European Gardening: What's occuring in the backyard?, 1 by Patbarr

Patbarr wrote:
Well the snow has gone today and I've been in the garden for hours. I've done far too much and have siezed up completely, but I had to get something done as I'm going on holiday next Saturday and the bad weather has prevented me doing all the usual jobs for this time of the year.

So I've pruned the roses, fed them and weeded and dug the rose garden. Then I got all the budleas pruned hard. I've emptied one of the compost heaps and put ten wheelbarrow loads on the vegetable beds and I've tidied up all the dead bits round the ponds. Oh yes and then I've picked the last two red cabbages and sprouts and cleared those beds .

I really feel as though I've made a bit of an impression on things. There's tons more to do, but at least I've made a start.

The seedlings are a bit slow in the greenhouse but are slowly germinating. I thought the aubergines must have gone rotten, as they've been in nearly a month, but three have appeared over night, and the Cape gooseberries have just come up too.

Last Sunday I had a panic as we had a power cut for six hours and it was snowing and feezing outside. I covered the propagator up with newspapers and several layers of cardboard and some fleece to try to keep the heat in and everything looks OK. Then on Monday I spent a couple of very cold hours trying to get the pond pump to restart as that had cut out and didn't want to get going again.

Here is a picture of the cheeky squirrel which keeps coming to eat the bird food. He spent half an hour planting peanuts at 30cm intervals all over the garden the other day.