My Week In Suffolk

It looks as if the "Legacy Blogger" will be switched off completely  towards the end of the month so I've swapped onto the new one and will have to put up with all it's foibles I guess. I tried it a few weeks ago and like everyone else found it annoying and went back, hoping it would continue as an alternative, but it seems not. Oh well.

Flowers on the table this week, blue and white - I know what both these are but the names have just gone out of my head for the moment!

 Shopping this week was at Asda in Stowmarket. While in Stow I ran an errand for the Opticians  by the coast where youngest works. She'd asked if I could pick up a box of PPE from a Stowmarket Opticians to take to her next week. I'm glad I had the address because when I lived and shopped in Stow in the 1980's this opticians was at one end of the town's shopping street and in the mean time it had moved right to the other end.
Coincidentally one of the few Facebook pages I look at  is a Stowmarket Then and Now page and this week they had photos through the years of one of the small shops in the town centre. I remember it as a sweet shop in the 1960's and an Estate Agent in the 1980s but between then and while we were away living near the coast it had been all sorts of different things- interesting to see. It's a British Heart Foundation Charity shop now.

During the week I roasted a tray of my beetroot and onions and shop-bought carrots  to box up and freeze like last year. This year I didn't put in aubergines or peppers because my peppers aren't ready yet and reheated roasted aubergines were horribly squidgy. The boxes were so handy last winter just to pull out and microwave. I need some more boxes before doing another batch because there are already a heap of tubs of aubergine and tomato sauce in the freezer. Winter supplies are looking good so far.

This is what happens when you leave 16 Tulip bulbs in heavy clay soil for 3 years and the reason why my tulips in the Cutting Garden this spring were spindly and small. The original bulbs had produced dozens of tiny bulblets but dry weather on  clay means they don't get much bigger than a thumbnail.

I always watch Gardeners World with envy when Monty digs his lovely soil with a hand trowel to plant things. Here its a battle with a crowbar! Well not quite, but you can see the size of the clods I turned up and this was AFTER I'd bashed the bigger clods a bit.

The Cut Flower Bed was made in a hurry, Colin wasn't really very well although he managed to run the rotovator over this patch after taking off the turf and using more of the wood from the pergola to do the edges and we put the wire netting up around the sides to keep the ducks and pheasants off just a few days before he died.
I came home from shopping via a garden centre and bought a bag of multi purpose compost and a bag of topsoil - to try and improve the soil here a little but what it needs first is some rain.
Then I'll replant the biggest bulbs and put the smaller ones in a planter filled with multi purpose in the hope that they will increase in size. 

 In the mood for sorting out the garden I've made a start on clearing the raspberry bed that we made in the first year and like the strawberry bed in a much too dry a spot. The canes just never multiplied and produced only a handful this year.Forgot to take a photo and there doesn't seem to be a single photo of the raspberry cage apart from the glimpse of it from the bedroom window. 

Eventually found the right size spanner to undo the bolts and now the aluminium frame is down and stacked ready to advertise for sale somewhere - I'll try the Parish Magazine first. Next job when it's cooler is to lever out the wood surround and move 20 paving slabs that we'd put down around the outside. Not this weekend - much too hot.

 This week I'm grateful for

• The energy to get things done outside 
• Sunshine
• Still blogging despite the new annoying format
  

Hope you all have a good weekend. Car boot for me of course and plenty of reading while half watching the snooker on TV.

Back Monday

Sue

Strange Times, End of Week 13..................

............When will I stop writing Strange Times and counting the weeks? Soon I hope.

This weeks flowers on the table are the first of the Alstromeria and the rather small Sweet Williams all from the cutting garden.

First of all a Big Welcome to some more followers - hope you like reading about life in Suffolk.

There's been a lot more rain here this last week, I got woken in the early daylight hours of Thursday morning when it looked like a cloudburst outside. All the water butts are full again so it can stop raining now and it's been quite chilly too - and, with no one to moan at me, I even had the heating on a couple of mornings and evenings. 

