Telstales

Tag: gardening

  • Goggles on, how about gloves?

    Eye has healed..yaay!

    Goggles bought and worn twice last week and thankfully doing their job whilst cutting away brambles from an old fence and yes, a bramble stem did hit my face so, thank you goggles, you’ve already paid for yourselves!

    Now it’s the turn of gloves.

    Not being a glove expert, but I’ve tried various types of gloves to try to protect at least my hands and fingers from being pricked, stabbed, popped and scratched and yes no matter which pair I buy they all fail….And for those pairs which are of thick leather or classed as welders gloves, they are so stiff to wear, they become difficult to hold plant stems and the secateurs to do the ‘job in hand’.

    It’s easy when gardening to be as careful as possible to negate the bodily damage done working around prickly plants, but when working in customer’s gardens and wanting to be as efficient and effective at clipping, pruning, restoring and removing said prickly plants it’s such a challenge also not to end up leaking the red stuff contained within my body, mopping up with tissue as I garden along. Not to mention the later evening discovery of broken off tips of thorns lodged firmly in my hands and fingers causing pain and swelling. Oh, the joys of gardening!

    So I thought I had got that ‘eureka’ moment last week in the discovery of a “guard glove”, a gauntlet type of glove for my fingers, hands and even my arms upto my elbows!

    Fantastic, or so I thought. Now, I’m not one to impulse buy, I researched these gloves before pressing that all familiar online ‘purchase button’ making sure that this company (never used before) was genuine, which it was.

    Reviews stated they were “just what I needed” “worked well” ” brilliant purchase for the gardening I do” and the photos of someone grabbing a length of barbed wire and stems of thorny roses made me ‘believe’ they were the ones I desperately needed. And to cap it all they looked so good, I bought two pairs!..hmmm.

    Arrival within two days of purchase, wow, impressive delivery!

    Gloves, well made, good fit for my fingers and hands right upto my elbows, yep as described in the advertising info.

    Ran out into my garden with glee, now, I really should have tried carefully, but I got caught up in the moment, as I thought I had solved my problem, I just grabbed the most prickly rose bush I could find.. and …”ouchy, woah, that hurt so much”

    Did they work and protect my hands and fingers as described… did they heck! They were terrible! But not to be defeatest, I put two pairs on each hand just to test their resilience to thorns and yep as thought, they were just as terrible!

    And not to be put off totally, the bramble clearing the next day for a customer, I tried again, and within one minute of wearing them they were off again! They were really worse than the cheapo ones I usually wear knowing that ‘they’ were no good when working with prickly stems.

    So, I contacted the supplier explaining my prickly predicament and they very quickly offered a full refund. I wonder why? Did they also know that these ‘anti thorn gloves’ really didn’t work?

    In my emails to the supplier I asked them to get a pair and try for themselves, only to be told they didn’t have any rose or bramble stems in their office!….. I’m still thinking about sending them my failed ‘guard gloves’ back to them with a selection of thorny rose stems and brambles for then to try.

    So, my journey continues to find gardening with prick and pain free hands and fingers!

    …. now time for a cup-of-T

  • After the event…

    It can’t just be me?

    I’m an eyesore..well..I mean my eye is still really sore and red although it’s starting to get a little bit better.. Guess these kinds of accidents do take time to repair.

    Good job I have two eyes ( I’m lucky there I guess)… At least one is in focus, the other is on its own way to refocusland!

    However, following this minor accident, it can’t just be me that does things after the event?

    Like simply buying eye protection which if I had worn, then wouldn’t have been in the predicament I’m currently in!

    It’s all about risk…. All I was doing was cutting down to ground level some 3 feet tall bracken, which had died back anyway as it usually does over Winter, using my long reach hedge cutters which I find less brutal to use than a brush cutter especially as the area had loose stones on it and a timber fence behind it.

    And easily munching its way through the dead bracken, it found (see how I blame the tool, not me the operator!) a long Raspberry came (alive) which was some what taller than the bracken and before I even had chance to think “best avoid that”, it had already cut through it, hurling it back to my face like a whip and so smacking across my head, oh, and eye…grrr.

    Now, this has happened before and you would think that I would have learnt after a previous and similar event and on that occasion I ‘was’ wearing goggles!

    So how did that happen you may wonder?

    Well, stupid as it seems the goggles I wore then keep misting up whilst wearing them (obviously) and they were supposed to be anti mist type, well, hmmm.

    So the two little air vents underneath the goggles had covers over them which I thought “good idea… I’ll remove them”

    “Ahh, that’s better”…not!

    Somehow the long stem of a plant found it’s way inside my goggles through the tiny hole where the air vent cover was and poked me in the eye!…. You couldn’t make it up!

    Any yes, I do wear safety glasses when using the strimmer for ‘obvious reasons’. Yet, somehow I seem at times to only react after the event!

    Soon my sore eye will be ok and must keep telling myself… ‘safety first!’

    Now for another cup-of-T

  • Ouchy….

