From pink to green...

You'll have seen the second picture in this post quite recently (if not I shared it in the second part of my 2017 in photos) but it was only this last weekend that It dawned on me that it looked quite different.  This is what it looks like now.

Scroll down and you'll see not only is it smaller, but it's now also much greener, but there are also babies. I promise you it's the same plant.  

I never realised this was a thing. But apparently it is. I know that now, thanks to reassurance from the internet. Succulents can change colour, as mine has, when there's less sunlight about, so that makes sense doesn't it?

Even though it's in our conservatory, there has definitely been less sunlight. But you know what, now I'm curious to find out if it'll change back to pink when the sun is around. Do you know?  Have you experienced this?  I'm curious. And quite impatient to find out...

Bleaching some pine cones...

In the run-up to Christmas I started to see lots of lovely bleached pine cones on Pinterest. I loved how they looked and thought to myself "how hard can this be?" and thought I could probably give this a go myself. The only thing was, I was short of pine cones...

Luckily though I spotted a source of pine cones one weekend at my in-laws as they have a Christmas tree of old planted in their garden, which is now, well it's much larger than a Christmas tree. I asked my FIL if he could save me some pine cones as they dropped and to my amazement - and to the amazement of my MIL and MOH too - he told me he had a bag that I could have which he'd collected a while back. So off he went and came back with a carrier bag of pine cones.

Result. This year was going to be the year I'd bleach some pine cones.

Rather than just plonk the pine cones into bleach I decided to do some more research and found this How to make gorgeous bleached pine cones post on Garden Therapy, and it looked just the thing. It gave more detail to my planned method and reminded me to take it all outside.

So sensibly attired in clothes-I-could-cope-with-if-they-got-splashed-with-bleach (they didn't) I set out to bleach some pine cones of my own. 

GETTING STARTED

I mixed some bleach and water and chucked in my pine cones and gave them a stir with a stick that had blown down in the recent winds. I wasn't expecting it to foam like that, but then again I'm not a bleach aficionado as anything to do with bleach is usually on MOH's list of jobs. And I only braved it for this as I thought there was zero-to-no chance of him seeing the point of bleaching pine cones, let alone be part of it.

So pine cones in a mixture of bleach and water, and stirred with the stick. And it was true, my pine cones floated to the top. I remembered reading that weighing them down with some bricks would help keep and increase their chances of lightening. So off I went to find some bricks.

BRICKS ADDED 

Now all there was to do was wait. Hmmn.

In the end I managed to leave them overnight. I popped out the next morning in the rain to check on them, and couldn't tell if it had worked at all. I wasn't convinced, but rinsed them anyway. It did make me smile when I thought of how excited I was to find out, and how daft I must look smiling to myself...

I'd forgotten how pine cones close up when they're wet. I hoped that as they dried their new whiteness would be revealed.

And it did. For most of them.

I'd also forgotten - if I knew at all - how long pine cones take to dry and open, but as they started to dry, some were looking distinctly whiter.  

They were also taking much longer to dry than I'd anticipated. When I started out I had no idea what I was going to use them for but soon thought I might add them onto this year's Christmas wreath as decoration. However it soon became clear this idea was pure folly as they were still not open. As we left for our Christmas break I moved them off the newspapers and onto a shelf above the radiator, hoping that it would give them a helping hand.

It certainly did, they are now dried and open.

They are all lighter in colour than when I started.

And I guess that like anything some pine cones take more to bleach than others. I quite like the mix of shades though. Now I just need to work out what to do with them, or at least find somewhere to store them where they are safe from MOH, who's most likely to want to throw them out. My other challenge - well that's remembering where I put them in time for next Christmas!

My top tip if you plan to try this: Don't leave it until 18 December before you start!

The RSPB Reserve at Titchwell

I've already shared the walk to the beach along the West Bank path, and the beach so I thought it was time to share more from the actual RSPB Reserve, where my dad volunteers each week.

As we headed back from the beach, guess what we saw?

Yes, I know I shouldn't have been surprised to see a bird given where I was, but it was the first one I'd seen.  And as I tried to get closer he hopped off over the bank on the right and scuppered that plan.

Having walked back inland we took a left instead and headed off around the Meadow trail on the boardwalk. The older wooden boardwalk is gradually being replaced with a plastic kind of boardwalk, made from used carrier bags - which sounds like a great use for them to me.

NEW AND OLD BOARDWALK

We were back up near the Reed beds and that meant I could snap some pictures of the bullrushes close up.

As we got closer to the visitor centre there were plenty of examples of how to give nature a home, which coincidentally (or not) is one of the RSPB's campaigns. You can see how you can give nature a home in your garden too.

Below is a dead hedge for wildlife, and if you want to make one at home you can use cut branches and stems which make a great habitat for insects, small mammals and roosting birds. And you can make one in three easy steps:

1. Knock some uprights into the ground in two staggered rows
2. Lay the smaller branches or pruning sideways on top of each other, alternating in front and behind the uprights in the ground
3. Fill any gaps with leaves, then pile on the rest of the stems - and top it up throughout the year.

And there were a couple of bug hotels too - I've still not got around to making mine, but it's still on my garden to do list (along with many other things!)

The next area was full of shells and represents the sea bed, which given we're so close makes sense. 

The volunteers maintain this garden and there's plenty to keep everyone interested, and you can lift planks up to see what wildlife is underneath - I delegated that part to my dad!

Opposite the visitors centre is an elaborate bird feeding station, well what else would you expect? I suspect for the local bird population it's the equivalent of a Michelin starred restaurant!

And as we left, I spotted this sign leading to an area where you could make a bug hotel - perhaps I should have stopped and picked up some tips! 

It wasn't what I expected from an RSPB reserve, there was a lot more going on than I expected and it was more accessible for non-bird watchers too. It's definitely somewhere I'd go back to - and having a cafe is a bonus, as it's always useful to know where potential cake stops are if I were to be cycling by!

I've got bird feeders - that reminds me, I'll need to buy some fat balls soon and I plan to build a bug hotel at some point, but what do you do to encourage wildlife into your garden?