garden

Summer 2020

Your Truly on 5th November 2020 © Kát’a Burešová

I must start by making a serious apology for not posting anything here for five and a half months 🙁 I will not make any excuses. Instead, here is a new post about what has been happening over these past Summer months and a promise to resume writing more regularly in the coming weeks.

In contrast to the Summer of both 2018 and 2019, this past Summer has not been so excessively hot and we have had far more rainfall. Across the Czech Republic in June, rainfall was double the average for the month. Throughout the Summer, the Labe/Elbe maintained a decent level, allowing the passage of commercial craft, unlike in the two previous years. My grass has also remained green and has immediately shot back up, each time I’ve mown it!

Cooler temperatures have encouraged and enabled me to make further progress in my garden. Even better, I finally found someone capable and willing to complete a number of tasks that have been beyond my capabilities – a man called František.

František lives with his wife Andrea and their three children, in the upstairs part of a house on the end of a public building, within sight of my house. Earlier this Summer, Andrea found me on Facebook and asked to be my Facebook friend. Through this link, I discovered that her husband has a Facebook page, which advertises his various building skills. Therefore one evening, when František, Andrea and I were all sitting outside at Bar-Restaurace U Soni, enjoying a few beers, I approached them, asking if František would be interested in doing some tasks for me, in particular, constructing a new path from the steps at the back of my house, to the woodshed on the far side of the garden.

The new path was to replace this untidy mixture of bits of rubber matting and roofing felt, left by the previous owners.

Our discussions were based on my pre-prepared Google translate text, asking whether he would be willing to do the work and if so, what would be his price? He clearly understood what I was asking and got out his mobile phone to show me a couple of photos of a path he had previously constructed. However, it did take a further conversation at U Soni a few days later, before I finally convinced František that I did want the work done.

Early one evening, a few days after our second conversation, František came round to look at what exactly I required. I told him that I wanted the path to be 70cm wide and he then measured the distance from steps to woodshed to work out the quantity of materials that would be needed. I also showed him the existing path through the front garden and agreed with him that my new path could be constructed in a similar style, using interlocking paving blocks.

A few further days later, František returned with my Google translated print out, giving me a price for materials, a price for his labour and saying that he would do the job the following weekend, 11^th-12^th July. In turn, I promised him that I would visit an ATM the next day and give him the cash for materials which I duly did.

Materials for the new path © Ricky Yates

Thus in the late afternoon of Friday 10^th July, this pile of materials appeared in my back garden, along with several bags of cement.

František & Andrea at work © Ricky Yates

The following morning, František arrived and started work, marking out the exact line of the new path and then digging two trenches for the supporting pieces of the sides of the path. An hour or so later, his wife and attractive assistant 🙂 Andrea, arrived to help.

New path under construction © Ricky Yates

In constructing the boundaries of the new path, František had a brainwave. He suggested the creation of an additional step at the top of the existing steps, which meant the new path would rise at a more gentle angle. Your can just see part of the new step at the bottom of this photo.

And here is how the new path looked at the end of the first day of construction.

The next morning, fine stone chippings were put into the channel of the path and then all the paving blocks were laid on top. Numerous blocks had to be cut into various shapes, in order to complete the path.

New path completed at the end of day two © Ricky Yates

However, a few hours later, this was the wonderful end result.

The new path properly landscaped © Ricky Yates

Fast forward to early October, and this is how the path looked after I de-weeded the disturbed ground on either side and then successfully grass seeded it.

My walnut tree

In my back garden there are three trees – an apple tree, a cherry tree and a walnut tree. You can see all three trees in this photograph, taken in early October 2019. The apple tree stands immediately to the side of the woodshed on the far side of the back garden. The cherry tree is on the left front in the photograph. Towering above both of them is the walnut tree, in the centre of the photograph, with its leaves rapidly turning yellow.

As you can see, the walnut tree stands quite close to my garden fence, with many of its branches extending over the adjacent public land, across which runs a driveway to the house behind my garden, the home of my neighbours Pavel and Vlasta. In the Autumn of 2018, the tree produced a large crop of walnuts, many of which fell on the public ground. More than one local lady came around and collected them, and example of thriftiness for which Czechs are renowned 🙂

Walnut tree leaves lying on my back lawn © Ricky Yates

However, in the Autumn of 2019, the tree didn’t produce any nuts at all. But what it did produce was a superabundance of fallen leaves.

Raking into piles, all of those leaves which fell into my garden and then transporting them by wheelbarrow to the bio odpad/green waste skip, was a major exercise.

The walnut tree minus nearly all its leaves © Ricky Yates

During October 2019, the walnut tree lost nearly all its leaves in little over a week. There was no more than ten days between when the photograph at the beginning of this post was taken and the one above. As you can see, large quantities of leaves also fell outside of my garden.

