Right now...

• I'm wishing I could get on with some crafty-type things but my right hand is still feeling very odd and uncomfortable due to the pins and needles from that trapped nerve. I am starting physio next week. My right arm feels like my left one! Do you know what I mean? It can do things, but not properly. Awkward. Let's look at the evening sun shining on the cosmos instead.

• My new eagerly awaited magazine fell through my letter box yesterday. Have you heard? Do go buy it, it is an absolute delight. The production is fabulous and the styling, well too stylish for words! I took advantage of the brilliant subscription offer of the first three issues for a fiver. It's still available, I think.

• There was only one place to sit and read it at my leisure - the hammock. The simplest of pleasures. Made even more special by being surrounded by the birds coming down to the feeders, for their tea. The tits and finches are not put off by the thuggish behaviour of the parakeets. For the first time this year, I also saw a pair of Nuthatches coming to feed on the sunflower hearts - what a delight, one of my favourite birds.

Checking me out!

• My new hens are settling in nicely. Still a bit timid but they are getting used to me going in the run each day with lettuce or some other kitchen scraps treats. Last week, my skyline hen started laying and has presented me with the most gorgeous of blue eggs every day since.

Violet, my Bovans Nera hen

• I made a sour dough loaf and had a delicious lunch of poached eggs on toast. This has become a little tradition of mine - to poach the first eggs. 

• It is the simplest things in life that give me the most pleasure. What's yours?

Gifts...

There are parts of my garden that I have really struggled to get things to grow in. I have planted things that have looked staggeringly beautiful in the flowering season, only for them to die or simply disappear the following year.

This year has been, by far, the most successful in my gardening adventures. However, in a few spots I am gifted with some things that, without the tiniest bit of intervention from me, or even without having spent a single penny, have not only survived but thrived.

When travelling on the London Overground into town, I am always amazed by the tenacity of buddleia growing out of cracks in walls twenty feet up in a railway siding or out of a gutter.  This buddleia is literally growing out of the tiniest cracks in the side of this old concrete path that leads down to the grass. Each year after it has flowered, I hack it down to ground level again but year on year, it comes back. I like to leave it despite its non-invitation as I like to encourage butterflies and bees into the garden. This year I have also discovered that it makes a great cut flower too.

A little further down the path, again growing out of a small crack, is this clematis. I'm not sure how clematis propagate themselves, but I have another freebie which I am going to train up to the top of the balustrade around the deck. You can also see that alchemilla mollis is happily self-seeding along the cracks too.

Down at the bottom of the garden, the brambles scramble over the top of my fence providing me with blackberries come late summer. I've been picking them every few days and my freezer is getting a nice supply which will tide me over the coming months as a compote for my porridge.

Do you have gifts from Mother Nature?

Nurture…

A while back, I bought a collection of scented pelegoniums. Celia had tweeted about them and I couldn't resist. I was giddy on the success of the cuttings I had taken last year on my cutting garden course.




From three tiny bits of well established plants, I now have three fabulously healthy plants. One is in my conservatory and has loved the year-round warmth. It flowered in about March and I'm loving the scent that gets released whenever you brush past it. The ones in the garden have only been flowering the last couple of months.




The flowers are just delightful. The leaves smell of Turkish Delight. Seriously!




I digress. My plug plants duly arrived and I potted them on as instructed, tucking them in a sheltered spot so they could begin their journey into lovely healthy plants. Then I went away on holiday and that was the week when Britain got its summer and the mercury whizzed towards the 30° marker on the thermometer. Unfortunately, my sheltered spot went unnoticed by my Mum who was doing my watering and on my return my poor tiny plants looked as though they had reached the point of no return. I could have cried. First aid measures had to be acted upon so I decided to bring them all in to the conservatory and see if the constant warmth could do it's magic. I lost 3 out of the original 12.




Fast forward on four weeks and my careful nurturing and words of encouragement seem to be working. I have some delicate flowers on a couple…








…and lots of tiny new leaves on all but one of my charges.




You can read about Celia's success here and her quirky display, which I think looks fabulous and would love to have outside my back door.

Six weeks, six things...

• Oof! Time slipped away for a while there, as is its wont.  I went on holiday and loved having the Mediterranean outside my back door.

We wore our TeamGB bracelets with pride, although I have to confess that I was one of the few who wasn't glued to the box throughout the two weeks. I loved the Opening Ceremony, was slightly disappointed with the Closing Ceremony and got way too excited over the 10m platform diving events. I blame my sister. My niece and nephews are the diving stars in the family and it all got a bit contagious!

• My garden has been my obsession this summer and I am reaping the rewards of the many hours of pottering around out there. I think these mosaics give some idea of what's been happening. The colour is just glorious.

I've been unlucky again with Mr Fox but have just bought another small flock of hens. I cannot bear the garden without them; it just seems empty. They aren't quite used to me yet and tend to scarper as soon as approach but I spend a little time each day having a chat (as you do) and I know they will soon settle in. I'm thrilled to have finally got some that will (hopefully) lay me some blue eggs.

