This May...

Thankfully May has gone more to plan than last month, although the high temperatures towards the end of the month have thrown a spanner in the works slightly; while it’s been nice to see the sun having temperatures in the thirties on quite a few consecutive days it has meant I haven’t achieved as much as I’d hoped to. But then again it’s my birthday month and if you can’t take your birthday month more easy, then when can you?

I’ll share more next week about the genius plan for my garden, which was necessitated by the influx of quite a few unplanned plant purchases - some were for charity, and others were just too gorgeous to leave behind! But my plans are on hold until the warmer weather subsides a bit, as digging a new bed isn’t going to happen, not least because the ground is harder than it was!

The warmer weather has meant plenty more barbecues though, so that is definitely good news. Even though MOH is on what he’s called ‘light duties’ by the end of the month he was definitely up for barbecuing, and back to washing up. Result!

At the start of the month it was all about MOH taking it easy, which meant I had a lot more chores on my plate - obviously I didn’t mind and I know he’d do the same for me, but it was a lot. I learnt some new life skills this month, nothing too spectacular - well apart from cutting the grass which I haven’t done in over 20 years, but there was also charging the Ring doorbell (and the treasure hunt for the screwdriver), plus lifting everything because MOH couldn’t. But as I said by the end of the month he’s doing so much better - I know I’m being vague, but as I said before it’s not my story to share, but also I can’t write my blog completely ignoring it. So this is where we are right now, maybe another time I’ll share more.

My self imposed plant buying ban has well and truly been broken since our visit to the Newark Garden Show last month. I’ve bought some dahlias and cosmos on our visit to Flintham Hall which opened its Walled Garden as part of the National Garden Scheme for charity.

We also went along to the monthly Gardener’s Market at relatively nearby West Bridgford - and worked out afterwards we could get the bus next time, which would definitely help with my plant influx! We’d not been to West Bridgford before and it was great - it reminded us of a London village, full of the hubbub a Saturday morning brings and we stopped for brunch in Cote, something I’m sure we’ll be doing again. So discovering the Gardener’s Market on social media was a very good thing!

Our holiday plans have progressed and we are off to the Loire to stay in a chateau or two, breaking the journey with an overnight stop in Paris each way. There won’t be any cycling but we’re hoping for some walking, plenty of relaxing and temperatures that aren’t in the thirties!

We’re restricting ourselves to one large sized case, and a hand luggage size case as between as that’s as much as we can manage, so that’s made planning what to take more focussed than normal. Usually my packing ethos is ‘put it in, just in case’ but not this time, although I fully expect still to take too much. The more challenging thing is my shoe choices will be limited, which for anyone that knows me knows this will be hard - I’m better than I used to be, but then again I am the girl that took seven pairs of shoes (plus trainers) for a two week netball tour to South Africa, and I wore the lot of them!

It won’t surprise you that while I don’t know exactly what clothes I’m taking, I do know exactly what my holiday sewing project will be - that’s all packed!

I’ve mostly been slow stitching this month, and really enjoying it. I haven’t made too much progress on the dream birds pouch from last month as I decided I needed a new pouch for my holiday, as you do. And the pouch kit in my Advent Calendar seemed to be just the thing, though I was missing a piece of material, but sourcing another from my stash wasn’t an issue.

All was going well until the instructions said ‘quilt how you want’ which my brain took to mean use hand sewing to embellish the fabric and quilt it at the same time, so that’s what I did (see below), and once I’d done that the newly-substituted fabric looked plain by comparison, so that got a similar treatment.

I’m sure I’ll manage to complete it in time though…

I have managed to complete my mystery block of the month quilt top, and it’s looking great. I ummed and ahhed about the borders and how wide they should be and eventually made a decision to increase each one by an inch. I finished it at patchwork group this month, which was a really sensible thing to do as the village hall floor is way more spacious than mine!

