Shoestring Garden

New Beginnings

2010-11-30T09:04:00.000-08:00

Yes, finally, finally we have moved. It was all very uncertain for a while but on the 19th of November we where assisted by friends, family and neighbours an we're finally all in!

And as we are making so many new beginnings we have decided to start a new website which will be all about both the house and the garden, we hope that everyone who has been kind enough to follow my ramblings on here will take a little look at the new site, I assure you it will be the same old nonsense just under a different address.

So a big thank you to everyone who has taken a peek, left a comment and linked to us here, we hope to see you again soon!

Kat & Rich

xxx

Still Here....

2010-10-07T23:41:00.000-07:00

....Grrrr why, why does selling a house take so loooong! How very boring the whole process is, and why do people who are selling house to other people think its ok to not have any of the vital paper work that potential buyers need to see ready and waiting?!

Calming breath...as you can tell we still have not moved, but you really don't want to hear all about that, its boring and results in me swearing colourfully. So what else have we been doing besides tearing our hair out. Not much actually, hair pulling takes up a crazy amount of time, as does the number of jobs we have recently got from our agents. The exact same thing happened last year in the run up to the wedding, although I cant complain as we really do need the money...mostly to pay the enormous solicitors bill for all this extra leg work he's doing!!!....calm...calm.

So I thought I'd put up some picks from our recent 1 year anniversary trip to London...

We stayed in Kensington just up the road form the Natural History Museum, which was as brilliant as I remember it being when I was 12!

Look me next to dinosaur bones...cool!

I was amazed that Rich had never been, I think its fair to say he was pretty impressed and its free to get in...FREE!!!

Another reason for visiting the Natural History Museum was that over the summer they have been running and exhibition called Butterfly Explorers, which is basically a big poly tunnel on the front lawn, full of live butterflies!

Knowing my obsession with butterflies Rich kindly indulged me by taking pics of my holding them, it was amazing, the best part of the whole weekend!

After all that culture and butterfly taming I dragged Rich off to Spitalfields Market on the Sunday, it was brilliant! I think Rich lasted about an hour and a half before he'd had enough of the crowds!!

So I whisked him off to the Tate for a calming coffee and muffin (how much to they charge for a bloody muffin at the Tate!! it is only a snack not modern art!) Sadly no pics of the Tate as we ran out of shots!

So a pretty good weekend, a nice break from the monotony of the house stuff....can I go again this weekend please!!

So Much Happening

2010-09-08T06:57:00.000-07:00

So so much happening at the moment, visits to the bank, our solicitor, trying to find enough boxes to pack my growing piles of stuff...wondering if the new house will be big enough for all this crap!

So the blog has been a bit neglected, sorry! So here are some pics form the last few weeks...

My first Courgette, it was very tasty!

Tons of lovely Raspberries, both red and yellow!

The Pears are just about ready now, I still can't believe how many there are!

Here we have a few of our latest boot sale finds, some really cool metal and enamel drawers for the new studio and an enamel industrial light shade, which we're hoping to use in the new kitchen when we redesign it.

I'll try to put some more stuff up in a few days, there never seems to be enough time at the moment! I really can't wait to get the move over with!

The Move Is On!

2010-08-09T07:32:00.000-07:00

WOO and indeed HOO!

Yes we've sold our little house! Well excepted a good offer from a lovely couple and had our offer on the house 2 doors over excepted, so its all down to the boring paper work and surveys now!

Fingers crossed we'll be able to complete by the end of September! So then will come the task of tackling the new garden...oh my god I cant wait!!!

More Secondhand Rubbish!

2010-07-25T04:53:00.000-07:00

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!

BBQs, Leaf Curl and Other Things

2010-07-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

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!

6 Months

2010-06-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

Another Sunday morning and another carboot sale (the best way to spend a Sunday in my opinion!) When we go round the boots sale I have a little list in my head of things to look for, stuff for us, stuff for friends, keeping an eye out for unusual presents I can squirrel away until the right time. When I see the prefect thing for someone it is the most exciting moment, then the rush to get to the stall before someone else beats me to it and the haggle (its only the right thing if I can get it at the right price!)

This morning wandering round I got that little shiver of excitement, "Dad would LOVE that" I thought, oh ya...right... laps of memory there..."Dad would have loved that" I'm 6 months to the day to late.

So Rich and I brought it anyway, in the knowledge that yes Dad would have loved that, so we'll have to love it for him.

Dad would also have appreciated my haggling skills, should have been £10, I got it for £5!

Moving On Up

2010-06-23T10:16:00.000-07:00

Ok so huge apologize for the lack of posts, but here is the reason...

Yes peeps, its time to let someone else take on the Shoestring Garden, after much sole searching we have decided to try to buy another house that we have seen (in here you should probably insert the sentence "Kat badgered and harangued Rich into buying another house mere weeks after finally finished our existing house")

The reason for the move are many and varied...ok no there not, basically we just need a bigger house, ours is only 1 bedroom and we always knew we'd have to move eventually. Working from home takes up a lot of space and quite frankly we've run out of it.

So were will we be jetting off to if the house sale gods see fit to bless us...

Well about 2 doors over actually!

So things are a little tense right now, we have to wait to see if anyone wants a little cottage like ours (with an amazing garden attached!), we're not kidding our selfs here, the chances of us getting the new place are slim...I'll probably be back on here in a week saying we're staying put!

So the garden posts will continue unless something major happens, and of course the blog will move with us if we go! On the plus side the new place has a bigger garden, a whole 5 feet wider, I can hardly wait!!!

Fingers crossed!

Things Are Afoot...

2010-06-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

...Yes indeed, things are afoot which have been taking up rather large amounts of time, leaving little for gardening or blogging, but more on that in another post.

Our Rocket that I sowed in the last post is coming on well, we're looking forward to having it in our sandwiches soon.

So many of the flowers are finally out and are looking amazing!

The tomatoes are looking good, we've got our first green fruit on the vine, one of the striped Tigerella...

...buts that nothing compared to the Chillies which are going mad, covered in flowers (Rich is already planting to dry some and make chilli oil with others!

The main veg patch is doing well not we've got some more sunny weather, the weeds are also doing well, so I'm out there as often as I can to try and keep on top of them.

The Peas are really taking off after a slow start, they got very munched on by the the damn slugs again so we had to resort to the organic slug pellets (we tried several other method last year and nothing worked so in desperation of having some peas at all this year I've fallen back on the pellets) They are looking very pretty on the willow wigwams.

I picked up a little Patty Pan Courgette when we where back in Shropshire the other week, from the Ludlow farmer market. We haven't done courgettes before so I fancied giving them ago.

I'm so enjoying just be able to wander down the garden of an evening and water a few things, blissful!

Treasure

2010-05-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

Ok yet another post of stuff I found at the carboots, sorry!

Last weekend was another good one, the amazingly hot weather helped, we got a vintage metal Horlicks crate (should have been £6, we got it for £4) and 3 old Ladybird books (£1 each, we got 3 for £2.50) which Rich and I sort of collect...

I decided to use the crate to plant Rocket in (Rich's favourite!), so I had to sort out a lining, we had some old willow screening off cuts from the fence and a few old empty compost bags...

Some fiddly work...

Then the cut up compost bag...

yes it did look at bit of a mess but once the compost had filled it out it look much better (honestly!)...

...and here's the finished result sitting by the pond all planted up with seed! Right where Rich can keep and eye on it! Mmm a good day of booting and recycling!

More Car Boot Goodness!

2010-05-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

Arrr finally the car boot season is up and running again, and like an addict I breath a sigh of relief!

So what bargains did I bag this weekend ( I can tell you really can't wait to see!) well not that much actually, it was threatening rain which put a lot of people off, not us though!

I got a MASSIVE Foxglove for £4, something that looks like a really big Cornflower (not label) for £2 and half a dozed duck eggs for £1.50....

I have wanted to try duck eggs for ages, but our local shop only sells hen eggs. I can't believe how huge they are! Apparently they make good cakes, that's the only excuse I need!

Anyway here's the plants in there new home by the pond...

The rest of Sunday was spent potting up Rich's Chillies, my Beetroot and some French Runner Beans Rich got me...

...and yet another willow wigwam!

Its all looking a bit Beatrix Potter! ( if you ignore the half coke bottles on the raspberry posts...and the big white motor home in the background...and the concrete garage, ok it doesn't look at all like Beatrix Potters garden)

For The Love of Apple Crates

2010-05-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

I love old apple crates (yes I am very sad!) a couple of posts ago I showed you the 3 we brought from Gardenalia in Bath, they where a bit rotten and very wormy in places so have spent quite a few weeks residing in the greenhouse waiting for me to give them a bit of tlc...

The plan was to make a veg storage rack as we are always short of space come autumn...

After being soaked in woodworm treatment I decided to paint the insides white, which really brightened them up, that and a good sand was all I did...

I may but a plank across each one to stop the veg sacks rolling out but apart from that I'm really happy with how they turned out!

I'm having to resist them temptation to put books in them, once I do that I know I'll never use them as a veg rack...must resist...!

Bank Holiday Weekend Part 2!

2010-05-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

More Pics, sorry!

So as we had the Monday off ( woohoo!) Me, Rich and Mum decided to make the most of it and have a day at the sea side, Lyme Regis in Dorset to be exact, we're only a couple of hours away in Bath so its ideal for a day out!

I totally LOVE Lyme, it feels like Bath only smaller and with a beach! We had a little walk along the sea front, admiring the amazing beach huts as we went...

My favourite is this one, the colours are so seasidey, I love that its a bit flaky too!

We discovered that there was the tale end of the fossil festival going on, with people carving stone...

...and balancing stones (?) something I'd never heard of before, I later discovered it was this chap

Weird but quite cool too!

Rich and I both love this quote!

Lyme has one of the most wonderful garden shops I've ever been in, I wanted everything in there, if your ever on the South Coast go at take a look at Ginger Beer (thankfully they also have a website!)

After drooling at that for a bit we went for a walk along Monmouth Beach, this is the beach where you can see all the ammonites embedded in the rocks.

Its so insanely beautiful I couldn't stop taking pics, sorry lots of rocks coming up...

This is Mums dog Eddie, Richard wants it making very clear that he's is nothing to do with him!

Aren't those fossils amazing!

We even brought back a couple of little souvenirs (because I haven't got enough crap in the garden!)...

I'd love to say we found them but Mum brought them for me off a guy at the fossil festival for £1 each!

So another brilliant day and a very good weekend in all, marred only slightly by the fact that my Dad wasn't there, but I think we enjoyed it for him...

Bank Holiday Weekend Part 1!

2010-05-05T09:51:00.001-07:00

I warn you now, these are going to be very picture heavy couples of posts, sorry but there was just too much to take pics of this weekend!

Mum and her woofer Eddie came to stay this weekend, as it was the Bank Holiday (for anyone outside the UK, it means we get Monday off too, woohoo!) so as usual the weather forecast was abysmal, pretty standard for this country!

However we actually managed to dodge most of the showers and had a brilliant weekend, Saturday Mum and I went into Bath (Rich gave us a bit of girly time and selflessly stayed home and played on his Xbox, what a kind chap he is!)

There was much looking in shops and having of lunches (as usual), if its a dry day in Bath it is now law that we go to the Walcot Saturday Market, Rich and I have procured many treasures there over the years and this weekend was no exception...

Now some of you may wonder why exactly I would want a Lobster Pot, in my defence...its so pretty! I couldn't leave it on the nice ladies stall, its just so amazing, I'm going to keep loo roll in it in the bathroom!

Anyway after all the strenuous buying of useless fishing equipment we spend the evening with our feet up!

Sunday we managed to get in the garden between rain clouds, we even got the odd bit of sunshine, we had had our latest parcel from Victoriana Nursery on Friday night so I was itching to get as much planted up as possible.

I got my Auriculas planted in lovely little terracotta pots...

That's the meter cabinet their sitting out, I hate those horrid white boxes, its right on the front of our cottage too, luckily with the bench in front of it and these little plants on top its not to bad now!

We also planted the Sweet Peas up on the patio this year, they are my favourite flower and I wanted them where I could see them all the time...

I can't wait for that amazing scent they have, smells like summer to me!

Here's our Goji Berry next to the pond, its in a nice deep pot, hopefully this will keep it happy!

As you can see the tomatoes are going well, the odd bit of sun really helps things along.

I seem to have had a very wicker heavy weekend this week, I brought 2 more of these willow wigwams from Gardenalia for the bargain price of £20 for the 2, I hope my Peas appreciate my bargain hunting!

I ordered another 10 Chive plants, I think I have mentioned that I was trying to line the edge of the veg beds with them, as this always seems to be a bit of a dead area, I love Chives not only are the great in food but they are so pretty when they flower.

Another herd I wanted to try was Fennel, I've never grown it before (and am not entirely sure how you use it!) but I'm willing to try anything this year! 2 Plants are now at home in one of the Belfast sinks (as it was the only spot I had left!)

And lastly my Brussels Sprouts, they are tucked into a corner where they can be left to just get on with things!

We also have more of the Boltardy Beetroot which we grew last year but I haven't cleared a space for that yet, and more Chillie plants than you can shack a hot spicy stick at (Rich is very pleased!) Those I'll plant up tomorrow.

Phew, I think I need a weekend off after all that!

Bee House

2010-04-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

I felt in need of a little DIY project last week, 3 days tied to my desk and not being able to spend time in the garden and the lovely sunshine was enough. So on Thursday evening I set myself the task of build my own little Bee House, I'm sure you've all seen the ones they sell at garden centers...

...very nice but a little on the pricey side, and this time of year all spare pennies must be saved for the boot sales! So as we had a lot of old canes around the place I gave it a go.

I cut the canes up into 10" length with a hacksaw...

Then bundled them together like fire wood and tied them with copper wire...

(that's me concentrating while Rich took pics!)

Then I wrapped some green garden string around the ends to cover the wire up.

I'm really chuffed with the end result! and it cost me the grand total of bugger all, just half an hour of my time!

