Sunday 25 July 2010

More Secondhand Rubbish!

Ok, I know its supposed to be a gardening blog, but some of the cool secondhand stuff we pick up is just so great I have to show people!



















Isn't the old travel trunk AMAZING! I loved it the moment I saw it propped against a dirty old transit! the very nice people who sold it to us wanted £5 but I mercilessly beat them down to £2.50! No idea what we'll do with it, it would make excellent storage for winter woolies.




















I'm so chuffed with these, I love old pictures and have a thing for old etchings!
























This pretty flower one isn't that old, its repro but quite a nice one and at only £1 down from £2 I couldn't say no.



















This is definitely the find of the day, I LOVE it way more than is healthy, we already have several very old etchings of Oxford, this one is of a school in Newcastle. The guy wanted £5 but we only had £3, which he very kindly excepted after I said it would be much loved at our house! Its now hanging next the Oxford one in our bedroom.

Rich also did well this week with a whole roll of large wood drill bits (£1) and a rev counter for the Landrover  (£2 down from £3, He's been after one for about a year!) no pics as Rich is taking the rev counter apart and making little happy noises, I hate to disturb him when he's having fun!

The only question remains is why are we buying more stuff when we're trying to sell the house?!  Who knows, its definitely some sort of affliction!


Wednesday 21 July 2010

BBQs, Leaf Curl and Other Things

 Bit of a bitty post this one, I've been meaning to post for ages but selling a house, running 2 shops and writing a children's book is surprisingly time consuming!

With the lovely weather we've had over the last month Rich and I have finally got ourselves a BBQ, so one evening a week a go I made some nice roast veg with herds...
...and Rich made FIRE...with various meat accompaniments!






















So onto the garden, I haven't been able to spend as much time as I would like out there, also I haven't
wanted to put to many new plants or plugs in, in case we do move and I have to leave a lot of it behind. I will take some thing with us but I don't want to leave the next person with a garden of huge bald patches.


Talking of bald patches, my poor Peach tree is suffering a bit at the moment, its developed Peach Leaf Curl (sorry for the bad pic, camera refused to focus on the leaf!)

I've been feeding it with nitrogen feed since it started and giving it lots of water, just have to keep my finger crossed that it survives.




















The tomatoes are doing ok, not amazing, they are getting just to hot in the greenhouse I think, lots of green fruit put they don't seem to want to go red, I've left these 2 that have done on the plant in the hope that the rest will get the idea!



















The major success the year has been Richards chillies (they are insanely hot so I haven't even tried them, Rich who must have a asbestos mouth, he eats them right of the plant!)
























The Polka Raspberries are coming through, but only about half of them, 3 of the plants failed to grow at all, I'll have to grub these out as they just look like dead twigs right now. The ones that did come up however seem to be going well and we've had a little bit of fruit of them.
























The peas finally got going only to then have nearly 2 months of really dry weather which despite Rich and I watering them twice a day seems to have dried most of the peas in their pods, also we seem to have some sort of little grub getting in and setting up home in the pods. We managed to rescue some and very lovely they where to, I don't know the last two years everything has been to wet this year its to dry...bloody global warming!
























One of the few plants to like the hot weather has been my little Petite Pan Courgette I put in a couple of month ago, I cant wait to harvest the veg of this, its so cute looking!



















Another small success is my pear tree, its been in 2 years and never even made the attempt to fruit then all of a sudden this year its covered! It was slight belatedly that I realised that you should really have 2 pears for cross pollination and seeing as we cant fit any more trees in the orchard I was wondering whether to dig it up and give it away, glad I didn't now! One of the neighbours must have a secret pear tree somewhere!















Sadly the dry weather had yet another victim, my poor little blueberry bushes have really suffered this year, the fruit has dried and shrivelled on the branches, they look like very tiny raisins.  We really struggled to keep everything alive. I think these bushes will come out in the autumn and be transplanted into pots (if we move they will come with) I'm really gutted as I LOVE blueberries and they are a bloody crazy price in the supermarket.



Things are looking a little scorched in the garden right now!




We do however have some Cobnuts on the bushes so it not all bad!