Raised beds for vegetables

We'll be building new beds this weekend on some unused driveway space up in the mountains.

I know I'll be a happier gardener to be tending more vegetables and herbs, away from my main spaces, which will benefit from a break, especially the main vegetable garden, which needs to be fallow, to reduce root-knot nematodes.

But there are gardening activities here to be done, too. The major task is freeing many mulched beds from their cloak of (weedy) winter annuals. Uh, and my gardening companion has yet to get the lawn mower out; I'm not a lawn person, but what's out there is getting pretty sizeable. He's had other distractions, certainly, but hopefully he'll crank up the riding mower soon.

I'm afraid I've only mowed a lawn a couple of times in my gardening life, and that with a push gasoline-powered mower back in Statesboro, GA in our first house and garden, in the last summer there, after my gardening companion (AKA my husband Tim) had already relocated to Clemson, SC.

"Is That A Badger? "

I woke before 5.00 this morning and lay in bed listening to the sounds of the gale outside. The rain lashing against the windows and the wind roaring in the trees. So good to be warm in bed and know that you don't have to get up for another hour. When I turned on the tv downstairs the first thing I saw were blizzards in Scotland and Northern Ireland with reports of power cuts and people trapped on roads. Here there wasn't any ice on the road when I walked up the hill but just as I got to the car it began sleeting. Lots of cold rain all morning which made us rather concerned about taking our children to do a Sports Relief Mile at the local secondary school. In the end we compromised by jogging around the playground for 15 mins. That way we could head indoors if it rained again. The weather actually improved and it is now sunny despite the icy wind. On the way home this evening I could see snow up on the hills of Exmoor.
Yesterday when I took the car up the hill I decided to spend some time framing shots against different aspects of the sky.

Shortly after I took this photo the black cloud unleashed a bitterly cold hailstorm. It was not so bad as long as I kept my back to the wind, otherwise - ouch.

One the storm had passed there was a lovely golden light and a rainbow.

While marching around the field to play with the angle of my shots I came across what I think is a badger sett. It's too big for rabbits or foxes and there were signs of a bedding pile. Farmers are not keen on badgers as they are believed to be the reservoir for bovine TB which is the scourge of all cattle farmers. Herds are regularly tested and any reactors have to be sent for slaughter and movement restrictions put on the cattle. In some areas the ministry has tried to eliminate the badgers (mainly by gassing) but this has not worked and is highly unpopular with the public. Unless every badger in the country was got rid of at the same time outlying populations will always move in to fill the vacuum where badgers have been removed. It would seem more logical to work on eradicating the disease within the badger population rather than the badgers themselves.

I have another reason to think that it might be a badger sett which dates back to an incident several years ago. One warm(ish) August evening the boys and I had headed up the hill to this spot (not far from the hole) to watch the Perseid meteor showers. I love anything like that and as we are lucky enough to have minimal light pollution (when it's not cloudy) our night skies are very clear. Wearing many layers of clothing we settled down on beach mats and garden cushions lying on our backs in the road to get the best view. I did hope that our neighbour hadn't been to the village pub and wasn't going to drive along squashing us all flat before we could get out of the way. We were well provisioned with biscuits (cookies) and chocolate and I think that was the year Linas brought along a guitar for a little light entertainment. It was a fun evening with the main conversations being; "Wow, look at that!" followed by a chorus of "Where?" and I'm sure a lot of exaggerated claims as to the number of comets seen. Everyone had torches so there was also a certain amount of complaining about torches being shone in people's eyes. Suddenly, Romas who was lying next to me said "Is that a badger?", I shone my torch in the same direction and there walking along the road towards us only a few feet away was a large badger. "Oops " we all went, including the badger who then disappeared. It's amazing how vulnerable you feel lying flat on the ground and I did notice that after I explained that a frightened badger can be quite vicious Romas moved to my other side leaving me on the periphery. Is that a badger ? has now become a family catch phrase and the memory of that evening will always be one I treasure.

Super Supervisor

My husband has a Mother-in-law and he wouldn’t take anything in the world for her. They kid one another. He is always up for her projects. She likes to bring him little treats or take him to lunch when he has been working for her. Mother is always upbeat and is very active. (I’m glad he helps her garden. She can work me into the ground along with her plants!)

There is one thing about it; if he is doing a project for her, you better believe she is going to be there to supervise. She loves to tell him what to do just after he has started doing the task exactly like she says. When he gets home from their house, I always ask if he had his ‘supervisor’ with him.

It took him a couple of days to get their driveway pressure washed last spring and it looked great – just like his supervisor said it would.

Project Notes:

• This is a real switch for me to only sort of match the photos with my papers. I was mostly matching my Mother’s leopard print shirt. She loves animal prints. I think it works because this is really about Mother’s personality not the actual chore.