Two weeks after it started I finally shook off the sore throat/earache/lethargy thank goodness. I was glad it went.......didn't fancy the hassles of trying to see a doctor.

The highlight of the week was the vets deciding to re-open for routine vaccinations, just in time for Polly to get her cat-flu booster without having to start again from the beginning of a long course. They did the usual health check and found she had a wobbly tooth which would need to come out in case it set off an infecton- so it's back in for her next week - that sounds expensive - Ho Hum.

And apart from making jam as mentioned yesterday it's been another week of reading, stitching, watching snooker on TV and the occasional burst of housework. It would be possible to do exciting things like going to a garden centre - but there's nothing I need so I've only been out to the vets and post office..........


Running total of food from the garden 2020

• 9 small lettuces (I now have a gap because the next sowing took ages to get going)
• 4 Cucumbers - and 4 more given away
• a few asparagus spears
• lots of rhubarb
• Few strawberries.
• 1lb of gooseberries

This week I'm grateful for

1. Strawberries from brother in law
2. Good rain for the fruit trees

 This weekend I'm just popping out to deliver a cucumber and a jar of jam to my sister-in-law which I'm swapping for lots of puzzle pages from the local paper and hopefully will be able to see the nearest bit of the family too.
Then next week most shops can open but they might be busy so it will just be a supermarket trip I think.

Hope you have a good weekend.

Back Monday
Sue

May Country Days

From The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady.

The name of this month is of doubtful origin. Ovid suggests the goddess Maia, the mother of Mercury. In the Roman Catholic Church May is known as the 'Month of Mary.' 
 Or perhaps from the word maiores (meaning Elders) as this was the month when the Romans celebrated the older members of their families

So many weather sayings for May, everyone desperate to know what the weather would be like during the main growing season.

Best known, although no one has ever decided for definite if it means May the month or may the flower of the hawthorn.

Ne'er cast a clout 'til May is out.

                                  Most old sayings prefer a wet and cold month (hope it isn't!)

May damp and cool fills the barns and wine vats

Water in May is bread all the year

A cold May is kindly,
 And fills the barn nicely.

A wet May

Makes a big load of hay.

In the middle of May comes the tail of the winter

A Page from The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden.

For ancient Celtic people May 1st was Beltane( Bel's Fire). The first day of summer and bonfires were lit to help the sun regain it's strength. A day of feasting and in many places there are still traditional events on this day, involving dancing round maypoles, May Queens, Garland dancers and Morris men and hobby horses.

The Maypole Pub in Wetherden, a village in Mid Suffolk.

I don't know how many pubs in England are called The Maypole but in the village where I went to primary school there is a one and a very old building it is too...... circa 1530. The maypole in the middle of the front yard wasn't there until a few years ago.

 

This is my vase of flowers for the first week of May. The last of my tulips from the cutting garden and some invasive bluebells - not native.

I won't be bringing in May blossom or Elder flowers because...........

Hawthorn blossom and Elder flowers

Fill the house with evil powers.

Watch out for late frosts around the third week of May. These are attributed to Saint Dunstan (or St. Franklin in some versions). Apparently he made a pact with the devil in order to obtain good sales of his beer. In return for his soul the devil promised to attack the blossoms of the  apple trees in the orchards so that the cider makers would have less cider to sell.




Back Tomorrow
Sue

Magpies and Ants

My second picking of tulips from my mini cutting garden, nearly all yellow this time, the next lot to open will  be all shades of pinks and purples.

While I was collecting the nettles tops last week I found a magpie feather. I know it came from a  magpie because of the green blue shimmer. Last year a pair nested in the top of one of the Poplars on the field.

A few weeks back I heard a huge racket and saw a pair of magpies arguing with a pair of rooks over that old nest. I've not noticed any birds near it recently so maybe they all gave up.

(For readers from overseas this is a magpie!)