Whilst strictly speaking, clearing them up was not my responsibility, I did feel rather guilty being the owner of the tree from whence they had come. This was especially so after rain and cars being driven along the driveway, turned many of them into a squelchy mess. So one Saturday in late October, I raked the leaves from the grass strip along the outside of my garden fence, whilst Pavel used his leaf blower to clear the driveway.

Over this past winter, I decided that I must do something to avoid a similar or worse experience in 2020. In simple terms, the tree has grown far too big for where it is situated. So I asked Mirka, whose English conversation class I help with, if she or one of her friends knew of a tree surgeon who could come and give it a ‘hair cut’.

Mirka kindly found someone suitable who, in turn, asked to see photos of the tree. I sent several, including some in this post. Having seen the photos, the tree surgeon, Johan Beneš, gave me a quotation of 5500Kc/£180.00 to reduce and thin out the tree, together with taking away all the resultant debris. I accepted his offer.

Johan Beneš cutting the walnut tree © Ricky Yates

On the morning of Wednesday 20^th May, Johan Beneš and a colleague, arrived in their van, towing a small trailer, in order to carry out the work. By a series of ropes and pulleys, Johan hauled himself up into the tree and commenced cutting branches, whilst his colleague collected them from the ground and started stacking them into the trailer. Johan did all the work with a simple hand saw being very careful where he cut in order to conserve the health of the tree.

The walnut tree following its ‘hair cut’ © Ricky Yates

After about four hours of Johan being up in the tree and with many branches and smaller twigs, lying on the ground, this is the end result.

Tree debris loaded to be taken away © Ricky Yates

And here is all the debris, either loaded on the trailer or stuffed in the back of the van. I remarked that they should really have brought a larger trailer with them. In reply, Johan admitted that the tree was far larger than he had envisioned from looking at my photographs 🙂

Winter 2019-2020 and progress with my front garden

This past winter, which is hopefully now over, has been my third spent in Stará Oleška. Yes, I’ve now lived here for two weeks short of three years.

The view from my front door on the morning of Saturday 29th February 2020 © Ricky Yates

One of my regular commenters asks for me to post snowy winter photographs. Well this one – the view from my front door on the morning of Saturday 29th February 2020, is the best I can do, as this past winter has been remarkably mild. And within a few hours, all the snow in this photograph had melted.

A combination of it being a mild winter, together with my new wood-burning stove, has meant that I’ve had no problem at all in keeping warm this winter. I’m also very pleased that the hope I’ve expressed a couple of times previously, that the logs delivered in mid-January 2019 would last until the end of this winter, has been fulfilled.

This is the inside of one end of my woodshed where my logs were once stacked, right up to the roof.

Split logs, ready for my wood-burning stove © Ricky Yates

But in mid-April, when this photograph was taken, I still had this supply of logs that I’d previously split, sitting on a table in the other half of the woodshed. These have enabled me to have the wood-burning stove going for a few hours each morning which is all I’ve needed the past few weeks.There are still some left if we do have few more cool days like today. The stove is burning merrily as I write 🙂

Although I pruned the vine on the front of the house in the Spring of 2019, I failed to give a serious ‘haircut’ to several of the bushes in my front garden.

My front garden in mid-October 2019 © Ricky Yates

This photograph, taken in October 2019, shows the result of my inaction 🙁 Therefore as well as pruning my vine, as explained in this post, in early November 2019, I severely cut back all the bushes in my front garden.

My front garden in early November 2019 © Ricky Yates

In the photograph above, you can see the result of my labours. As you can also see, because the bushes grew too large, they killed off the grass underneath, leaving bare patches of earth. Re-seeding these areas is one of my tasks in the coming days.

My front garden on 22nd April 2020 © Ricky Yates

But with the arrival of Spring, green shoots are appearing on all of the bushes reassuring me that I wasn’t too severe 😉

As I outlined in my previous post, since the middle of March I have been living in splendid isolation because of the measures taken by the Czech government, to counteract the Corona virus. However, this has given me the opportunity to do a lot of work in my garden, aided by dry, fine weather throughout April.

Along with dead-heading and pruning all my roses, I have finally managed to repair this trellis alongside my front door, which was damaged on 10th February by Storm Ciara (UK), Storm Sabine (Czech Republic & Germany).

Once DIY shops, (or Hobby shops as Czechs call them), were allowed to re-open just before Easter, I was able to obtain a replacement metal bracket to re-attach the trellis to the wall of the house. You can see the new bracket in the photo. I also screwed a new wooden baton, (which you can’t see), across the base of the trellis, and resurrected the roses.

One of the joys of this Spring has been to have these daffodils and tulips flowering, directly in front of the house. The bulbs were given to me by my daughter Christa at Christmas 2018. Last Spring, only the daffodils flowered, no doubt due to being planted too late. This Spring, they flowered beautifully.

