Mystery solved!

Hi!

Just a quick post from me today.

Remember a little while ago I did a post about a mystery plant which had appeared in our garden? Well, mystery solved - it turned out to be this ....

..... it's a Red Hot Poker! How did it get into our garden? Must have been the birdies dropping seeds for us - very kind of them too, it's a pretty addition to our garden and gives a hint of the Mediterranean - lovely.

Most of our spring blooms have gone over now, but we do have some lovely colour still, in the form of laburnum, honeysuckle, foxgloves, strawberries and various other plants whose names I do not know! But I love them all. Here's a few pics.

beautiful honeysuckle

scrumptious strawberries - well, they will be soon!

Chives

one large branch of our lovely Laburnum

OK, I'm off. Hope you enjoyed these photos of my garden and that you are enjoying equally glorious blooms wherever you live.

Bye for now,
love from me xx

An exciting discovery

Hello everyone

Well, the English weather continues to confound and confuse us. On Saturday and Sunday we had lovely warm sunshine, and we even had our first ever barbecue in this garden, yesterday the morning was reasonably warm and sunny but it deteriorated rapidly as the afternoon wore on to the point where it felt rather bracing out there again by teatime (still got my washing dried though!), and today it's grey and raining. Sigh. The poor birds must be wondering what on Earth is going on!

Anyway, we made a little discovery in our garden yesterday!

Remember this ...

Those of you who have been regularly reading my posts will have seen this photo in a recent one where I was sharing our lovely garden blooms with you all. Well, that fine soil appeared to be a big ants nest and I resisted the temptation to mess with it! Anyway, yesterday we decided to do some digging. Just to fill in a bit more detail, this is a section of our garden which was full of soil and stones and rectangular in shape and surrounded by concrete paving slabs. So, we'd had a theory since moving in that it might once have been a pond and we expected the hole to be quite deep. We had a preformed pond liner from my dad that he no longer wanted (and they are quite expensive to buy and we knew we wanted a pond of some sort in the garden eventually ....) and we'd thought it would fit into said hole quite nicely once dug out. So, Alex (our son) being very eager to get started on this little project persuaded his Dad that they should do the digging out. Well, first off let me tell you there were no more than about six ants in that huge pile of powdery soil - I suspect they moved home once their cover was blown! So, with more than a little relief at not suddenly being inundated with little ants scurrying everywhere, the digging continued at a pace. Once they got about 12 inches down though, they hit something red - either tile or brick, it wasn't clear initially. They'd also discovered a square of concrete on each corner. They continued digging out and eventually this was revealed ....

It's a fully constructed garden pond! We were a bit gobsmacked for want of a better phrase as we'd expected just a big hole in the ground! The pond is about 4 to 5 feet long by about 3 to 4 feet wide and just over 12 inches deep, with a fully tiled bottom and concrete sides that also have a lining of some sort. Unfortunately some of the lining has broken off but much of it is still intact. Closer inspection revealed this ....

This is a properly installed hole which we think may have been where a water feature of some sort sat, at one end, and perhaps that hole was where the cables came through. But we're not entirely sure! It's clearly something along those lines, and it's the only one in the pond. Our son suggested it might just be like a plughole in a sink, so that the water could be easily drained out. Who knows, anything is possible!

Anyway, since making this discovery and agreeing it would be a bit of a waste to just chuck all the soil back in again (and I'm not sure what we could grow in it other than bulbs and shallow rooted veggies anyway), we have decided to make any necessary repairs to reseal it and then we're going to have some goldfish in it. It's deep enough for them (I checked!) and we can probably have around half a dozen in there without it being too crowded as they grow. It will be nice to return this original feature of the garden (remember, this house was built in 1957) to something close to its former glory. We'll have a water feature of some sort in that same position where the "plughole" is, which will not only be lovely in terms of watching the water moving, and hearing it, but will help aerate the pond, and we'll get a few small plants which will also add oxygen and provide shaded areas for the fish. It needs a ramp so that beasties can get in and out (frogs, toads, etc.) and we'll have to put wire mesh over it because we regularly see a heron flying overhead and with it only being a shallow pond the fish would be gone in a flash otherwise! We're not sure what to do with those concrete squares on the corners - maybe put potted plants there which like their roots only just dipped in the water, such as Iris perhaps. I will be sure to post pics on here as it progresses. And one thing remains to be decided ... where to put all of that soil which is now sitting in a huge great pile at the side of our newly discovered pond!

