First Picking

………. of the blueberries - well, those that the blackbirds haven’t got to yet ( I have to pick the slightly underripe ones as well and ripen them on the windowsill, if I leave them to ripen they are scoffed before I get a chance to pick them ).

I gave the kitchen a good cleaning ( including the floor) and then went out to potter in the garden. We ended up spending the rest of the day trying to tame some of the wilder areas, cutting back some of the really high branches of the leylandii hedge that is now huge and hanging several feet over the fence from the neighbours behind us and runs all along the bottom of our garden. It’s nice because it gives us good privacy from them but the huge overhanging bits are 20 feet up and higher, it’s just so difficult to reach them. The neighbours have just sold the house and will be moving at some point so I don’t expect it’s worth asking them to have it cut.

I’ve also been cutting back a very large hypericum that has become very leggy and contains loads of dead wood. It is starting to shoot again from the base so I think I’m going to be a bit radical and chop it right down to the base and see if it regrows - fingers crossed ;-))