Tuesday 24 April 2012

Back to Winter?




It's hard to believe that this is a Tulip.  I'm afraid I must have recycled the packet which said what its name was, but what a stunner!

A view of the right hand side of my garden with wildlife pond still full of tadpoles and newts.  I am out weeding there this week, having a tidy up.  It will soon be absolutely full of Aquilegias in full flower.
A roly-poly Alfie cat.  He is such a happy lad.  He and his brother Jarvis are always off hunting, and regularly bringing back baby rabbits, or half baby rabbits, and yesterday I found a prone and very dead young squirrel on the kitchen floor.  They're showing off now!!
A visit to the Garden Centre last week saw me bringing these home with me.  The tomato is a 2nd try at growing it (crop failure on first sowing due to extremes of weather in greenhouse), but as it's resistant to Blight, I am keen to try it.  I hope to have a good display of Sweet Peas this summer - I have started several lots of seeds, and also brought 4 pots (so far!) of very well grown seedlings at the car boot sale.
This is our latest arrival for bed and board.  She has a deep throaty voice which resulted in D and I calling her Estelle - she reminded us of a husky Jazz club singer.  Anyway, she was always hissing, spitting and swearing so soon acquired the nickname of Misery Guts.  She knows all about cat flaps, easy living, sleeping on beds and hoovering up everyone's leftovers.  She did go missing for about 10 days when the weather improved, and we thought she had moved on, but then she returned and has been much more even-tempered and happy since being back.  Her father is the same grey tom who is the father of our two remaining boys.
This is one of our "original" strays, Amber, who has been with us about 8 plus years now.  She came to us after the lady who owned her (and Snowy and Timmy) moved to her daughters.  The cats were just abandoned.  Snowy and Timmy are dead now, sadly.
My husband working on a rocking chair which someone had decided to paint white (emulsion fortunately, so easier to get off).  You'd think we were back in the 1960s when beautiful pieces of furniture were frequently "modernized" with a coat of white gloss.  Anyway, it is now just about finished, so I shall put up a photo of the renovated chair in a day or so.     




I have to say that the new format of Blogger is annoying me, as I can no longer write my blog posting as I load photos.  I can only do one or the other.  I can't seem to move things around either.  

The seeds and young plants I have "growing" are on a go slow as we have had a real return to winter following the lovely warm week a month or so ago.  As we walked round town yesterday, you'd have thought it was February and not nearly May.  We are back to wearing 5 layers indoors and 6 out, and the house has sunk back to 13 degrees C again (about 55 deg. F) which is NOT comfortable.  We are still having to light the wood burner each evening and have an oil radiator on if we are in the sitting room during the day.  In fact, if we had the oil, we'd have the central heating on . . .

So, all plans of having well-grown plants and seedlings to sell at car boot sale have been scuppered.  Only those folk with polytunnels are able to provide those at the moment.  Of the things grown from seed, only the Coriander are performing as I expected.  The Purple Basil has germinated and then not grown another fraction, and I lost other seedlings to a very frosty night which decimated those trays at the top of my tray stack in my little plastic greenhouse.  So I am having to start over.  Such is life.

9 comments:

  1. It's started raining every time I have thought of going out to plant anything. I have some awfully waterlogged parsnip seedlings which I will need to transfer to something with better drainage.

    If you want to add your voice to the growing concerns about the new Blogger, you could try looking at https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!msg/blogger/siGTUCP-1G8/cZT3RfWTN2IJ

    Think the idea is to gather together enough peple who are unhappy with it to actually persuade Google to keep the old interface up till they have ironed out the bugs in the new one. You can return to the old interface at present by going to design, clicking the tools icon and you will see it there. They do plan to remove it soon, though. I have had to go back.

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  2. The weather is just awful at the moment isn't it? I was interested to see Jenny's comment as I too am fed up with the new Blogger, I can't get spaces between my photos and text any more. I shall go back to the old interface while i can and add my voice to the pressure group.

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  3. Amber has a beautiful coat. The rocking chair is gorgeous. If blogger would smarten up all would be right with the world. Well very nearly all.

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  4. Been thinking of tackling a small rocking chair but getting the fabric off, which some person has stuck on with glue!! mind you paint is also bad. Think it is foreign by its shape but the children fight over as to who can sit in it.... O those terrible 1960s people and their bad taste ;)

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  5. Your garden is looking very pretty. Our aquilegias are almost ready to flower too. Newts but no froglets, so far, in our little pond this year.

    Good luck with the new batch of seeds. I hope we have enough sunshine for the veggie crops to grow this year. Last year was hopeless. No courgettes, no tomatoes and a poor crop of potatoes.

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  6. Hello. Ran across the term "chime child" somewhere the other day and in running a search for more info, your site popped up. I love gardening and cats and history, so have enjoyed poking through your posts a little! I have a blog here but am more often at Live Journal.

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  7. Hello Pam. Nice to see you've "joined" the merry crew on here. I shall be over to say hello on your site shortly.

    DW - I really want to get on out there, in the garden, but it is SO perishing that I really cannot face it. The most I've done is potter in the plastic greenhouse.

    Thelma - the rocking chair is finished now and I will put a photo up shortly.

    Chris - Amber is a lovely cat but doesn't really "do" indoors - she will come in if she's hungry, but then scamper out again. Hence the THICKER than average coat!

    Rowan & Jenny - I added my name to the group protesting to Blogger - let's see if it gets us anywhere.

    Kath - never any shortage of cats to photograph!

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  8. Estelle aka MG proves that the silver tabby strain is dominate on both sides of the ocean--she is a dead ringer for Willow and the elusive Wilbur.
    Three nights of frost here two weeks ago did very discouraging things to the berries and fruit trees--I haven't had the heart to post about it.
    Very nice photo of K. I do recall the 'anitquing kits' which were popular here in the 70's--some gruesome paint mess with a crackling glaze--I may even have bought one. I'm not into the 'shabby chic' look either. If a piece has classic lines and is well made I'd rather sand it clean and refinish in character--said project being a bit beyond my physical stamina at this point, but one I used to enjoy.
    Re blogger: my current 'compose' format is working quite well now after several very sticky months when photos wouldn't load. I've never been able to write the post while the photos were uploading.

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