Ok not quite as smart as a shop brought one but I don't think the bees will care, hopefully this will encourage them away from the other side of the shed where the chicken coop is coming together, apparently them keep crawling into the old nail holes in the wood Rich is using! Cheeky bees!

Busy

2010-04-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

Where have I been?! Sorry life got on top of us for the last few weeks, there was holidays away in the sun, mounds of illustration work to wade through, chicken coops to work on, new computer to buy then load all my software on and in the last week the horrifying realisation that the Landrovers MOT is up on the 1st of May and the chances of her passing are slim to say the least (welding, over heating, knackered alternator ect ect.....big black Landrover shaped hole in our bank account...again)

Poor Rich, he's been either under the Landys bonnet, crawling under my desk with wires or measure lengths of wood and trying to decide exactly how much square footage your average chicken needs to live on, I have spend most of my time making tea and asking if I can help! My poor lovely husband, no wonder he's going grey!

Anyway, a v.quick catch up on the garden and hopefully more pics this coming weekend.

My Polka Raspberries are starting to show some life, I cant wait for them to fruit, we don't seem to have any problems with birds on the All Golds (Rich reckons they cant see the yellow berries as they blend with with the leaves better?) I think I will have to net the red ones.

I had my first batch of plants from Victoriana Nursery the weekend before last, I was really please as I was desperate to get my tomaotes in and going. This year I'll have 4 veriaties in the greenhouse, 'Tigerella' which we grew last years and was brilliant, very tasty! 'Shirleys Pixie' as small bush tomato which should give us v.small sweet fruits to go in salads and sandwiches.

'Black Krim' which sounds a bit menacing, they are a large heirloom verity which should be good for sauces and soups, also they have purple flesh which should be interesting!

And lastly we will be having a 'Tamerillo Tree Tomato Plant', don't know about you but I'd never heard of them, apparently they have a plum like fruit that will carry on producing for 7 months of the year, click on the link about for more info! Anyway I thought they sounded really unusual and we've been trying to experiment with slight less well know fruit and veg so I'm really looking forward to what we'll get. We wont get the plant till May time so I'll post a pic when it arrives.

We will also be trying out a Goji Berry plant this year, according to folklore, people living in the Himalayas who eat Goji Berries are reputed to live to 120 odd, not sure about that but I'll get back to you in around 90 years and let you know how I'm going. Anyway they are another tasty fruit that we can have room to grow so its being added to the collection.

We are a bit late with our spuds this year, mostly because I ran out of time before I went away so they had to wait 3 weeks. This year we have 'Forest Gold' and 'Edzell Blue' which is an amazing violet blue colour (I seem to have gone for a lot of purple fruit and veg this year, there is going to be some very odd coloured soup later in the year!)

On top of all the fruit and veg we've also had quite a few flowers, I'm trying to bulk the few flower beds we have out (most of the beds have edible stuff in!) to encourage bees and butterflies, so Hollyhocks, Lupins, Drumstick Primulas and Geraniums have gone in, some in the bed around the Peach tree and the rest in pots around the pond, things are starting to look very pretty out there now (at last!!)

I'm so pleased that Spring seem to be here at last, its so good to be able to walk around the garden and see everything starting to flower, it makes my soul feel lighter.

The Great Shed Revamp

2010-03-17T15:06:00.000-07:00

That's right, we have finally begun the great shed revamp, the first step in building what will eventually become the chicken coop!

We have a very old shed up near our cottage, it has needed tidying up since we moved in but has been far down the list of jobs to do, however Rich has promised me Chickens for my birthday (end of May!) and the only place for a good sized coop is on the concrete slab next to the shed. This however means that all the old ship lap that covers the front of the shed has to be removed, its old and a bit tatty and the gaps between the planks would be a nice breeding ground for lice, so we're replacing it with tight fitting tongue and groove. Here's Rich removing the old planks...

As the tongue and groove is being used outside it needed to be treated with something the keeps it weather proof, we decided on a coloured stain so from one slightly tatty brown shed to a lovely blue one...

It goes really nice against the Bath stone don't you think!

Above you can see the space where Rich will build the coop. Poor love, he does get asked to do the impossible by me sometimes! He was supposed to be building this with my Dad so sadly now its going to have to be a solo project. I have every faith in my lovely Husband, I'm sure he's going to make a brilliant job of it!

While Rich was making our shed look pretty, I was trying to tidy up our neglected pond. I think I've mentioned the pond before, it acts as a water butt for the run off from the roof of the cottage, I wish I could take credit for this great idea but it was the old couple who owned our house before us who installed it. Basically there's a splitter coming off the down pipe that then travels under the patio, through a flower bread and a rockery and out into the pond. I use it all summer to water the pots on the patio and every year we get a lot of frogs and newts in it (which I like to thinks keeps the slug population in check).

Over the last couple of years it has got very over grown, so the weekend was a perfect time to give it a much needed trim...

A vast improvement! and as I was clearing it this little chap came out from the weeds...

And lastly another little project that we will eventually get round to finishing is my new vegetable rack. Our cottage is tiny so storage of any kind is limited, and storing our crops is always tricky. I brought these lovely old apple bushels from the wonderful Gardenalia for the amazingly bargainus price of £7 each!!!

These will be sanded, wood worm treated and then made into a unit for storing, potatoes, onions ect...

Not sure when we'll get this finished, Rich and I both have books to finish up, and I'm running off for 2 weeks hols, I'll add it to the ever lengthening list!

Peachs & Apricots!

2010-02-25T07:14:00.000-08:00

Finally we managed to get our Peach all planted and snug! This is our second Peach Tree from Victoriana Nursery's, we decided to give our first one away to Rich's sister Gemma for her birthday ( Gem send me a pic when its all planted up!!) there's nothing like family forcing fruit trees on you!!

So we got another for our garden and decided to go for an Apricot as well (you can never have enough soft fruit!) We decided to plant the Apricot (Hargrand) up on the edge of our little lawn, in front of where the chicken coop will be going (yes, its happening this year for definite, watch this space!!) the orchard at the bottom of the garden is now full so we're having to squeeze trees and bushes in where we can, I want to make the whole garden as productive as possible!

Rich kindly obliged by digging the hole despite a nasty cold (arr my poor lovely!)

Ok I know it doesn't look amazing now, its looks like a twig BUT it is a twig with potential!!

Heres Rich with the Peach twig (sorry I mean Peach Tree Red Haven)!

This tree we planted nearer the house in a flower bed that is a sun trap in the Spring and Summer, we previously had a ornamental cherry in here but I dug it up in favour of a more useful tree (don't worry the cherry was re-homed on freecycle)

Its nice to be outside again doing something productive in the garden, I feel Spring is just around the corner...

A Little Time Out

2010-02-25T06:33:00.000-08:00

Rich and I had a little time out last week, we went up to Shropshire to see ours Mums.
We had a really good week, although I must say I am heartily sick of bloody snow now, just stop ok...and give us our spring already!!

I was full of good intentions of taking lots of nice pics of good old Shropshire but everything was either muddy, gray, windy as hell or snowing so I didn't bother. The only day I took my lovely new camera out(That Rich brought me for xmas. Thanks Lovely!) was the Tuesday which was the nicest day of the week. I made Richard take me out for a little culture and the possibility of learning stuff! We when to Blists Hill Victorian Town and it was BRILLIANT!!

Blists Hill is a Victorian Town, all the staff around the place are in full costume, there are shops you can go in a buy goods, a pub, fish and chip shop (ooh my god the chips are good!), chemists, bakery, printers everything, there's even a bank where you can change your money so you can shop with old currency (which totally confused me!).

Blists Hill is situated in Ironbridge which is just a few miles from Shrewsbury where I grew up, consequently my school did regular visits here whenever possible (can you image 60 kids running round here annoying the staff and trying to push each other in the canal!)
Neither Rich or I have been since we left school so fancied seeing it again after 15 years and I'm glad to say it didn't disappoint.

The whole place is so beautifully kept, the buildings are amazing and the stuff in the shops (most of it props which sadly you can't buy other wise I would have spent a fortune!) are incredible and the staff, most of which are crafts people themselves are obviously really passionate about what their doing.

You can get a real feel for what life was like back then, right down to the horse and cart going up the street and the pigs and chicken every households or business seem to have kept (wish I had a pig sty like this!)

Rich and I discussed it and decided that had we been Victorians this is the house we would have liked to live it...

although realistically and knowing me and Rich it would have been more like to have been this one...

...the Squatters Cottage!

All in all a great day out, if you find yourself in Shropshire GO!

A Bad Day

2010-01-26T09:46:00.000-08:00

Don't you hate those days where not matter what you do everything seems to be going wrong, my day started of with me wanting to beat my computer with a very large stick! Why does it decide to go on strike when every I have a lot of work on?! One of life delightful little mysteries evidently.

Anyway my day picked up with the arrival of the post after lunch...

So naturally I dumped my paying work and went to have a look...

Its the first of this years plants from the wonderful Victoriana Nursery's, in this parcel was 6 Polka Raspberry Canes, a Red Haven Peach tree , some Giant Headed Sunflower Seeds and 2 packets of Corn Flower seeds...nice!

I had got the bed prepared for the Raspberries on Sunday, we already had 2 rows of All Gold Raspberries that I got from Freecycle 18 months ago. They have been wonderful, really heavy croppers which has sort of been the problem, with nearly 15 plants all fruiting in September we cant eat the damn things fast enough (yes, yes I know the anwser is make jam!)
So I decided to take out the front row and replace them with an earlier fruiting variety to lengthen our Raspberry eating season (and it gives me plenty of time to learn now to make jam too!!)

Anyway all this led to me order 6 Polka Raspberries, a variety from Poland that fruits on the first years wood (excellent if you are as impatient as me)
So out came my trusty All Golds, to be given away on Freecycle (again)...

and the bed was dug over with some good compost from our bins.

So late this afternoon I managed to get out there and put my new canes in...

and here they are looking all neat!

So the tree will be planted tomorrow as I ran out of daylight to do it this afternoon. I have wanted a Peach Tree forever (because I'm that sad!) but was under the impression I needed a huge greenhouse or a south facing wall to grow it up, but Stephen assures me that my south facing sloping garden with good drainage will do just as well! How exciting!! I can't wait, I don't care if we only ever get 1 fruit of it!

So a bad day that managed to get slightly better, phew!

Moving On...

2010-01-20T09:17:00.000-08:00

...Not forgetting but time to move on I think.

Well for obvious reason we haven't really been up to much, funny how much time missing someone can eat up in a day!

The weather has just been to appalling to go anywhere near the garden, which has been very neglected for the last 2 months what with one thing and another, hopefully this weekend I will get some time to get out there and tidy up a bit, I will also be making decisions on veg to plant in the spring soon.

Much of our time this week as been spent indoors, desperately trying to get some artwork done and also tidying up after Christmas.

I have finally stopped sweeping up pine needles, thank god, kept finding them embedded in my socks.

A few flowers around the place to make me smile.

Here is a little project Rich and I did last week, I found this old cotton reel in a junk shop in Shropshire, so we made it into a lovely candle stick to go next to the stove. Very shitty chic as my Dad would say!

Goodbye

2009-12-31T10:56:00.001-08:00

I have written before on this blog about my Dad, about his influence on me and my sister and whether he knew it or not on most of the people he met. I could go on for pages about the sort of guy he was but for the moment I will re frame or I will end up crying all over my Mums laptop!

Our wonderfully Dad died on the 27th of December 2009 aged just 60.

To say we are all heartbroken is an understatement, he will leave a huge hole in our little family that will never be filled.

Bye Dad, we will miss you forever.... I just hope they have Wi-Fi in Heaven.

Are We Feeling Christmasy Yet?!

2009-12-16T12:42:00.000-08:00

YES!

Yep, I love Christmas, any excuses to eat to much chocolate and sit around watching cheesy films...oh wait I do that the rest of the year as well! Ok so I get to do it with a Christmas tree in the corner of the living room, which is nice.
We have quite a collection of vintage and glass baubles that I've picked up over the last few years (mostly at car boots and ebay) so I really love decoration the tree.

We also use ivy and holly collected from our lane to decorate the rest of the house...

I just love our tiny little cottage at Christmas, it suddenly feels cozy and warm (thanks to the stove) and very twinkly!

See, whats more Christmasy than a kitten snoozing by her Christmas tree!

Apologies!

2009-12-07T08:22:00.000-08:00

I seem to have taken a little unscheduled blog break there! A combination of doing jobs on the house we put off till after the wedding, trying to finish my first children's book for the publishers deadline and the fact that our camera seems to have packed up, has meant I either don't have anything to tell you about or cant take pics!

So here's a few bits and pieces we been up to over the last month that I managed to get pictures of before the camera gave up the ghost...

Most of whats in the garden has gone over now, we still got some leeks and cabbages in but that's about it, which is ok by me as it seems to have been raining here none stop for nearly 2 months, and I hate getting soaked while weeding!

I have to say one of the major success of this year for me has been the Sweetcorn, I've never grown if before and once we got over the mice problem, they where wonderful. I was never a huge fan of Sweetcorn but I that has changed now I've eaten home grown, I just wish we'd planted more (on the list again for next year!)
Here it is having just about gone over, I was in the process of pulling the dead stalks up for compost...

I also used up the very last of the tomatoes in October, I was amazed at the size of them (I shouldn't really, there called Giant Delicious, does what it says on the tin!)

I made about a ton of tomato and basil soup (about half of which is still in the freezer!)

We did have one tiny bit of planting to do before the end of the year, back in the summer I ordered 2 hedging plants for the orchard, Cherry Plums. It was the first time I'd heard of them, but apparently they make good shelter hedging for orchards, and produce red or yellow fruit the size of cherries but the shape of plums. At the moment they don't look like much...

...but I'm looking forward to the spring when they come to life!

Another thing we've been trying to do this month is keep warm! As money is tight (as always!) we have been trying not to have the central heating on (thank you British Gas, I do like my fingers blue and my pockets empty!) so we have been relying more and more on our trusty little Stovax wood burner (which is AMAZING! I have probably said it before but nothing get a room cosy and toasty like a wood stove) we've eaten rather quickly through our store of logs so we're having to scrounge up gash wood where we can, luckily our local garden center is happy for us to take old broken pallets off their hands...

see, I knew that Landy would be good for something!

