Bringing the outdoors in

I love fresh flowers, and lately I've been making an effort to have at least one bouquet in the house at all times. I'll pick whatever's blooming, including herbs and veges which have gone to seed. The jug above holds purple sage and bright green starbursts of parsley.

Dainty sprigs of sage and linaria are perfect for this little vase.

A lovely rose... the easiest cut flower of all! Just cut a stem with a bud and a couple of leaves, plonk it in a vase, and it will do all the work for you. It slowly unfurls over many days, and even spreads a gorgeous perfume. Even the fallen petals of a rose look beautiful.

A taste of summer

Can you smell them? Ripe, sweet and delicious. My first strawberries of the season, picked 15th November. These are from my Pink Temptation plants - the fruits are small but very sweet, and the flowers are pink. I have two baskets of strawberries in the glasshouse so they will ripen faster, and also be safe from the birds. Can't wait till I have blueberries to go with them...

Flickr and Ravelry

I've been updating my Flickr and Ravelry pages. You can find me here at Flickr and here at Ravelry.

Some recent Ravelry projects:

1. crochet, 2. crochet stool cover, 3. swatch , 4. hottie cover 2


Some recent Flickr photos:

1. Carouby pea flower, 2. Carouby pea, 3. Rhododendron, 4. Vege garden

Pop tart decor

I don't have many good things to say about Britney, but check out the gorgeous afghan she is lying on here (click image to see it larger). It looks part freeform, part granny, and I love the mesh border with the tassels. In fact I love this room, even the midget with the cake would be handy...

Spring gardening

Spring... a time of bird song, warm days, pretty flowers... oh and rampant weed growth. Here's just one of the problem areas I've been tackling recently:

Mint, mixed in with bulbs, a large fern, and something unidentified growing from a dense mass of white rhizomes. I'm hoping to get all this cleared out and plant the small garden with some heuchera.

Actually, this was just a small patch of weeding to ease me into it (I thought, 4 weeks ago, that it would be done in a weekend). There's also convolvulus going rampant in 2 different corners, plus a huge infestation of oxalis in the future potager. So. Plenty of weedbusting to be done. Does anyone have any tips for dealing with oxalis or convulvulus (bindweed)?

Things are going well in the vege patch though. My silver beet is going to seed, but according to Lynda Hallinan (editor of NZ Gardener), this tends to happen to silver beet in the middle of October, regardless of when it was planted.

The Carouby (sugar snap) peas are growing tall and beautiful in the background. In front of them are leeks, purple cauliflower, borage and violas. I'm starting to thing I might have planted things a teensy bit close together.

They have such gorgeous flowers, just like a sweet pea, but unscented.

The pods develop super-quick - don't let them get any bigger, or they'll be stringy!

A radiant patch of golden marjoram. Next to it, my nemesis pokes one of its many heads through. I hate convolvulus.

Aquilegia, next to a pretty scallop-edged mirror.

A blush-pink rhododendron... the flower of spring.

In which Lui has a big adventure

Bright and early on a Monday morning, Lui sat looking out the open back door. Suddenly his ears pricked up and he leapt up, knocking over his stool in excitement, and ran out the door. What had he seen? Just two ducks, taking an early morning stroll across the rooftops.

Full of eagerness and spring cheer, Lui leapt up on the roof to join them. "Surprise!"

"Bugger off!" quacked the ducks, and flapped across the short space from the neighbours' house's roof to our garage roof. There they sat, regally surveying the landscape and ignoring the lashing tail and fanatical glare coming from just metres away.

Poor Lui - he just wanted to cuddle one! Just one! He just wanted to wrap his paws around it and hold it tightly, and maybe wash it a bit, and watch it flap and then grab it close and cuddle it again. That's all!

Silly little feline. You don't even figure.

Darling, this neighbourhood isn't what I thought it would be. Let's go!

Right you are, dear.

Oh well, thought Lui. I know how to get on the roof now! It's just a jump and a flap from here to the cherry tree. Those smart-ass blackbirds won't know what hit them!

Some things

Some things that are annoying me today:
• I have a cold. My head is stuffed and fuzzy and my nose is dribbling. Enough said.
• We have a cheap new keyboard and it's awful. I type a line and then go back through inserting the letters (especially "n") that didn't show up the first time.
• The weather. These sick bones want a patch of sunshine to warm them, but it's being obstinately overcast. Again.
• Lui has just jumped in my lap and is making it very difficult to type (although the comfort of his presence really outweighs that)
• Lack of choice in the pantry. I felt like making a stew or something warming in the slow cooker, but I don't have anything I'd need for that. Guess it's toasties again tonight...
• Weeds along the driveway. I've been planning to deal to these for a while but weather and time never seem to cooperate. It gets worse every time I look at it!

Some things worth being cheerful about:
• I've started a(nother) new crochet project - a ripple blanket! The first photo on this post is my swatch. It's a nice, easy project from Attic 24 - good for when your head is stuffed up and you don't want to think too hard, but if you get a couple of rows done then at least you haven't wasted the entire day...

• Pretty spring flowers! Above we have rhododendrons, sparaxia and pink lantern-flowers (no idea what they're really called).
• I have a pile of unread books (so no anxiety about running out), fuel for the fire, some dvds and a blanket. Also a vase of gorgeous flowers to look at.
• I have plenty of lemons and honey. The only good thing about having a cold is hot lemon-honey drinks!

So now I think I'll take my cat, crochet, books, blankets and hot drinks to the couch. And that's where I'll be for the rest of the night.

In the glasshouse

Here is that tour of the glasshouse I promised you. Come, take a peek inside... no spiders, I promise!
Many treats and treasures are growing inside, including 2 strawberry baskets hanging from the ceiling, and 2 little pots of parsley seeds (one has a plastic bottle on it for a cloche, and it did indeed bring the seeds through quicker!) Inside the door to the left is Miss Rose Chiffon the miniature peach tree, and inside to the right is the Garden Prince, miniature almond tree.

Sweetly scented alyssum (I was told it helps keep whitefly away, but I noticed today that wasn't the case. We'll see how well the marigolds do!)

Seedlings in their newspaper pots await potting up. Here we have chives, onions and tomatoes.

Some more seedlings in a china saucer. Marigolds, Black Krim tomatoes and sorrel in the background.

Arctic tomato. This was sown in March and I was doubting the value of it as it didn't do much over winter. I had two inside and two in the glasshouse, and the two in the glasshouse succumbed to frost. So I put the other two in my sunny studio and they made it through winter. When the days grew warmer they came out to the glasshouse, and have rewarded me with vigourous growth and some flower buds. Well, we'll see how long it takes them to actually get around to fruiting - last year I harvested my first (normal) tomato in January. Mind you I didn't have a glasshouse then either.

A great crop of large, luscious mesclun salad. Delicious with a lemon dressing! Next to them is a folding chair - I like to sit in here and have lunch sometimes. On a cool day the change in temperature is very welcome.

Of course, you have to be in quick to grab the chair.

So that's the spring tour! Hope you enjoyed it. What are your favourite things to grow in a glasshouse?

Windowsill vignettes

Here's a view of my kitchen windowsill. I like to keep pretty things there because it makes it much more interesting when you are stuck in the kitchen doing boring things like dishes or cleaning up! The predominant colour scheme in my kitchen is beige, green and splashes of pink.

I'm growing some herb cuttings in this little glass bottle.

The cyclamen flowers match the cranberry glass.

Want to see a few more windowsill vignettes?

Okay...

Small dollies and a birdie

Lush green cyclamen

Glass teardrops and hearts

In my studio window

♥

More vintage crochet

Here is some more vintage crochet, using up thread from my stash.