Now, that takes care of our son's desire for some goldfish in the garden, but we still need to sort out where to incorporate the preformed pond liner, which will then become just a wildlife pond with no fish, so maybe that can go somewhere shady like near the log pile at the bottom of the garden. But that's another project - best get this one finished first I think!

Anyway, I'm off now, but just before I go, remember I told you about our lovely peony bushes in the garden, with their big red flower buds waiting to burst open? I promised a photo once they opened and I don't like breaking promises, so here you go ...

How gorgeous is that!

Bye for now,
love from me xx

What is this plant?

Morning everyone

What a gloriously sunny Sunday morning it is too, and with another day of sunshine and light breezes in prospect I know where we'll be - in the garden! I began a mammoth pruning job yesterday evening ... I know, not necessarily the right time for pruning, but there is an ancient apple tree which is growing right on the boundary between our and next door's garden, and it is leaning over our garden and the mass of tangled branches have created a very dark damp corner and many of the branches are resting on the roof of our timber workshop, damaging the felt, which has already had to be replaced once. Also, although it has loads of beautiful apple blossom every spring, the apples are always diseased and no good to use at all. I think that's possibly because the tree never appears to have been properly pruned, so it's a tangled mess with no chance of air circulating and not enough of a gap between branches to slow down the spread of grubs, etc., from one developing fruit to the next. I think it's also possibly quite an old tree too. Soooo, yesterday evening I bit the bullet and decided to give it a bit of a haircut. I focused on the lower "layers" and tried to really open it up. Pruning is the job I tend to do in the garden because I have a better eye for shape and form than hubby, although I'm certainly no expert! Hubby went up on the steps and cut some of the branches which are resting on the workshop roof which I couldn't reach, being vertically challenged as our lovely electrician so kindly phrased it a few weeks ago, but there's still more to do, and that's a job we'll hopefully finish today. Whether it will make any difference to the quality of the fruit long term we don't know. Only time will tell.

But I deviate here! The reason for this post was to ask for your help!

Just in the last week, with being out in the garden a bit now we are getting some decent weather on the odd day, we've noticed this plant growing right against the edge of the lawn in an area which is semi-shady first thing in the morning but then pretty much in full sun for the rest of the day. We haven't a clue what it is and I wondered whether anyone out there might be able to help us to identify it. It looks like something which should be in the Med to me and reminds me of some plants in a garden in Spain which fascinated me when we spent some time there many years ago, but given that our weather is distinctly not Mediterranean for most of the year then I doubt it is the same plant!

As you can see, the plant has long pointed leaves and they are quite sharp on their edges. They are also quite thick, tough leaves. The leaves are currently about a foot long, perhaps a bit longer, and are probably getting on for two inches wide at the base. It's growing as three separate "clumps", and two of these clumps have a flower developing in the centre. The third clump is a little way behind in terms of growth and currently I can't see a flower in there but that doesn't mean there won't be when it gets a bit bigger!

I've looked online but haven't found anything concrete, so am asking for your help on this one. We need to know if it's going to get huge because if it is we need to move it!! Also, is it a plant or a weed?

It's never grown in the garden before this Spring and it's certainly not something we've planted, so we are absolutely baffled! We've been here almost 3 years now so it clearly isn't a perennial, or if it is, how did it get here?

I hope I might hear from you in the comments box with your suggestions of what it might be and appreciate any help you can give me.

Well, household chores are pressing for my attention, so I'd best be off.

Have a great Sunday whatever you're doing ... barbecue for us later - yum!

Bye for now.

Love Julie xx

Spring beauty

Hello my friends

So, as promised, here I will share with you some of the beautiful blooms which we are lucky enough to be enjoying in our back garden right now. So much colour, the promise of full freezers (and tummies) come summer and autumn and I'm loving it!

This post is a bit picture-heavy, but I make no apology for that - nature's beauty is worth it!

So the tour begins outside our back door and we find in the border these wonderful Aqualegias (don't know how to spell this one!) which we have in a variety of colours and which seem to pop up wherever they choose from year to year! When we moved in here almost 3 years ago we didn't have any by the back door at all! Aren't they gorgeous? I love the two layer flower which has the big star shaped bottom layer and then a completely different shaped top layer - well worth replicating on some future cards! And they stand so tall too!

