learning as we grow

One of the things that I will remember about this first home that John & I have shared is our little patio. While neither of us are particularly green fingered, we both dream of one day having a home that has a garden. 

Although there is very little room for growth & life on our patio, we have tried to make the most of it by lifting up some of the flagstones & putting down a grow bed that my parents kindly gave us for Christmas. 

(Transporting the compost home from the garden shop was another story altogether. We went for a run, popped into the shop, purchased 50kg of compost, then lugged them home on our shoulders. I don't ever want to do that again. Ever.) 

So anyhow, back to our grow box. Some time in May, we planted rows of seeds with smiles on our faces, excited at the prospect of produce which would hopefully spring forth & feed us over the Summer months. 

While we know little about gardening, we do know that tomato plants like to take up a lot of room. What we should have done was plant the tomatoes in their own little space to give the rest of our seedlings a chance of survival. But we didn't. 

We have been so excited to watch our tiny garden grow, and have diligently watered it (although there have been many weeks when the rain has done the work for us) and done little else. A few weeks ago, my good friend Ros came round for coffee & cake. She looked at our tomato plants & said, 'you've done a good job at picking those out'. I had no idea what she was talking about, so she gave me a lesson in how to help tomato plants grow up tall & strong, and be more fruitful.

Due to our ignorant negligence, our tomato plants had not once been picked out, and as a result, had great strong branches growing in every direction, thus weighing down the main stem & creating a bit of a struggle for themselves. So, for the last few evenings, while watering the little garden, I have started picking out the off-shoots (is that even a term?) in the hope that they will bear greater fruit when their load has been reduced.  

Over the last year I have been given two orchids as gifts. The first one as a house warming present from the family I childmind for, and the second by John when he came back from China at Easter. When John presented me with this beautiful flowering orchid, my first thought was, 'oh no, another one for me to kill off!' I find there is something rather daunting about being entrusted with a flower as delicate as an orchid. I didn't know how to care for them, and when the flowers fell from my first orchid, I thought they may well be the last. 

Along the way, I have asked a couple of much more seasoned gardeners for advice on caring for orchids. I have learned that they love to have their leaves kept wet, and that they like to sit in water every now & then. So, for the last few months, I have diligently sprayed my flowerless orchids in the hope that they might live. To my great delight, both orchids have buds that look almost ready to burst into bloom. It's amazing what a little water and patience can do.

First Fruits

4: Strawberries
A little while ago my housemates and I invested in some plants from the garden centre to brighten up our lovely concrete patio. One of my purchases was a tray of six strawberry plants. I was very excited at the prospects of eating my own produce. All I had to do was not kill them. Amazingly, I have had some success and here are some of my first little babies....I am a proud mama:






Aren't they beautiful?

Peony

3: a little bit of life
This entry is not so much about an event. It's more just a tiny snippet of one day this week where a little thing brought me a little bit of joy.

I was walking home from school with the kids who decided to go an alternative route to our normal one(s). There is a choice of three routes home & each day there tends to be a discussion regarding the preferred route for that day.

Grace has just discovered a 'secret pathway' that she wanted to show us, and is pretty convinced it is a short cut. I am almost definitely convinced that it is a long-cut. But that is fine. It's nice to have a change of scenery every now and then.

Anyway anyway anyway, as we were approaching the secret pathway, I was admiring a peony bush (a flower I have a particular affection for) and noticed that one of the unfurled flower heads from the bush was sitting on the wall. My guess is that another child walking that route home from school was unable to resist the great temptation to pluck the flower head from its stem, only to be reprimanded by their mum, and told to put it back. Being unable to perform a miracle and reattach the head to the stem, they left it on the wall for me to find.

So, also being unable to resist the temptation, and hating to see a flower go to waste, I pocketed the flower head. Thanks to me, this little peony saw far more of the world than it would have otherwise. Amazingly, the peony head made it all the way back to my house relatively unscathed, surviving a bumpy, speedy cycle ride home, all the while sat willingly in my back pack, knowing that the best was yet to come: Water.