• My cutting patch is a complete success and I have had my own cut flowers around the house for over 3 months now. At one point, I counted 14 jars, jugs and vases in the house. Admittedly, some only had one stem in, but still! It feels very indulgent to have fresh flowers in my bedroom! I found this pretty coloured vase in the charity shop in my town centre this week - I love the way it highlights the pink flowers.

• I am looking forward to a small harvest of tomatoes again this year. Other than some herbs, they are the only edible crop I have grown. Apart from some golden cherry tomatoes which are in a hanging basket, the rest are in the greenhouse and are in desperate need of some sun to ripen them up. This is a black cherry variety.

• I have been lucky enough to have had a couple of days out over the summer too. A fruit-picking trip resulted in some yummy blackcurrant jam being made, a disaster in the red currant jelly area and a couple of bags of red and white currants in the freezer for later.

• Finally, the bad news. I have a prolapsed cervical disc and have been in agony for over four weeks now. I can't sew or knit or, well, do anything much really. Even the jam-making was tricky! For the last couple of days, I've been trying to get this post written as well as tidying up my blog (what do you think? better? worse?) but sitting at the computer isn't the best position and it makes my shoulders scream after a little while so I have to wander off and come back to it. I'm finding the hammock a comfortable place to be, so life is tolerable!

I am on a scary amount of pain-killers and am anxiously waiting to see my consultant again next Wednesday to decide on a plan of treatment. In the meantime, No2 has become proficient with the hoover and I am just taking it slowly. The hammock is calling ...

Brightening up my day...

Are you as bored of the grey as I am?

Shall I share with you what is brightening my day? In spite of it now being tucked away in my spare bedroom...

It began life way back in April with the making of my first block and had me all pleased with myself at the precision I had achieved. Only another 48 blocks to go then...

I showed a sneak peak back here when I was interrupted due to running out of fabric.


I had already found some vintage-like fabric in Ikea that I knew would be great on the back.

Then there was mention of my sore arms here, when I was about to machine-quilt it. There was also a fair bit of unpicking to be done because of some unwelcome puckering. Bah!

I used some brightly coloured voile from my stash for the binding (always one of my favourite bits of quilt-making, choosing the binding).

In an unexpected dry spell, I even managed to lay it out on the deck to get the, ahem, full-frontal shot.

May I present the making of My First Queen Size Quilt:

I'll be making a couple of pillow cases with the scrap and then I will do the full reveal in situ.  If these grey skies persist, that will happen some time soon because if they have brought anything positive at all, it is my sewing mojo firmly back in charge.

The beauty of wood...

Kew Gardens in July - Part Two

I'd been looking forward to seeing the David Nash sculptures in situ since we happened upon the set-up a couple of months ago.

I absolutely love the Ent-like nature of these branches striding through his wood quarry.

As imposing as the larger sculptures look outside in the gardens:

 I think they really come into their own inside the glasshouses, nestled in amongst the ferns and foliage:

Off the beaten track...

Kew Gardens in July - Part One

Isn't it always the way? In spite of having become a bit of a sporadic blogger, the minute my broadband goes down, my head gets full to bursting with blog posts. Five whole days we've been offline. It felt like going cold turkey and my eyes are strained from peering at my phone which gave me 3G to feed my internet addiction! The lack of xBox hasn't been pretty either for a certain someone. Just saying'...

All up and raring to go again as of a couple of hours ago - woohoo!

So, Nancy and I went to Kew on Monday determined to have a proper look at the wonderful David Nash sculptures, but more of that in Part Two.

I've been a member at Kew for just over two years now and I am pretty certain that on every visit I've made I have discovered myself in a part of the gardens that I have never been in before. This time, we found ourselves off the main paths and in a shady woodland area that was over by the badger sett. The paths were soft underfoot from the natural leaf mould rather than the tarmac paths that we usually walk.

It was hard to believe that we were in the carefully planted Kew that we both love and know. The area had been left to grow naturally and there were lots of tree stumps that were the habitat for stag beetles. It would have made my day had we spotted one.

As we strolled and chatted, we came across these stunning wild lilies. Using the wild flower identifier app on my phone, we soon discovered what they are: Martagon Lilies.

They were much smaller than cultivated lilies, probably about the size of a golf ball, but they had the distinct lily fragrance and the tell-tale pollen.

Further along the path, we then saw this pretty yellow wildflower trailing through the bigger bushes. Out came the app again and voila! Big Root!

It had some impressive tendril spiralling going on but I failed to capture it clearly so you'll have to take my word for it or ask Nancy nicely to post her photos ; )


Another little gem within Kew is this walled garden below. It's not always open but I was hoping it would be this time as I knew the borders would be breathtaking. I was right and came home full of big ideas for my own pesky back border. A girl can dream...