Magpies are large striking looking birds, unmistakable in their black(with shimmery blue/green tinge) and white and now SO common. It was rare to see them when I was a child and so unlucky to see just one. Now wherever you drive in the countryside there they are.

"For anglers in spring it is always unlucky to see single magpies; but two may always be regarded as a favourable omen. And the reason is, that in cold and stormy weather one magpie alone leaves the nest in search of food,while the other one remains sitting with the eggs or young ones; but when two go out together it is mild and warm and favourable for fishing."

"Magpies flying three or four together and uttering harsh cries predict windy weather" .

What I also keep hearing and then seeing down the meadow, but only as they fly away, is a pair of Green Woodpeckers, they are very shy birds,could they be nesting somewhere close? None of the trees down the meadow are old enough to have holes in them for woodpecker nests.

Still seeing the goldfinches and long-tailed tits on the feeders, like the header picture, and a couple of starlings have found the suet block - don't see many here .

On Monday I noticed a few of the early potatoes were just showing through so needed a little soil pulling over them and as I did this all along the edge of bed were ants..... as usual. I've puffed them all with Nippon ant killer but only have a little left. Last year I got some Dof ant powder cheap from a boot-sale which turned out to be useless. With no garden centres open I've ordered online some of the decent stuff. Ants do more damage here, especially to the potatoes, than anything else- and they are bound to appear in the kitchen in June, coming  out of the old chimney bricks so I expect this will be my 4th June hoovering up flying ants.

I was supposed to be doing posts about Saints and their days from my book, but they've not been very interesting to write about!
However, today's Saint is Fulbert of Chartres. Fulbert was born in the mid C10 and was a clever child sent to study at Rheims and later taken to Rome where he became chancellor of the cathedral of Chartres where scholars came from all over Europe to study. He died in 1029 and the steeple of the cathedral is the only part that remains from his time when he rebuilt the cathedral after a fire.
And the next two? April 11th Saint Guthlac and April 12th Saint Zeno of Verona.  Not very well known.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Sure To Be The First of Many................

.............photos of car boot finds.

The weather was fine Saturday morning so off down the A140 to Needham Market  - 1st car boot sale of the season.

They've had lots of stone put down over the winter to fill many holes around the site but it was still very muddy in places. Quiet a lot of people there both selling and buying but nothing from my list except things for the grandchildren, I think arriving at 8.15 was too late for the best finds!

Sticker books, washable felt pens, a scrapbook and a magnetic doll dressing kit. This is similar to one I found for Florence for last Christmas although hers was princess clothes. Florence loved hers so I shall put this away for Willow for Christmas this year. I also found a few items of clothing for baby Arthur.

 Finally I bought a pack of 6 Sweet William plants and as the weather was good after getting home I was able to get them planted in my mini cutting garden. There were a couple of Hollyhock plants that hadn't lasted so there was room for the Sweet Williams. Just need to get the Gladioli bulbs in when the weather has warmed up a bit. The Alstromeria have survived the winter and the tulip bulbs have produced lots of leaves. I must remember to dig them all out this Autumn, sort the best bulbs, feed the bed and replant.

There were a few hours of sunshine on Sunday so I finished weeding the Veg. beds and potted up the cucumber seedlings (5 Louisa) and 6 tomato seedlings (Ildi). I brought the wallpaper/carboot table into the conservatory to hold all the plants as they get bigger. There's no electric to the greenhouse so all the early stuff has to be in the conservatory where I can plug in a frost-buster heater if needed - hopefully NOT needed - I don't fancy snow or hard frosts now things are growing.


Back Tomorrow
Sue

Another Saturday

And another Saturday round up from the end of the lane

The first Hollyhocks from the mini cutting garden and a chance to use my Big Jug.