    Well today’s gardening for two customers included getting whipped across the eye by a bent over stem which decided to wizz onto my left eye as it passed by and in my anguish turning to one side, banged my head on a low branch next me only for me to reel in the opposite direction for my head to connect directly with another ‘low’ branch!

    The words “ouch”.. or similar rang out repeatedly.

    My eye is sore this evening and I have a lumpy head!

    So, today’s score is Garden 3…Tel 0

    Time for a cup-of-T

  • Sunshine

    Well, after such gloomy grey skies through January, yesterday was brilliant clear blue skies and bright (too bright) sunshine all day.

    And when working in folk’s gardens, gardening, made me feel so much better and much more positive.

    Everything and everywhere was lit up brightly with contrasting dark shaded areas throughout the day.

    For my wellbeing, it was a win-win!

    “Stay away gloomy grey sky days…just need brighter and sunnier times!”

  • Home made compost – a gardener’s gold!

    Well, one of my customers has three large timber framed compost bays within their even larger garden.

    When I started my gardening services there two years ago, it was the first thing I noticed, well, beyond the plants and friendly chats with the house owner, of course!

    The ‘decomposing’ material had been sat there for years, within three connected timber slatted bays built several years before. The slatted sides allowed air to ‘hopefully’ enter each bay to assist with the decomposition of the material within them.

    Although appropriate material had been added to it each year, its thick layers of grass clippings and Autumnal leaf fall squashed down and compacted as tightly as possible by previous gardeners, had prevented air from getting into the material to assist in the decomposition process.

    So, my plan was to dig through each bay, mixing it all up, providing air spaces within the bays of material to help to speed up this process.

    And by doing this a few times during my first year there resulted in the most finest and decomposed organic material one could wish for!

    Yes, Gardener’s Gold!

    Repeated digging through the organic material in each bay helped it to decompose.

    Barrow loads taken to borders to spread.

    A thick 4 inch (10mm) layer spread over planted borders.

    The effects of adding a thick layer of compost has benefitted the plants by

    • retaining moisture within the soil surface
    • improving the soil structure through worm activity pulling the compost into the soil
    • providing a food source for beneficial worms, woodlice, slugs and other invertebrates
    • adding nutrients to the soil so benefitting the health of plants
    • reducing the amount of weed seeds from germinating

    And, following the work done during Spring 2024, the process of creating more compost continued through the year and Autumn, filling up the compost bins to create even more to use in Summer 2025.

    now for a cup-of-T!

  • Gardening day 15th January 2025

    At this time of year there’s not so much to do in my customer’s gardens, it’s a quieter time. There are a few maintenance tasks to get involved in though.

    Today needed to cut back first year’s growth on a native hedgerow I planted in March 2024.

    Keeping the plants well watered through the year and keeping weeds at bay at the base of each plant has resulted in a good start in their growth.

    So it was now necessary to cut back all growth with the customer asking for each to be 3 feet high which I did. Obviously they will probably grow to be about 5 feet high by mid summer and can then be clipped back again to the required height asked for.

    Cutting back stimulates side ( and vertical) growth and allows each plant to thicken out when they burst into life in Spring!

    The Caravan in distance is not mine!

    The native hedgerow included Thorn plants and yes those ‘ thorns ‘ pierce fingers easily…I can (v)ouch for that!

  • Yippee..back to gardening work..but..noooo….

    After the total frenzy of Christmas past, my planning to start work in customer’s gardens again has just been put on hold a while.

    Following a bombardment of snow on Sunday 5th January 2025, providing a good ‘deep’ covering of about 2 inches here, (that’s quite deep for us here really🤣)

    Then as rain took over during Sunday afternoon into the evening and through Monday 6th created a total aesthetically pleasing mis match of melting snow linked between puddles of rain.

    Obviously as all professional gardeners know…. “Keep of the grass,” and stay away from sodden gardens until it all dries up. Needless to say that the overnight temperatures of minus 2 real feel minus 7 have now left all gardens here sparkly white with frost.

    So, gardening in customer’s gardens can wait a bit longer. Oooh now where’s my bookkeeping to update with cups of T, bikkies and warmth…plenty of time for gardening soon!

  • Snow joke

    Well, apparently a ‘no name’ storm will be arriving over the next few days, Monday 30th December 2024 to Thursday 2nd January 2025.

    Well, when they say storm here in North Yorkshire, England, they are usually short lived and certainly not as extreme as other places on Earth yet they do seem to be getting worse and more frequent from when I was a kid, many many years ago.

    And this time, the predicted wind and heavy rain will also dump loads of snow on us on New Year’s Day. So remains to be seen!

    The main weather reporters get blamed if they don’t report the severity of it yet when they do and it’s not as bad as they say it could be, then they get slated again for over reporting!

    Yes, we will get some weather each day that’s for certain and as I already said our weather extremes are usually short lived.

    So let’s see what the weather has in-store for us this coming week.

    I am a bit fixated about the weather though, probably due to my gardening business trying to plan my week ahead and day to day depending on the weather, ( “yer can’t mow grass when it’s chucking it down!”) so the weather has a direct bearing on what I can and cannot do in gardens!