Dreaming Spirals

I have been busy over the last few weeks finishing some postcards for a postcard swap with Art2Mail.  There are 27 here (I think!).  Here is a tantalizing taster for the recipients:

I have also been installing a router for our wireless network - we have had a very temperamental, ancient system until now and I got fed up of getting cut off and having to go and tweak various adaptors.  The only problem is that now one of the computers the kids use, which still runs Windows 98, can’t connect.  So we are getting lots of complaints about being bored over this half term week…

On another note, the garden has still got some colour, despite it being nearly November.   Things don’t usually just grow for me, and when they do the slugs beat me to it, but I just stuck a few nasturtium seeds in last spring, and one of them is ENORMOUS!   It has grown and climbed from the patio across most of the width of the lawn and is still flowering.  I like to eat the nasturtium flowers.  I visited the restaurant at Garden Organic (which used to be called HDRA) a few years ago and they served various flowers in the salad and it gave me confidence to try some of them at home.  Nasturtium flowers have a nice peppery flavour.  Trouble is, I can’t manage to bring myself to pick many of these….

While I was pegging out washing the other day I moved the trampoline cover and underneath were these eggs - I assume insect or reptile eggs.  Anyone know what they are?   There were also a lot of slugs hoping to overwinter snugly under there as well!

[Read more →]

I love this gladioli.  It came up suddenly last year after we had lived in this house for 9 years. 

We had a blustery day and it got blown over and the stem broke so I had to bring it in and put it in a vase.  Oh well…. silver linings and all that!

[Read more →]

I thought it was time for a bit of visual relief so I took the camera for a walk in the garden this afternoon and turned the macro setting on.  

Not sure what this flower is but it is on a very long stem and looks a bit like a harebell.   We got lots of free packets of wild flowers at a Springwatch ‘Breathing Places’ open day last year in Newport and I think this is one of them.  In fact it is the only new wild flower I have noticed growing in the garden and I’ve scattered a lot of seeds around!

This is herb robert but it is pinker than the photo shows.

Don’t know what this is but it is one of those weeds that you mean to pull up and then it flowers and you change your mind!

[Read more →]

This is an interesting list of tips about blogging which Sharon of In A Minute Ago pointed to in today’s blog post.  I don’t understand some of them so I must read up about it.  Trouble is… if you did all of this it would be a full time job, I suspect.

I planted a few seeds not long ago.  Here are some nasturtium seedlings coming up.  I love bright nasturtium flowers and you can also use them in salads - they have a peppery flavour.  If the slugs don’t beat me to it!

And here is a photo of the avocado plant which germinated from an avocado stone which I had put out in disgust having soaked it and tried to germinate it for weeks.  It is doing well, isn’t it?  I recently planted it into a bigger pot - it had been in the small original pot all winter but as soon as spring came it grew more vigorously.  The poinsettia beside it looks quite puny and tired - it has just put all its energy into the flowers and will need cutting back soon so it can recoup its strength.

[Read more →]

The wisteria at the front of our house is in bloom, really early.  It is usually the middle of May before it comes out.    The smell is sumptuous …

I love the way it hangs all along the stem in fronds.

These wisteria pods from last winter knocked on our bedroom window last night and woke me up!  But I didn’t have the heart to cut them off…

I love looking up at them with the sunlight filtering through the leaves and seeing this glorious green and purple…

[Read more →]

Well, I’ve been quiet but not inactive.  Still no camera but I’ve dug a few out of Picasa which I haven’t put on my blog yet….

The weather is absolutely glorious.    The garden is lovely.  We have two red tulips which I thought I’d killed off by planting my herb garden where they were, but they seem to have come up this year, the first time for three years.    Here’s a photo of them in previous years:

I bought a couple of blueberry plants in the last two farmers’ markets in town (one at a time, all I could carry up the hill to my house!).  Here is one of them waiting on the patio to be planted out.    Our soil is very acid and apparently they like acid soils so they should do well.

Because the weather has been warm, I have been doing some natural dyeing (or at least preparing for it) over the last couple of days, so I could boil stuff up while leaving the kitchen door open.

I bought this gorgeous pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farms via a yarn coop I am in.  I want to dye it and then knit it into a bag and felt it. 

Here it is wound into skeins ready for dyeing.  Yesterday I washed it and mordanted some in alum and some in copper and picked a lot (A LOT!!) of blackberry brambles which were running wild in our front garden.  I was attacked in the forehead by a rampaging yukka plant and have lots of scratches to show for the battles with the brambles but now they have been safely boiled up and I am just waiting for the water to cool sufficiently to put one of the skeins in.  I’ve got some madder to dye some more skeins … photos when Nikon duly releases my camera!  Hopefully…. 

[Read more →]

Here is another magnolia which grows up by the side of the Civic Centre.  It is a lovely deep pink colour, I think.

Nothing like the colour magnolia which paint companies sell in tins.

This flower was a little blurred but I thought I’d post it anyway.

There is also a lovely pink flowering cherry tree which is out at the moment too.

Yes, that is the right way up!  Taken from underneath…

And a lovely pink camellia too…

It has gone really warm the last couple of days and I sat out in the garden for a few minutes yesterday.  I couldn’t help noticing that the flies were sitting still too, sunning themselves…

I won’t show you the photos of the spiders…

[Read more →]

Everywhere I go nowadays there are signs of spring.  Hurray!  I’m fed up with this damp, dark winter.  The clocks go forward on Sunday so it will be even lighter in the evenings. 

I love it when the magnolias bloom.  This tree is a gorgeous one:

Here is another one which I pass on the way to Zachary’s school:

The blossoms are beautiful.

I love the way they seem to raise their heads to the sun. They look as though they are butterflies or birds spreading their wings, about to take off into the sky.

[Read more →]