Next comes Lily of the Valley. I have always, always, loved this plant, and so did my mum and my gran. And I had it in my wedding bouquet as we got married in the Spring. Hubby and I were never fortunate enough to have it growing naturally in any of our gardens, but it's always grown in my parents' back garden. So, when my mum died a few years ago I took one stem of the plant the following Spring to remember her by and put it in a pot, hoping and praying that it would survive - Lily of the Valley can be tricky and doesn't always appreciate being moved. It survived! And I am so thrilled to see how much it has expanded this season to the point that we now have a little pot full of it, and look at all of those fabulous little flowers just waiting to pop open! And wow, the tiny white flowers sheltered against those lovely big green leaves? Amazing! 

The next beauty is Quince (Japonica?). I love these big dark coral pink blooms even though I'm not a pink person. They're pretty much the first blossoms we see in our garden each Spring so once they appear we know Spring is just around the corner.

Continuing along this border we come to a small tree - Corkscrew Hazel. I love the twisty contorted branches and the purple leaves on this one - quite a contrast to everything else, and the little blossoms are just getting ready to open. 

Now next to the Corkscrew Hazel we have planted a tomato plant in a big pot and since it's against next door's garage well we're hoping when it's a sunny day the warmth from the sun which will be absorbed by the bricks will help keep the little plant warm at night and give us lots of lovely red juicy tomatoes later in the year. (This border, by the way, is South facing, pretty much, so gets sun for a big chunk of the day.) 

Next up one of my all time favourite shrubs and one which reminds me of my grandma - peonies. We have three of these in our garden and I wait each Spring to see the new growth coming up through the ground. It's so exciting to me. They disappear each winter and you wouldn't know they were there, until come the next Spring rusty red growth pops up through the soil, and then I wait with eager anticipation until that growth gets bigger and bigger and turns green and sprouts lots of gorgeous green leaves and then those wonderful huge, dark red flowers appear. They are so, so beautiful when they open and I will do my best to get some photos to share with you.

Ok, still with me? Good! Now, veering over to the other side of the garden briefly, we then find a newly dug plot (hubby has been very busy these last couple of weekends) which is now full of brassicas - cauliflower, broccoli (calibrase), red cabbage and kale. These are not only for us (assuming we get any off them and they're not ruined by the dreaded whitefly) but also for our two guinea pigs to enjoy. It's costing us a small fortune keeping them in veggies so we thought we'd better try to grow as many of their favs as possible to ease the strain on the purse strings! And in our greenhouse at the back there we have more tomato plants, peppers and Florence Fennel growing, with cucumbers to be planted this coming weekend. We still have Second Earlies seed potatoes in there which have finally just about chitted enough to plant out - better late than never! In this section of the garden - the business end we call it - we also have blackcurrant bushes, red gooseberry bush, blackberry bramble, Main Crop potatoes and redcurrant bushes, then way over to the left raspberry canes with give us fruit from about June to October!

Now, you may be wondering what on earth you're supposed to be looking at in this next photo! Yes, there's a lovely blue Aqualegia there, but what I wanted to show you was all of that fine, powdery soil. Now, this section was underneath one of those pre-formed garden pond liners which had been sitting there upside down for a year plus, waiting for us to dig a hole big enough to sink it into - we want a wildlife pond in the garden. We decided to lift said liner and move it to another section of the garden out of the way. We hoped we'd find all sorts of exciting creatures underneath, such as frogs, maybe newts, perhaps some nesting field mice? No! Not a one! Apart from the odd woodlouse, nada, zip, zilch! So disappointing. However, there was this big mound of powdery earth which can only mean one thing - ants! Yep, this is a HUGE black ants nest (we have black and red ants in this garden)! You can't see the depth of it from this shot as I took it from above but it's probably about six inches above ground at its highest! I was sorely tempted to get a stick and disturb it all to upset the ants and see them scurrying around but didn't have the heart - after all, they've obviously worked incredibly hard to create their home, what right do I have to muck it up! So it's been left as we found it. Maybe some savvy starlings will realise there's bounty there and have a go at some stage - who knows! Let's just say if not that will mean one mammoth flying ant exodus in July!