Though now I’ll be putting pressure on myself to baste, quilt and bind it so it is really finished. But that means a temporary rearrangement of my craft room as that’s a lot of quilt and once it’s through the machine it needs to go somewhere, and the ten inches or so I have behind my sewing machine isn’t going to be enough!

But that’s at least next month’s problem.

A blue chandelier

It’s been up a while now, but it still makes me smile every time I see it. So I think we chose well - but it did take us a while to decide. When we moved in a light for the stairwell wasn’t our priority, but we knew it would need - and could take - something pretty spectacular. Our stairs double back on themselves, and so have a half landing - so while it’s not a big space because it is the full height of the house, it’s a very tall space, and our choice needed to do the space justice.

When we moved in there was the standard white fitting with a lightbulb on the tiniest length of cable. The electricians were here soon after we moved in and we said to them about it and they admitted they were waiting for us to call them to fit a light. So that was good to know, but it was a while before we called them back.

I’m not sure why though as I’d pinned the light we actually ending up buying soon after we started to think about what would work, though to be fair it was one of many coloured chandelier type lights and I’d originally opted for the jade version, as that’s much more our usual colour scheme.

Our final choice was helped by the large artwork we spontaneously bought on a trip to Nottingham, when we intended to look at a new sofa - oops. Anyway we had the picture hung by experts (and it was well worth it) and they also helped us plan its position in relation for the likely chandelier we knew we’d have at some point.

In January I was on the Dunelm site and thought I’d look at the chandelier I’d pinned so long ago again. It was THIRTY PERCENT OFF. I hadn’t expected that, but it was worth pursuing, and quickly as there were only a few days left of the sale. We tried to find a shop that had it on display, and I went all Beattie from BT calling shops but it wasn’t in our local and local(ish) branches. So we took the plunge and ordered it, hoping that if we really didn’t like it then Dunelm would come good on their promise of hassle free returns.

Thankfully we didn’t need to test that, as it arrived and it was gorgeous. Phew.

But it needed putting together, and there were many, many parts. The parts were labelled and there was a diagram, but it wasn’t always obvious.

But I got home from yoga one week, and with the electricians scheduled to come later in the week, to find MOH already making good progress with the blue crystal jigsaw we’d bought. And between us we got it all in mostly the right place.

With it successfully assembled it lived on our dining table, propped up by packing materials until the electrician’s arrival.

It made quite the centre piece!

And then it was up - with MOH assisting the electrician in the final stages - and thankfully without any ‘Only Fools and Horses’ moments, and it looks great.

No doubt it’s clear now why blue was the obvious choice.

It’s a stunning light, and works well in our space which is always likely to stay white. It was also a great price - even better with the sale discount, and despite looking like it probably isn’t, it’s just about reachable from a tall stepladder for any bulb changes, but hopefully that’s a long way off!

My garden in April

I ended last month’s post saying there was still plenty to do, and that’s what I’m starting with on this post too. But then again, there’s always something to do in the garden isn’t there, often though it’s just getting the weather to behave to spend enough time out there amongst everything else that’s going on, but as the month has gone that’s been more manageable - especially with an influx of plants from this year’s visit to the Newark Garden Show, oops.

The wallflowers have been fantastic, brightening up their little corner by the garage - I love how the colours change as they mature, which often means there’s a multicoloured display at any one time.

Our lavender’s have mostly done well - we have many of these large bushes, but one less than last year it would seem. One has mostly not survived the winter and while I haven’t looked at it in any great detail yet, there’s not much green new growth on it. In better news the small-ish self seeded plant that we pulled out from between our garden and the pavement has survived and seems to like its new position in our outer border. It’s a good few years behind the larger bushes but with one bush failing it’s a good reminder to take cuttings - so that’s another job on my list!

After the daffodils had a poor show this year - just three flowered - the tulips said ‘hold my beer’ - this was the only flower we had this year, and so some bulb attention is clearly needed too. I’d been growing both the daffodils and the tulips in pots, but I think the time has come to sow them into the ground and see if they do any better there for next spring.

