Monday 14 May 2007

Blue Skies

Well the rain has finally let up and we have even had sun today. Having a look at the garden this morning the plants have come on well after their big drink, not too many weeds, just a few parcels left by the dog! Our square patch of earth (awaiting a new lawn hopefully this week) has even sprouted some grass from the seeds we planted (found an old bag of lawn seed in the cupboard thought we would give it a try) a few weeks ago. My husband is out as I write this flattening the ground so we can put our new bench outside (just waiting to be stained), its in the living room at the moment where our daughter and dog are using it as a den. That's the christmas present taken care of, a cardboard box and a flat pack!

Friday 11 May 2007

Veggies part 2


Thought I'd post another pic of my lettuces, they've grown a bit. They are definitely loving all this rain. Those slug pellets are deadly, every morning there are more and more slug and snail corpses around the veg patch - I'm starting to feel a bit guilty!
My potatoes are doing great as well, I planted a sprouting potato, just your ordinary spud that you buy, and they've grown loads, in only a few days! I must be doing something right (I hope)

Our loveseat....


The weather is still quite bad (us brits love to moan about the weather) and it's frustrating when you can't do anything, so we decided to put our loveseat (with hole for pole!) together. As you can see it's not the most complicated of instructions, although we did have trouble trying to put a round screw in a hexagonal hole! It does look great tho, now all we have to do is paint it before we can put it in the garden.

Thursday 10 May 2007

Still raining...


Still raining, still dull and grey outside. Had quite bad winds in the night and one of our plants blew over - no damage tho. The lettuces are loving it, they've grown about an inch, which is great considering the weather. It's still very windy and it's not supposed to get any better :-(
Our bench/ loveseat arrived today (we paid for this one only £30) Took a photo of the box 'cos it made us laugh lol!
no hope of putting it up today tho, which is a shame 'cos I love flat packs! So we're ebaying today, clearing out the junk - if you'd like to see what we're selling (or just to be nosy lol) our id is andrewsmt26.

Wednesday 9 May 2007

Rain, rain, bloody rain



For the second day in a row the rain is falling grrrr!! I know my plants love it but so do the weeds, and this lack of sun is doing nothing for me. I've had to be content with watching gardening programs and picking up tips on the web for our new projects, construct a compost bin and a water barrel. As we rescued some lovely sand coloured slabs from a back lane (its amazing what you can find when your walking the dog), my husband dug out some soil, to level the ground to put down our bench, and its now a patch of wet gunk. Good job the bench hasn't arrived yet! We'll have to be content with making some garden sculptures indoors until the drizzle stops.

Current Projects


Two current projects - just waiting for the sun to shine (grr british weather)

Herb Garden

Planted a few herbs - rosemary, parsley and lemon thyme (bought in the sale 35p each) and the smaller ones are coriander and basil grown from seed. Ive tried growing herbs before, but they've always died on me - so I'm trying again, maybe Ill get lucky this time.

New bench

This is our old bench from last year, made by my husband out of wood from an old bed frame, which I painted red, balanced on bricks which were left behind by an old tenant (a brickie) its held up really well. We are re-using it for outside our backdoor (nothing is ever thrown away). Our new bench (which we will build when the weather gets better) will be made from two old 8ft long 4x4" planks, which had been dumped in a garden a few doors down - (we had them when the tenants moved out - with permission of course!)

Tuesday 8 May 2007

Vegetables!

Our Carrots - grown from seed (98p)
We found an old water dispenser, cleaned it out, cut the top off and drilled a few holes in the bottom. We didnt want to put all our vegetables in the ground, we wanted to see if we could grow some in pots. A great thing about this 'pot' is that we will be able to see the carrots growing (hopefully).

Our Lettuces.
We bought some lettuces in a garden centre (£2.00) and made a makeshift veggie plot in our small garden. We're not quite organic yet (give us a chance!) hence the slug pellets. At the bottom we put a few carrots to compare with the ones in the pot and next to them are some cucumber seeds (hopefully they'll grow, fingers crossed!)

Basic Table


Our basic table - first stages.
We had cleared an area at the top of our garden, and needed some garden furniture. We didnt want to buy something, but rather have something unique and 'us'. So we came up with this table. A few flat(ish) rocks and a discarded patio slab. Next to do, buy a bag of cement £2.78 and cement the rocks together and then the patio slab (we did find a better larger slab that our local council left behind as rubbish) when it's completed (just waiting for some sun) we'll post the finished table here. Easy and cheap to do with imagination - look around you and look sideways!

Our Firepit


Our Firepit.
We dug a hole, lined the bottom with broken bricks, surrounded it with rocks (we found loads underneath the dump) and it works perfectly.
Cost- nothing. Much better that paying a fortune for something commercially created and mass produced - create something unique to you, and for free!

Looking Sideways

Hi
Ive created this blog to have somewhere to put all my ideas, creations and whatever else. No more scraps of paper tucked away in books and behind the sofa! A little bit about me: I'm happily married with 2 kids and a dog (labrador). My husband is just as creative as me so I suppose he'll want to muscle in on this lol. At the moment we've both started to grow our own vegetables - even though we've never grown anything before - ever, so that should be interesting!. Any mutant veggies I shall post pics here. We are also clearing out the dump which is our garden, and creating furniture and garden deco out of stuff we find under our rubble and the things that people throw away (some people are so wasteful). We've built our own firepit - pics coming soon, and our next project is building a mini pond out of something out of the ordinary, when I find it I'll let you know. I also take a few snaps so I'll be posting a few here, I'm also a massive sims fan, so Ill be posting a few of my creations, as well as some illustrations and no doubt other things that pop into my brain.
Thanks for visiting - see you soon!
earthgirl