OK, back to the plants! This next photo is the last of our purple sprouting broccoli plants which went in around this time last year. The fox cubs which played in our garden every night last spring and summer broke some of them quite early on, pigeons got others, but we have managed to enjoy some ourselves, and so have the guinea pigs! I'll be harvesting what's left of it within the next couple of days though or the purple sprouts will go to flower and I wouldn't fancy them with my dinner!

Next up, yellow! Yay! Gorgeous yellow wallflowers which seem to self-set wherever they choose but only in the bottom half of the garden. I love wallflowers - we had them in our garden when I was a child, and I appear to have managed to have some everywhere I've lived since.

Now this next shot is one full of promise - tiny baby pears just beginning to grow on our pear tree. I wonder how many will actually be ok to eat this autumn and how many will fall off way before they're fully grown - the last two years they've been quite disappointing. Maybe this year will be better.

Heading down to the bottom of the garden now, and we have our white lilac tree. Again, one of my all time favourites and something I grew up with. I much prefer the white to the lilac, if you know what I mean, and the perfume is heavenly. I love to stand underneath this tree when the blossoms are open and take in the heady scent. And again, gorgeous white flowers and fabulous green foliage - lush! 

OK, so by now you're probably getting bored. If so I apologise, but I did warn you it was going to be picture-heavy! And you can probably tell just how much I love our garden! So the final pictures feature some of the plants growing in our alpine/rockery bed which is against our garage wall back up near the back of the house. This border is opposite the one with the quince in so more or less north facing. It doesn't get very much sun really, certainly not after about 11am, but still manages to give us a lovely display of little blooms every spring and summer. It is quite sheltered I suppose, which probably helps. We have lavender in this bed too and all kinds of succulents.

This last shot I wish I'd taken a week ago because this plant was absolutely full of these gorgeous black and yellow flowers which again I love. It was a treat to behold but sadly many of them have gone over now. Still, you can get an idea of what it was like.

So that's it - tour complete. Thanks for joining me and I hope those of you with a love of plants and gardens have enjoyed it.

I'll see you again soon.

Take care,
love from me xx

Where's my kitchen?!

Hello everyone

Just a quick post from me tonight with an update on the home improvements going on here.

You may recall I mentioned lots of major cosmetic surgery going on in the place, all badly needed and very overdue. Well, the latest progress in the lounge is that we now have our lights wired in - yippee! We brought them with us from the last house and they've been in boxes every since. So, two and a half years on, they are finally up and running! We're really pleased we refused to leave them (the buyer of our last house wanted EVERYTHING left - he'd only ever rented fully furnished places before and seemed to be under the impression that when you buy a house you also buy all the contents, so it was quite a shock to him when we said "no way"!). They work really well with our woodburner and the neutral colour scheme we've opted for. There's still a lot to do in the lounge to finish it off and as and when, I'll show you how things are going!

The other news is someone stole our kitchen!! Not really, my husband (ably aided by both myself and our son) dismantled it the other weekend so that we could have all the necessary electrical work done which involved gouging out holes and trenches in the plaster and masonry and around the edges of the ceiling too (we have a flat roof on the kitchen - it was built in the 1970s - so no loft access for cabling). It's a right old mess really with heaps of filling in to do before we can progress any further, but my husband has bought all the materials required to do the job and I know he'll give it his best shot even though it's not his forte at all. All told it's cost us just under £1000 to get all the electrics done - gulp! Still, it could have been worse.

So, that's the latest. I'll leave you with a few pics showing our lights, missing kitchen and our temporary kitchenette!

Our son giving a helping hand!

Temporary cooking area!

Somebody stole our kitchen!

Oh no, my mistake, they just relocated it to the back garden!

Lots of cables and switches - exciting!

One of our lovely lights

Take care.

Bye for now.

Love from me xx

DIY and new arrivals

Hello all my lovely followers, thanks for sticking with me during these last few months.

Unfortunately I don't have anything crafty to share with you at the moment, but for two very good reasons ..... we are having some big cosmetic surgery jobs done on the house which are long overdue, including the ceiling reboarded in our lounge (the original one had no less than SIX holes cut in it by previous occupants to accommodate lights!), a stone-clad eyesore demolished - you may recall my post prior to Christmas when we painted said eyesore white in an attempt to brighten up the room, all the lounge walls plastered to cover over some lovely red and yellow lead-based paint (that's when you know the house was definitely built in the late 1950s!) and along with this is the need for new skirting boards, new cabling for light and power and eventually (not there yet though) a new carpet. On top of this, we're about to rip out the kitchen and fit a lovely new one which we bought in the sales recently. It's currently sitting in boxes in our shed and I'm itching to see the old kitchen out and the new one in its place! BUT, this also entails some mammoth electrical work, including a new consumer unit and associated wiring as the existing one isn't up to the task of powering a modern home!

