Our wisteria is getting settled, it grew well over the summer and now it's been in for a couple of years, it's time to start guiding it up and across the wall. You can see that the leaves have just started to turn this week. The virginia creeper is a very bright red in contrast and suddenly after a summer where it felt like the garden just looked like different shades of green plus some brickwork, there's a range of colours showing up. And in the rain we've had over the last few days, the reds and yellows have appeared even more vibrant.
In a break between the showers I put up some vine eyes and wire, around which I will wind the wisteria tendrils gently so that they get used to growing in that direction and are held up there when (maybe next spring, maybe the one after) hopefully they'll start to flower.
This isn't really rainy weather work, because it requires heavy use of a drill. I suppose I could have just banged the eyes into the mortar, but they have a screw on them and the mortar is quite old and uneven. Plus I have a 10mm mortar bit and a hammer drill and what's the point of having heavy duty tools if you don't use them when you can!?
I've never drilled straight into brick before. It's brilliant. It's quite hard, especially when you're up a ladder for the higher ones and there's a possibility of sudden heavy rain and you've got a lot of electricity flowing through this thing in your hands. I've not experienced this before but the brick dust liquified and came out as clay. I guess because it's an outside wall that's regularly soaked through. Got me thinking about recycling old bits of damp brick (though probably not by just drilling them to pieces!)
So now the wires are up and the next job is to untangle the existing wisteria tendrils and show them where their new home is.