A Normal Weekend?

I've been in the garden quite a bit this weekend, which is perfectly normal for me.

This dahlia is one of my favourite flowers at the moment.

Dahlia Nuit D'Ete

Dahlia Nuit D'Ete

 
I have a bit of a thing about dark flowers but generally find they don't show up very well. However this one  looks lovely in the front garden growing alongside the white japanese anenome.

My other favourite thing in the garden at the moment are the skeleton flowers on Hydrangea Annabelle, the detail is just amazing.

Hydrangea Annabelle

Hydrangea Annabelle

A perfectly normal weekend... but there are some other things I have done this weekend that you may not regard as normal:
1.  Helping to catch a bantum who was having an asthma attack.
2.  Waking up to find this post-it stuck to a fresh duck egg outside my back door on Saturday (explanation below)

(Hinge and Bracket are my neighbour's ducks.  Since she got them in May I've been giving them all the duckweed that I scoop out of my pond.  They laid their first eggs this week, and were kind enough to give me one!)
3.  Showing both neighbours how to avoid the spiders' webs that are spun across our narrow gardens by teaching them the "Elephant Dance".  (Imagine sticking one arm out in front like a trunk, and waving it up and down as you move in an elephant like manner down the garden and you'll get the gist of it!)

A normal weekend?  I'll let you decide!

There's Something Wrong Here!

For some of each week I work from home.  I have a nice study which is quite roomy even though it also doubles as a sewing/work room, but today something has been wrong.  Someone else has been in charge... 
 
First of all I lost control of my chair (and my cardigan too).

No real problem, I got another cardigan and relocated to the floor.

(I'm sure that working on the floor probably breaks some working environment rule, especially when squeezed between the ironing pile and a pile of books!)

Unfortunately the pencil was deemed to be a "good game" and now I've lost control of the floor too!

Oh well, here's hoping that I have more success tomorrow!

Cupcakes

Not a real one I'm afraid - a knitted one! Complete with beaded hundreds and thousands.  Not as tasty as a real one, but better for the waistline!

Why?

For Gina, that's why.  Pop over to her blog to find out more.

I Do Like A Bargain!

My father used to say (maybe he still does) that "a bargain is only a bargain if you needed it in the first place".  Well I did need this!  I'd been looking for a candlestick for my dining table for ages, but my dining table is round and most of the candlesticks I'd seen were either rectangluar or very expensive, so when I spotted this I knew I had to have it.

Before

It was £12.50 in one of the barns at Risby Barns Antiques Centre near Bury St Edmunds.  I spent a morning outside clearning it up with kitchen grease cleaner, a brio pad and a heat gun to melt the years of wax.  I mixed up some paint from old Farrow and Ball matchpots and leftover satinwood paint from the radiators, added some gold wax and crystals and voila, here it is now:

After

Now I just need some nice white candles to go in it, if anyone knows where I can get some (as opposed to cream) I'd be really grateful to know.

Also on the subject of bargains, Sudbury Garden Centre were selling packets of seeds for 50p each yesterday, how could I resist?!  I bought these18 packets, mainly veg for next year and sweetpeas, for just £9 as opposed to over £46 if I'd bought them full price.

Now all I have to do is not lose them before next year!

Meet Aunty Elsie

Actually she was my Great Aunty Elsie, my Grandma's elder sister.

Hopes and Dreams (17cm x 24 cm)

Sadly I never knew my Grandma as she died before I was born so Aunty Elsie was a sort of surrogate Grandma.  She was born in 1899 - I'm not sure when or why this photo was taken, but she looks a lot younger here than in her wedding photos of 1928, so I'm guessing it was taken around 1920, maybe her 21st birthday?

Her and her husband lived in Cottenham (near Cambridge) and were fruit and flower growers.  There are pictures of them from the 1930s with strawberries and tulips they'd grown for market.

She sometimes looked after us as children and although they’d sold most of their smallholding by then, I remember feeding a donkey in the orchard behind her house.  When I was in my early 20s I worked nearby and used to call and see her every week.  She gave me tea and tinned salmon sandwiches, taught me how to harvest asparagus, and told me off for suggesting that at 86 she shouldn’t be up a ladder picking plums!  She talked lots about people and relatives that I didn’t really know but had probably met every year on Feast Sunday without knowing who they were!  

 

She was a lovely lady and I hope she would like what I’ve done with her photo.  After some editing in photoshop I printed it onto calico.  Then I added vintage lace, velvet, recycled sari ribbon and some vintage buttons. 

I used to think of her a lot when I had my allotment – especially when harvesting my asparagus as when she died I was lucky enough to be given this:

 her asparagus knife.

A Whiter Shade of Pale

It's been a glorious day in Suffolk today, blue skies and sunshine - lovely!  Here are some of the white/almost white flowers that are blooming in my garden today, I think they provide a rather calm and cooling atmosphere:

Top row:  Cosmos Purity, Penstemon, Passion Flower (can't remember which variety!)

Middle row:  Rose 'Madame Alfred Carrier', Leucanthemum, Dahlia 'Cafe Au Lait'

Bottom row:  Mint flower, Anenome, Rose (unknown variety)

The penstemon was supposed to be red when I bought it, but I couldn't be bothered to take it back, and the passion flower was only planted this year and is already over 6ft high!  It's supposed to be a fully hardy one so should be ok in the winter as the garden is quite sheltered.

Wherever you are I hope the weather is kind to you this weekend - I plan to be in the garden as much as I can.

Then Came The Jolly Summer

Last week, while I was waiting and generally getting side tracked, I noticed a rather nice pattern had appeared on a piece of fabric I'd placed under some garden fleece I was painting (don't ask!) to catch the excess paint.  The fleece experiment wasn't a success but I fiddled around with that bit of fabric as it seemed to have flowers on.  I cut and stitched, and added some organza.  I painted some handmade paper and stitched the fabric on.  I used my new lumiere paints that I got from my recent visit to Art Van Go. 

Jolly Summer - 17cm x 21cm

  
The text is from The Fairie Queene (Edmund Spenser) because it seemed quite a jolly piece, especially when the sky was grey over the weekend.  I'm not actually sure how much I like it, but my neighbour does so I thought I'd share it anyway! (And is it a textile piece, or is it really mixed media, or doesn't it really matter? It all gets very complicated at times!)

The sun is back now - let's hope it stays awhile this time!