• The title is cut out twice on the Cricut. I stamped some of the gold dsp with black circles in SU! classic black ink then cut out the letters. I enlarged the letters just slightly and cut them again in black cardstock.

• I downloaded Futura Rounded from dafont.com for cutting the letters with SCAL software. A really heavy font was needed since I was stamping.

Have you ever scrapped about your or your spouses relationship with in-laws? This reminds me of more relationships I keep meaning to capture. Ah well, another day…


Ingredients: Ink: Basic Black from SU!
DSP and glittery die cuts: Lemon Grass from Crate Paper
Ledger DSP:  Notebook from Stampin' Up!
Cardstock: Bazzell
Fonts: Just Act Casual (journaling), Futura Rounded for letters from dafont.com

New Kitchen Home Design Photos

Sometimes referred to as the heart of the home, the kitchen is a place to prepare and cook food and, depending on the size, can be used to eat and entertain guests. In Ancient Greek homes, this room was a central open air patio but it was not until around 1800 that the stove, which enclosed fire completely, made cooking indoors possible.

As technology advances, so do kitchens' design and efficiency. The introduction of the kitchen island has lent more flexibility to the positioning of the kitchen cabinets and kitchen sink, and helped make open plan kitchens and dining rooms a reality.

Find kitchen design ideas here.

Contemporary Kitchen Design

Blue Kitchen Design

Classical Kitchen Design

Luxury Exterior Home Design Plan

for those of you who want to build a house a palace, and longed for the exterior design that looks glamorous ...
above is an example of a house exterior was designed by famous designers.

Fresh cabbage

There are a lot of vegetables that we grow to store. Cabbage is one of them. But freshly-harvested cabbage is juicy and delicious. (As will be freshly harvested onions and garlic in early summer).

It was a revelation to me. An extra head from the kitchen garden, nibbled by an herbivore, trimmed, and stir-fried with fresh spinach trying to bolt - it made a totally delicious dinner with local shrimp, rice, and whole-wheat tortillas.

Do my shrubs need fertilizer?

A participant in a perennial class today mentioned fertilizers. She'd found that the local Wal-Mart isn't selling 10-10-10 (NPK) anymore, only 10-0-10 (eliminating the phosphorus that can be problematic in streams, ponds, and lakes). She likes to apply 10-10-10 around her garden every spring, she said. Another participant said that she'd found 10-10-10 at Lowes.

And I'm thinking, goodness, why would you want to spread fertilizer around shrubs and trees in your garden every year?

Annuals and edibles certainly need fertilizer (I use organic time-release and compost), but most shrubs, and trees should be quite fine with regular organic mulches, since we don't harvest them. Some herbaceous perennials will benefit from a bit of (preferably organic) fertilizer in addition to mulch, since we often do cut their flowers or remove their spent foliage.

Soil tests provide the most accurate information, of course, about your soil nutrient levels and degraded urban and suburban soils may need building up, to be sure.

But the most important thing to do is to keep the organic matter produced by your garden plants (leaves, twigs, etc) IN your garden, recycling it as either as mulch, compost, or both. That's what happens in natural ecosystems, after all.

Amazing Interiors Design Collection from Brandon Barre

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection from Brandon Barre

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Amazing Interiors Design Collection

Complex Apartment Interior Design in Soho

As most of you already know, Soho is short for “South Houston” and refers to a small neighborhood located South of Manhattan. This complex apartment design seems to counterweight the crazy and chaotic lifestyle of this particular USA region. The flat features an interesting terrace of impressive dimensions, a place of relaxation and promising outdoor parties. Interiors are airy and spacious. The living-room houses an interesting white bookcase and a dining area. Original looking wooden stairs connect the flat with the upper terrace, a symbol of living life “in the big city”

Complex Apartment Interior Design in Soho

Complex Apartment Interior Design in Soho

Complex Apartment Interior Design

Complex Apartment Interior Design

Complex Apartment Interior Design in Soho

As most of you already know, Soho is short for “South Houston” and refers to a small neighborhood located South of Manhattan. This complex apartment design seems to counterweight the crazy and chaotic lifestyle of this particular USA region. The flat features an interesting terrace of impressive dimensions, a place of relaxation and promising outdoor parties. Interiors are airy and spacious. The living-room houses an interesting white bookcase and a dining area. Original looking wooden stairs connect the flat with the upper terrace, a symbol of living life “in the big city”

Complex Apartment Interior Design in Soho

Complex Apartment Interior Design in Soho

Complex Apartment Interior Design

Complex Apartment Interior Design

Snow Tonight?