The husbands not bad either!

The Landy has been brilliant this Autumn, she's even managed a couple of trips up to Shropshire to see our parents. Rich's Mum & Dad moved house last month, so we went up to see their lovely new cottage...

Cute isn't it, I'm not jealous in the slightest!

...and here's me stroking the horses who live next door.

So a bit of a hotch potch post, I'll try to do better from now on (and possibly nick Richards phone, which has a descent camera on it!)

The Evolution of Our Kitchen

2009-10-22T02:18:00.000-07:00

Again I feel this may be a slightly boring post for people who aren't me, what can I say, its raining a lot here in Bath!

As I may have mentioned before Rich and I live in a very tiny cottage, its nearly 200 years old (meaning there isn't a straight line in the place!) and for the last 4 years we have been slowly redecorating it. When we moved in the decor was VERY dated, I think it was last done in the early 80's, don't get me wrong the place was scrupulously clean and the lovely old lady we brought it off had obviously loved it (she'd lived here for the last 40 years!) but it just wasn't us.

My favourite room in the house is the kitchen and this was the room that needed the most work, I should explain a bit about the kitchen its is TINY, and I do mean tiny, it used to be the old back yard but in the 80's the previous owners roofed it over to extend the house. Our cottage is built into the side of a hill, meaning it quite literally sits with its bum buried, this means the only natural light coming into the kitchen come from a big velux window in the roof because the ceiling is at ground level.

Here is the kitchen a few months after we moved in...

Look at the tiles...beige with tea pots on...nice!

Here it is after I finally snapped one weekend and we ripped all the tiles off...

The units in the above pics where dreadful chipboard and formica things, these pictures still give me the shivers. After we'd been in the house about 18 months we scrapped up enough to get 2 new hand-built units, we had them made by a great local craftsman in Bristol. We had looked at what we could buy off the shelf at all the usual kitchen places but to be honest it was the same price to have hand-built units that where made to measure (and Richard design) with Oak work tops.

In this pic we have the new units but a few of the crappy old cupboards where holding on, we had quite a time getting them off the wall (when I say we I mean the royal we...as in Rich!) also as storage space was at a premium we couldn't get rid of them until we replaced them with something. Also can I just point out the lino floor here, this stuff actually does give me nightmares (I bet it gives Rich and his Dad nightmares too as they had to chip it off the floor)

Note to self: next time, lay new floor tiles BEFORE getting hand made units built and fitted.

So are we ready for the grand unveiling....

Looook at the floor tiles!!! Sorry I realize I'm very sad but I've waited years for this! Ok it has taken us nearly 4 years but we have been hampered slightly but lack of cash and time (and 2 redundancies!) but we have learned a hell of a lot, for instance ebay is brilliant, don't buy from reclamation yards, they will totally rip you off, we brought all the tiles from ebay and salvo web. We worked out after that if we had bought the tiles from the local reclamation yard we would have paid about £2000, we got nearly 1000 tiles for £500, including the hire of a van to collect them and the petrol to drive them back to Bath.
Another little trick I discovered was when it came to buying cement, we got ours from B&Q where a standard bag of cement for the floor is about £13-£15 a bag, but if you keep an eye out for split bags you can get them at about quarter the price. I don't know if every store does this but B&Q Chippenham does, we got 4 split bags for £16 and we had more then enough to do the whole ground floor of the cottage.

So my undieing gratitude goes to Rich and Rick for spending another horrible weekend once again ruining their knees and losing their sanity trying to get it all finished.

So to everyone who has to suffer living with rubbish kitchens, have faith you will get there in then end and when you do it will be totally worth it!

P.S. Please ignore the dirty dishes I have just spotted in the last few pics, just because I have a lovely kitchen doesn't meaning I've stopped being a domestic slut!

Honeymoon

2009-10-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

Ok I realize not everyone will be interested in further tales of mine and Richards wedding but at the moment I haven't had much chance to get in the garden and as I type Rich and his Dad are laying tiles in our kitchen floor so I'm trying to keep out of their way!

So I thought I'd share some of our Honeymoon pics, we ended up going to the lake district for a week, mostly because I've never been and always wanted to and also because our passports have expired and we couldn't afford new ones AND a holiday!

We stayed here, Sheperd's Nook cottage in the Kentmere Valley not far from Windermere, and its one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.

Inside it was wonderfully furnished, you know when you walk in some where and think ' that's how I would have decorated it too!' this was totally like that.

I must admit one of the reason I picked this cottage out of the dozen I was looking at was because of the Aga, I totally love Aga's and if our kitchen wasn't to small I would run out and buy one tomorrow! And if the inside wasn't good enough, this is what we had to look at out the window...

and this...

oh and this too...

and that was before we'd even left the front door!

When we did eventually tear ourselves way from the cottage one of the first things I made poor Rich do was go and see Beatrix Potters farm Hill Top. It is now owned by the National Trust (meaning it was packed with tourists) but it was fascinating to look round.

Here's me out side the really Hill Top...

and here's me outside the fake Hill Top they used in the film 'Miss Potter'...

Poor Richard!!

Anyway we had an amazing time, Rich put up with me dragging him round National Trust properties and was happy to drive down all the twisty turny lanes to get to our little cottage. I could go on ( I have A LOT more pics!) but I think I'll leave you with the best ones.

If anyone is interested in renting Shepherd's Nook you can find all the details (and some better photos) here, I highly recommend it!

We're Back!!

2009-09-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

Yep, we're finally back to something resembling normality! Now the wedding is over with I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all my time now...oh that's right I have a garden that's reverted to jungle in the 2 weeks we where away!

Anyway the wedding was perfect, exactly the sort of day Rich and I wanted. Not to mention that by some amazing peace of blind lucky it was actually sunny and hot!

So without any further ado I shall now bore you with pics!!

Mmmmm, who has a yummy Husband... that's right Me!

Do you like the dress! not bad for a second hand dress and skirt cobbled together into a wedding dress by my amazingly talented Mum! and the whole thing cost about £100! (Mum says's I should stop telling people this but I'm extraordinarily proud of my dress and her handy work!)

Our lovely bridesmaids, my sister Sally on the left and Rich's sister Gemma on the right.

Our fantastic cake, cupcakes was a great idea, no messy cake cutting which would probably have ended up with me getting it all down my dress!

And our reception venue, which was a local village hall, decorated by us, our family's and friends (soo much fun!!)

I could go on and bore you senseless for hours but I shall refrain, just to say a huge thank you to all our family and friends who came (some from quite far away, in a couple of cases from the other side of the world!) Thanks you for making it the most memorable day ever, Richard and I couldn't have asked for anything better!

And finally to sum up, I'd like to share the poem my crazily talented sister Sal wrote and read at the reception:

He sat next to her, they met on a train,
that hustled and bustled through hammering rain,
They travelled together, through turbulent weather,
to big school in Wales,
to draw and drink ales.

The quaint little house on a terrible street,
was home to the two, for a year and a week.
We painted the artex and covered the cracks,
and transformed the terrace to palace, from shack.
He brought her a hamster, he was two tones of grey,
was kept in a sock draw until her birthday.

A holiday was planned in a damp caravan,
"To Barmouth we'll run for a few nights of fun"
with 'Richard the Sand Elf' and 'Sally the Brave'
decided to rebel and pierce her navel.
Mummy was shocked and Daddy just laughed,
Kate took photos and out Sally passed.

After bumbling home in the old CV6,
that struggled up hills and tripped over sticks.
With the grace and finesse of a fine ballerina,
Richard ran back to his yellow Cortina.
He patched up 'old yeller' with the finest wall filler,
that crumbled away as the metal got thinner.

Kate moved down south to live in a Bath,
that ran hot and cold as the weeks slowly passed.
Without her boy, her friend and her lover,
the water grew cold, she needed her plumber.
He couldn't resist her and from London he flew,
to be with his girly who came form the Shrew.

They brought a small house in Bailbrook Lane,
with a hairpin corner to challenge the brave.
They ripped out the 3 bar and tiled the floor,
restored it to greatness but still there came more...
The garden on a shoestring, that soon became fave,
the best blog around from the money they saved.

I can't see them leaving their beautiful home,
with squirrels abundant and black dial up phone.
With Stella the cat on the window sill perched,
to gaze down the road to the rusted tin church.

After 10 years together, 10 years since that train,
that hustled and bustled through hammering rain,
we all come together to cheer and elate,
the wonderful wedding of Richard and Kate.

x

Madness

2009-08-26T11:47:00.000-07:00

Yes, madness is what seems to have descended on our life's at the mo, the wedding is now less than 3 weeks away (panic!!!) so posts will probably be non-exsistant till after we come back from the Honeymoon.

So for the time being a very quick (and I do mean quick, I've got a seating plan to sort out here!) update on whats been happening here in between me tearing my hair out.

Has anyone else noticed how early everything is this year? We have picked and eaten the few cooking apples our tree managed to squeeze out, not to mention the Blackberries! aren't they about a month ahead of themselves? The locals don't seemed to have cottoned on to this yet, but lucky I noticed the berries on the way home from work, so managed to nip home and get a pot to collect them in.

I had more than this but a generous helping went into the Blackberry and Apple crumble I made, the rest will go in the freezer as I don't have time for much else right now!

Down on the veg patch, the onions are out and we got some cabbage plugs from the boot sale at the weekend to keep the beds full and productive (always something I struggle with going into winter)

Fingers crossed the slugs leave us a few! The rest of garden so looking good despite the fact its been left to it's own devices of late.

And lastly, I would like to say a huge thank you to Stephen and Serena at Victoriana Nursery, who have given us our first wedding present (and very kindly supplied us with Cottage Garden seeds as wedding favors!)

Now I have no excuse not to give jam making a try! Lets hope theres enough fruit stored in the freezer to make some!

Work While Its Dry

2009-08-05T10:02:00.001-07:00

Sunday was surprisingly dry (for a change) so we rushed outside to do all the little jobs we've been putting off!

I brought some Leeks from the local garden center, it was supposed to be 6 Leeks for £1.50 but when you looked closely at the trays most of them had at least 2 plants per plug, so we got 24 Leeks for £3 which was brilliant!

I put them in where I lifted the potatoes as they like nitrogen rich soil, fingers crossed they do ok, I haven't grown Leeks before (Rich is already anticipating Leek and Potato pie)

A lot of the other stuff in the veg patch I'm just leaving alone, it seems to be coping fine without me fussing over it...

I'm really pleased with the Beetroot, again I just bunged it in and left it to its own devises...

Another pressing job that I have been trying to do was net the Blueberries, we had to make the cage bigger this year as the bushes have grown quite a lot, Rich built the wooden bed frame back in February, I just needed to get the netting on it.

I had to take the netting off the Strawberries as we didn't have enough without that to over the new huge frame!

While all this was going on, Rich spent the day giving the Landy a bit of TLC, in other words filling some of the gaping holes so the rain doesn't keep coming in...

Bless him, he loved every minuet!!

Another Sunday well spent!

Things To Do On A Wet Wednesday

2009-07-29T07:19:00.000-07:00

Yet again time seems to have run away from me, a combination of my latest illustration project and the wedding now only being 6 weeks away mean finding time for my little blog is a bit hard. However today I have somehow ended up with a day where I'm not at work, I'm waiting for my editor to get back to me and the wedding stuff can wait, this would usually mean a nice day in the garden but this being an English summer, its tipping it down...typical!

So I'm afraid this is rather an indoors post today, that being the case I thought I'd show off a couple of my latest car boot finds...

2 cute little plates, I try not to buy anything to flowery as Rich will only put up with so much chintz (poor love!) but these where pretty simple (and only £1 each!).

Which brings me on to my next bargain of the century...

a hardly used breadmaker for £7!

This was brought last Sunday and I have been waiting to try it out, so this afternoon I sorted out my ingredients and road tested it. I'm always a bit sceptical buy electrical stuff secondhand but the girl who sold me it seemed pretty genuine and assured me it was working fine. I have been wanting to be able to make my own bread for a while, I had tried it in the oven but it never seemed to go well so I'm hoping this will make it easier, its also finding the time to make bread that I struggle with (I don't usually have whole afternoons to fiddle about with it!). I love the smell as it cooks, really yeasty, it reminds me of when my Dad uses to make his own beer when I was younger, their kitchen always smelled the same.

So from now on the neighbours wont have to listen to me shouting "We're out of s*dding bread again!!" at 10.30 at night the day before I have to be in work...

...no, now they'll hear me shout "we're out of s*dding yeast again!!!" instead.

Anyway, the breadmaker took a couple of hours (and makes more noise than my washing machine, not to mention nearly bouncing off the counter top!) so while all this was going on I make one of Richards favourites, Anzac biscuits.

After a long hard day at work and getting drenched cycling home, its amazing what a cup of tea and a few biscuits home made will do!

A day well spent I think!

General Stuff

2009-07-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

Where have the last 2 weeks gone? I don't know, you do a few jobs around the house, have a weekend in Shropshire visiting the P's and suddenly 2 weeks of your life have rushed past!

I'm struggling to keep on top of all the jobs that need doing around here, the garden included, what with Illustration jobs, the Library and just general house stuff we never seem to get any time off! I must admit I'm looking forward to our Honeymoon in September!

Last weekend was pretty productive, I managed to finally finish planting up my latest parcel of stuff from Stephen over at Victorian Nursery's.

This lot arrived about 10 days ago, most of the stuff went in straight away, but we got send a varied selection of Chillies which have been sitting on the living room window sill for a week until I brought some more compost!

Anyway their now happy in the greenhouse with the Tomatoes which are shooting up! we have quite a few green fruits on them, I really am looking forward to home made tomato soup!

We also got 10 Chives to put in the dead space down the side of the bed with the Onions and Sweetcorn in like they have here.

