March in My Garden - What's Hot and What's Not.....

Our camelia, pulmonarias and daffodils are all looking lovely. Pulmonarias are great - they spread everywhere and the slugs don't eat them - which is pretty important as we are permanently infested.

I just love this cherry tree. Its supposed to be a winter flowering one, but I think it decided to wait until spring this year and who can blame it! The delicate pink blossoms look just stunning against a blue sky - they also look pretty good against a moody grey one. Just can't have enough pink blossom.

It's taken quite a while for my helebores to get established - but they now seem to be thriving and multiplying.

I've always loved walking in the woods. There's just something magical about it. We have quite a few trees in our garden, providing shady spots for primroses and other woodland flowers.

An early clematis on the house wall.

I'm a bit of a washing line fanatic. Its amazing how you can line dry even in the winter months. I managed to freeze my washing on the line in winter 2010 - my mum had always told tales about the washing freezing on the line way back in 1963 but somehow I didn't believe her until I accomplished this myself!

A colleague of mine told me that according to his sums it cost about £1 a load to dry in the tumble drier ( interesting people, engineers!). I've never done the sums for myself , but it definitely motivated me to carry it down to the line in all but the worst of weather conditions.

Ok, now for the things that I'm not so proud of.

My attempts at an "all year round" vegetable patch.  Hmmm. It's really not as easy as they make it look on the television. In my mind's eye I had a vision of a vegetable garden just like an illustration from a Beatrix Potter book. What I've ended up with is only fit for the most delinquent of rabbits, most likely living on a diet of junk food.

Why is this lovely organic purple sprouting brocolli in the garden crimes section?  It's simple. Apart from my own lazy reluctance to head to the garden in the arctic winter we've just endured - this thug is prime suspect no.1 for the chaos in the patch.

The seed packet didn't give any warning that this would grow to about 4ft tall and flop all over everything. I tell you, it's unstake-able.

There's also something sinister about a vegetable that has a longer gestation period than we do. That's right - this little beauty was sown in spring 2010, has taken up a large chunk of my patch for a whole year, and we'll be lucky to get enough PSB for 2 meals off it. Incredible.

This is also responsible for bad behaviour in the garden. Most notably eating the odd bird (hopefully just the weaklings?) and bullying the dog mercilessly. Just as well that he has redeeming qualities.

Birthday Presents

As it was my birthday recently I thought I'd show off some of my lovely presents.

Here's Choccy the bear who is wondering what to do with a Cath Kidston sticker book and a reel of Liberty print bias binding.

Choccy has had a varied life. He was found in House of Fraser many years ago strapped to a box of chocolates (hence the name). Our son "adopted" him and gave him pride of place as favourite bedtime bear for many years. With a sad inevitability Choccy's popularity declined and he endured wilderness years in the attic.

A twist of fate brought about by a random watching of "Anthea Turner - Perfect Housewife"  revealed how manky old bears who are not blessed with being machine washable can be sponged and frozen back into respectable society. (The sponging removes the grime - the freezing kills off any dust mites, etc - yuk).

An antique / vintage silver tea set has been on my special wish list for some time. I really don't know why. Too many evenings spent watching Downton Abbey??

Anyway, these were a gift from my husband. They are in beautiful condition - which is just as well as I'd like to be able to use them on special occaisions. It's a silver plated tea and coffee pot, probably from the 1920's and they are stamped as "Garrard & Co, Regent Street, London". All I need now is a maid to polish them and make the tea!

Meet Rachel. It would seem convention that dress forms are named by their owners, so for me "Rachel" is the obvious choice. I have  been mistakenly called Rachel throughout my life - it seems people have a real problem with the Rebecca / Rachel thing - so what else to name my body double??

Rachel is made by "Lady Valet" , she is fully adjustable and she has a wooden stand so she won't look too industrial when hanging round the house. As you can probably tell, Rachel has had to have her bottom made a little more generous to match up to her human counterpart!

Here's Rachel looking decent in a top I made last summer but never got around to finishing.



I have high hopes to have less UFO's (Un-Finished Objects ) in future. Let's see what happens when the gardening season gets going properly.....

Lastly some flowers rescued from my garden.
The early daffodils didn't take kindly to the -6C we had earlier this week.

The dog was also put out to find her outside water bowl frozen solid again - a common theme since about mid November. She has a water bowl inside but apparently it just isn't the same.