yes, we are posting parcels to people, as Christmas presents, instead of just you know, forgetting, or not bothering.
• Grete has writers cramp from writing out our Christmas cards which will be posted before Christmas, not like the year we posted them after Christmas.
• I have just retrieved our tree from the cupboard upstairs, and we’ll be putting it up in the next day or so.  We didn’t bother last year because we weren’t sure Fizz would cope with all the glittering things that hang off it without trashing the house, but she’s (slightly) more relaxed now (pictures of the tree as soon as it’s up, I promise).
• We’ve already started buying the food for Christmas, so we don’t have to spend 19 hours queueing in Tesco two days before hand.

So there you have it, Christmas at last.  Nearly the end of 2008, near the start of 2009 and that means we’re uncomfortably close to 2010.

Of course, in some ways, it’s always Christmas in this house, since our Santa Clause stuffed toy sits on top of the book shelf in the lounge all year round, bringing us good cheer and joy.

Oh yes.