Hey friends,

Happy British Summer Time! Lately, I've been hard at work in the garden, preparing it for summer. The weather hasn't always cooperated, but it's a good workout and it feels like you're accomplishing something compared with just going for a walk with no destination. Plus, it's free. And that's helpful while we save for our next house project.

First up was the greenhouse. I cleaned the glass and removed the old nutrient depleted soil. I used some timber and stakes from the garage collection to replace the disintegrating edging around the paving stones. The new soil is home made, not completely composted down but I'll mix with store bought when planting begins. It should hold water well, useful in a greenhouse.

I may have jumped the gun a little with my seeds. They look a little leggy and I don't have a grow light but I think they'll survive. So far I've planted: lettuce, carrot, kale, cucumber, tomato, pepper, cabbage and zinnia for flowers. It should a be a tasty and colourful summer.

I then turned my attention to this bed which is the most well planted in the garden but was riddled with weeds. I dealt with those and edged the lawn. Plenty of spring flowers coming up!

Next was the rockery with the waterfall. The mass of light green is creeping charlie - nice in small doses but here it was taking over. So I removed it as best I could and took up the dry stone creek cobbles and liner.

Then I expanded the rockery and laid turf that I cut from elsewhere. That dark green plant is a juniper which are difficult to prune because if you cut below the green growth, it won't re-grow so I cut off the lower parts for a more tree-like appearance.

In the pond, the frogs have been doing their thing. A quick swoop of the net revealed the progeny of last year's goldfish purchase. I reckon there must be 100 or more so I may need to give a bunch away. I've read the should turn gold soon enough🤞.

I laid the granite rocks I pulled from the rockery around this fuchsia and fern to make a bed that should be easier to mow around.

This left side border has been neglected since we moved in, but I'm busy widening it to allow more variety and height in planting and less lawn to mow. The biggest challenge is the weeds that come from under the fence from our neighbour. Ground elder is my nemesis, but I'm determined to get rid of it. One day I'll get round to painting the fence a dark colour to make the green of the plants pop.

I don't fret about having the perfect lawn. As long as it's green, I'm happy. However, the central area has been plagued by moss and turns brown in the summer. I've scarified it with a rake and I'll overseed it when the weather warms up and hope for the best.

I've been enjoying "Wild Isles", Attenborough's wildlife documentary about our home islands. One of the most fantastic scenes was a white-tailed sea eagle hunting barnacle geese. Closer to home, I saw a sparrowhawk catch a blackbird, but a cat interfered and the sparrowhawk flew off. I now have a pet blackbird with a sad wing in my greenhouse 🫤. I'll call him Feisty.

👋

I'm sure you've heard of or tried Chatgbt, the AI chatbot. I've not used it but I got invited for early access to Bard, Google's equivalent and thought I'd throw it a structural engineering problem:

Not bad. I also got it to break down the calculations. I don't think live load comes into it but as the humanoid says in I, Robot 'you must ask the right questions'.

Then, while writing this email I couldn't remember the name of the plant and googling was no help:

Impressive. It's a massive leap and there are those concerned about how far this could go. So I asked it:

Yikes.

Hit "reply" if you've got any comments on this week's newsletter – otherwise I'll see you next time. Have an epic week :)

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