We have been having some lovely weather here, just the right amount of warm sun and the odd shower, everything seems to be going mad, for instance here is the Sweetcorn about 10 days ago when I planted the Chives...

and here it is about 10 minuets ago...

It is now hip height, I really hope we get some veg off them!

There are some down sides to the bouts of wet we've been having, the army's of Slug and Snails seem to be massing under the Rhubarb and have once again decimated my brand new Peas! Here they where 2 weeks ago...

and now...

I've had to resort to the old slug pellets to defend the few plants I have left, we've managed to save 6 out of 20 plants! and that was all in one rainy night! Those slimy little b%*@£*$s!!!
Grrr (calming breath!)

We how also have some lovely Beetroot in where my Globe Artichoke was (another minor disaster, ants made a nest under it and eat the middle out of it. It was fine one evening and I came down next morning to find it dead and shriveled, and after I managed to save it from the slugs too!) So the Beetroot has taken over this part of the bed next to the Sweetcorn and seem to be doing well.

Its not just the plants who have been enjoying this nice weather, this little minx has been coming down the veg patch in the mornings to watch me jump up and down and swear when I find something else has been eaten during the night...

The sun has also meant that we managed to get the new shelving unit for the kitchen finished last weekend. After Rich hacked 4 inches out of the back it needed a fresh coat of paint, then the fun task of hang the bloody thing (Rich now has no skin left of his knuckles poor love!) here it is after most of Sunday morning and A LOT of colorful language...

and here it is after I finished putting all the stuff on it (see, I get to do the nice jobs!)

I really love it, and it goes so well with the oak work tops and retro fridge.

So a busy few weeks, although as ever you get 1 job done and there are still 600 to go! I shall go and calm down by looking at my pretty geraniums.

Introducing....

2009-06-21T07:31:00.001-07:00

...Our latest crazy purchase, An Old Crappy Landrover!!!

Ok, yes its old but not too crappy! Isn't she great! and before all the Tree Hugger's out there have a go about useless gas guzzling 4x4, she's LPG meaning she shouldn't cost us much more to run than our KA. We already have a load of jobs we can now do with her, such exciting adventures include taking all the really old rotten wood to the recycling center, buying a new front door and getting a load of old floor boards to finish the stair case off with!

Sadly the arrival of the Landy means the KA will have to go as we really can't afford the running cost of 2 cars right now. I am a bit sad about it as I do get attached to cars but hopefully we'll find her a new home....anyone interested in a luxury KA with a cream leather interior?!

Richard is especially please with the new toy (its a V8 which he has always wanted, in fact as long as its a V8 I don't think he would really care what it came in, I think a bucket would have been ok if necessary...it must be a male thing?!)

Arrrrr look at him, he looks like a jaunty farmer! It must be Landy Love!

Another Busy Weekend

2009-06-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

I think Rich and I are our own worst enemy sometimes, we get a few days where we don't have anything particularly pressing to do, no artwork deadlines looming or anything and we managed to find back breaking jobs to do! I think its all part of owning your own home, when we lived in a rented flat we just put up with stuff until the landlord could be chivvied enough to come round and sort it out!

Saturday was another gloriously sunny day, we went out for a quick look round some of our favorite secondhand shops, then made the mistake of going to the Landrover garage in the local village and got talking to their mechanic about old Defenders, this is going to lead to trouble I know it! In fact it already has with us going to South Wales tomorrow morning to look at an LPG Landy that's for sale. I don't think my mother approves!

Anyway when we got home ( all starry eyed about possible Landrover owner ship!) we made the crazy decision to clean out the shed (at 2pm! why, why??!!) The shed has needed sorting out properly since we moved in (3 an a half years ago) it had got to the point where I would quickly open the door, throw things in, then wrestle the door locked again and run away.

So after 6 hours of Rich doing battle with the junk and spiders and me cutting up all the useless wood we found in there to burn on the fire, Rich now has his tools all organized and neat and there is the possibility of being able to find what we're looking for in there.

Here is the amazingly neat looking wood pile once I'd refilled it with all the rubbish timber...

I would have taken a pic of the inside but as Rich pointed out, to the untrained eye it still looks like a bombs hit it, only we know the difference!

Sunday we got up as usual to going Car Booting, this week was a little disappointing but we managed to find a few bits...

Another storm lantern, a HUGE opium Poppy for a staggeringly cheap £1.50 and a sweet Kew Red Lavender (we have to much Lavender in our garden but its one of my favorite plants and puts up with being baked in the summer sun!)

While we had been clearing the shed on the Saturday we came across an handmade plate rack Rich mum and dad gave us over 2 years ago, they had had it made for the kitchen off one of their houses but unfortunately who every built it, whilst obviously being a very good carpenter had never tried it with an actual plate in, as they just roll straight out of the slots! Anyway we ended up with it, then shoved it in the shed and forgot about it (as you do!) Rich decided whiles being total pants as a plate rack it would make a good shelving unit...

It was however too deep and stuck out into our very tiny kitchen too far, Rich being the clever so an so he is took it outside and spend the rest of the day hacking 3 inches off the back of it. It now looks great but needs repainting, so hopefully in a few weeks we should have some lovely new shelves for me to keep my vintage cans and jars on! Hmm love recycling!

While he was doing that I spent a happy hour picking and shelling peas for the new freezer...

Then spent the rest of the day pottering around the veg patch...

I'm pleased to say the Onions and Sweetcorn are doing really well...

I've planted the Sweetcorn in a block and the next door neighbor has planted his level with mine, so we've hoping they'll pollinate each other.

I wish we had a few more but as I've mentioned before we lost a few to the mice!

The Tomatoes are loving the warm weather and are growing inches everyday, I so cant wait for home grown toms in my sandwiches, store brought just don't taste of anything!

And finally as I promised Stephen over at Victoriana Nursery I would, here is a pic of our Molly's Cottage Garden Mix it's coming on really well, can't wait to see what flowers we get!

Green & Easy

2009-06-16T07:28:00.000-07:00

In one of my previous post I was bemoaning the fact that out lovely little retro fridge had decided to pack up, after nearly a month of putting up with milk going off and not being able to freeze anything we finally bit the bullet and forked out for a new fridge freezer. Ok I realise this isn't a particularly garden oriented post but the company we got our shiny new toy from are an extremely good little business which I thought was worth a mention.

We found Green & Easy while randomly searching the web for retro cream fridges ( which are apparently not as popular as they where 3 years ago. Note to self: do no design whole kitchen around hard to replace appliances again!)

I am always slightly sceptically about buy large items off the net, I always worry it will turn up and not look a thing like it did on the site, but as we couldn't find the type of fridge we wanted at any of the regular chain stores we had very little choice (the other option being to fork out a horrendous amount of money for a vastly overrated Smeg, which would have involved one of us having to sell a kidney!)

This is the Fridge we wanted to replace...

So sad only 3 years old and in perfect condition other wise, why don't white goods manufacturers make their products to last anymore!! one fridge retailer told us your lucky if they last 18 months these days as they want you to came back an buy another one, grrrrrr!

Anyway if we where going to have to buy another one I wanted one with a separate freezer for storing produce from the garden...

Isn't it pretty! ok I realise its just a fridge but as out cottage is open plan you see it all the time so it was important to us that it looked nice.

I was hugely impressed with Green & Easy, there on-line ordering was really easy, I placed the order at about 7.30 at night when I got home from work and was called back 10 mins later to say thank you the order and they would email me a delivery date the next day! How good is that!

Now I always dread having stuff delivered to out cottage, we are hard to find and up an unmarked road, and there is also a 100 foot up hill path to contend with when people do eventually find us. Needless to say we have had a fare amount of abuse from delivery drivers who refuse to help carry stuff up the path for us.

The delivery guys with our new fridge however where brilliant! very helpful and manfully struggled up through our garden, through our very narrow cottage and even unwrapped it in the kitchen so we could check it was ok. Curry's and Argos's delivery guys have never done that!

So all in all, I'm really impressed with this little company, if you are looking for appliances or anything else for home or garden give them a look!

Mmmm nice cold milk!

At Last...

2009-06-09T07:08:00.000-07:00

...some of our own home grown food!

We had Spinach and Radishes with my home made lasagna and Strawberry's for afters, yum!

I'm very glad we rescued some of our Strawberry's from the slugs this year!

Birthdays and Finding Treasure!

2009-06-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

Phew, another busy few weeks! Sorry for the slight lapse in posting, it was a combination of having a week in Shropshire doing vital wedding prep, both our Birthdays within 5 days of each other and a long awaiting visit from Rich's lovely Mum!

So the wedding stuff is coming along well, I finally got most of the invites out (thank god!) and all that's left is to sort a band or DJ for the night.

Things in the garden are going crazy as it always does in May and June, everything seems to be in such a race to get huge and the wonderful weather has helped, although as I type this its just starting to rain (thankfully, my water butts are almost empty!)

The Rambling Cascade Strawberry's seem happy in their baskets, their handing from the front of our cottage, which is really warm and sunny.

The Strawberry's in the big bed down on the veg patch are also coming along nicely, there's quite a lot of fruit on them so last week I spent an afternoon putting straw done and netting them.

I must remember to change the straw regularly so it doesn't rot this time, and end full of woodlice and earwigs!

I got some more peas while in Shropshire (as the mice who think my greenhouse is McDonald's eat all mine!) these have gone in with the others i started form seed, as the wood ash thing worked so well on the toms in the greenhouse I have tried using it again, just till the plants are a bit more established, and I have to say so far its worked a treat.

Despite it not be the most attractive thing to look at, although in my opinion its better than looking at little blue pellets every where.

Look at those healthy Tomatoes, I cant wait to taste them, I thing Tomatoes are my favourite veg as they always seem to put so much effort into what they give you.

Rich even got time with all this lovely sun to mow the Orchard, i had been waiting for the Cowslips to drop their seeds before I let him. I love it when its fresh cut and I can walk through it and check the trees out properly.

my b.day happened to be only my second day in my new job with the library and I thought it was As i mentioned the week before last was my Birthday (my 28th, groan I feel old!) Unfortunatelyprobably a bit to soon to be calling in sick! so I worked 9-7, and spent all day looking forward to my prezzies!

luckily all my blatant hinting here had payed off...

and among other stuff I also got these...

See, you know your with the perfect chap when he buys you a new handbag and a spade for your birthday!

For my Birthday treat we went out to a National Trust garden the next day, its a tiny little garden in the village of Holt not far from us call The Courts which was beautiful, all full of Irises and Poppies and the cutest veg garden...

I want to put Chives along the paths in my veg garden like this...

I wish we had the space to make an apple arbor like this...

and these Poppies are just beautiful...

Jealous!! This garden is totally worth a look if your in the area, small but perfectly formed!

We got to do a good bit of Booting last weekend with Rich's Mum who was staying with us, I thing she was impressed with the caliber of the Bath boot sales as she brought loads of good stuff! Here's some of the rubbish we dragged home...

A very cute brass watering can (the lady wanted £10, but we got it for £5!)

The biggest Foxglove I've ever seen for £2, here it is all planted up and looking great...

and the bargain of the day where these 2 vintage filing cabinets for £8...

The look fantastic next the Rich desk and are now holding our entire CD collecting (which Rich has alphabetized!!! ) I love it when the weathers good it brings out all the best junk!!

It was Rich's Birthday last Wednesday (his 30th ooooh!) so we had another day out to celebrate, Rich picked to go to the Haynes Motor Museum down near Yeovil, I must say I really wasn't looking forward to it that much, I like cars but I wasn't sure I could stand a whole day of them. As it turned out it was actually quite good, not too many cars for me but enough to keep Rich happy, he found one he wanted to take home straight away....

and I found one I would have quite liked to have driven home in too...

Hmmmm Landys! Will have to see what I can find on ebay, I wonder if anyone would swap a luxury KA for an old Landrover?!

Vintage Recycling

2009-05-13T08:13:00.000-07:00

That title is just a way of making "buying old junk and stuffing in the garden to rust quietly" sound good! So what goodies have we scrounged up this week?

Well for starters we managed to get just over 4 meters of this lovely old metal border edging last weekend from the even bargain packed Gardenalia in Bath...

Isn't it great! I'm totally in love with it and have to keep wondering down the garden to look at it, we've got it edging the orchard (my Mum insists that its very Jane Austen?!) Rich recons our stupid cat will get her head stuck though one of the loops! This was a bit of a treat for Rich and I as we don't really need it, but it was just to pretty to leave there (and at £2o a bargain)

I also got this from the same place a few days later...

I've already got 2 of this old zinc plant numbers, I just love the way they look and at £3 how could you say no! This is the problem with walking past Gardenalia on the way to work, I'm always tempted to nip in and see what new treasures he has.

We went to another good car boot on Sunday, this time it was the Castle Combe Race Course one, which is held roughly once a month so its usually pretty big. As I have mentioned before we are on the look out for stuff for the wedding and this weekend didn't disappoint...

We got 2 more storm lanterns, still in their wrappers (£2 each, down from £3!) and this lovely old stop clock that Rich really liked, its in the most lovely shade of duck egg blue!

I also got this great old bucket for £3...

This was planted up with more of the Molly's Cottage Garden Mix and few of my Opium Poppy's.

This one and the other metal tubs I planted up last week will all be used at the wedding reception as decorations (fingers crossed!) The other tubs are starting to sprout little green shoots...

I can't wait to see what flowers we get. At the moment their all crowed round the pond up by the front of our cottage.

Another wedding bargain was these 2 beautiful Lavender bushes, their from the supermarket where I work (but only for a few more days thankfully!) and where in a state from not being watered so I got them at a knocked down price. They will have ribbon wound around the stems and little lights in them and will be on either side of the door into the reception hall.

And finally, things you can do with an old BBQ...

This old cast iron pot bellied BBQ belonged to our neighbours, one of the legs had snapped off so they where going to chuck it, I cheekily asked if I could have it and they said to help myself! Whilst moving it I managed to snap the other legs off (very cheap cast iron!) so I have put it up off the ground on an old chopping block and decided to us it as a planter...

