August snapshots

So it's the end of August already! I've been a bit slack with my blogging... it's that time of year when I'm sick of winter, drained of motivation and just waiting for the extra daylight hours to kick in again. There's still a month to go till daylight savings (I'm counting down) but today when I got home from work there was enough daylight for me to go out to the garden and harvest a leek and some broccoli. It's such a relief to be able to do that! That and other small things, like emptying the rubbish bin or fetching something from the garage, are just so much easier when it's daylight. So bring it on.

Here are some of my recent pictures from Instagram. (At first I thought Instagram was just another trend but now I'm really appreciating it as a quick and easy way to document daily moments...If you want to look me up on Instagram I'm here!)

Hellebores are still the flower of the moment but their time is nearly up. My favourite this year has been the picotee - white with a dark purple edge - which looks gorgeous glowing in the garden, in a vase, and floating in a teacup so you can better see its pretty little face. I also got a new hellebore - Tutu - and it was so potbound that the first thing I did was soak it in water, then slice down the middle to create two plants. They didn't flower much after that but I planted them out in the garden and they'll be away next year.

On the crochet front, I made a couple of dishcloths. I'll do a full post about them soon as they turned out well. The pink one above made a pretty scalloped pattern.

And last weekend I assembled a flat pack bookcase for my reading corner. I ended up with 20 dowels left over, which I eventually realised were supposed to help anchor the shelves to the walls, but I couldn't be bothered redoing the whole thing to put them in. They were completely missed out of the instructions which were hard to follow anyway - you know those line drawings which make it look like the whole thing assembles itself! Anyway, it feels very sturdy so I happily filled it with all my books. There is a little room for expansion but not very much, so I'll either have to have a purge or buy another bookcase. The book stack above is my latest library haul, this should be just enough to last me a month as long as none of them turn out to be duds (they haven't so far).

That's about it for the last week in winter! I probably shouldn't be in such a hurry to wish it gone, as there are plenty of jobs to get done, like cleaning the glasshouse, before the busyness of spring arrives. But actually I can't wait!