The Third Lockdown, Part 13: Terraforming again

“This will be the first of a thousand worlds that we will give life to. 

For we are gods, and we are lonely, so we shall create.” 

― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time

If for nothing else, I will remember this lockdown for having ‘exploding head syndrome’. Despite the minor inconvenience of having my brain squeezed through a wrangle, I still hold to my mission of writing a ‘blog-a-day’. If only I could get this bloody cat off my keyboard...

You may recall my attempts at terraforming the Wye Valley in a previous lockdown blog (see here). Well, back in reality-ville, I'm trying it on a much larger scale. 

Today Parc-y-lan, tomorrow the world...

When, four years ago, first taking on that which we now call 'our garden', I had several ideas on dealing with this large sloping untamed field. These ideas ranged  from 'cutting the steeply sloping field with my sit-on lawnmower' to 'die while cutting the steeply sloping field with my sit-on lawn mower'. I tried the first, then narrowly opted out of the second.. 

The next 'big idea' was terraforming. Ok, terracing in real English. This 'seemed like a good idea at the time', but I then found myself in an unenviable place. The terracing inevitably left a significant amount of banking to deal with. By 'banking' I mean both difficult steep slopes AND difficult financial institutions. By significant, I mean AN ENTIRE KILOMETRE of them. One f**king thousand metres of them. Or if you prefer imperial measurements: A lot. 

This amount of banking in this climate would be impossible to maintain without using acres of garden liner. But this liner needs covering with life to make it look anything other than an urban wasteland.

Much of this life was planted about three years ago, so this year most should be established and starting to grow with some pace. Some areas are nearly there, some are not.

This was the garden three years ago in May.

Now it looks like this:

This was three years ago:

This is now:

Hopefully, most liner will be covered in another three months of growth, but some banking is still being planted even now. Today, the banking below the Aviary had several rosemary plants added amongst the Agave.

Some of the banking is already well covered.

Other parts are struggling after this winter's frost.

The rest of this week will be spent getting the watering system working. We've already put in about 1.5 kilometres of piping, more goes in tomorrow. We need to sort this now. Summer is coming.

Meanwhile, in a hidden corner, something else is coming...

Fuqua Duck and his siblings are growing...

“Why should we be made thus, to improve and improve, unless it is to aspire?”

― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time