Gardening post-stroke

Bring them on! I was massively relieved that my eyesight and dodgy left hand has not removed my ability to prick out seedlings. Little shoots of hope of a life that carries on. Hope your hard work pays off, try and enjoy it toošŸŒ· Julia

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Hi Alan was a bit of a duffer at school and couldnā€™t wait to get into country side, was a townie but both sets of grandparents lived in country so I was destined to dig and delve. The closer I could involve myself in the natural world the better.since being stroked found I had no desire to watch tv and found fiction a real effort so just read nature writings. After monk told me to check out J Krishnamurti to get a grip on mindfulness.Had ā€˜a look and at Alan Watts and your ā€˜Be more tree ā€˜ man Elkhart Tolle they all seem to be singing from same hymn sheet. Find listening to their talks very relaxing. So keep growing trees and healing. Pds

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Good morning @Mahoney . If you find the garden fairies, please give them my address :laughing:. I hear that piles of wood are good for encouraging wildlife to use as habitats.šŸŖ°:beetle::honeybee:. Happy lopping Julia

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I read a bit of Krishnamurti as a teenager, along with various others along the same path such as Jung, and books like the Tao of Pooh and Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Interesting stuff, and quite fascinating how a lot of that earlier literature filtered into the classics of the 20th Century. I am a bit of a rag-and-bones spiritualist, picking up bits here and there. I must tell you, that I have begun concocting a specialist potting mix. I have added some secret ingredients, and am looking forward to the results.

Today, I arranged all the betony and rue to go out, and secretly planted a young strawberry tree sapling in the woods for future generations to wonder how it got there. I enjoy the start of spring but it does feel like a ticking clock to me sometimes. I am replacing two damaged greenhouse panels, and it suddenly occurred to me that before stroke, I might have patched things up willy-nilly, but after stroke, I seem to fixate on jobs shrewdly with an obsessive need to follow through as precisely as can be. It takes longer, but maybe more effective?

I found tubs of 2013 fruit at the bottom of one of my chest freezers, I have fished them out and mixed them up to make a hedgerow wine. Not strictly speaking hedgerow, but rose-hips, gooseberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, autumn raspberries and red raspberries, and blueberries.

Some good news, vast tracts of the surrounding area of my home, including my land have now been preserved under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. That means, no new development! I hope no nasty backhanded development occurs on this greenbelt but at least I have the ordinance maps now to challenge any new-builds. Thereā€™s a law here which states that if you park a shed on a field for ten years or whatever, it can then be turned residential.

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Good, the bugs will love it @Mahoney. The Tylwyth Teg are fickle creatures, and if you wish for them to clear your cuttings, theyā€™ll leave it, just to watch you pick it up, and be sure theyā€™ll be giggling from afar. When youā€™ve cleared the lot, theyā€™ll sprawl a few trimmings of their own for good measure, just to watch you come out again.

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our garden is very wet and at the moment has very little except mud in it but I am hoping to be able to make at least some of it into a Fairy Bog Garden

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Morning @Loshy. Super exciting isnā€™t it? Good luck with them, I also have done some sweet peas, you canā€™t beat the smell, and they flower so generously I have them all over the house. Sorry to hijack the gardening thread but I finished the painting you inspired me to do. Found an old IKEA frame in the loft and itā€™s actually on the wall. So enjoyed it, already started a new one. Thank you for the idea, Julia


No idea if picture worked havenā€™t posted one beforešŸ¤”

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@Loshy Well done trying free hand. You are definitely braver than me! Julia

Wow @Loshy , they are looking great. Itā€™s so nice to see things develop from nothing isnā€™t it. This is the first year Iā€™ve put Spring bulbs in - Tulips and Alliumsā€¦Iā€™m waiting (not so) patiently for them to flower :tulip:

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@JuliaH - Absolutely love this, it looks great - well done :star2:

Shwmae @Loshy, nice selection. The colour on that morning glory looks fantastic. I have some salvia in the garden but canā€™t remember which one. And nothing like sweet peas straight off the vine. I must get my trays ready this week. Hereā€™s to a colourful and nutritious 2022.