Most of the belly is filled with old crock and polystyrene to help weigh it down and give good drainage, then I filled it with compost...

and planted with with a few more of my Poppy's and some trailing Lobelia I brought the other week. Much better than it moldering away in a landfill and free, so I think this classes as the best bargain of the week!

Parcels Of Goodness

2009-05-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

Yet again I have had another parcel from the very excellent chaps at Victoriana Nursery's in trade for some more illustrations. I love getting these, although I know what will be in it as I choose it all, its still so exciting!!

It never ceases to amaze me how much they squeeze in to a relatively small box!

In my continuing war against the mercilessly ravenous snail population I will be giving this a whirl...

It seems to work by slightly altering the chemistry of the soil, meaning that slugs simple relocate else where (my neighbours on either side will be thrilled!) so you don't kill them or run the risk of accidentally poisoning anything else, excellent! I'm going to try it on the strawberry's which I had a devil of a time with last year, I'll let you know how I get on.

Also in this months box of tricks was a small trough of Feverfew, a natural remedy for sufferers of migraines or hay fever. Rich gets quite persistent hay fever in the summer so we're going to try it on him (not that he should be regarded as a guinea pig or anything...) it does apparently have rather a strong flavour, so i think we'll try it as a green leaf tea with honey and see if he spits it across the room or not.

I had also asked for another 30 onion plants, I have officially given up on the seeds! I'm sorry but gowning onions from seeds is bloody hard and I think best left to the professionals (I bough to Stephen and Serena who somehow manage this every year?!) I think out of the 50 seeds i planted 6 germinated, this is however a combination of snails, Stella sitting on one tray for a whole day until I discovered her and my own stumbling incompetence with seedlings! Sorry but its plants or sets from now on.

Richard had requested some chilli peppers this year, we grew some last year and he loved picking and eating them fresh from the plant. I'm a complete wimp when it comes to spicy hot flavours, as I like all my taste buds to work on a regular basis but Rich loves crying happily over a good curry so he now has 2 Jalapeno's growing in the greenhouse.

When i was having a look over the Victoriana website I came across these Tomatoes called Tigerella's, they just looked some pretty as they are yellow and red stripped, I thought they would be worth grown just to see what they looked like.

I also fancied some flowers so we got 10 of these Opium Poppies, these are the most lovey shade of pale dusky pink, I really hope they flower this year! incidentally this happens to be a very similar shade to my wedding dress!

So I had a very happy weekend of planting in the sunshine, perfect!

Small Disasters & Little Victorys

2009-05-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

The title of this post is in reference to the pest problems we're having this year, we seem to have had a major boom in the slug and snail population around and mice have now discovered my greenhouse and are using it as a free takeaway bar!

The end of last week was when I discovery some industrious little rodent had finally discovered my precious Squash seeds, and had spent a happy night digging them out of the pots and scoffing all but one (they are definitely in cahoots with the damn slugs to drive me round the bend!) as with the tomato massacre of the week before one sad and lonely survivor was left to tell the tale, this little one has since been brought into the house and is now sitting on the front room window sill where he should be safe from veracious rodents (hopefully.... this is the problem when your cottage is buried into a hill side, mice seem to think is a free-for-all!)

Saturday morning reveled that having eaten all the squashes they had moved onto the sweetcorn seeds I had planted a few days before, I had hoped that the presence of Stella would put them off, as she sleeps in the greenhouse most of the day and the smell of cat would deter them...apparently not.

I potted up my remaining 15 Sweetcorn seeds and to protect them I devised my mouse protection grid!!!

also know as the fly screen we use over cakes when we eat in the garden, brought from a boot sale for 50p 2 years ago.

So far this seems to have worked as long as there's a brick on top to weight it down (having kept quite a few mice as a child I know the little buggers a pretty strong and can get through the smallest gaps!) I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed that they survive long enough to germinate.

I had some Sweetcorn already on the go, they had started sprouting and where doing well until the slugs and snails found them too, so they have been moved outside and planted in the ground.

I was having a look about on the net when I found out that a good slug deterrent is wood ash, something we have loads of! It also said on quite a few sites that Tomatoes in particular actually like wood ash and suggested adding it when planting them. So I'm test running wood ash sprinkled around my tom pots, so far it seems to be working, although is not particularly attractive to look at (better however than looking at the chewed off stump where your hard grown tomatoes was yesterday!)

The other great slug solver is of course chickens or ducks, Rich has found a lovely lady who breeds bantams locally who would be happy to sell us some, however the site next to the shed where the coop would go is currently where the rest of our quarry tile floor is piled up, so unless that gets finished soon, chooks may have to wait till next summer.

Damn you snails, I'll beat you yet!!

Planting Toms

2009-05-05T03:17:00.000-07:00

What a hectic weekend, an art show, my parents coming for a nice visit and the fridge freezer packing up all in the space of 3 days!

Anyway some where in between all that I managed to get my little toms planted up, they have been needing a little more room for a week or so, especially the Giant Delicious which are romping away! I'm seeing a future containing a lot of tomato soup and some cracking pasta sauces! Unfortunately the lovely little Sungolds (which we grew last year and are the sweetest little toms Ive ever eaten) have been slugged!! I had 4 going really well and I went to the greenhouse the other morning to find slimy stumps where there was once healthy plants. So I now have 1 remaining plant, I'm going to start some more seeds off but think it may be a little late now?

So on to planting the survives! I picked up some organic compost and planted the toms in large plastic tubs again, this seemed to work well the last few years we've done it.

In total I planted up 4 of the Giant Delicious and the sad remaining Sungold!

They are now nice and snug in the greenhouse and will hopefully start putting on some good growth. I also had 2 good sized Basil plants that I had rescued from work, as i have mentioned before I work evenings at a local supermarket (although not for much longer thank god!) they sell flowers and herbs but apparently don't think that they need watering hence these poor plants end up dieing after a week. So a few weeks ago I found 2 Basil plants who where drooping and going brown for sale in the staff shop (for 30p each) so I brought them home for a little tlc to see if they would respond. They perked up after a few hours and a lot of water and have spend a happy few weeks on the living room window sill soaking up the sunshine. They have now been planted in a large tub in the greenhouse, I have to keep an eye on them to stop them flowering but as they are a good companion plant for Tomatoes I thing they'll do well in there.

As usual on Sunday we managed to get along to the local boot sale, I got some trailing Lobelia and these lovely enamel bowls...

They have had holes drilled in and seeds planted up in them, along with some galvanized tubs I picked up, so hopefully the Molly's Cottage Garden Mix will be making an appearance soon!

I also planted some other seeds my Mum brought me, Snap Dragon seeds! I love Snap Dragons so they've gone in one of the enamel bowls too. Mum got them given to her in the Oxfam shop when she was buying a few other bits, what a great idea giving away free seeds and in such nice packaging!

So another busy weekend, unfortunately ending in my lovely retro cream fridge breaking down (and every repair guy we ring telling us to scrap in it!) why don't these white good company's make fridges and cookers that can be repaired?! There are mountains of knackered kitchen equipment moldering away, why is it considered crazy to try to fix ours!!

The world is a very strange place at times....

Carbooty!

2009-04-26T06:44:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post today, I've got the art show next weekend and I'm rushing to get enough stock made up!

We did have time to nip to the Lansdown carboot this morning, unfortunately it was a bit rubbish this week, completely lacking in storm lanterns, old buckets and enamel ware! I did however find a nice lady selling plants, and she had a lovely little Wisteria called 'Amethyst Falls'!

I cant tell you how long I have wanted a Wisteria, I know they take a long time to grow but I just thing they are so beautiful, lots of the houses around Bath have them, they just look so amazing against the creamy coloured cotswold stone.

So I took out the Passion Flower we have growing up the side of the porch, its never really been happy there and has gone very leggy and sick looking. To be honest I always wanted a Wisteria there but they where just too expensive from the garden centers, but Rich said it was ok for us to spend £9 on one!

So there we are, its now sitting happily next to the Honeysuckle Rich's mum gave us last year. Mmmm a porch covered in Honeysuckle and Wisteria, how English is that!!

Progress

2009-04-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

Every time I think 'right I shall go and pot up some seeds today!' I get an email from my agent, or someone buys something from my shop or I remember I really must get my wedding invites finished and printed to send out, I'm not complaining as it great to be busy and god knows we need the money right now but I feel I don't get a chance to breath sometimes!!

Soon I'll have even less time or maybe more I haven't decided yet... I've managed to get a new part time job! one I actually wanted instead of something I just do to pay the mortgage. From next month I shall be working a few days a week a the local Library as a Stock Assistant, I'm really excited as I really wanted this job but was convinced I would never get it as I was sure there would be far more quantified people applying for it. This is official proof that I am slowly turning into my mother (she's worked in Library's for the last 15 years) Richard will be so pleased! But mmmm books!!

Anyway back to the garden, we had another busy weekend as it was so beautiful, Rich managed to get sunburned after about 5 mins of being outside!

I got some of my Sweetcorn planted up...

and the rest of my early spuds in (a bit late but never mind!)...

The Raspberries have suddenly taken off like crazy, they need a bit of a trim to keep them in line actually, there also sending bloody runners out all over the garden, I keep finding little Raspberries shoots trying to come up in the middle of the Strawberry bed, you can tell they from the same family as Brambles!

The Apple trees are in bloom, I love this as the whole orchard is now alive with bees.

Another major reason why I love April sooo much is the Lansdown Car Boots start up again!! Woohoo, stuff and junk at bargain prices! This year we are on a bit of a mission to get stuff for the wedding in September, I need as many storm lanterns as me and my mum can find (to be hung in trees in the little field where the reception will be held!) I'm also on the hunt for old enamel buckets or tubs, as the ever generous Stephen and Serena over at Victorian Nursery's have very kindly given Rich and I several packets of free Molly's Cottage Garden Mix as a wedding present, the idea being to plant the buckets up and come September have beautiful cottage garden flower displays around the reception! Lets hope I can find enough contains in time.

Sunday turned up a new storm lantern (£1) and some old cast iron shelf brackets (£2)

The rest of the day was spent on trying to build me a display stand for an up and coming art show (Rich would like it pointed out here that THIS is how he got sun burned and not sitting around drinking beer of anything!) anyway like a trooper he slaved all day making me a wonderful stand out of 2 old doors...

and a pile of old gash timber...

Its going to look amazing when its all painted up with my little Circuses on it!

So slowly, slowly me make a little progress.

Special Delivery

2009-04-13T05:47:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post since Wednesday but as usual work kept getting in the way every time I sat down at the computer!

Ok so I'm finally feeling a lot better after last weekends dodgy food incident (that'll learn me!) so on Wednesday I was very excited when Rich told me some long waited for parcels had arrived from the wonderful Victoriana Nursery's (ohhhh excitement!!), I've been working with Stephen and Serena designed some new logos and other bits and pieces for there lovely websites, and in return they had agreed to pay me in plants, a very excellent arrangement as I would only of spend any cash buying plants anyway!

I'm amazed I could control myself long enough to take pics of these...

ooooohopenitopenitopenit.....

Here are my 2 Cobnut Trees emerging from the amazingly compact parcel, some where in there is also an Olive Tree.

In the box all this wonderfulness was packed inside...

God it was all so exciting I had to have a little sit down and a cup of tea!

As it says in the helpful literature that Victoriana Nursurys send out with all their plants its best to get them planted as soon as possible, especially for the trees. So the rest of the afternoon was spent getting as much of this lot potted on or planted out as possible.

The Olive tree I planted in an old bin, this is mainly so it can be moved in the greenhouse to over winter, it also means if we even move house it can come with us!

The Cobnuts we planted down on the edge of the lawn along the fence, we're hoping to grow them into a hedge. I've wanted to put something productive in this area, we have a small lawn by our shed, there's not much there and I would quite like to dig it up and put veg beds in but Rich does like a nice bit of green to sit on on a sunny day so its stayed. However this year we are making a real effort to make the whole garden as productive as possible, to grow as much food as we possibly can, so we though the Cobnuts where a good compromise. We will have to keep on top of the yearly pruning though as left unchecked they can shoot up to 20ft (and I'm not climbing that just for some nuts!)

Please ignore the shapeless jumper I'm wearing, its another example of my gardening wardrobe!

So both Cobnuts are in and hopefully happy...

I had started growing my Onions this year from seeds, however they don't seem to be doing very well, I thing this is probably down to me (also my veg growing neighbor assures me growing onions from seeds is a right bugger, so I don't feel too bad!) so just to ensure we actually have some onions for autumn I caved in and asked Stephen to send us some onion plants (I feel like I'm cheating!!)

One of the other plants I had asked for was some Rambling Strawberries, we already have a Strawberry bed but are constantly fighting with the slugs to get any fruit, so we thought we'd try growing some in hanging baskets and see if this worked better...

We now have 2 baskets hanging by the front door, I'm really looking forward to walking out the house in the morning and picking a handful of Strawberries!

If this does work well I may do away with the Strawberry bed as the plants will be 3 years old next year and they recommend replacing after 3 years as productivity starts to drop off, also the bed takes up a lot of room for the fruit we manage to rescue from the slugs! We'll see how we go this year.

I have now finally got some Sweet Peas in, I LOVE Sweet Peas, they are one of my favorite summer flowers, my Nan use to grow them on her allotment so I always remember there being bunches of them around when I was little.
As the veg bed is getting a little crowded now I decided to grow them up on our sunny patio in front of the cottage, then I can just snip handfuls of them when I like and hopeful we'll get the fantastic smell too (Sweet Pea scent is the smell of summer for me!). They have been planted in to the little butlers sink we got a few months back.

Another little project we're trying to tackle here is the mini orchard (I say orchard its actually only has 5 fruit trees and 4 soft fruit bushes but I cant think what else to call it so mini orchard it is!) this section of the garden is right at the bottom of the 200 foot slope that's is our yard. It was part of the veg bed originally and also a general dumping ground, Rich spend most of the first summer we lived here flattening it out and haling great pills of rotten rubbish of the the recycling center, finally we planted the trees on it as it was too stony to grow veg in. Since then we've let the grasses grow back up around the trees and have been encouraging wild flowers to grow here, in summer this bit of the garden swarms with bees and butterflies.
One flower in particular that we have tried to encourage here is the lovely little Cowslip which is now endangered in the wild, gardeners have been asked to plant Cowslips where possible to try to boost numbers again. So I was really pleases when I discovered that Victoriana Nursery sold then as plug plants!