The existing kitchen is custom-built pine, which sounds heavenly perhaps, until you know that it was custom-built for a kitchen WITHOUT an electric cooker or hob and WITHOUT a dishwasher and half of the cupboards don't even have a back on them, AND they are only 450mm deep front to back, unlike standard base units which are 600mm, so they're not big enough for all our stuff. The previous occupants had a little gas cooker in one corner of the kitchen which they must have had all their married lives because it was ancient and disgusting, so when they moved out they took that with them and we knew we would be all electric so the gas feed was capped off too. However, the tiny corner space was not a safe place for a cooker, being right next to a wall so not safe for saucepans at all, so that space got taken up by our fridge/freezer. We have been managing to cook our meals for the last 2.5 years with a combination microwave oven and a portable two plate electric hob which my sister and brother-in-law kindly loaned to us! This has been less than ideal as I am sure you can imagine, and Christmas dinner was a real challenge, I can tell you! So, it's high time it was all sorted out, even if only to give me a proper oven and hob! Also, the worktops are a hideous dark green (and there was equally hideous dark green paper on the walls when we moved in, AND hideous dark green venetian blinds at the windows - needless to say they went pretty quickly!). I can't wait for our new beech kitchen with granite worktops to be fitted and to have a proper oven and hob for all the cooking and baking!

So, chaos and mess have become the order of the day for the last several weeks and this is set to continue for at least another six weeks I suspect while everything gets sorted out. I am hopeful that by the time we get to May, we will be somewhat straighter!

On top of this, we became the proud new owners of two 3-yr old male guinea pigs, which my gorgeous son has named Phineas and Ferb after his favourite animated TV characters! Their previous owner had become bored with them and they needed a new home. They are lovely and have such quirky personalities and I really don't understand how anyone can become bored with them since they're always up to something! When they arrived they were in a tiny hutch which wasn't big enough for one, let alone two fully grown Rex breed guinea pigs (for those not familiar with guinea pig breeds, Rex is one of the largest guinea pig breeds and ours each measure about 25-30cm long which is quite big and weigh in at just under 1kg EACH), so straight away we had to go out and buy them a new and more suitable home. We ended up with a two-storey hutch far more suited to the needs of two big boys like Phineas and Ferb! But they currently don't use the lower level and we think this is because the ramp is too steep with rungs too far apart so they really struggle to get back up once down there, so this will be modified as soon as possible. Of course, they need to be indoors during the winter, so this posed another problem for us - where to put them! Naturally the only option was to sacrifice half of the craft room to accommodate their hutch and associated gubbins - hence the other reason for no crafting going on - I have nowhere to work at the moment! But, I wouldn't have it any other way. The piggies are cosy and safe and being inside means they've been able to get used to us quite quickly, whereas if they'd been outside or in a shed they'd have hardly seen or heard from us on any given day. Equally, it's meant we've been able to get to know them!

We also give over a big chunk of the floor in the lounge to a run for them when there's no painting or other DIY going on. They need space to run around, get some exercise, and to do what guinea pigs do so well, forage and popcorn! Yes, guinea pigs jump around like popping corn when they're happy, and we've seen a lot of this from our two. They really are the cutest things ever. Here's a photo - I'll try to get a better one of them for next time.

Ferb in front with Phineas right behind, just off to explore! This was their first time in their new run!

So, whereas there's no crafting going on, there's a lot of other stuff happening, including continuing to teach my gorgeous boy amidst all the mess and chaos of the DIY. But, at least he's been getting some opportunities to see first-hand all the steps involved in these DIY jobs, and has even helped with wallpaper removal and eyesore demolition! If in school he would now be half way through Year 6. I've been teaching him myself for 4 years now - can't quite believe it and wonder where the time has gone! But it's so rewarding - I love it.

Anyway, that's all from me for now.

Thanks for popping in, please stick with me as I will be back crafting in the very near future.

Take care in these wet and snowy conditions and keep warm.

Love from me xx