Sorting out the glasshouse

 It's Labour Weekend, which is the traditional time for planting out your summer crops like tomatoes, zucchinis and capsicums. However our weather has been all over the place - it was warm and summery today, but yesterday there was a frost, and a cold front is meant to blow in tonight - so I'm keeping my precious babies under glass for a few more weeks.

 I did pot up the tomatoes and capsicums who will be permanent glasshouse residents, and that required a bit of a reshuffle inside. Some of the tender plants who were overwintering under glass have had to make way.

 So far in pots I have seven tomatoes, five capsicums, two pots of mesclun lettuce and three gherkin vines. There are also all the punnets of seedlings I'm still raising. I grew all the tomatoes but one from seed, as well as the lettuce and gherkins, but I bought the capsicums as seedlings. I find them too fiddly to raise from seed without a heat mat or something, they take forever to come up so it's just easier to buy them as seedlings. Same for chillis, pumpkins and zucchini (although I have got a pot of zucchini seeds nestled in the compost bin, where it gets really warm, to see how they go).

My wooden chair still fits at this stage, and so does the Cat Mat and the Saucer. Mr Lui likes a selection of sleeping spots, and gave me the dirtiest of dirty looks when everything was out on the grass while I moved pots around. I managed to fit them both back in, luckily for me. Today he was sleeping in the glasshouse where it was around 30 degrees, and as he got too hot he would get up and move from the Saucer to the Cat Mat, stretch out, get too hot again, move back to the Saucer, stretch out, etc.

Little green strawberries are forming in the strawberry baskets. One has the faintest blush on it. Not long now...

October flowers

The bright days of spring are here. Freesias, ranunculus, azaleas and blossom provide fragrance and colour. It's joyful to pick a small posy for a vase which will then scent the hallway or kitchen. These beauties are fleeting so I enjoy them as fully as I can.

How is your garden on Garden Blogger's Bloom Day?

Spring showers

 The unsettled weather of spring has continued, with wind, rain, sun and storms frequently throughout the course of a single day. Currently the lawn is sprinkled with discarded blossom petals which blew down in the storm that raged for most of the weekend. Now the clouds have cleared and hot sun is shining, all the better to germinate my newly sown lawn seed.

 The potager is still producing steadily. I'm harvesting carrots, leeks, 'Purplette' onions, lettuce, silver beet, spring onions and herbs. I've planted my seed potatoes and sown peas and snow peas. I've got bean seeds to sow and tomato and pepper seedlings to go out when the weather is settled.

In the glasshouse I've already potted up tomatoes and peppers, and I have gherkins ready to be potted. The strawberries are blooming and tiny green fruits are forming. I have two pots of peas slowly succumbing to mildew. The pods are now ready so I'll harvest those, then the gherkins can go in their place.

 The silver beet in the potager is getting ready to bolt to seed, as it always does in October. I need to thin these pansies and phacelia out but I just can't bring myself to - they are good for the bees so it's good companion gardening!

 The curved garden I extended last year is filling in. The mounds of geranium, catmint and lambs ears are a good ground cover, and as the summer progresses the taller plants will appear - verbascum, sweet peas, dahlias and chrysanthemums. 

There are still a few pops of colour from the ranunculus. In the back left corner is a new delphinium, Astolat, which has held its own against the wind.

I'm off to put on my sun hat and windproof coat to plant out the next batch of spring onions. Hope you're having fun in your garden this weekend.

Blossom

Blossom is everywhere right now. Petals flutter in the breeze and the air is sweetly scented. All the apple trees are covered, with extra-large petals on the Monty's Surprise. Pink flowers are blooming on the strawberries and I'm counting down the days till my first fruit. The last two pictures are from my mum's garden. It's a spring time delight. (Daylight savings kicked in this weekend... I feel like life is beginning again!)

Vintage-look garden sign tutorial

Recently on Pinterest I came across a link to this laundry makeover. I really liked the rustic sign they had made, and I thought a similar one would look good in my potager. It was easy and cheap to make, and best of all looks like it has been there for years! Read on for a tutorial.

 You will need a piece of wood for your sign. I used a piece that the builders pulled out of our house when they were taking the chimney down, but pallet wood would also be excellent. Give it a rough sand to remove any splinters, but leave it quite textured.

 You need two colours of paint - black and white (or thereabouts). I used test pots which were super cheap, the dark one is more of a green black but that is fine for these purposes. Put the wood on a work surface, with a couple of small plastic pots or jar lids to hold it off the surface. Paint it with your black paint. Do two coats and let each coat dry thoroughly.

 Take a candle and rub wax all over the sign. It will stick to the raised wood grain. (If you don't have a candle, omit this step. It's not essential but will make distressing the sign a bit easier.)

 Paint ONE coat of white paint on the sign.

 Using a word processing programme, print out the lettering to go on your sign. You can print it in outline to save on ink. Cut around the letters and arrange them on your sign. When you are happy with the arrangement, trace around the letters with pencil.

 Use your black paint and paint in the letters. Do two coats for these. Let the paint dry for at least 24 hours, then take to it with sandpaper!

Lightly sand along the edges to remove the top layer of paint. Be very gentle if you go near the painted  letters as it's easy to remove that layer as well. You can go a bit heavier near the ends, the more distressed the better here! When you have aged the sign to your liking, coat it with some clear varnish if desired, or leave au naturel so the weather can continue your work.