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Hi Alan close to where Iā€™m moving too shortly is a couple of acres donated to parish on condition it is kept planted with Lupins. It didnā€™t stipulate they had to be Russell Hybrids. Over the years achieving a good display has been hit and miss. Every few years it has to be ploughed up and re-established often not successfuly. Donā€™t know my capabilities in future but would like to think I could get involved and the thought came to me that maybe the lupins you grow might be an option, know .they donā€™t have colour range of the Russellā€™s but would be a cheaper. Are they basically an annual agricultural lupin ? When the clogs in my head occasionally fall back in place get some relaxation by listening to jKrish . ā€œhere is my secret: I donā€™t mind what happensā€ something for me to ponderšŸ¤” Pds

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Some pictures of Indian plum blossom and peach buds ready to bloom in the orchardā€¦ enjoy.


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Hi Alan The lupin patch is next to a small church with an interesting history not ancient , but built on site of a plague village which had the unfortunate name of Terrick from tord wic meaning in old English the place of turds. The land was given to National Trust in memorial provided they kept the lupins going but their management plan is a bit hit and miss and some years thereā€™s more ragwort than lupin, but the Cinnabar moth caterpillarā€™s donā€™t complain.

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For various reasons our back garden is a bit of a mess at the moment. Lets just say I wasnā€™t planning on having a Stroke while it was being done! One good thing though - we have a compost heap made of old scraps that needs to go - but it is leaving behind some good compost

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@Pontwander how exciting! What a project and so much to look forward to. Those photos have been a treat to start my day. Good luck getting what you need from the hospital visit :tulip::evergreen_tree::deciduous_tree:Julia

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@Pontwander, good to hear from you, despite the news of your seizures and liquificative necrosis which I hope is not conclusive. I was worried I may have acquired hydrocephalus after the stroke I had. The condition comes with shuffling, and I shuffled after the stroke, thatā€™s why I had my second MRI. It turned out negative, but there is potential morbidity after stroke which is not addressed directly after a stroke or TIA. I suspect the reason for this is because brain recovery can induce many conditions that may mimic acquired morbidity, and to test them all out would be expensive. This is a tear in the post-stroke treatment net, and can swing both ways for survivors.

I have enjoyed seeing your pictures, it looks like a behemoth project but you look well into it. You have two hoop tunnels? One looks like a aircraft hanger :grin: Will you be making some walking sticks from your blackthorn, mine arenā€™t big enough for sticks. I make sticks from laurel as it helps reduce the plague we have in the woods. I also make tree stakes from the laurel too, thatā€™s how much invasive laurel we have.

I had a little hurrah moment the other day, I saw that the caraway I planted has come back up this year. I have planted it soon after the stroke (about thirty or forty plants I reckon), it was massive achievement at that time, and quite painful. Then a late frost came by and sent them all into remission. Then the creeping buttercup came along and settled in. This year, however, some fifteen or so caraway have appeared, so now I just need to weed around them to give them a fighting chance. I have also sowed Bolivian fuchsia (alba), Tasmanian snow berries, horehound, liquorice, guelder-rose, and have one successful graft of the medlar I did earlier this year.

Hope you are having a decent week, and look forward to more updates, and hope spring provides some much needed freshness to life. I am trying to be more tree, but have resolved to be more shrub and work my way up to tree. :grin:

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Hi FionaB1 on subject of compost heaps moving shortly and four council provided plastic composters that were filled to brim have been emptied moved to new garden and refilled you can never get enough decent humus. My new venture will be to make seed and potting compost in a couple more composters from lawn mowings and leaf mould. The secret is getting the ratio of nitrogenous and Carboniferous right, think Rups is doing same so must compare notes. Pds.

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Shwmae @Pds, indeed we shall. I have just started mine with brown waste (shavings and whatnot from the woodshed), and then have been adding weeds on top, a bit of cardboard. This is my initial recipe. Weā€™ll see what comes of it. I am not going to turn it, but leave it do its thing. Hope you are as well as can be.

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Morning @Pds Get your self some rabbits! ( Not the wild ones obviously, they are a gardenerā€™s nightmare) I am a keen composter and use their daily litter tray contents ( high in nitrogen, dried hay, wood based litter pellets) to add to my garden and kitchen waste. It is full of the right stuff and the fibre gives the perfect mix to the other wetter components. I nearly cried when I finally took the task of checking the composters after 7 weeks of neglect whilst in hospital last summer, with my husband, bless him, just putting grass clippings and kitchen waste in, but I have just about recovered it thanks to the bunnies and the glories of organic breakdown! Julia :rabbit:

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