Hello everyone. We've been in Italy where we were grateful for some dry, sunny weather so that we could give the house a good airing, do some more work in the garden, see the family and generally relax. I'll be sharing more over the next few blog posts, but today I'm joining in Five on Friday Weekly Meetup which from this week onwards is being hosted by Tricky and Carly who have the interesting blog, F.A.S.T (Family Attempting To Survive The Times).
Regular followers of my blog will find my photos of the Italian garden familiar as I've been sharing the work over the years, mainly in the Spring and the Autumn. In recent years we've been able to maintain the upkeep of the garden with outside help so that all that needs to be done is the cutting of the grass and the pruning of the trees, vines and shrubs. There's less to do in the Springtime as in the Autumn when there are the grapes to collect and fallen leaves to sweep up and as we were in Italy in November we found that the grass was still short after having hired someone with a tractor to mow it for us and, therefore, it didn't need cutting this time.
1. views from the front garden
2. views from the side garden and drive
3. the back garden
The fig tree was pruned one - this one is 'the mother' of the tree we have in our UK garden.
4. wild flowers and daffodils
There are wild flowers growing in the grass - grape hyacinths,
a variety of lily, flowering herbs.
5. The pruning of the vines, shrubs and trees - most of the vines were pruned in November.
They need to be pruned before the sap rises.
pruning some of the apple trees
The twigs will be used as kindling in the wood burning stove
when they dry out.
We decided to cut down the ornamental cypress trees as they need
so much effort to keep trimmed down to a manageable level.
So far three of them have been cut down leaving some branches
that will be kept at a low height.
Branches were stacked in a corner of the garden. Other branches
and logs are stored in the cantina/garage.
