On my wavelength

* I was invited to the press preview of Gardeners’ World Live and provided with a pair of tickets to visit the show, therefore all my posts will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

This beautiful border designed by Kim O’Brien certainly lives up to its name, but there’s a lot more to it than you might think. The inland beach-inspired border is designed around a mathematical sine wave, representing waves of water and brainwaves.

The planting, with its predominantly blue theme, represents the water but also the abundant and varied life found within water. I’m a big fan of sea holly, and so I wasn’t surprised when looking through my photos of this border to see them dominated by this beautifully structural plant. I really must make sure I find a space for these in my ‘still in thought not yet in planning’ garden!

But it was also the wooden backdrop that caught my eye in this garden. It combines thought with mental health challenges - you can see the text on some of the colourful wooden slices, which are chained together to form a curtain - and this ‘links a vibrant community forming a network created by individual experiences’.

And it’s a stunning backdrop to this beautiful border, isn’t it?

I’d also have been more than happy to take a break in those deckchairs, but I didn’t. Mainly because there was still so much more to see, and I really didn’t think it would be appreciated! But also because I’d spotted some succulents growing on horizontal tree trunks…

That really is very clever, and that is something that is achievable in even the smallest of gardens. I always leave Gardeners’ World with so much inspiration, that my brain is overloaded and it’s only later on as I go through my photos that I remember, and then become inspired all over again!

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was just as good as I expected! I’ll be sharing more from my visit to the show - I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Sharing the pouch love!

I promised more pouches, and more pouches there will be - though this is just a few of them, there’s plenty more to come. In this post though I’m sharing the pouch love and all of these were gifted to relatives over the last month or so.

Let’s start with the smallest ones

This year we decided that cash would probably be the most welcome present for our nieces and their partners, but I also wanted to do more than pop it into a card. Many years ago I wrapped some cash up with some chocolate, and they were obviously much younger but the cash was discarded in favour of the chocolate (you can tell we’re related!) and so I was keen to avoid that, especially as there’s more of us now which means there’s a lot more wrapping paper to sort through!

Anyway I thought the pouches with the vinyl fronts would work, but smaller. And so I made one half the size of the smallest one I’d previously made - opting for the easy maths every time - but it was a bit too small. So I went midway between the two measurements and ended up with two pouches that size, alongside the smaller one.

I was happy, and so were the recipients though I think they were most happy with the cash inside. My 4 year old great niece was probably ambivalent about receiving the smallest one (even with a £1 coin in) as let’s face it at that age there’s much more interesting things going on.

Repurposing an old shirt

Even MOH didn’t escape, though I took a different approach here as I knew he’d say he didn’t want/need one - but as you know that’s never the right answer to the pouch question. I decided that by using one of his old shirts (which he’d already discarded and I’d claimed as ‘potentially being useful at some point in the future’ I should add) he couldn’t argue that it wasn’t his thing.

I can be canny like that.

He’d said that he tends to keep his coat on while on the train even though it can be too warm as he hasn’t got anywhere to put his phone or wallet… I told you the answer to these types of questions is “you need a pouch for that!”

And so I made him a pouch for that, whether or not he’ll use it is another matter but I know it’s been with him on his recent London trip. So that’s at least part of the battle.

For this one I cut one side of his old Superdry shirts, using the breast patch pocket and the buttoned placket, which I sewed closed before assembling the pouch. I left the pocket functioning as a pocket, thinking that it would add interest and may actually also be useful. Along with the same material for the back, and a toning zip I followed the same process as for the vinyl fronted pouches, now fully confident about the size changes. I’ve worked out the back needs to be about 1.5 inches bigger than the front to allow for it to wrap around to the front.

For this one I used an old denim chambray shirt (also MOH’s) for the lining - again not taking any chances on the material choice, and you never know it may even get used.

A flamboyance of flamingos

That’s actually the proper name for a group of flamingos, isn’t that great? Almost as great as this set of pouches I made for mum who has made, and continues to make, me many pouches which I’ll never complain about. Mum was quite taken with the flamingo pouch in the original stack of pouches, and so I thought with my newfound size knowledge I could go flamingo mad (or plamingo mad as they’re sometimes known in our family).

And so I did.

With four more pouches! Each fits inside the other - and so it was a tropical flamingo pass the parcel for one - what’s not to like?

Walking East Stoke's lanes: November and December 2024

Somehow my last post in this series was the October update in which I bragged about it being ‘almost on schedule’ - well, that didn’t bode so well did it? I’ve also realised that there was little joy for me writing these posts so long after the walks, and so having given in some thought over Christmas and the New Year I thought I’d change that. For my 2025 posts my intention is to post them much earlier in the month on the first (or at times second) Wednesday of each month.

But before I can do that I need to catch up with my 2024 posts, and so that’s what I’ll do now.

In mid-November we woke to snow, not a huge amount thankfully, but enough for me to double down on my hibernation tendencies. MOH though has very few of these, and so he ventured out sharing with me a photo or two of his expedition, which he was probably also daft enough to do on his bike, or at least consider in any case.

MOOR LANE

Either way his pictures did nothing to persuade me outside, and confirmed I should stay snug and warm indoors. A week later though it was a different story and I was pleased to get out for an approaching sunset walk, also along Moor Lane.

FOSSE ROAD

It always strikes me as odd when we have snow before all of the autumn leaves have dropped - but then again our weather seems more crazily mixed up as the days go on so I really shouldn’t be that surprised. But what a different a week makes, hey?

And even though it was way colder than it looked, the glorious light more than made up for that.

We reached our usual ‘turn back’ point of the bridge and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it look quite so picturesque - though I’m sure it has, I’ve just not been there to see or capture it. I also noticed ahead of us on Moor Lane the sheep in the right hand field - while this might not strike you as odd, as obviously that’s where sheep should be, it’s the first time we’d spotted them here.

Heading back and it almost looked as if the hedgerows were aflame with the sun - the picture here only does part of the justice, in real life they were flaming beautiful.

We get some brilliant sunsets here, and often my pictures are from our upstairs windows - but not this time, this one was an out in the open natural beauty capture.

In December I only ventured out on foot once, and that was on Christmas Day. We’d booked lunch at the pub in Elston and our plan was always to walk there and back, whatever the weather. We were lucky as when the day arrived, it was another one with blue skies and also unseasonably warm - much better than our worst case scenario of driving rain.

These pictures are from that walk, heading out around 1pm and heading back much, much fuller a good few hours later!

FOSSE ROAD

LOOKING OVER THE A46

Given that it was peak lunchtime on Christmas Day you wouldn’t expect much traffic, but it was a joy to see the A46 this empty.

We turned onto the path towards Elston, and so the A46 was on our left, but you’d never know it (and especially that day) given our view. I think this photo is one of my favourites so far.

Even though we were heading off for our Christmas lunch I still had a couple of photo stops along the way. I mean, catkins and lichen - I was never going to walk straight past now was I?

And then much later, and much fuller, we headed back along the path complete with bright torch and accompanied part of the way by the Christmas lights which were magical - and the first time we’d seen these as they are definitely off the usual routes through the village.

Thanks for joining me for this update, if you enjoyed this post you may also like to see all of the posts in this series or some previous series where I revisit the same place - there’s my year in Greenwich Park and remember that time when I followed a tree?

If all goes to plan, then January’s update will be here sooner than you know it!