So 20 little plugs have gone into the mini orchard jointing then 5 or 6 plants we brought last year which are already beginning to spred.

The Cowslips where also joined by 3 Borage plants which should be another huge hit with the bees!

We also got 10 Foxgloves which are Rich's favorite flowers, they have gone in with the Cowslips and Borage, however they seem to be the only thing I forgot to take a picture off!

And last but not least we got these 5 Scented Geraniums for the patio...

As I think you will agree thats a hell of a lot of plants to get in too pretty small packages! So there you go that lot will buy two new logos for your website, anyone fancy trading for a chicken coop?!

Poorly!

2009-04-07T01:51:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, usually I have a nice big one after a weekend of sunshine and ordering Rich about. I was really looking forward to Sunday, I had a whole day of planting planned however whatever it was I eat on Saturday night decided that wasn't to be. I'm now into my 3rd day of feel awful, although I'm slightly better than I was on Sunday which ended up with me lying on the sofa trying not to throw up and shivering with 2 blankets and the fire going full blast! God I hate being poorly, it doesn't happen very often so I always think I'm dieing when it does!

Saturday was a better day (before I ate the dubious stew in the evening) we had a few months back been given a load of logs by a lovely lady who had had some branches from one of her trees come down. She was looking to have the rest of the tree felled as it was unsafe and had said at the time we could come and collect as much as we wanted. Anyway Saturday was the day so we went to load up our trusty little car (which is brilliant but we are seriously considering trading it in for some sort of pick-up), we ended up getting 2 car fulls of very large logs which just needed cutting.

Rich spent most of the rest of the day sawing and chopping, and I stacked the result in the new wood shelter, we where going well until the handle on our axe broke! I feel another trip to the DIY shop coming on...

Anyway as you can see we now have enough wood to last us through the winter and we haven't chopped all the logs yet!

By Sunday morning I was feeling pretty dreadful but dragged myself out to the veg patch hoping the fresh air would stop me feeling sick, I managed to get the Pea wigwams up in the prepared Pea bed.

I got about half way though planting the Peas when I had to give in and crawl back to the house in defeat, but the lovely Rich finished planting them out for me, I need to start some more off in the greenhouse but that will have to wait will I can stand to smell of compost again!

Rich made a nice job of it didn't he!

So there we are, hopefully a better post after next weekend as I'm expecting a delivery of plants and I shall be out planting them even if I do feel like death!!

Book Lust

2009-04-02T02:57:00.000-07:00

I have just made the mistake of looking about on Amazon while waiting for paint to dry (god how exciting is my life!) Amazon is never a good idea, especially not when you have a credit card about your person. However I have managed to resist for today, but these are what I shall be lusting after and dropping hints about before my Birthday in May!

and this last one isn't really to do with gardening but its recycling and finding new uses for old stuff, very Shabby Chic (or in the case or our house, Shitty Chic!)

Mmmm books!

Tiles, Seedlings & Bunting

2009-03-31T04:57:00.000-07:00

Phew what a busy week I've just had, sorry for the little blog break but I had a week in Shropshire with Mum & Dad doing some much need organizing and decision making about the wedding, it all seems to be coming together well and Rich and I are stating to get pretty excited about it now!

While I was away Rich was yet again doing more tile laying in our cottage, you may remember that we (and by that I mean Rich!) laid our quarry tile floor in the living room, we had always intended to do the whole ground floor of the cottage but as its very small and Rich's time is limited we are having to do one room at a time. Last week was the turn of the dinning room/my work room/hall/room thats too damn small to do much with! Once again Rich was helped out by his Dad who gave up a weeks holiday to put himself through mild physical torture on his knees on a cold concrete floor (thanks Rick!!) and the result as you can see is beautiful!

Rich has also been watering my seedlings in the greenhouse for me, they seem huge after not seeing them for so long, the Peas are going really well, I'm hoping to plant then out this weekend (hopefully the frost will keep off!)

The Onions are also doing really well, I need to get some more on the go this week, but its quite exciting growing them from seed!

My Tomatoes have also at long last made an appearance, helped along by the warm weather at the beginning of last week.

I'm hoping to get a few hours in the garden some time this week so I will have a better up date on whats happening.

My next little project (in between working on artwork, stuff for my shop, the garden and my part time job!) is making stuff for the wedding, Mum and I managed to get some really lovely fabric last week, including some beautiful old hand stitched linen place mat's from a charity shop (for the grand total of £3.30!) we'll be using these to stand kilner jars full of wild flowers on at the reception.

And as buying ready made bunting is so exspensive I'm going to try making my own...

I have a feeling this week is going to be just as busy!

Happy Birthday!

2009-03-18T05:49:00.000-07:00

Two Birthday s actually, I have just realized that my little blog was a year old on the 2nd of March! so a slightly belated Blog Birthday to me, which brings me on the the more important Birthday of the two.

Happy Birthday to my lovely Dad who is 60 today! I have mentioned my Dad on here before so I won't go on to much (but just enough to make him feel embarrassed!) sufficed to say he's had a very crap year, there's nothing like a load of medical professions killing off your bone marrow then pumping you full of drugs to really put a dampener on your day, put he has come through it all wonderfully (in fact we recons he has more hair now its grown back than he had before, score!)

So this is just to say we are all so proud of you Dad, we weren't ready to do without our silly old bear just yet!

Sun At Last!

2009-03-18T04:08:00.000-07:00

Mmmm lovely sun shine, how I've missed you! Its warm enough to walk to work without a coat at the moment! Its been so nice to stroll down to the greenhouse after breakfast and have a look at how the seedlings are getting on. Their doing pretty well actually, even the onions have finally made an appearance!

The Garlic is also rampaging away in its sink...

And as the weathers improved a bit I got some of my Victoriana Nursery's Spinach seeds planted, they are also in one of our freecycled sinks!

As the Pea seedlings are coming on so fast I thought I would take the opportunity to get the pea bed ready for them. I'm using the same bed as last year, I know your supposed to rotate the beds to stop problem build ups in the soil but the end bed is so handy for peas as it narrower that the others and I can get at them from both sides.
For the last 2 years I have used the method of burying a layer of corrugated cardboard about 2 foot down to act as a sponge layer, peas really don't like to dry out so this should mean that the card retains any moisture in the soil so the peas roots can borrow down and get at it. Now in theory this works fanatically well, unfortunately the last 2 years have been a total washout as far at the summer was concerned, so dried out Peas really haven't been an issue! But I believe firmly in forward planning and every man and his dog recons this year will be a scorch so here I am yet again digging a bloody big hole...

Then lining it with cardboard, a layer of wood ash from our stove (quite a big layer, I really must empty it more often!) and a layer of worm filled compost from one of our bins...

Then the fun job of back filling it, my thighs are still aching 3 days later!

Hopefully all this effort will give the Peas and Squash the best possible conditions to give us loads of lovely veg this summer.

I love this time of year, so many things are sprouting and showing tiny bits of green, our All Gold Raspberries are just starting to shoot, they where a huge success last year apart from it being slightly too wet for them meaning quite a few of the fruits went moldy before they had even ripened.

So generally the whole garden is looking pretty promising right now!

Apart from all the fruit and veg we grow I try to grow as many flowers as possible, not just because they look nice but to attract the insects, especially the Bees which seem to be having a very tough time of late. I like to try and grow flowers for cutting as well, money being so tight means cut flowers from a shop are an unaffordable luxury right now, so to make sure I can have flowers over the summer I'll be planting my favourite Sweet Peas in tubs on the patio by the front door.
I managed to buy another old galvanized tub the other week for a mere £3, so Rich kindly drilled some holes in it for me...

then it was filled with wild flower seeds and will hopefully also have the Sweet Peas planted in it but the end of the month.

I put it next to the pond where it should end up covered in Dragonflies like the pots I had there last year did. I already have my Pansies planted up which the Bees seem to like.

So a pretty productive day Sunday, its so nice just to be out a working in the garden again. Who needs foreign holidays when you have all this on your door step...

First Spuds In!

2009-03-02T07:34:00.000-08:00

Woohoo, the first spuds of the year are in, they have been sat chitting on my front room window sill for a month now, and looked ready to go to work.

So the beds got a good dig over yesterday and a nice layer on compost to help them along. I am putting the spuds in the bed that had the onions in last year, I don't have a lot of room for rotating as I only have 3 small beds (and the peas will be going into the same one again!), hopefully they'll be happy here.

Its very satisfying to finally be digging again! I also saw the first signs of life in little pots in the greenhouse this weekend, my little peas are stating to pock their way though! I can't wait to be eating fresh peas this spring!

The Garlic I planted at Christmas is also on its way...

...and here are further signs of the approaching season.

we suddenly have millions of purple crocuses every where, I even spotted tiny green shots on my Grape and Raspberries!!!

I will have to go and have a sit down, this is all to exciting!

The Long Awaited Wood Shelter

2009-02-19T05:35:00.000-08:00

Yes it's official, I am a very sad person, most women my age dream of lovely designer clothes, the perfect handbag, height heeled shoes that don't rub or pinch.... not me however, I dream of wood shelters!

I am not mad, there are valid reason why I should be so obsessed with having a wood shelter. Our little Stockton stove is a truly wonderful thing, it keeps our tiny cottage very toast (even with me and the cat sitting right in front of it socking up most of the warm) but keeping enough wood dried and ready to use has been a bit of a problem, you see we've been using the greenhouse to dry the logs and store them, however I am now in desperate need of the space in there plus we couldn't really get a huge stockpile as the space was limited.

This is why we decided to convert the old coal bunker that's is on the one side of our shed, the bunker has not really been used for anything since we brought the cottage and has just sat there looking ugly and useless, it leaked so much we didn't even bother to store garden tools in it. So on Monday my Dad came down from Shropshire to help Rich redesign it (ie knock the hell out of it till it surrendered) just the sort of activity you should force a man recovering from a bone marrow transplant to do!

So Monday afternoon Dad and Rich got to work, here they are having ripped the roof off and now contemplating whacking the wall with lump hammers...

I should point out that it was a little more complicated than just whacking the hell out of it, as we have no money the whole thing had to be re-made out of bits and pieces we had around the place, so the breeze blocks had to be reused.

Arr here's Dad displaying surgical precision as he hits it with a lump of case iron...

Once the front wall of the bunker was down it was a case of build the one end up as that had had a door in it.

Here they have managed to get a roof on it , incidentally the roof is made out of the door of a broom cupboard we ripped out of our kitchen 2 years ago, Rich and I never chuck anything in case it comes in handy!

So then it was just a case of getting some roofing felt on to keep it dry, and sawing up an old pallet to keep the logs of the floor and it was all finished, yay!

Isn't it beautiful!! ok maybe not beautiful but a lot better than the waste of space that was there before, and now it means we can really stockpile wood for next winter.

Hopefully the poor old shed will get a makeover this summer too, as this is the veiw from the front room window, but I'm happy to look at my lovely logs which I know will be keeping us warm for free!!

So a HUGE thank you to Rich and Dad who both worked very hard for 3 days to get this finished and for managing to not spend a penny on it (they even reused the nails and roof tacks, how eco friendly is that!)

Valentines Day

2009-02-15T10:44:00.000-08:00

Happy (slightly belated) Valentines Day to you all! I hope you had a nice day? I did! Want to see what I got...

A sure sign of a man who knows me well!

Richard and I have (well mainly me) have been trying to get in the garden for the past 3 weeks or so, but a combination of art jobs, our part time jobs and snow have meant things have had to be left. So as Saturday was dry, the snow having finally melted off and it was actually trying to sunshine I managed to start planting some of Victoriana Nursery seeds I was sent before Christmas.

Technical I think I should have had my Giant Exhibition Onions on the go by now but I had a lot of work to get though...and it was cold...snow...not sitting in front of tv or anything.......guilt.

Anyway down to planting my lovely seeds, I got the Giant Onions started first, I've never actually seen onions seeds before having always used sets from the garden center, they look like tiny little stone chips!

Don't they look all neat with their little labels in. This year I'm trying out fiber seed pots (thanks Rich!), last year I used pots made from newspaper, which worked brilliantly, however this year we have our wonderful log burner so any newspapers in house are used for lighting the fire, meaning their was none left for pots!

I planted a few of the tomatoes seeds, again possible a bit early but a chat with our veg growing neighbor reassured me I'm not the only one starting early, also our greenhouse has been at a steady 20c for the past week (we're lucky it is south facing on an open slope) we tend to get an early spring down here in the south west and if these 4 fail I've got quite a few left (and several people willing to re-home if I germinate too many for us!)

The tomatoes we'll be growing are Giant Delicious, apparently brilliant for sauces and soups with some individual fruit getting up to 8lbs in weight! I hope our little greenhouse can cope with these big buggers! We'll also be growing Sungold's again, we had one of these last year and it was brilliant, I've never tasted such sweet little toms, perfect in sandwiches and salads...I'm getting hungry just thinking about this.

My very generous parents brought us a few bits when we were home the other week, including some more seed potatoes, I've now got Sharpes Express early and Desiree main crops, so the Sharpe's have been started off chitting in the greenhouse.

My Mum also brought Richard a present, a mushroom growing kit!

I haven't seen these before but Richard does like his mushrooms, so we'll give it a go. It all looks pretty easy, although it does rely on me remembering to spray the compost with water regularly so that may be the down fall right there, although my New Year resolution is to be more organized in the garden (and leave notes around the cottage to remind me to do these things!)
Here's the mushroom compost that is in it:

You just empty it in, then put the lid back on and spray with water every few days, then 10 days later you add mushroom seeds (I think, I'm trying to remember the instructions, which of course I've left in the greenhouse, I'm off to a great start already!)

