Blooming at last

The rambling/climbing rose has proved itself a winner:

When I think of the state the poor plant was in this time last year, sprawled across the lawn in a tangled mess, it has certainly benefitted from a little tidy-up last autumn.  It is smothered in buds and should be an absolute picture in a few days' time.

Laundry liquid has been made again, using Rhonda's recipe from Down to Earth.  This batch has cost me less than £2.50 and should last for several months (and I know exactly what's in it).  It's been a great weekend for washing - sunny and breezy - the wash basket is empty and everything's put away. 

In this sunny weather it's a real pleasure to spend time pottering in the garden, there's always weeding to do and veggies to crop.  More and more of our meals are accompanied with home-grown produce and there is still so much more goodness to come.  We are definitely winning the battle of the weeds (grim determination on our part) and just a few minutes here and there keeps on top of them.  We must surely reach a point where there are no more pesky weed seeds left lurking in the soil!  

It's been a purposeful weekend with quite a lot achieved and plans and ideas discussed.  A drop of rain wouldn't go amiss for the garden - we now have a small barrel by the back door for 'clean' kitchen water, as there are a lot of crops needing watering now - and there is some rain forecast for this week.  We'll wait and see if we actually get any or not.

A hot start to July

July has announced itself with the hottest day so far, possibly even for several years if the reports are to be believed.  All I know is that it was very, very warm.

A new month requires a new list, naturally, and a quick review of June which turned out to be quite a busy time.  I did re-cover all the dining/bedroom room chairs (with N's help wielding the staple-gun) but managed, in the process, to badly bruise, or possibly crack, a rib - a bizarre injury and one which did restrict me for a few days.  However, the chairs do look good ;))   The painting indoors didn't get done at all and may well end up waiting till cooler weather in the autumn.  I had a couple of planned projects which I couldn't finish for various reasons, and I need to follow those through later on.  Much of our time has been spent outside in the garden, and we are now enjoying the rewards of N's hard work.  

We have just returned from a lovely weekend with DS and DIL, and we were able to help and advise on a few DIY jobs in and around their home.  We also fitted in a very enjoyable walk in the surrounding countryside.  Some delightfully picturesque villages along the way.

My list for this month is a realistic one in terms of time available - more of that anon - but I still have some goals I would like to achieve.  Some sewing and possibly some knitting, and I'm wondering if I could manage to paint the side gate, too.  The paintwork is rusty and flaking; it needs preparing with a wire brush prior to painting, but I'm thinking in this lovely weather, it might be just to outside project I need.  

I'm hoping we may finally have some flowers in bloom by the weekend, and I shall be out there, snapping away to prove that we grow more than veggies!

Bountiful days

It's all busy, busy, busy round here at the moment.  The garden is fairly bursting with goodies, there are interesting things lined up, lots of WIPs on the go and several days of glorious sunshine to put smiles on faces.  Doors flung open from very early in the morning, and much pottering about outside.  I do believe summer has finally arrived.

The lack of posts is due primarily to the impending (and previously well-documented) demise of my laptop, an elderly model who is very near the end of its useful life.  Switch it on and it proceeds to spend many happy minutes in a never-ending loop, and is showing an increasing tendency to simply go blank without any warning (I can relate to that; obviously a middle-aged thing ;-o ).  I'm not sure I can put off the inevitable much longer *sigh*.

The garden is rewarding all N's hard work with goodies in abundance, and last Sunday we sat down to a roast dinner from the garden (with the obvious, for us, exception of the chicken) - new potatoes, carrots, beetroot, spinach and beet leaves.  So tasty.  The thrill of our own veggies never fails to delight us.  The sweetcorn have finally got going (or should that be growing?), pea-pods have formed, the cucumbers are taking over the greenhouse and the tomatoes are beginning to colour.  The sprouts for the winter have germinated; fingers crossed we will see the end results on our Christmas dinner plates.

Our 'social calendar', usually very quiet (ie non-existant) has suddenly filled up, and we're making notes of dates, times and places to go and people to see.  Makes quite a change for us.  Trips to the mainland, family visits for various occasions, entertaining here - lots of fun things going on.  And now, into the mix, something quite unexpected has turned up, and we are taking a bit of a step into the unknown, but sometimes when a door opens it's worth at least a little look.  I think it will be interesting on a number of fronts and we'll just see how life pans out over the next few weeks.

I'm still finding time for a bit of sewing here and there, and making the acquaintance of my latest gadget (ooh, an overlocker, much excitement!!)  And two more chairs have been recovered, and they now match the ironing board, all being revamped from the same £5 remnant of curtaining.  Fully coordinated on a budget  ;))

Such a lot of rubbish

The IW Festival is over for another year - after a bit of a downpour on Friday night the weather was good over the weekend and by all accounts a good time was had by all.  I mentioned last year that we tend to avoid the area for the duration owing to traffic congestion and restrictions, and although in previous years the music has wafted our way (a prevailing wind helps), we heard nothing at all this year.  We aren't on the main road anymore to watch the shuttle buses taking the festival-goers to and from the ferries so the whole event almost passed us by completely.  I say almost, because this year I fulfilled a long-held wish (I admit I have some odd wishes!) - I worked for two days as a litter-picker, helping to clear the site of rubbish after everyone had left.  To say that it was an eye-opener is putting it mildly indeed.