 I decided to hang my sign on the arch leading into my potager garden. I attached it firmly with wire so it doesn't get blown down in a breeze.

And that's it. A house name sign would be really nice, or a coffee sign for your kitchen. The possibilities are endless and all it takes is scrap wood and paint. Happy signwriting!

Spring posy

 This weekend I spent some time with my old library friend Vintage Flowers again. I was feeling inspired so I whisked into the garden this morning, scissors in hand and gathered up a posy of spring flowers. I made a hand-tied posy, which is a technique I love now that I've learned how to do it, since once tied you can pop the flowers into pretty much any vase and they'll hold their shape.

I had a few spare stems so I made a mini posy to go alongside.

The main bunch has hellebores, freesias and linaria, and the small posy has one freesia, one hellebore, one linaria and a few white carnations.

After my flower arranging I gave the garden a leisurely water. The forecast was for rain, but they said that yesterday too and it didn't do much. I decided to give the potager a good soak, especially the garlic, broccoli and little seedlings I planted out on the weekend.

 Shortly after that, I noticed dark clouds beginning to loom menacingly. I raced out and quickly picked some veges for dinner - carrots, onions, leeks and silver beet - all the time watching the clouds pile up overhead. It was like someone had drawn curtains across the entire sky. 

From day to night in an instant. And did it rain?...

 Oh, yes.

September flowers

It's been a mixed start to spring this month. We've had some beautiful warm, sunny days, and also rain, gale force winds, thunderstorms, sleet and hail. It's been exciting weatherwise but not so good for the early performers. The blossom on the almond tree was half knocked off by hail and finished off by wind, and the daffodils have been pummelled. Fortunately there are some hardy souls throughout - Miss Rose Chiffon the miniature peach tree (pictured top left) has kept her blossoms on, and there are ever present pansies cheerfully blooming away. The potted pulsatilla*, mostly kept for it's spotty foliage, has put out shoots of quirky pink and blue flowers. The first ranunculus are pushing through, although slugs and snails are finding them tasty.

 I always like the look of a group of assorted glass bottles with flowers in them, and springtime is one of the best times to achieve this display (mostly thanks to the wild abundance of grape hyacinths). To break up all that blue, I put in the first pink carnation buds of the season. Height and fragrance come from some stems of earlicheer daffodils.

This post is linked to Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. What is blooming in your patch this September?

*Edited to add... it's actually pulmonaria not pulsatilla. So many plants with 'p' names to trip me up... pulsatilla, pulmonaria, penstemon, platycodon. In general I prefer common names but the common name for pulmonaria is lungwort which is kind of gross! However, lungwort it now is!

Recipe: Apple Crepe Cake

This is an easy yet festive cake to make. It's budget-friendly because it uses few ingredients and you don't have to heat up the oven, but you can make it look as fancy as you like. You can change the fillings between the crepes and have a different cake for every occasion.

Apple Crepe Cake

Crepe ingredients:
1 cup plain flour
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup water
pinch salt
2 tbsp melted butter

Filling:
300ml cream, whipped
1 can apples (or fresh stewed apples), pureed or whizzed with a stick blender
Chocolate sauce

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Lightly beat together egg, milk and water and add to dry ingredients.
Heat a pan on moderate-low and pour a little batter in, swirl pan or use the back of a spoon to coat base of pan. Cook 1-2 minutes each side till lightly brown. Remove from pan and put aside to cool, repeat until you have used all the batter (approx 7 - 8 crepes).
To assemble the cake, put the first crepe on your cake plate and spread with a light layer of apples and then a light layer of cream. Lay down the next crepe, and spread with a light layer of chocolate sauce and a light layer of cream. Repeat until all crepes are used. Spread the top crepe with a thicker layer of cream. Decorate as desired... I used fresh flowers and herbs from the garden.

Other filling ideas: sliced bananas, toffee sauce and cream... fresh berries and yoghurt... apples, cinnamon and demerara sugar... What would you do?

Spring

It's here. It's been spring in my heart for a while, but at last nature has agreed and so, here we are. The weather on the weekend was perfect - warm, sunny, beautiful. I threw open the doors and windows and spent as much time outside as I could. I weeded the potager, which took most of the time, spread some compost and prepped a couple of beds. One will be for potatoes and one for brassicas. I weeded the leeks - you'd realise what an achievement this is if I showed you a before picture, but I was too frightened to take one. I tried not to look around the edges of everything and think about how much more there is to do - I would rather be in the moment enjoying the sun on my skin and the fragrance in the air and the birdsong - but there is more, always much more.

Later I baked brownies and made a layered crepe cake. Fresh flowers and herbs to decorate the top. The first blossoms on the almond tree and sweet kittywhiskers. It feels like things can only get better.

August flowers

Tiny gems and jewels in the garden this month. You need to look closely, under leaves and close to the ground. But they are there, shining in the gloom, awakening as the season changes. Hellebores have been going since last month, as well as the indoor and outdoor winter cyclamen. They've been joined by the fleeting crocus and the first of the season's geraniums and blue star flowers. Camellia Fairy Blush is still giving a good show, and Cinnamon Cindy put out a delicate blossom in her first year. And the first miniature daffodils are unfurling... spring is truly not far away.

I'm linking up to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. How does your garden grow this August?