I have returned from the garden.

I weeded the path, forked over the vegetable patch and gave the compost heap a good prodding and forking.

Gardening jeans!

Men's bootcut jeans from 2004. My garden's a cross-dressing retro fashion hotspot.

Do you have other types of housework trouser?

Dusting trews?

Polishing pantaloons?

I do have some painting trousers (old jogging bottoms with paint all over them).

Daubin' joggers.

I am once again about to put on my gardening jeans.

That was such a strenuous gardening session, pulling up ivy and creepers and unwanted rose stems. I'm covered in scratches.

But I did get to do a Harrison Chase impression when I was feeding stuff into the shredder.

Here is my smiley recreation of Seeds of Doom, btw:

I pruned the apple tree this afternoon. I also uprooted the ivy and dug out the roots of a dead bush with the Neverbend Rootbreaker (which you may remember from the old HOTW). And I piled earth round the bottom of compost heap 2 so the wasps can't get in again this year.

I too did some pruning this weekend. I read that, despite the cold weather, one can prune the ribus blackcurrant shrub which had become very woody and with too many little trunks forming. So I got the pruning saw out and cut some of them out and reduced the height of the woody thicker branches, allowing the newer thinner ones to thrive - and it's those ones which produce the fruit apparently, not that I ever pick the blackcurrants - I leave that to the birds.

I also cut down an unneeded hawthorn which had pretty much turned into a little tree and little ash or mountain ash which never really does anything.

I'm once again about to put on my gardening jeans, and prune the buddleia.

I pruned that buddleia good.

I pruned the buddleia this weekend too! I remember reading a few years ago that you could do that in February. I didn't cut it right down to almost the ground this time though but just took the height out of it, down to probably about 5ft. Last year I was shocked at just how quickly it grew from the stump I chopped it down to. Within days there were new shoots coming out of the old wood and it just shot up - probably the quickest-growing shrub I know of. Then it displayed huge white flowers which attract butterflies.

A standard purple variety set itself at the other end of the garden last year which should grow more this year.

It's like we're buddleia buddies

It's been a while since I cut mine back to the ground - I wouldn't dare try now, it's about 15ft high.

The blackberries look like they're about to become edible sometime in the next week. They're starting to develop some colour.

Fangirl Three wrote:

It's like we're buddleia buddies

It's been a while since I cut mine back to the ground - I wouldn't dare try now, it's about 15ft high.

I'm sure I read that you get more flowers on newer shoots in the summer, hence why people cut them right down at the beginning of the year - but that didn't seem to be the case with mine last year which just seemed to have the same amount of flowers as normal.