It's a huge site, far bigger than I had realised (I walked well over 6 miles each day), and cleaning it up is a massive logistical task.  It's an ideal job for someone like me, who needs to tidy things up (!) but I was simply astounded by the sheer volume of rubbish that is left in the aftermath of such a weekend.  Just so much, everywhere.  I have heard tales of the rubbish, and seen litter-stewn fields driving passed in the car, but the first-hand experience was something else.  Tents, folding chairs, camping and sleeping gear, clothing, and the remains of drink and food, plastic bottles, beer cans, wine bottles . . . everything you would associate with lots of people having a really good time, but it was just abandoned at the end.  Truly staggering.  Mountains of rubbish.  

I'm still trying to get my head around it all.  Have we become such a 'throw away', disposable society?  Are products produced so cheaply, in such vast quantities, that they no longer have any value at all?  Have we abandoned all responsibility for our own rubbish that we just leave it for someone else to pick up and deal with?  The thought of all that 'stuff' ending up in landfill (I would love to think that it was all going to be sorted and recycled, perhaps some will, but the sheer volume suggests most just won't); the food wastage (why buy it if it's not going to be eaten?)  I even saw two pushchairs abandoned on rubbish piles.  I don't mind admitting that I brought one or two items back with me because I knew I could put them to good use; if I'd had a lorry I could have easily filled it with more very useful bits that could be repurposed, recycled, upcycled or just mended and reused, and at least what I salvaged isn't going to end up in landfill. 

There are so many aspects of this and I shall probably be pondering it over for some time to come.  I have no idea what the answer is, if there even is one.  I am glad I had the opportunity to help clear the site, and I acknowledge that earning a little bit of money was a very nice bonus indeed.  It is rewarding to enter a field that's covered in rubbish and after two or three hours of hard work, to leave that particular space a good deal cleaner than it was.  I really enjoyed doing something quite different, and the weather was lovely.  I got to wear a high-vis jacket, quite the fashion trend, and am now adept at picking up plastic cable-ties, bottle tops and cigarette stubs with a litter-picker.  But I was, and still am, staggered by the amount of rubbish that was simply left behind. 

And now I need to catch up on a bit of work around the house.

Today . . .

• bread baked
• house cleaned and tidied
• two more chairs recovered - a joint effort
• more seeds sowed (carrots and sprouts)
• vegetables cropped for dinner (carrots, beetroot and assorted leaves)
• four sweetcorn germinated
• parsley potted on
• weeding in the sun
• reading
• sewing
• washing all dried outside and put away
• blackbirds feasting on worms in the lawn
• 'love-in-a-mist' (Nigella) flowering

It's been a lovely, simple day.

Goodies from the garden

Note:  I typed this post on Friday but the technical gremlins struck and the laptop went into a loop :((     After several attempts, things seem to have cleared for the moment.  I'm thinking I may need to invest in some new hardware; I've been coaxing and cajoling this one for some time now and I know at some point I'm not going to get it going again.  *sigh*

Yesterday we thought summer might finally have arrived.  Clear blue skies, wall-to-wall sunshine and temperatures warm enough for a spot of sun-bathing.  Today has been ominously still and humid, and eventually, and inevitably, this evening the heavens opened.  It was always going to rain at some point this weekend as thousands of revellers have descended on the Island for the annual Festival.  Oh dear, are they getting wet right now!  I hope they remembered their wellie-boots, 'cos they will be needing them :(   Fingers crossed for dry weather for the rest of the weekend so everyone has a chance to dry out.

The Elephant garlic has lived up to it's name - a 50p piece for comparison

The rain won't go amiss in the garden, especially with the dry windy weather we've had recently.  And we're harvesting daily.  Spinach (the second crop), lettuce, rocket, and basil are all appearing regularly on the kitchen table and on our dinner plates.  The garlic has been pulled up - one or two were showing signs of onion rot so N didn't want to risk losing any more - and the first crop of carrots have been pulled.  As space is made, so more seeds are planted.  This is the first time we have been in a position to have second sowings and we are trying to make the most of this opportunity.  We are learning lessons as we go, making note of what works well and what needs to be changed next time around.  A bigger greenhouse seems to be creeping to the top of the list!  We may be a very long way from growing all our own vegetables, but what we are able to grow gives such satisfaction and pleasure.

An early morning walk in the woods

An early start today to take the car in for it's MOT.  Rather than hanging around the garage waiting, we took ourselves off for a walk through the woods.  It was such a lovely way to spend an hour, quiet and reflective.  

We spotted a greenfinch on the telegraph wires, and then watched a couple of swallows skimming across the field.  We've been watching 'Springwatch' each evening for the past couple of weeks, and there was a piece on the programme a few days ago about how to differentiate between swallows, swifts and housemartins, and that was how we identified these swallows, by the low flight across fields as they hunted for insects.  We were quite pleased with ourselves!  As the birds turned in flight, we caught sight of their forked tails and white underbody so we were certain of our identification.

On our return home, I dug out our little book of wild flowers (excellent charity shop find at Christmas) to identify this plant:

 

It is the Common Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) which was growing along the paths in the woods.  My knowledge of wild flowers is sadly limited, so I am keen to learn a few more.

We've had another productive day in the garden, moving veg bags around, tying up trailing plants and potting up some annuals I sowed from seed in early Spring.  We're on the look-out for the sweetcorn, but it's a bit difficult to tell seedlings from weeds!