So a busy day, here is the finished results, I keep nipping back out to proudly look at them.

And while I was trying not to kill his mushroom kit off, Richard was being a sweet heart and finishing off my half constructed fruit cage for the Blueberry's.

He even weeded it for me, what a good Valentines Day!

SnowSnowSnowSnow!

2009-02-05T09:25:00.000-08:00

Snow! Yes snow here in warm sunny Somerset, normally we get a light dusting that lasts about 2 hours before melting off but today the whole of the county has ground to a halt, the buses and trains aren't running, there isn't enough salt to grit the roads and best of all the schools are shut (meaning Rich gets a day off!!) this all just goes to show how rubbish the English are at coping with snow.

Anyway, as no one else was bothering to do any work today we didn't want to be left out, so we got up and went for a walk.

Here's me not feeling guilty about not doing any work on the garden today...

Here's the lane that leads from our cottage to the fields, not many cars where braving it.

Doesn't Bath look pretty in the snow!

Rich and the snowman he built...

and me with the snow dog I built (with help from Rich!)...

And then it was back home for hot chocolate and cake, much better than working!

Here & There

2009-01-30T06:45:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm still here, sorry for the quiteness over the last 2 weeks or so, but Ive been spending a lot of time here...

and not here...

Doing a lot of these...

but not doing much with these...

Spending my evenings in here...

but not much time in here...

although on the plus side I have made quite a few of these!...

So its not all bad!!

Fruitcages and Roast Dinners

2009-01-12T10:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the first day in about 3 weeks where the temperature hasn't been hovering just above freezing, I've been wanting to get outside and dig a bit of the compost into the beds but the ground has been so frozen it was impossible to get the spade in.

So I took the opportunity yesterday to get out in the garden and do a job I've been wanting to tackle since before Christmas. At the bottom of our very long garden is what we laughingly refer to as the mini orchard (4 trees and several fruit bushes) 2 of these bushes are the Blueberries I planted last year, they have done very well in their new home and managed to produce a very healthy crop of lovely fruit end of last summer, however they did get slightly swamped by the long grass and invasive clover we have down there. Another problem was the persistence of the local bird population, with one of our neighbors having to rescue several birds who had got stuck under the netting we used and which where being eyed up by the equally persistent local cats.

This year I have resolved to make a better more substantial fruit cage. The idea was sink 4 posts in a rectangle, they nail side panels of wood basically creating a small raised bed area for the Blueberries that could be easily netted and weeded. Sounds great right! I really wanted to get this under way while the bushes are still dormant and don't mind Rich and I brushing against them, that is until the subzero arctic weather parked its self on the UK and the ground has become as hard as iron meaning no knocking in posts.

Until yesterday! It took me nearly a hour to knock in 2 posts on my own ( and they are slightly wonky) Rich came out to see how I was doing and proceeded to knock in the last 2 in 5 minuets flat. Damn my weak girly wrists!

I just need to cut down the side panels of wood and nail them in place then its done!

I also set my first early potatoes to chitting this weekend, their Home Guards, I have grown them before and they make nice new potatoes if lifted early, I'll probably use Desiree's as my main crop same as last year as their a good all-rounder.

I cant wait for the warmer weather and to get planting!

While I was busy doing all this planning and straining my wrists, Rich was being a sweet heart as usual and cooking us a beautiful Sunday Roast, a pretty perfect Sunday really!

Post Christmas Randomness!

2009-01-02T05:37:00.000-08:00

Its that's lull after all the festiveness is over, all those months of preparation and organizing...all over in what seems like 5 minuets! I really hate the first few weeks of January, all the Christmas telly is over, I can no longer justify eating chocolate for breakfast, no ones got any money left and most annoying of all there's not much happening in the garden!

Its a bit early for planting any of my little seeds up, most have to wait till next month or early March, so I'm stuck doing the boring jobs. So far I've given the Raspberries a good hard trim back...

...and planted the Garlic out in one of the sinks.

Rich has been working his way through the small mountain of gash wood we got given for free by a local builder, most of its old 2x4 bits of pine from ripped out stud walls, Rich has been chopping it up into usable lengths for out stove, one of our neighbors very kindly lent him a bench saw so he's been able to make a really dent in the pile ( and keep us warm for nothing!)

One of our jobs for the new year is to get a proper wood store sorted out (and so I can have my greenhouse back) we've got an old coal bunker next to our shed so Rich is hoping to temporally convert it for logs, at the moment its made of old breeze blocks and is not particularly attractive, eventually we'll replace it with something nice made of wood but for the time being we'll make it usable so we can be drying out enough logs to see us through next winter.

Now as there's not much for me to blog about in the garden, I though I'd do the meme I got tagged to do back in November by Lucy.

I've been meaning to do it for ages but Christmas got in the way, so here it is now: 6 Random Facts About Us...

1. Old Cars: Rich and I have some what of an obsession with old cars (although I have been seduced in resent years by the lure of good fuel economy and a car that starts on a cold morning!) When we where at Uni together we both had our dream cars, mine was an old fire engine red Citroen 2CV (god I loved that car!) and Rich's was a bright yellow Mark 3 Ford Cortina (ever watched Life on Mars? its the car out of that in case you where wondering!) we had these two for most of our 3 year degree, they lived happily parked nose to nose out side our little terraced house in North Wales, the neighbours (and most of our friends) though we where mad. Sadly Both Blodwyn (2cv) and The Yellow Peril (ford) have both since had to go, mine couldn't cope with the steep hills of Bath and Rich's need huge amounts of money spending on it. They are both sadly missed.

2. Kilner Jars: as with bricks in the garden, I have another slight thing about Kilner Jars in the house, I cant seem to stop buying them when I see them a boot sales, if fact I am now running out of things to put in them. I think I must have some sort of recessive hording gene in me somewhere.

3.Cast Iron Animals: this is quite a resent thing, it started with Rich buying me a little white cast iron bunny last Easter, he always buys me something silly and random and I'm glad to say this Christmas was no exception...

...who wouldn't want to find a rusty iron Pigeon in their stocking! I'm not sure why but this seems to have become one of our 'Things', I wonder what I'll get for my Birthday?

4. We Lived In The Same County For 20 Years But Met On A Train: we even had friends that knew each other and we went to the same art collage 2 years apart but ended up meeting on the train to uni, proving that the railways in this country are good for something.

5. Shoestring Wedding: I should start another blog about this! We're getting married in September, we're both really excited about it but as Rich and I have literately no money right now the whole thing is being done on the tightest of shoestrings ( I brought my wedding dress of ebay for £37!) but quite frankly even if we had money I thing we'd do everything pretty much the same as we are right now, I hate the idea of spending more on a dress that I would on a car!

6. Squirrels: ok, before I tell you this I must remind you we are not mad. Another one of our 'Things' is squirrels, I have no idea why but it's a sort of in-joke from when we first started going out, we have now got to the point that every occasion is marked with a squirrel card or squirrel related gift (both being artist's this gets quite creative!).

Well thats it, I could go on but fear the men in white coats will be banging on the door any minuet now! as ever if anyone fancy's having a bash at this meme go for it (and let me know, I love seeing other people are as strange as us!)

Merry Christmas from Shoestring Garden!

2008-12-24T11:35:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to wish anyone who's been reading my pearls of wisdom ( or nonsense ramblings, which every way you look at it) a very Happy Christmas!

Christmas Come Early!

2008-12-17T11:50:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I got a very nice comment on my blog for Stephen Shirley over at Victoriana Nursery Gardens, Stephen had a proposal for me, he would supply me with some free packets of seeds and in return I would review how I got on with growing them! I'm a seed Guinea Pig!

So I had a happy few hours reading through their very nice web site and made these selections:

Onion Seed - Shirleys' Giant Exhibition

Spinach Seed - Little Grandad's Original

Squash Seed 'Crown Prince'

Sweetcorn Seed 'Seville'

Tomato Seed 'Giant Delicious'

Tomato Seed 'Sungold'

Artichoke Plant 'Imperial Star'

And on Saturday these showed up!

Ooooh thank you Father Christmas...I mean Stephen! So over the coming spring and summer I shall be testing my gardening skills (which lets face it are enthusiastic if not always fruitful), I am especially looking forward to the tomatoes, I've never grow them from seed before (usually I buy them at the local carboots!) also I cant wait to get the Artichoke plant ( which will be arriving around April/May time)
In the coming weeks the greenhouse will be getting a good tidy and clean out, seed pots sorted and hopefully the compost bin will provide me with enough of the good stuff that's been decomposing in there for the last year and a half! I will try to keep the post on my progress regular and as ever with plenty of pics, So a huge Thank You to the Shirley Family, I hope to do their lovingly produced seeds proud!

I do seem to be a very lucky girl at the moment as the seeds weren't the only prezzies I got early, over the weekend we went to Shropshire to see family and as we wont see most of them on Christmas Day we had ours with them on Sunday instead. My banging on about my blog and our veg patch has obviously payed off and Rich's Mum & Dad brought me these...

They gave us a few penny's to go and spend too so a quick trip to the garden center saw us in possession of a little lemon tree that is now happily sitting on our front room window sill...

Its all feeling very cosy and festive around here right now, Im really looking forward to next week, although Christmas Day may find me in the greenhouse playing with my presents!

Decembers Freecycle Goodness

2008-12-07T07:23:00.000-08:00

Its been a busy few days around here, what with Christmas rapidly approaching and me not being organized as usual! We've also made some decisions about what we will be planting next year but I'll talk more about that in a later post.

We've had some good luck on good old Freecycle over the weekend, on Friday we drove to a very pretty house out in the woods to collect a car load of chopped wood offered to us by the lovely Michelle. We had burned most of our stock pile so this new stuff is drying out in our sunny greenhouse and should be ok to use in a couple of months!

Then this morning we drove out to another very lovely village on the out skirts of Bath to collect a Belfast sink, if you have read this blog before you will know my slight obsession with Belfast sinks, apart from anything I have found they are prefect for growing salad leaves in (which sort of explains why we have quite a few now!) Anyway when we eventually arrived at this gorgeous old chapel we found a cute little Butlers sink waiting for us, then the lovely Laurel who answered the door said they had another one we could have too! Hooray!

Rich managed to manhandle them into the back of our poor little car (We're seriously considering swapping it for a van!) and tried to avoid the many pot holes on the way home!

Here he is adding it to the 2 we already have on the veg garden.

Yay, now we have 3! These are going to be used to grow various salad leafs (mostly Spinach as its our favorite) each sink will have staggered planting to last us through the spring and summer.

The little Butlers Sink has been put up on the patio by the front door, I may grow herds in this or possible Sweet Peas for cutting.

Ooooh its like Christmas come early round here!

So a huge Thank You to Michelle, Laurel and To for being so generous to total strangers!!

Garden Jobs For Winter

2008-12-02T05:39:00.000-08:00

I finally managed to get in the garden on Sunday, good job too as I have a list of winter jobs I need to be getting on with, unfortunately most of them require the use of our greenhouse, which at the moment is housing a small mountain of stuff to either go to the recycling center or the local charity shop (this is what happens when you finish decorating your cottage that's to small for all the wonderful treasures you try to cram into it!)

Anyway, one of the first task was to trim the apple trees, I didn't do it last year as they hadn't long been planted and there wasn't much growth so I though I'd give them another year to really settle in, however they got a bit leggy over the summer so this winter I have trimmed them quite hard back to encourage them to thicken up a bit and hopefully improve next years crop.

I have stored the off cuts to dry out in the greenhouse to we can burn them on the stove, we didn't get much more that a few twigs off them but I hate to waste anything so on the fire they'll go.

Unfortunately my Cauliflowers have bitten the dust this year, it was the first time I had attempted to grow them so was hoping at least one of them would make it to the table. Sadly the sharp night frost's in October seem to have finished them off before they where big enough to do anything with! I'm gutted as I was really looking forward to eating fresh Cauliflower, I should have had some sort of cold frame over them but could stretch to buying one and didn't have enough stuff to make one, I'll know better next time!

Anyway they had to come out and go in the compost bin, the Broccoli on the other hand seems to be surviving ok and has put on more growth. The trouble is we're quite exposed being on the side of a hill facing south, great in the summer for the sun but we cop the wind and ice in the winter.

Other winter jobs include...

Tiding the greenhouse

Planting up garlic in pots in greenhouse

Digging up Blueberry bushes and moving them into a raised bed to stop them being swamped by grasses and weeds.

Scrubbing brick paths clear of moss (so they stop being so slippy)

Working on Rich to let me have a few chickens ( I suggested asking for them as a wedding present!)

Ordering seeds for next season, planning where everything will go!

I'll be making up my list of plants for next year in the next couple of days so I'll post as soon as I've decided what we'll be attempting, I really want to give Sweet Corn a try and some sort of Squash although I don't know which one? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Things To Do When Your Not Gardening

2008-11-29T08:46:00.000-08:00

The post's have been a little light on the ground recently, mostly because there's not much going on in the garden right now and its just too damn cold to go out and sweep up leaves!

Another reason is Rich and I have been desperately trying to save money (like everyone else right now!) and when I go in the greenhouse I realize I need to buy more seed's, compost, a cold frame, the list goes on! So I've been avoiding it!

Anyway, today we decided to have a day out and away from the long list of jobs that needed doing on the cottage and garden and went into Bath. We're very luck in that we live on the outskirts of the city and can walk in, thus avoiding paying through the nose to park or take the bus. As usual for a Saturday near Christmas the place was swarming with tourist's all heading for the Bath Christmas Market, this is a really lovely event held yearly next door to the Abbey and the Roman Baths, marred only slightly by the huge number of people all trying to squeeze in to a very small square. Sadly actually getting to see any on the products on display was damn near impossible so we gave up and went to the Victoria Art Gallery as this free to go in and was decidedly free of tourists! This is the only problem living in a world heritage site, the number of visitor's in summer and Christmas goes through the roof, but I suppose they are bringing much needed money into local businesses so I can't complain too much as I now work part time in one of them!