I'm very disappointed by these, out of the dozen plants I bought, these are the only ones to flower and they all have rust disease.
 Half an hour after taking this photo the whole lot were drooping, so I googled and found I should have conditioned them first by filling up their hollow stems with water and plugging the bottom with cotton wool. A bit too "faffy" for me for cut flowers! I'm going to move them all out of the cut flower garden in the Autumn into the quarter circle flower garden and try something else for cut flowers.  I Live and Learn!


I've had a funny ol' week. Starting Sunday morning  feeling under the weather and wading through treacle (not literally.... obviously)  and so cold on Tuesday. I got all the grass cut with ride on and small mowers and my usual weekly swim - but had to have frequent rests. Tired, aching and getting more lethargic as the week progressed but it's given me time to watch lots of tennis (and read).
I'm very excited about being able to watch the cricket world cup final on TV. Colin loved cricket and listened to TMS on radio whenever he could, he would have so enjoyed being able to see the final. I shall watch it on his behalf and "tell" him about it.

I've been really lax at commenting on other folks blogs....apologies......mainly because I try not to look at lap top screen after 7 or 8pm  and lots of people post in the evenings so I don't see them until next morning when it seems almost too late to comment especially if other people have already written what I would have said anyway!


This week I'm grateful for.............
Food in the cupboard and freezer so I didn't have to go shopping all week
Raspberries and vegetables from the garden for the same reason.


 Hope everyone has a good weekend. I really have to pop out for shopping today, still no energy but once I'm home again I can stay at home for several days.

Back Monday
Sue

Another Week in Suffolk

What a glorious Easter weekend it was for family get-togethers. Sunny and warm.

There were a plethora of one year olds at Willow's birthday party last Saturday as DiL had invited some of the families she had met at NCT classes. So interesting to see them all the same age, bar a week or two, yet all so different.

This was my Easter Mantelpiece, the light up chicks came from the charity shop on my last morning there. (The clock doesn't usually live there, but had been moved out of reach of three small people and not moved back)

On Sunday it was my turn and all the family came for an old fashioned Easter Sunday tea and an Easter egg hunt.

Son, AKA Uncle M hid the eggs and had just as much fun as Florence and Jacob helping them find them again. (Why does it make me feel very old to have a son who is an uncle, seems even older than a son who is a Dad as my Uncles always seemed so old!)
 The two older grandchildren had huge fun together and in a year or so Willow will be tagging along behind while Jacob and Florence who are almost two years older will be getting her into mischief too.(My next job here is to organise some fencing and gates!)

Colin's sister and husband and Col's brother came too so all of us together did the scattering of Col's ashes around the trees in the birthday wood.  It wasn't too sad to do because the Colin I knew for 38 years isn't the ashes but the memories in my head, although family times is when I miss him most and after everyone goes home it can be really difficult.

But enough of all that..............

Monday was spent finishing the clearing up, not too much as the grown-up children had cleared the toys and washed up and Sister in law had done another heap of washing up after tea.
I planted out the Elder saplings and sat out with a book. Unfortunately the book I was finishing "Three Things About Elsie" by Joanna Cannon is so sad in parts that it was no help in cheering me up. (It's on the Books Read 2019 page now)

The electric was off all day on Wednesday - a planned outage- I got a text message to say the UK Power Network had a "Welfare Van" parked down in the village which would make hot drinks and provide free wi-fi etc for anyone who wanted to call in - never had that message before - must be a new thing. I didn't need to use the welfare van as I went out  to visit Youngest and Florence in their new home. It's in a much quieter spot in Leiston than anywhere they have lived before, but further out of town so Youngest is planning on a bike with a bike seat to get to work and childminders.

Shopping - not much needed although two Cadbury's Easter eggs reduced to 50p somehow jumped into my basket. (That's my brexit store restocked!! along with the Lindt Lindor Youngest gave me for my birthday).
Swimming, housework and a haircut and that's another week gone.

This weekend I need to go and get some decent multi-purpose compost as the stuff I got from the Wyevale-that's-now-a-Dobbies is the weirdest looking compost I've ever seen. Then the tomatoes need potting on again  they are not really big enough for their final large pots. The aubergines that I thought had had it due to cold nights have recovered and growing well, as are the peppers and cucumbers despite the cat attacking them. I also need to get dwarf beans and sweetcorn sown, suddenly I feel all behind with the growing season.


