| Doin’ The Dirt was a gardening series that ran in my first blog, ‘ A Guy Called Bloke, from 2018 to 2022, when the blog closed. Willow Garden is a series exclusive to the Earthly Comforts blog only. |
| Suze the Worm Farmer Sieving! |
| Who Woulda Thunka it? Sometimes minor things can surprise me profoundly more than huge things! I say little, but it’s not a small event either. It’s pretty large, most distinctly significant too! Things are changing how l garden, Suze gardens and we garden. Not so much style per se, but more along the lines of traits or personality progressions. Suze used to be a very keen green-fingered gardener. She still is – and l used to be hyper-focused on brown gardening; l still am and still do. But we also now like different things as well. I am keen to start growing more green, and Suze is eager to try browner! I never thought l would see the days when Suze was enthusiastic about working with worm farming, and yet she is, and not just in the way of helping me out occasionally, but getting into it too! Truly intrigued by the whole subject! We have a busy week ahead, or instead, l do, to begin with, having just finished sorting out the harvest sieve off of the two New Zealand actual compost units and thinking l wouldn’t be back for another week – that’s not the case! I will start to sieve off again over the next few days, draw off the worm stocks, and keep them separate from the compost. Next weekend Suze and l will be harvesting off worm farms one and four, and l will then add the additional compost worms stocks to them, divided as evenly as l can. The plan to move the compost operation out of Willow garden is my priority, and l hope that either 1] an allotment comes up soon or 2] l can arrange to use a piece of another person’s allotment to create compost for us both at least till an allotment becomes available to Suze and myself. But l want to turn the space the composters currently occupy into a working garden, so first things first mean l need not have deliberate breeding worm stocks in the compost boxes. They must be transferred to active farm units, and the composters must become just composters! It is not rocket science, yet bizarrely, it sometimes reads that way! So it’s another busy week ahead. |
| I have so much going on at present but l will write on this later, so in the meantime l’ll leave you with some garden shots! |
| Feature Image – Close up of Fushia Flower Thanks for visiting and reading, see you next time in Willow Garden. Rory |
Earthly Comforts 
Changing and discovering new things you like to do, or want to try, is fantastic! Good for physical and mental health! Stagnation causes decay… in Nature and in humans.
So says ME, Angie, Sciencey Stuff Person🤓 😝🤣🤣🤣🤣
Your garden looks very healthy and happy! The flowers are beautiful.
I noticed on my drive to pick Daughter up from work, that a cactus I pass, and used to pass on my walks, is blooming. If there hadn’t been impatient drivers behind me I would’ve stopped for a smell and pictures. Those cactus flowers have a beautiful scent.
Good luck with all the sifting and shifting! I hope Murphy is busy elsewhere (not with me, please 🙏) and things go smoothly🤞
💌💌
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Ooh to see a cactus blooming, pity you couldn’t stop – curses to impatient drivers 🙂
Yes there is so much still to be explored with regards gardening and mental health – a whole diversity of topical content begging to be written about l would say 🙂
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It is so wonderful to be able to share in the results of the love, thought and effort that goes into Willow Garden, Rory! Your enjoyment of the whole process is quite evident as seen in the lovely photographs, for they just seem to radiate health and happiness! 😊
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You keep such beautiful plants 🪴… so lush!
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Well their lushness is going to be put to the test this month Trisha, we are currently experiencing a major heatwave – NOTHING compared to your California ones, but hot for here 🙂
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Lol what is hot for you?
I showing 80’s and 70’s in Sandwich,
Kent, GB … is that right?
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Well the average summer temps in the UK since 2000 have been in the 60 and 70’s’s, whilst pre-2000 the normal summer temps were in the mid 40’s to the early 60’s – but that is climate change.
The typical temperatures in Kent GB currently are now between mid 70’s to mid 90’s, the latter are the temperatures in built up towns like here, whilst a bit more rural like where l lived before moving here was in the 70’s to 80’s.
British summers have been getting hotter and hotter in the last five years whilst our winters get wetter and we no longer really have four defined seasons as in spring, summer, autumn and winter like how they were back in the 1970’s – now we have very short springs, longer summers, practically no autumns and shorter winters.