Anyway, I love going to the Victoria, its quite a hidden little gallery but they always have some amazing stuff on show, in their entrance hall they have one of my favourite sculptors ever...

This is 'Lady-Hare on Dog' by Sophie Ryder, I absolutely love this and have to go and have a look at it every time we go.

You can see where Dog's nose has gone shiny because everyone strokes him as they go in!

After this we have a walk around the city which is looking very pretty with the Christmas decorations up, one of my favourite things in Bath at this time of year is the Merry-go-round which they set up near the Christmas Market.

It looks so beautiful with all its lights on and the old fashioned music, really magical!

And as I love it some much Rich managed to scrap together his last few coppers and got us 2 tickets to have a ride!!

Ooooh look...action shots!

He's so good to me! Maybe I'll do the gardening tomorrow instead!

Here Comes Winter!

2008-11-06T02:08:00.000-08:00

You can feel Winter rushing head long at us here, Bath has been cloaked in gray damp coldness for weeks now, which has put me off doing the jobs I should be doing on the veg patch! Another sign of the approaching season is the cat is not happy about being turfed out for the night, she does sort of cling limpet like to Rich.

The veg garden had been getting a bit over run with the Nasturtiums I planted in the spring, they have been wonderful for keeping the slugs, snails and most of the caterpillars aways from my other plants, sadly one morning last week after a particularly hard night frost I came out to see this sight...

I had to clear this up as soon as possible as it looked so bloody awful, the frost turned the Nasturtiums to slimy mush so it was lots of fun pulling all this up and squeezing it into the compost bins.

The Broccoli and the Cauliflowers seem ok, although I thing the Cauli's are suffering from the frost a bit too.

Another little job I've been meaning to finish up was the brick border for the veg patch, I started it weeks ago then the weather closed in, plus I started a new part time job which has thrown my schedule out (excuses, excuses!!).

One of the major off puts of this job was prising out the old rotten wood and concert broads that have been there for years (the wood is lethal slippy when wet). I almost gave myself a hernia trying to lift some of these...

I eventually got it done and was quite please with the finished job, then Rich came out and pointed out the it was a bit wonky in places and some of the bricks needed to be sunk deeper or the would just roll out on to the path, so I generously let him relay a few bits...

Now it looks perfect!

As Rich was out side and quite obviously didn't have anything better to do (like work, sleep or any one of the two hundred jobs on the house) I made him help me tidy up the greenhouse, the tomatoes had just about gone over and the Aubergine had had it, so everything was bagged up to go to the recycling center and my Geraniums from the patio have been put the bed for the Winter in there too.

They are apparently not the only thing trying to sleep through the winter in here...

My poor grape, I hope it survives this tough love!

Pottering

2008-10-12T10:58:00.000-07:00

Saturday

I was pretty busy trying to get some artwork finished but I managed to squeeze in a hour or so to do some much needed weeding.

The Cauliflowers are starting to show their heads now, am getting excited imagining fresh cauliflower cheese!

We have 5 cauli's in, only 4 seem to be doing well, I think the 5th got a bit too munched by the caterpillars.

I spent the rest of the time in the garden digging up a load of potato's, we had finally use up all the ones I had squeezed into the fridge so I dug another large bucket full, that should keep us going for a while.

While I was doing all this Rich was chopping up a load of the gash wood we where given a few months back, its love dry pine and makes fantastic kindling.

And lastly before I finally gave up and went in to make mash spuds, I picked the apples from the eating apple tree, they had developed funny mottled spots all over them, I had been leaving them alone and hoping this was just the usual dimples and marks you get on home grown apples (as a possessed to the picture perfect ones in the supermarkets) but the spots have been looking more like some sort of fungus and I saw something that looked similar on Gardeners World the other week . They said to strip all the apples off and take them to a recycling center (if it is a disease and the apples when in the compost bin then it will just live in there till it can infect the trees again, recycling center usual hot compost which kills the bacteria)
Anyone else come across this on their apples?

Sunday

As usual it started with a trip to the car boot sale, next week is the last one before winter, how will I cope till next Easter when they start again!!!

Anyway I managed to grab some really beautiful old french coat hooks for £3, bargain!

When we got back I finally tackled a job I've been meaning to do for weeks, I trimmed our lavender bushes outside the front patio. It was a bit of a shame as they look so pretty but the lavender heads where starting to turn brown and die of anyway.

Every year I dry the lavender and keep it, it is great for making last minute birthday and Christmas presents or as we're starting to plan our wedding for next year so possible confetti?! I will leave it hanging in the greenhouse for a month or 2 to really get all the moisture out of it then store it in kilner jars in the house. I also did a bunch of rosemary this year too as the little bush of it I have has really gone mad this summer.

Now on to the best bit of the day, the laying of yet more bricks in the veg patch (for anyone who is new to this blog, please read back through the archive, and you'll see I'm slightly obsessed with the use of bricks in the garden!!) anyway, I had yet again got some bricks from the local Freecycle, and they have been waiting partially for me to do something with them.
I have used them to replace the old rotten wood borders of the veg patch, which are lethal slippy when wet.

So now we have this...

Happiness is a brick boarded veg garden!!

A Belated Thank You

2008-09-23T02:08:00.000-07:00

Its a bit late in coming, mostly because I kept forgetting to down load the photos of the camera, but here it is, our tiled living room floor

So a huge, huge thank you to Richard and his Dad Rick, who both worked tirelessly for a week to get this done, thanks to Rick for giving up a week of his well earned holiday (and thank you to Rich's Mum for lending him to us!), I fear we may have ruined Rick's knees forever!
Thanks to Richard who spent months cleaning and dressing the tiles (I helped a bit, but Rich did the lions share!) then spend several days getting drenched trying to cut the tiles in a monsoon and gale force winds!

I also need to say thank you to my Mum and Dad who where kind enough to drive to Derby and back to collect 280 tiles I brought on ebay and thank you to Rich's mum for letting us keep them all in her garage (some of them are still there!)

I'm so chuffed with this floor, it looks beautiful and more importantly looks like it has been here for about 200 years!

Arrr only 2 more rooms to go before the ground floor is finished! I may need to give Rich and Rick 6 months to recover!

Finally, A Little Sun

2008-09-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

Mmmmm, love the sun shine, was so nice to get in the garden and not need wellies!

We had a pretty busy weekend again, I finally got the pea frame dismantled and put away, I've been meaning to get round to it for a couple of weeks but I really couldn't be bothered to get drenched doing it!

Anyway this is what it looked like before

and here it is after some energetic digging over

and here's where I was starting to plant some more rows of carrots.

Thank god that's done, it was starting to look really messy.

One other job I have also been meaning to do was plant out a tree our neighbour left us when she moved out, I was a bit surprised when she gave me this pretty big apple tree which was squeezed in a tiny pot. I've been waiting to rescue it for a few weeks and it finally went into its new home down in our mini orchard on Saturday.

Now the fact that it was in such a small container had worried me a bit as although fruit tree don't mind being grown in tubs they have to be big enough to give them some room, here's the pot it was in...

I dug a good hole for it and put some compost in the bottom, then I tried to remove the pot. I have never see a plant more pot bound before, I also discover that this woman hadn't bothered to drill any holes in the pot for drainage, half the roots where rotting from sitting in this manky pool of water! It is at this point I should mention that I have promised my Mum I would stop swearing on this blog, so I wont tell you what I think of people like this!

Anyway, I trimmed the rotted roots and planted it with crossed fingers, I gave it a good watering and will just have to hope it makes it. It hasn't got a vast amount of room in our garden but anythings better than that pot!

Sunday was another lovely day and we managed to get out blackberry picking, something I've been promising Rich we'd do for a while. We came back with a huge tub and have since enjoyed a pretty good blackberry and rhubarb crumble and there's still loads left!

There's a hill near our house which is great for blackberries, and also has a fabulous view on a sunny day!

I hope next weekend is as nice!

The Tin Church Fete

2008-09-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not posting for well over a week, has been madness here what me trying to find another part time job as I've jut been informed my current one will be terminated come October!! it never rains but it pours!

Anyway we had a really nice weekend so that cheered us up a bit, my sister Sal and her boyfriend Ollie came to stay, my sister is a jewelery designer (among other things) and has just finished her official web site which I am shamelessly going to put a link to as I promised her I would: Ollies Dolly!.
As is usual with most of our guests they were dragged out of bed on Sunday morning and forced to go car booting (as its been rained off for the last 3 weeks and i was get withdrawal symptoms!) it turned out to be a blinder and we came back with some brilliant swag (which i forgot to photograph before they when home!)

Then on to the main event of the weekend and the reason they had dragged themselves up the M4 in their complaining little car, the local village fete, know by everyone in Bath as The Tin Church Fete!

The Fete has been held every year for god knows how long in the little field opposite The Tin Church, the church is actually not a church any more (De-commissioned in the late 70's I think) and is now home to Graham, local artist and nutter who takes on the mammoth task of organizing the fete, all money of which gets donated to child line.

I absolutely love this old church, it's a bit of a local land mark, every couple of years Graham has to replace the corrugated iron which its made from with new as it rusts though, hence the slightly shinny looking roof and bell tower.

The lane runs between the church and the field so you do get the odd motorist who tries to force their way though just so they can us this local short cut, they usually get a fare amount of abuse for this!
As you can see they build the stage for the bands in front of the church, so everyone had a pretty good view.

Most importantly here's the bar called 'The Moon on a Stick'.

here we are making use of the bar...

Here's the first of the bands, I think they were called The Mighty Pea, although I could be wrong so don't quote me, I've never heard versions of Eminem, Greenday and Girls Aloud quite like it, they also some how managed to heckle the passing traffic while singing, they were brilliant!!

They where follow by Sargent Peppers Only Dart Bored band who where pretty good too!

Around 3 o'clock Samba Sulis, a local drumming band appeared to officially open the Fete.

They where joined by Lady Margarette (guy from the local theater group in a delightfully spotty dress and hat) who always opens the fete, this year she was carried through the field in a litter, last year she appeared in a replica of the Tardis (complete with sound effects) and the year before that she parachuted in then claimed over the roof of the church, to much applause!

Here he (sorry she) is abusing a chap who decided to drive his big blue van past just as she was cutting the opening ribbon, snapping it in half! that was some brilliant language and before the watershed too!!

Around 4 is the balloon release from the church tower, this involves Graham and volunteers filling the whole tower with helium balloons then opening the bit where the bell used to hang to let them go.

So basically a brilliant time was had by all, its so nice that this little village fete still exists and hopefully will continue to do so, although Rich's back may not recover from helping to put the tents up!

Returning To Weird Carrots!

2008-09-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

Well I've been back for about a week but have been hampered by the weather and my own lazyness form taking any worth while photos.

I finally got round to it this morning when we had a brief glimpse of the sun (so dont be fooled, Bath doesnt always look this sunny!)

The Cauliflower plugs have been in about a month now and seem to be doing well, I am having to go and pick the caterpillars off them each morning put despite the odd wholes munched by them the little Cauli's seem to be storming along.

I put in some Broccoli plugs next to the Cauli's, again I feel as if I'm cheating a bit but with everything going on right now I haven't had time to grow stuff from seed so this will have to do. Lets hope the caterpillars leave them alone till their a big bigger and able to cope with the onslaught.

I'm pretty proud of the herb bed, its really filled out and everything seems pretty happy, it gets quite a bit of sun and I think the wall behind helps as it tends to store the heat of the day so they stay pretty warm all the time.

Something else I'm really pleased with right now is the raspberries, their huge! not bad for the twiggy stumps we were given the end of last winter. I don't know why I'm so surprised, this is the sort of thing Raspberries are supposed to do, as any veg gardener knows but I still find it terrible exciting when I plant some thing and it doesn't immediately die!

The Raspberries at All Golds but for some reason one of the off shoots has decided to produce red berries? I thing you can just make them out in the middle of the photo, is this something Raspberries normal do or is mine just a big freak?

Speaking of freaks, marvel are my wonderfully weird carrots!

I don't care, the fact that they grew at all was amazing, and they taste lovely.

That's it for now, hopefully another up date at the weekend with pics of how Rich and his Dad got on with laying the tile floor and surprise, surprise, here come the rain again...

Dad

2008-08-15T05:21:00.000-07:00

I will be taking a little brake from blogging for a week or so, I'm traveling up to Shropshire on Sunday to go and see my Dad.

Dad has always been a bit of an inspiration to me, him being a bit of a pioneer of the whole recycling thing back in the 80's when I was little (before it was cool!), most of our house and garden was furnished with bits and pieces he pulled out of skips or rescued from building sites, it would then disappear into the wondrous recesses of his shed to emerge and week or so later fixed and beautiful! the reason for this sort of things was mainly we didn't have the money to buy much new stuff plus Dad really hates to see something useful thrown away (I have the same problems, I'm a bit worried I may be becoming a hoarder)

He was also the one who taught me how to paint, we used to spend endless weekends when I was little making complicated stuff out of cardboard and paper-mache, he's an amazingly musical chap too (sadly something I didn't inherit, although my sister used to be a wonderful clarinet player) he has taught himself to play guitar, clarinet (when my sister was finished with it!) and recently the piano.

Probably the best description of my Dad was when my sister Sally and her boyfriend Ollie were staying with us, Ollie said Dad remained him of someone but he couldn't think who? Richard, Sally and I immediately said Winne The Pooh, then fell about laughing, but I afraid he does, hes quiet and very funny and some of his furs been loved off over the years but that's definitely him

So why am I telling you all about my Dad on a gardening blog? well he was the inspiration for me starting all this way back in March, that's was when he started his chemotherapy treatment for cancer, basically the idea was if he couldn't come and visit because he wasn't well then he could at least see what Rich and I were up to on the blog (one of the reasons I post lots of photos), luckily the chemo hasn't been to ruff and he's be able to come and stay a couple of times.
This week however he starts his bone marrow transplant, a lovely fun experience I sure he's looking forward too!

So I'm going home to spend some time with my Mum and my Sister and wait for the doctors to give us our silly old bear back!