Walking round the garden...

As I step outside the back door, Angelique (my favourite tulip ever) is starting flower.

Heading to the bottom of the garden to the pesky back border, I find it filling out with my perennials and looking surprisingly full of promise.

Hidden in amongst the lush greenery are the first of what I hope to be many of my cut flower seedlings: cerinthe, cornflowers and verbena at the moment with more to be added if it ever stops raining.

My new roses are perking up too. This is Precious Love that I got as a gift for my work at The Child Bereavement Charity.

This is looking like the first year I will have gooseberries too. I think I will cage/net them soon to avoid disappointment.

There is a simple reason why the garden is looking lush and green other than the obvious one of the torrential rain of late...

My girls have had their destructive habits quashed. It was a BIG decision to limit their freedom but it was getting to the point of whether or not to keep them. My garden and their lack of compassion was getting me down. I was constantly fed up of the disappointment of finding stumps instead of fresh green shoots. This was Plan C! Plans A and B didn't work. They are still laying everyday so I don't think they are that stressed and I am feeling less guilty now that they have been down there for a couple of weeks and are still pleased to see me.

October gardening...

Still full of inspiration from the cutting garden course, I got planning for my spring bulbs a few weeks ago.

This weekend was perfect for pottering and planting in the garden. It felt so good to be out there in a fleece and wellies. I ordered bulbs from here, here and here. Tulips, muscari, ranunculus for the garden and amaryllis and paperwhites for indoors.

They don't look very attractive at the moment on the windowsill, but hopefully will start producing some green leaves soon. My amaryllis last year were a great success and this year I went for something a little less obvious -- Lima.

Photo credit Parkers Wholesale

Helping me out in the garden are my three pretty new hens. I bought them last weekend and for the last couple of days they have been slowly exploring the garden. 

I lost my two new girls to a fox in the summer, which was a bit traumatic and I vowed not to get another white chicken for gory reasons that I won't elaborate on here. However, I was convinced otherwise by the very knowledgable chicken man at Thornes that I would love having a bowl of pinky white eggs laid by the Coral hen on the left there, who I have named Daphne. When they all start to lay, I should have eggs of different colours from each of them. Things like that make me very happy indeed!

Anyway, back to the bulb planting.  Protective measures have been implemented to stop all my promise of a colourful spring being ruined. Again, not particularly attractive...

... but necessary because if it's not squirrels stashing acorns, it's the ever curious new girls on the block.

Still a couple of hundred bulbs still to plant in my raised beds that will purely be for cutting, along with the seedlings I have got from the course. Just a bit of leaf raking and a bonfire or two to put the garden to bed for the winter and I'm done for the year I reckon. 

Intent...

Shiny new eyelets,

fluorescent guy ropes,

sparkling tent pegs

and a bit of spec to boot.

All the signs are there that I have realised my dream and bought myself a tent.  It seems that late summer is a good time to find a bargain for such a purchase.  My intent is to go camping before the winter sets in.

It was a doddle to put up and is having a good airing in my garden. So what better reading material to peruse than the books I have pored over for the last few years hoping that one day it would all come to fruition.

It gave me a view of the garden that I don't often take notice of - I'm usually looking the other way.  I didn't want to come back indoors and spent a lovely few hours relaxing with my sampler and laughing at my daft dog.

It was his birthday yesterday and he had a mahoosive rawhide bone as a special treat.  He shares his birthday with No2, who was 15 but adamantly refuses to be photographed.  My very own Inbetweener.

Of course, it has necessitated a whole new board for inspiration over on Pinterest!

October rain...

Hmmm, so typically, this morning it is raining and my garden plans have been temporarily (I hope) thwarted.  Strangely, No2 has yet to emerge from his bedroom too.  Funny that, when I mentioned that we'd make a start today...

So I thought you might like to see the new bed I made for Pip last week.  I am in the process of having a major sort out at home and in the process, came across a big bag of fleece that I think I bought at a Knitting and Stitchery show quite a few years ago.  It turned out, I had already cut out the 3 pieces needed to make a simple Oxford-style cushion cover to fit in his basket.

I always use these really cheap (£2.59!) duvets from Ikea for his bed.  They last a couple of washes and I don't mind throwing them away when they are too dog-eared.  (Sorry!)  To make his new cushion really comfy, this time I splashed out and used two together.  The convenient thing is that if you fold them into four, they fit perfectly in his basket.  I tied them together using some embroidery thread so they keep their shape as he does like a fidget about.

As I had a couple of hours to kill, I thought he might like to know that his new cushion was, indeed, his.  Of course, he can read!  I raided my scrap drawer and used some bondaweb to cut out his name.

I then used a narrow zigzag stitch to complete the applique.

I used the same stitch to make the Oxford-style edge to the cover and lazily kept the lime green thread in the machine!

Now he knows his place and it is making everyone smile when they notice it.

Look at him, all soppy.  He is a ridiculous dog!  He takes that toy everywhere with him.

Ah, well... I think it may have stopped raining...

Three...

I would never say I was a pink kinda girl, so it's always mystified me why I ever went for a predominantly pink blog design.  Today my blog is three years old and so it is time for a new look.  I probably wouldn't say I was a black and white kinda girl either, but I do like the clean look.  What do you think?  I'm very happy with the larger photos and the border around them.