This morning brought very heavy rain which started as soon as I began picking more leaves. The predicted sleet didn't arrive but it is incredibly windy. The new plastic roofing sheets on Linas' bike shed were heaving and lifting ominously so I've put some lengths of wood up there to add a bit of weight. They needed tidying away anyway. The sky looks rather grey and Metcheck says we will have sleet and snow overnight so I'm going to drive my car up while it is still light. Then I won't have to worry. More birds (and a pile of poo). This time a couple of pheasants that were walking around in Ron's field. Pheasants are not native birds but are captive bred, then released into the wild in spring to be shot in the autumn. People pay hundreds of pounds to come and shoot at them as they are driven into the air by beaters. Pretty pointless really. The main road into this area, the North Devon Link Road, runs along the back of the Filleigh Estates (owned by the Earl of Arran ) which run a big pheasant shoot. The sides of the road are always littered with the corpses of pheasants that have been hit by the traffic on this very busy main road. Pheasants are not very clever birds and do get hit on the country roads as well. The law does not allow you to pick up a bird, (or animal) that you have hit but you can pick up birds that some one else has hit.

This is the standard colour of the male birds but you also get nearly black birds and very pale birds. They generally run along the road before flying off with a great whirr and clatter.

Heard owls last night. I had thought that the whoo whooing that we hear a lot was Barn owls but apparently that's the tawny owls. Barn owls screech more and that's what we heard last night. Ron has a proper barn owl nest box in a ruined barn just 2 fields away and we often see the barn owls perched on the fence in the evening.

Living room minimalist interior design ideas

TIPsy Tuesday - Recoloring Brads

To create some graduation cards for my Operation Write Home cards, I thought it would be cute to make my own little graduation cap.  The center really needed a black brad and I didn't have one.  When you live over 15 miles from the nearest craft store, you learn to make do if you want to get done.  So I recolored a pastel colored brad.  Here's how:

1. Thorougly ink a smooth brad in pigment ink of the desired color. (Stampin' Up!'s Craft ink is a pigment ink.)  I used black Colorbox pigment ink for my example. 
   
   
   
2. Dip the inked brad in clear embossing powder and heat.  Be sure to hold the brad with tweezors to protect your fingers.
3. Repeat this process if necessary to get a full coating. 

That's it!  A very simple way to give your brads a dye job.  I did find that Colorbox pigment ink did a better job than Stampin' Up!  I'd love to hear your experiences with inks.

Project Notes:

• This is one of the few pattern papers I had with black in it and forunately it is two sided.  I used a strip of the stripe for the center and turned the paper over for the aqua color.  I didn't have any cardstock that matched this paper.
• The morterboard is simply a 2" square of black cardstock with a hole punched in the center for the brad.  I attached it with dimensionals.
• The tassels is made from DMC embroidery floss and adhered to the card with a glue dot.

Thanks for stopping by for Tipsy Tuesday!

Ingredients:  Designer Paper from Two Bugs in a Rug

Stamps:  Congrats from SU!

Ink:  Black pigment ink from colorbox, Basic Black for greeting from SU!

Spring peepers

Leaving work late this afternoon, I heard spring peepers calling. Loudly. The small Cherokee Worldview Garden bog is filled with water now, and has clearly been repopulated.

It's a lovely sound. Now if I could just figure out how to upload audio files.... hhmrph.

But my favorite nature sound audiographer, Lang Elliot, doesn't seem to connect with the latest Real Player version on his site.

But just google spring peeper call, and you'll hear what I heard!

This is an image from Wikipedia, from a USGS site.

Weather Warning.

The Metcheck web site has a big red banner running across it saying Severe Weather Warning. Once again sleet & snow are forecast for tomorrow. Oh joy!

It has been raining all day. At first it was just showers but the moment I put on my gardening clothes it set in for good, how predictable. So today I've done lots of housework. I wouldn't have to keep on doing so much if Peter & Linas would only refrain from cooking or eating or leaving dirty clothes around.

My bird watching has been confined to looking through the kitchen window. This house sparrow has been eyeing up the hole behind a stone in the wall by our bedroom window.
On closer inspection it seems to be suitable.

Definitely will do for a sparrow home. Last year was the first time we have had no house martins at all. We always had half a dozen nests under the eaves and this hole would regularly be inspected but found to be too small to use. I have no idea why they didn't come but it seemed to be happening in other places as well. The mud nests built on the other more exposed sides of the house did not usually survive our wet weather but there were always broods of youngsters chirruping away by our bedroom window. I deliberately keep the honeysuckle and roses well below the roof line so that the cats cannot reach any nests. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that they return this year.

Did a little more work on my shell necklace and started another pair of earrings.

Diet update, ( good motivator putting the weekly weigh-in on the blog). If I can lose another 2 lbs by next week that will be a whole stone gone by Easter.