Flowerbed & panels treated with wood stain © Ricky Yates

A couple of weeks later, just as the tulips were past their best, I also completely weeded and delineated the flower bed, and then applied wood stain to the panels below the enclosed verandah. This and the previous photo, show how dry everything is. The whole of the Czech Republic is currently experiencing drought conditions. Fortunately, this weekend as I write, we have had some most welcome rain.

I have also done plenty of work in my back garden. But that deserves another post 🙂

My Vine

The house and vine in March 2017 © Ricky Yates

On the front of my house is a well-established vine. In this photograph, you can see the outline of it, in between and along the top of the double-glazed windows that enclose the verandah. The photograph was taken by me in March 2017, at the time I agreed to buy the house. It has appeared previously on the blog, in this post entitled, ‘The new house in Stará Oleška‘.

At some point in the previous six months, the vine clearly had been pruned for which I am most thankful. It was the only thing in the garden that appeared to have received any attention in the months before I purchased the property. I believe that once the previous elderly owners decided to sell, they chose to do nothing further to the garden, meaning that I inherited quite a jungle 🙁

Over the summer of 2017, the vine flourished, as can be seen in this photograph, taken in August that year, when I was painting the frames of the two windows under the apex of the roof of the house. However, it did also produce a healthy crop of grapes.

The vine after being pruned in March 2019 © Ricky Yates

In February 2018 and again in March this year, I rigorously pruned it. This is how it looked following its serious haircut in March 2019. But in both years, all my rigorous pruning has ever done is to encourage the vine to flourish even more.

As you can see in the photograph above, taken in late September this year, the vine took over virtually all of the front windows, making it almost impossible to see out!

However, it did once again, produce an excellent crop of grapes. These are some of the 2019 vintage!

One piece of helpful advice I was recently given was this. Whilst vines are known for growing prodigiously, if you prune them in the late Summer/early Autumn, rather than leaving it to the Spring, they tend not to grow as much. Therefore, deciding that I would like to be able to see out of my front windows next year, over the past two days, the vine has been once more thoroughly pruned.

Pruned vine 31st October 2019 © Ricky Yates

Here is the photographic evidence!

PS: You can also see my recently renovated & freshly varnished front door 🙂

Further progress with the house and garden

At the end of an earlier blog post entitled ‘Finishing touches and next steps‘, I posted this picture of one end of the small room behind the kitchen and stated: ‘My plan is to decorate it to get rid of all the orange 😉 and then get Elefant to fit further matching units along the wall on the right, to store all those things that didn’t fit in the kitchen’.

On Wednesday 23^rd May, just over two months after I wrote that post, my plan came to fruition when Martin from Elefant, came and fitted my chosen units. Before that, I spent many hours over several days, removing unwanted things attached to, or sticking out from, the walls, and filling the resultant holes. I then applied one coat of white emulsion to the ceiling and two coats, (because of the orange 🙁 ), to the walls. Below is a photograph of what has been achieved.

Room decorated & new units fitted © Ricky Yates

My apologies but, because of the size of the room, or more realistically, the lack of size, it is impossible to get a better photograph to illustrate what has been done. And I do still need to gloss paint the metal door frame, part of which you can see in the photo, as well as the window frame which you cannot see.

A year ago, at the end of a blog post entitled ‘Plenty to keep me occupied‘, I posted the photograph below, of an unsightly pile of earth in the back garden, that I wanted to get removed. As that earlier post explains, its origin was from the building of a retaining wall to hold back the earth at the back of the house, to prevent problems with damp.

Some months ago, I discovered that Rudolf Cebiš from the village, (Ruda to his friends 😉 ), owned a mini digger. I approached him and asked if he would be willing to come and rid me of my unwanted pile of earth. I did so, over a beer in Restaurace U Soni, in a mixture of limited Czech, sign language, and showing him this photograph taken in March this year.

The pile of earth in March 2018 © Ricky Yates

Ruda agreed to do so. However, a combination of the mini digger being used on other work and then breaking down, meant that the day I had longed for, for just over a year, only finally happened on Tuesday 22^nd May 2018.

Mini digger being unloaded © Ricky Yates

That afternoon, the mini digger arrived, sitting on a trailer, towed by a tractor, driven by my near neighbour Petr Novak. Here it is, being unloaded on the driveway alongside my back garden, that gives access to the house behind mine. Petr then drove it into the garden, through a gap where a section of fence can easily be removed.

Petr soon got to work, breaking up the earth, in advance of it being put into the trailer on the other side of the fence. Various of my neighbours gathered around to watch the fun.

Milan, who is my immediate neighbour on the other side, hopped in the cabin and made his contribution to the project!

Within two hours, all was done. The earth taken away, then the mini digger loaded back onto the trailer, and my fence put back together. Now to landscape the bare patch……