Monthly Archives: April 2015

A bit of colour (okay, it’s mostly a restricted pallette of green, blue, white and purple) in a slowly evolving border in the back garden.  The forget me nots are spreading nicely (with a bit of help).  The euphorbia wulfenii is looking majestic with its acid green plumes.  The ‘Shirley’ tulips have started off a lemon and lime white shade, and are maturing gradually with purple tinged petal edges.  A few bluebells are peeping through the greenery, and  I’m looking forward to the allium ‘purple sensation’ popping its purple pompoms, and the nigella seedlings (the result of a scattered packet of seeds) launching their frothy blue stars.  There’s more to do, and I definitely need to plug a few gaps in the bulb planting come autumn, but it’s feeling like progress.

The borders in the back garden were small, lined by a very ugly, cracked concrete and aggregate path, and covered in blue plastic and bark chippings.  Time and money have prevented a dramatic makeover.  Instead I’ve gradually removed the plastic and path, reshaped the border edge, enriched the soil as much as I can with the contents of our dalek compost bins, and removed the largest stones (it is mostly builders’ rubble with a handful of clay topsoil, it seems).  I pruned the laurel, and transplanted, divided and spread around a tiny clump of forget me nots from our last house.  Allium and tulip bulbs were added last autumn from Wilkos (bargain!).  Euphorbia wulfenii and cardoon plants (just a mound of silvery foliage so far this year) were the only extravagance, bought from Sara Raven two years ago.  I’m waiting for the miniature alchemelia mollis plants from Aldi to do something interesting (planted about a month ago).

This gardening lark is fun, but I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing, and thinking in 4D (not just space, but time, planning the seasons) is one hell of a challenge.  And don’t even mention dandelions and bindweed.  Just don’t.

Oh yeah, and the bastard earwigs munched most of my daffodils.  Grr.

Most of my little projects seem to revolve around small people these days.  This week it was smallest one turning 2, with his favourite character, Peter Rabbit, perched on a Mr McGregor’s garden cake. I have to say easiest cake ever (far easier than anything that involves making complex shapes from sponge cake).

It involved a simple chocolate sponge cake, chocolate buttercream, a pack of marzipan and some food colouring (to make vegetables), green petit fours cases (for cabbage and cauliflower leaves), white chocolate crispy cakes (cauliflower), green fruit winders (for carrot leaves and pumpkin tendrils), crumbled bourbons (soil) and some cocktail sticks to help the veggies stay put.  And Peter, of course.

Still enjoying spring time too, with two bunches (always at least two) of supermarket daffodils are brigntening up a corner of the living room.  Can’t remember if I’ve blogged the bookcase before, but it was a £30 ebay find (solid wood, a bit lived in), with some Ikea origami design wallpaper pasted to the back of each shelf.  It’s a good dust-free and relatively toddler-proof home for my expanding collection of Denby Chevron crockery (handed down by my Gran).

I’ve been painting a bit of furniture and doing some gardening too, but need a bit of spare time (yeah, right) to take some photos. I also need to delete a million photos off my phone so that I can update iOS and start using Camera+ again (best phone photo editing app ever) which explains the even dodgier than usual pictures in recent posts!

Me and the biggest small person found some elder branches on the way home from nursery. We then had fun blowing some eggs (“It looks like snot, mummy!”), painting and glittering them.  Not classy, or perfect, but very festive.

By the way, painting and fixing a hanging ribbon to eggs is harder than I thought and Pinterest is full of perfect eggs and zero tips on how to do it!