So, what have I been up to?  I visited the Abergavenny Food Festival last weekend.  In a word, it was heaving!  I don't think I barely got to the front of any stall to see what was on offer and my camera stayed in my bag the whole time.  Who knew it would be so popular?  I'm not great in crowds at the best of times.  Never mind, I have food of my own to share with you.  Of the egg kind.  My new girls have started laying already.  Mini eggs to start with, but they are getting bigger every day.

Damsons have been picked from my mum's garden and made into jam - something I've not made for a long, long time.

Very good on scones, by the way!

My workroom has shamed me into photographing it... organized chaos, of course.  Nevertheless, I have started to tackle a major clear up of the house downstairs which has been long overdue.

Trips to Ikea have been made and progress is steady!

It's one of those jobs that has huge knock-on effects and the first part was to put some shelving into a store cupboard that was a total waste of space with just one shelf and a pile of goodness-knows-what on the floor...  You know the kind of thing, I'm sure.

To keep me sane, I have been quilting.  Some secret quilts for Christmas so I'm going to have to be very cagey about how much I show in case there are any spies out there...

Plus writing, of course.  I'm trying hard to overcome my self-consciousness in putting words down that don't sound too mushy.

Hmmm, a post that is neither here nor there.  Still, hopefully it's cleared my head a little.  Off to make Delia's goulash-y meatballs for dinner - YUM!

Pecking order...

I'd like to introduce you to my two new girls.

Ethel is a very pretty Sussex Star and Elsie is a Speckled Star.  I have had to consult my hen-keeping book to read up on the best way to introduce newcomers.  I have kept them in the run and let Flossie roam free around the garden as usual but when I put Flossie in last night, Ethel gave her an almighty peck on the back of her neck which made her cower horribly.  So I decided to remove Flossie from the coop and allow the other two to make their way into it for their first night.  Flossie stayed in the garage in a cat box with some straw! 

It took quite a bit of persuasion on my behalf for Ethel and Elsie to go to bed in the coop!  Imagine the scene with me trying to catch them, leaning in through the door of the run!

This morning, Flossie is tidying the garden while the others are being kept in the run.  She is also taking liberties by fussing around in the kitchen as I prepare lunch, knowing that I'm feeling a bit sorry for her!

I decided to call them after two elderly neighbours that I remember from my childhood.  They were sisters, I think, and lived with their brother, Arthur, and a dog called Beauty in the house next door.  The nice thing is though that Elsie was also my paternal grandmother's name.  She died before I was born and Flossie and Lily were her sisters, so the names are still connected in some way.

I absolutely love the delicate necklace that Ethel is wearing!  I'm not really that keen on white chickens, but with such markings, I was happy to change my opinion!

Worried...

... because Lily, my friendly red hen, is not her self.  I have read up and am not sure whether she is broody or sitting or unwell.  I coaxed her out of the hen house this afternoon and gave her a tray of water as she didn't seem to want to reach into the water bowl.  Then she lay down again and after a few minutes went back inside.  When I was holding her, she seemed really light but she doesn't look any different.

Any ideas from fellow chicken keepers?

Transformation...

A wheelbarrow full of colour can work magic when a particularly grim part of the garden looks like this:

I have tried and tried to get a box hedge growing along this little curved border in front of my hammock, but someone thinks it is the perfect place to cock his leg (not mentioning any names...).  An hour spent on a kneeling pad with a fork and actually crumbling the heavy soil between my fingers and it was getting there:

Add in the goodies and a not-so-grim place is created.

It is fairly shady and the soil is heavy, so I think the hostas will do ok.  I had absolutely no resistance in buying those zingy orange zinnias.

PS. Here is the culprit!

My garden #4

Nothing very pretty to report today.

Today, I moved the chickens from the convenience of outside the back door, where they have spent the winter, to their summer residence down at the bottom of the garden.  No2 was dragged away from his PS3 to give me a hand carrying it down the garden (much to his disgust...).  Then we spent a while fencing them in.  They are the Houdini's of the chicken world and love to escape, so this year I have penned them in a bit of grass around the swing so they can munch away.  I watched them for ages last year until I could be sure how it was they were getting out.  It turned out that if they head-butted (!!!) the fence for long enough, it would spring up and they could scramble underneath.  Ingenious aren't they?  The fence is now pegged down!  Don't worry no chickens were harmed - the fence is very flexible!

Here they are settling in and having a move around of the bark chips, enjoying the dust!  I need to get some more bark to spread around so it doesn't get too slippy again.

Now I can have my back door open again without finding hens on my conservatory sofa or pecking around the kitchen!  Pippin proved to be the most useless guard dog when confronted with bold as brass hens!  They just march straight past him!

While I'm toiling at the bottom of the garden, my nemesis that is my back border taunts me.  Take a look:

It's not for the want of trying.  I have tried.  Like Every Single Year that I have lived here.

I am confronted with brambles and other undesirables that scramble over from the back of the fence.  It never seems to look... harmonious.  I WILL tidy it up, once my green bin has been emptied...  That's always a good excuse.  Just out of shot to the right is the blossom tree that has a couple of weeks of glory in April each year.  Its buds are about to burst.