Snippets

I started work on the dreaded christmas presents this weekend. This is all I can show you for now, but after Christmas I'll do a proper show and tell. If you are looking for inspiration for handmade gifts, here are some of my previous years' round-ups.

I was busy in the garden this weekend, sowing and planting and transplanting. The potager is finally beginning to fill up. There are plenty of potatoes, rocket, lettuce, spring onions, and broccoli just about ready. I added tomatoes, chillis and capsicums, one zucchini, and sowed lots of beans. In the glasshouse I've got more tomatoes, chillis and capsicums as well as a cucumber and some strawberries. I've also sowed some flower seeds including love in the mist, linaria, gilia, alyssum, cosmos, calendula, scabiosa and echinacea (apparently hard to germinate so we'll see how that goes). Oh and verbascum, which was also hard to germinate. I've now finally got two miniscule plantlets peeking through - so I'm watering sparingly so as not to drown and willing them strongly to live, grow and develop some damn flowers!

This is the first strawberry of the season, harvested last week. It was delicious... so lovely and sweet sweet sweet. The second and third strawberries were fattening up beautifully, then as soon as they began changing colour something decided to sample them, chewing its way through all the red bits. I suspect it's earwigs. Does anyone know a good way of getting rid of them? They must be hiding under the leaves during the day, so I'm not sure if spraying with pyrethrum will work.

Well, I need to get back to my studio and do some more work there. After a winter of not doing much in the way of handcrafts, it's nice to get back in there and be creative! Oh - and I've finally got the next Real Gardens tour ready. Pop back tomorrow to check that one out :)