This week I am grateful for

• 2ml of rain - in the hope that every little helps?
• My children and grandchildren - as always 
• Vegetable plants still growing in the greenhouse
• More tulips from my cutting-garden

Have a happy weekend folks
Back Monday
Sue

Getting Things Done Last Week

What a difference some new vinyl has made to the upstairs shower room. The floor was  a pale wood laminate and had worn away in places and lost its colour, so that it never looked clean.

The fitters measured up my bedroom after they'd laid the vinyl and decided what needed to be done to level up the corner where the shower came out of and thankfully took away the old carpet so that I could finish sanding and painting the skirting board.
I'm so pleased that everything upstairs will soon be finished (well, apart from the boxing in of the pipes in the bathroom which will be done sometime this month) makes it feel that I'm actually getting somewhere with the updating. All the work now will be downstairs which I'm not looking forward to. Workmen too close for comfort!!

Now the weather is cooler there is much to be done outside and I emptied the small compost bin onto the cutting garden and planted out the Alstromeria plants that have been sitting in pots all summer. Way back in June I ordered some mini plug plants of Hollyhocks and they finally turned up last week. They've been potted up now and will later go in the third quarter of the cut flower bed. But how frustrating to find out about a month  ago that next door neighbour has grown lots from seed to sell! She is raising money to replace a memorial bench but I only found out that she had Hollyhocks when I was doing the watering for them when they were away. I've managed to do some weeding in the front flower beds but the quarter circle garden behind the house is an awful mess and needs a lot of work as do the veg beds.

As they nearly say on TV  "the next programme paragraph contains pictures words that some readers may find offensive!"

Had a nasty shock one morning last week when I noticed a rat under the bird feeders. Spotting a rat in daylight means there are probably several more around. This is the time of year when rats move off the fields closer to homes and the time to set bait boxes. OK, I knew where the rat bait was but where on earth was the bait box. Last seen in the spring when Colin was ill and told me to fill it with bait and put it on top of the compost heap because he thought there were rats digging their way in under the compost bins. Surely the bait box isn't  buried somewhere deep in the compost bin? I've looked everywhere else but if it is in the bin it will be impossible to find until the bin is emptied next year. So a trip to the local hardware store and a new box bought and filled and covered with a tile to keep the rain off. DIE RATS! I shall stop feeding the birds for a few days so there is nothing on the ground for the rats, hopefully they will take the bait.

After 3 busy days of getting things done earlier last week  by Thursday I felt shattered, so had two days  pottering around at home and  going nowhere. I just did a little weeding but without feeling pressured to rush and get as much done as possible. I seem to be trying to keep busy...... going here, there and everywhere which is totally different to the way I used to live when most of my time was spent at home on the smallholding. Somehow I have to find a happy medium.

The two quiet days revived me so on Saturday it was back to a bit more garden clearing, and after buying a bag of multi-purpose and some late pansies I tipped out dead petunias and re-planted some patio pots for a bit of late colour. One veg bed is half full of Iceland poppy seedlings - more like a small forest really and definitely not wanted there so I covered them with black plastic - hopefully when I uncover in the spring they'll all be gone.

Almost a year ago when Col's treatment seemed to be working he bought a small poly-tunnel on line. He'd been looking and found a company who were clearing out their last tunnels and reducing the price so he jumped in and got it . When  it arrived it was put in the workshop and there it stayed because sadly he was then not well enough to even open the box. Eventually last month I got round to placing an ad in the Suffolk Smallholders Society newsletter and had 2 phone calls on Saturday and sold it to the first caller for £60. A very useful addition to the purse for September.