As soon as I got in, I popped the peony into a coctail glass of water & let the water work its magic:

introducing...my sunflower babies

I thought I'd take the opportunity to introduce you to my sunflower babies. Some of them are definitely healthier than others. Just in case you were wondering why they all have pink bows tied round them, it's not an attempt to make them look even prettier, but an attempt to teach them to grow upright, rather than at a 90 degree angle, which was their preferred stance. Ah babies, you'll learn in good time, don't worry.



The picture below was taken on a run I went on last week when I was away at training in Bracknell. This lovely shelter was in Lily Hill park, which was very cool and beautiful, especially on the misty, rainy morning that I went there.

a liverpudlian lilt

This week I've had the pleasure of having my beautiful sister come to stay with me. She's so grown up and mature these days. The thing that amused me the most was the way she's picked up a hint of the Liverpudlian accent, after spending a weekend with the cousins in Liverpool over Easter. She even speaks German with a Liverpudlian accent. Apparently I speak German with a Scottish accent. Ho hum. Poor Sarah was privy to just how awful my sense of direction is. We ended up on the wrong section of the M5 again and nearly ended up in Wales again - this is becoming quite a habit for me. But hey, I always manage to get where I'm going eventually - it just tends to take slightly longer than it does for the average person. I need someone to teach me to navigate and map read.

All of my plants that I am growing are coming along nicely, although it's been dawning on me that I am going to need a whole lot more pots to plant the rapidly growing seedlings into, especially for my sunflowers. I am having a competition with Andy, a guy from church who lives just down the road with his lovely wife Kate. Our sunflowers have the potential to grow up to 9feet! So far I have 12 sunflower babies. If they all flourish, my little patio is going to be festooned with sunflowers - how exciting!

A few pictures from my walk to the office today...




There are some pretty amazing graffiti artists in Bristol.

signs of life

I got very excited earlier to see some of my little seedlings have started sprouting!

a little bit of homemaking

I seem to have developed over the last few days a fever. Muffin fever. Yesterday I had no plans to bake, but as I was flicking through my Jamie Oliver recipe book (thanks Ben) looking for advice on planting seeds of the edible variety, I stumbled across a recipe for Butternut squash muffins (as pictured). Not your average muffin recipe. It just so happened that I had a butternut squash in my fridge, so I thought I'd whip some up. I invariably find that when a muffin recipe states that it makes 12 muffins, it actually makes 22/23. Why do they do this? Is it because you can't quite squeeze 24 out of the mixture, and as muffin trays tend to be 12-hole, it wouldn't be considered a 'whole batch' if they wrote the number 23? Mystifying. It turns out this recipe was no exception, meaning I was able to share the muffin-y goodness with friends (who are like an adopted family) as well as housemates. These muffins are perhaps the most moist muffins I have ever come across. Very delicious. If anyone wants the recipe, I will happily oblige. In the process of making the muffins, I came to the end of my pack of muffin cases, which I bought on thursday. This means that in the last five days, I have baked 75 muffins, hence, 'muffin fever'. Don't worry, I haven't consumed all of these by myself - I baked for church on Sunday, so a large proportion filled the bellies of the people of City Church. I love baking.

Yesterday, I took a little road trip all by myself to Almondsbury garden centre, where I purchased a whole lot of seeds. For months I have been planning to fill up the planters on our patio, take out the dead plants and replace them with new pretty things. I have never grown anything before, so this gardening business is all a bit new to me. I wish I'd paid a bit more attention to Mum when she's been sorting out her seeds, germinating, propagating, transferring, watering, and everything in between. So I am not going to be too hopeful that I will be successful in the things I've planted, as I don't really know how I should be caring for them. Just for my records, this is what I've planted (so far)...

:: Evening Primrose (white flowers)

:: Gypsophila (white)

:: Lavatera (white)

:: Candytuft dwarf fairy (pink)

:: Convolvulus royal ensign (purple)

:: Californian Poppy (Orange)

:: Godetia Unwins Dwarf (Pinks - very pretty)

Everything I planted did not state that they needed to be first put in seedling trays, or kept inside to start off with, so I'm hoping they'll cope with the unpredictable British weather, and not get too much of a battering. If anyone has any advice as to whether I need to protect them in someway, I would gladly welcome it. Hopefully there will be pretty photos in a few months time!!