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Well summer is my favorite ❤️ summer is the greatest season ❤️
I asked google for sandwich England and it change it to all that … sandwich, Kent, GB … lol … uhhh ok yes? lol
You have seen our fires… we are like Australia 🇦🇺… Australia and California are similar and we help them/they help us ❤️
So England sounds very similar to New England lol … but they still have some decent winters and snow fall … but yes same as you
Do you have humidity to your air? Ok yup I look – you very similar to New England – they just have distinct seasons still – but nothing like the 70’s!! Omg
Blizzard of 1979 😮😮
Yeah you sound like New England area lol… they name many things after your places or people … you have similar weather lol
Americas version of you lol – right down to Sandwich lol
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We have an oceanic climate so very high humidity as opposed to a dry heat – yet in other years we can sample all sorts of weather fronts, weather is very climatic these days.
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Yes – you sound extremely similar to New England area
Is same there.
They have a saying … you don’t like the weather? Wait 5 minutes lol
I’m not sure that you get as much snow as they do when they get a storm?
There are storms that will give them a foot or 2 during winter ❄️
I used to send Christmas cards with Santa surfing 🏄♂️ to my family back there when they were alive lol
Every year I would send a card with Santa doing something beachy 😄✌️❤️
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Awesome 🙂
We had a sprinkling of snow here in January 2021, then the last snow l saw was a sprinkling in 2019. But the last time l saw really deep snow was when l was 15 and living with my parents in 1978.
The south east has very little snow now. Scotland still gets hammered with snow, Wales mostly has rains, we now have very moderate weathers here.
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Did your winters used to be snowy? ❄️ ⛄️… could you build a snowman? 🎶 Lol
Sacramento does not usually get snow… and if you ask “me” – they do not get snow!
Once in blue blue moon they will have white fall on the grass – but it is not normal snow lol they crazy lol
I have mild winters too… we supposed to have rain but we don’t get a lot – there were years where we would flood…
But currently we haven’t flooded in quite a few years.
Always a drought lol ✌️😘 🌵
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I remember building my first dwarf snowman in 1978, there wasn’t enough to build a true snowman and ours measured about 2 feet high 🙂
My first and only snowman.
I performed naked snow angels with a girlfriend once in 2008 … enough snow to lie in and make a star but not build anything.
Climate change is here and mother nature is changing fast in various parts of the world.
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We lived in Maine in 1978 … they had MASSIVE blizzard that year… completely snowed in your doors
You had to find your car and dig it out lol… and hope they able to keep roads plowed – many got stuck on highways in blizzard – it was bad blizzard
But I made igloos and tunnels lol ❤️✌️ bunkers lol
Well the earth does this… it has periods of warmth and then ice ages … historically is MO
But we make worse with pollution and things – we do not care for earth like should
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Excellent – where exactly is the car?? in the snow! 🙂
Reminds me of an advert l saw once .. In the sand!!
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Hahaha that is hilarious ❤️😄😄
What is it for?? AA? Lol that must be like our automobile club? But ours is AAA… American automobile association lol ✌️
That commercial though reminds me a little of our geico commercials lol
Oh how funny ❤️😄
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Yes basically the same thing just one more A for you 🙂
They were a very popular campaign in the mid 80’s l think – corny but catchy and we still remember them for their simplicity 🙂
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Advertising brilliance – you don’t see that anymore!! Or rarely
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You are right we don’t – but you’ll love this …. it’s because this was the eighties!!
The 80’s were easy to understand and memorable for so many reasons .. Today, mm, well moving back to the 80’s hahaha 🙂
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Hahaha yeah ❤️
I do love the 80’s
It used to feel like yesterday – now feels like million years ago 😮
The 80’s was the last decade before the World Wide Web entangled the world 😉✌️
Although a spark was already lit with video games …
And before that was TV
Lol
But the 80’s was last decade to have life without insane crazy constantly lol
Plus I was kid lol … so last decade before I was adult 😄✌️
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It was the last decade for normal – yeah yeah l know, define normal, well when l say normal l mean before internet crazy 🙂
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Yeah once internet entered – it was all over 😮✌️
And here we are lol
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Hahaha exactly and here we are …
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