The crab apple tree has been busy this month - the blossom has formed, flowered and gone! It’s delightful to watch the little tree come back to life, but it seems I have very few pictures of it this year - I’d given it quite a trim in March so I was doubly delighted to see it in leaf, let alone blossom.

The acer by our back door also sprung into life - and has since had a bit of a trim - but just look at the sunlight on those red leaves. Divine.

It’s not all been quite so rosy though, or in this instance rosey. One of my roses was looking decidedly dry, and I think it along with the small peach tree got caught out by that very warm spell at the start of April. We weren’t home for those few days either so it was a bit of a double whammy.

But with some careful pruning I think this one will be ok - it’s already started to form new leaves, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I know I say it every year, but I really do need to get these roses out of their pots and into the ground - maybe this year will be the year, who knows?

My succulents overwintered well in the garage (mostly) until they didn’t. I brought them outside and later in the month I lost the single one on the right. The two butting up against each other seem happy enough though, as does the tiny one on the left. My plan for my succulents is to load them up into the pots I have - partly as I think they look better en masse, but also to help with the the ongoing pot shortage situation.

The aeonium decided it wasn’t happy after all and so now I have a twig! My indoor one is also not happy, but a tad happier than this one - but I’m going to persevere with these as plants as I think they’re gorgeous - though I may need to buy one to replace this one, I’m not sure that one is coming back!

The gravel weeding can be a full time job, as well as the usual dandelions and weeds this month I’ve been pulling up baby trees. And I’m glad to do this while they’re still small as it’s a relatively easy job. The gravel is great for propogating plants on its own though, I’ve got a couple of buddleia and some lady’s mantle that I want to pot up (thankfully smaller pots aren’t an issue) and I think I’ve several hellebores forming too, though these are teeny tiny at the moment and MOH is under strict instruction not to touch them, or even walk on them - so we’ll see how we go!

The mahonia has been jewel-like and gorgeous in the sunshine. It seems we’ve lost the smaller of the plants we had, and I’m not surprised it seemed to be a lot wetter than the other two. But two of these is plenty enough, and the blackbirds are enjoying them as much as me, perhaps even more so.

It was really quite satisfying and mindful to sit alongside this lady’s mantle and remove all the dead leaves which had done such a good job of protecting the plant over winter. The leaves are fascinating and you can quite clearly see how they’re folded as they develop and before they unfurl themselves. This job was made all the better for its position in the sun, I have another large plant which doesn’t get so much sun, so I need to time that one right - and haven’t yet!

I also overwintered some amaryllis in the garage, leaving these in there a bit longer than the succulents. Imagine my joy then to discover that it looks as if I’ll be rewarded with a flower.

I mentioned at the start that we’d been along to the Newark Garden Show again this year, and this year I went with a plant list - taking my cue from visiting quilt shows! We even bought some of the plants on my list - irises, tomatoes, strawberries and foxgloves, but there was some off list shopping too, including a lemon coloured red hot poker and a glorious lilac rhododendron.

A RED HOT POKER (THAT’S NOT RED) AND MORE IRISES

TWO FOXGLOVES

A GLORIOUS LILAC RHODODENDRON

STRAWBERRIES AND FOUR TOMATO PLANTS

So now you now why I continue to have a pot shortage!

I also spotted that one of the hebes was having a crisis - a kind of Cruella de Vil kind of crisis, as it were with a central stripe dying back. It was as dead as could be, so it needed to come out, but it doesn’t look that much better after - hopefully I’ve been able to act quickly enough so that it can recover and grow more healthily - fingers crossed.

But it’s far from all bad. The new olive tree looks like its ready to flower soon - just look at the number of buds, so I’m taking it that its happy in the large patio pot.

And if this snapshot of the small crab apple tree is anything to go by, then I should also be in for plenty of crab apples later in the year. Which is good news as I’m hoping to be able to make even more chilli jelly this year!

Let’s hope there’s more ‘at least pleasant’ weather to come, as I’ve got a to do list as long as my arm!