I'm still clearing and sorting a little something everyday. Last week another bag of books went into the car ready for a charity shop and  2 small boxes of books were sent off to Ziffit. The seed tin was sorted, old seeds chucked and unopened seeds that I'll never use have been bundled up for the car boot box. A couple of things from the garage into the dustbin. A bundle of old Self-Sufficiency magazines that have moved house umpteen times are going off to the Smallholders Society AGM. It does feel good to clear and sort.

Many thanks for comments and new visitors and hello and welcome to a couple more new followers.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

July Flowers and Replies to Saturdays Post

On my table this week are Cornflowers from the cut flower bed, Golden Feverfew,  Lavender in two different shades of  er.......Lavender, a variegated leafy shrub  that is probably an Euonymus and the leaves from a perennial in the garden that hasn't come into flower yet. It must have been there last year, but I don't remember what flowers it had so I'm not 100% sure.......maybe  Phlox?

Cheering up the living room and making me smile.

There were lots of comments on Saturdays post and apologies for not replying. So here is a big thank you to everyone and answer to Athene - Yes Polly Cat can get "through" the chain fly curtain, there's a couple of inches at the bottom and she sort of puts her nose under and squeezes through. She doesn't really go through the chains and is very wary of the noise they make when I go through - she'll get used to it!
Thank you for the good wishes for Florence, she's now fine. They had 4 nights in hospital and got home Friday afternoon. She had antibiotics and steroids and an inhaler to sort out the chest infection or whatever it was and their local GP had already prescribed an inhaler for her last time she was wheezy. I hope this won't be a too frequent event but a little boy who was 2 years old and in the next bed to Florence has had many trips to hospital with the same symptoms since his first time. So Youngest may need to keep a bag packed! They've got the most wonderful playroom and outdoor play area at the hospital, so Florence was easy to amuse once she was well enough to trot around the ward, not so easy for Youngest daughter on the first day when Florence was confined to her cot on oxygen.
The plumber got the shower done, he was quite a good bloke really, just the company not good at telling me what was happening. Now I need to give the room a coat of paint (but not until Wimbledon is finished). I'll be contacting them again for the next phase which is taking the horrible old shower cubicle out of the bedroom and replacing it with a corner bath. Both the bathroom floor and the corner of the bedroom will need new flooring - vinyl type stuff, which will need sorting out before the bath is installed. Then my plan, after decorating the bedroom is to get an old fashioned four-fold screen to stand in front of the bath. In this way when I come to  sell the house sometime it will have more than just the one shower for a 4 bed house, and a bath behind a screen won't be such an eye-sore as the big shower enclosure.
I've got used to the ride on mower now. I often used one to cut the campsite at the smallholding way back, before we expanded it and Col got a mower for the back of the tractor, but that was just a big square field and the garden is a bit more fiddly to get round - only one near collision (with the cold-frame) so far!
How lovely to hear from Lynney in Illinois who will be up early to watch Wimbledon over the next two weeks, really good to share a  TV programme across the pond 😊

And finally - I had to find some positivity  or it would have been a Really Depressing Post!


Back Tomorrow
Sue

PS Coming home from swimming yesterday with Radio 2 on and there was the doctor on the Jeremy Vine programme talking about the diseases that you can get from swimming pools! I turned it off PDQ

These Make Me Smile

Sometimes you spend a bit of extra money on something and it turns out not to be worth the expense.

But sometimes you spend a bit of extra money on something and it turns out to be worth every penny.

My third vase of tulips from the cutting garden to come indoors. The colours are even better in real life. I paid a bit extra for larger bulbs in unusual colours and it's  been well worth it.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

What Became of the Cut Flower Garden?

Last summer when we had 4 wooden posts left after taking down the eyesore-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden, Col made me a mini Cut Flower Garden.
The plan was to have 4 quarters.....1 with tulips, 1 with Alstromeria, 1 with annuals and one with something else.
I ordered some "Florists Favourites" tulip bulbs and Alstromeria plants from a garden catalogue and some Monarda (or Bergamot) from ebay, and picked up loads of cheap flower seeds from a car boot-sale.
The tulips are gorgeous, I've had two vases full indoors already.

