Garden


Cheap unique solar garden lights

Spring is here,  and it brought longer brighter evenings with it. It’s a great time to get out in the garden and liven things up. I had a cool idea – making cheap solar lighting more fun. In Wilko the cheapest solar lights are 85p each, they’ll do.  I checked they worked first, and then peeled off the shop stickers. When you remove the top bit (the silver section that has the solar panel in it) you gain access to the clear section. I half filled the clear hollow bit with beads, pretty beads from Craft Merrily. You can use almost any beads but pearlescent or translucent ones glow wonderfully.  You could even try some glass marbles, anything that might grab the light.  By day you notice the metallic beads glint in the sun, by night they glow with an almost magical quality. You could deliberately match the beds to […]


Welcome to Anneka and Edwina 7

Tikka the chicken was struggling and lonely since Freya Woof “got” poor Fajita. So yesterday we drove a few miles into the countryside to a farm to get a few more chickens. That was the plan, a few small, cheap chickens. The hens the boys chose were not cheap. I should have said “No way” at the prices, but the boys had decided and I didn’t have the heart to refuse. £35 each!! Ah well, it’s done now.


The New Year Storm 2

Here in Gloucester the weather was special for the start of 2014, and the word that sums it up best is minging. Sideways rain, whistling wind and chilly. No major damage, and the pets are safe, although the hutches are very soggy. We thought we’d got away with just a nearly flooded garden, a water logged, muddy mess. Then the fence came down. We struggled to find somewhere open that had a similar panel in stock in the correct size. The internet revealed Wickes had some. Yay! Only a mile from home and just £19. We got the trailer on the car and all went out after a big cooked lunch. What could go wrong?


Trespass or Inconsiderate Neighbours? 1

This morning I woke in the night, as I often do. Still a bit sleepy I walk in to my kitchen for a drink, not bothering to turn on the lights as I can see enough from the orange glow of a nearby street lamp. I bent down to retrieve a clean and slightly warm mug from my dishwasher and I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. A woman is in my garden, walking past my window. I see her eyes towards me, shes looking in to my home, I duck but keep watch. Then a second shadow sneaks past. I hear whispered voices. They are standing still, in my front garden, right at my front door. I feel frightened. I shout loudly to Blokey upstairs “there are people in our garden” and I run upstairs to look from a safer place. Its not like opening my […]


Hoorah for all this rain 2

My garden is growing, alas the weeds are doing the best. We have rubbishy heavy clay soil, and despite binning the worst bits and replacing with homemade compost we still struggle to grow much more than dandelions. Each year I plant more bulbs, nothing exciting, daffodils etc. I also have the show drops and crocus bulbs I took from grandads garden after he died 7 years ago, I’ve never bought more of those, I like to know something of Gramps lives on. Every spring I will smile and remember gardening with my Gramps, and it encourages me to get a move on and get things growing. But after all this rain my strawberry plants that were limp and almost dead are now perky and standing up clear of the ground, I even spotted a few flowers on one. I love strawberries, really hope I get a good crop. We start […]