 Col raked in the flowers seed - mainly Cornflower and Corn Cockle a couple of weeks ago. Some have appeared.

 But after the bed had been snowed on,frozen, rained on, dug up by the cat and walked over by ducks and pheasants(on their way between bird feeders, where they sit and wait for crumbs to drop) this is all that's left of the 6 Alstromeria plants. That tiny little green bit ought to be a big clump or even one of 6 big clumps.

And as for the Monarda - vanished - dead- kaput! They didn't look good when they arrived and didn't last very long at all . Serves me right for ordering cheap stuff off ebay

So the posts in the corners are ready for a bit of wire netting to make a fence to keep the wildlife off. I've sent for some more plants and there are lots of sweet pea plants growing slowly in the greenhouse ready for the 4th quarter.

By hook or by crook I hope to have  more flowers to cut later in the year.

Thank you for comments yesterday, apologies for not replying I'm having a busy week

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Flower Seeds and Other Bargains

 Some boot sale treasures have already be mentioned but there were a few more during the month

At a small Sunday boot sale early in August I spent only 30p. The postcard book of Country Diary cards was 20p and the card kit 10p.

From another small Sunday boot sale that was actually bigger than usual I found a Gi-normous plant pot for £2 and the pretty Blackcurrant sage also £2.

 Plus some nappies of the size Florence now needs for 50p and 3 big mugs including a modern Denby which were also 50p each.I like to get a couple of big mugs each summer in case we break any during the winter when there are no boot sales happening. I was very good and walked by lots of lovely baskets that I really didn't need, masses of toys and a load of cross stitch kits.

 From the big boot sale in early August..............
Huge box of brio type railway for the grandchildren. I now have enough for Jacob to take some home when he is a bit older and some to keep here too. I paid £4 for this lot. The Hungry Caterpillar Card game was 50p.

4 new flannels for 20p each. A very large ziplock plastic folder was 50p, Some hand-cream without perfume 20p. And 10 packets of flower seeds for 10p each.
I never used to grow flowers from seed at the smallholding because it took all my time and space to grow enough vegetable plants. Now I don't need to grow so much veg I'd like to have  more flowers and some of these will be grown for the new cutting garden. These packets are ones that would have been free with a magazine so don't have many seeds in each  but that doesn't matter. There's a packet of really dark- almost black- Sweet William,some Sweet Peas, Cornflower and Corn Cockle, Sunflowers,Nasturtiums and Edelweiss.

Can you say Edelweiss without breaking into song?!

Thank you for comments about Bank Holidays and Books

Back Soon
Sue

Flowers for Cutting

After making the two new beds there were 4 posts leftover from the

 eyesore at the end of the garden

A bit of garden for cut flowers would be nice I said, as there are not many flowers for cutting in the quarter circle flower bed

and not many in the purple bed beside the conservatory either

No sooner said than done. On day one he cut bits off the ends of the posts so they were interlocking.
On day two he used our ancient tiller to cut up the grass surface

 Scooped off all the loose grassy bits, forked through the soil underneath and rotovated again.
Dug out round the sides so that the wooden post-frame fitted in at soil level so we can run the mower over them and raked in the soil.

And how brilliant............ we have a new bed. I did make him sit down in between the various jobs  and kept saying it didn't need doing all at once but it's done now.

What shall I plant?

I have Tulip bulbs called "Florists favourites" on order. Shan't bother with Daffodils as bunches are for sale everywhere in the spring. Must find good value Alstromeria or Peruvian Lily as I grew them to sell at the smallholding and they last really well as cut flowers. I have some seeds for Sweetpeas too.

I've borrowed a book from the library which is full of ideas, but I won't have room for everything.

 Love a new plan!

Back Tomorrow
Sue

PS Many thanks for comments on car boot stuff, dirty British coasters and John Constable!