30.04. A new lily

It’s the last day in April! Where did last month go?? I have no idea, except I know I used a lot of it in my new garden, and some of it in the 3 different hospitals I regularly go to, and I also spent a lot of last month in bed – as usual – but apart from that, I think the month has gone very quickly. I past a milestone last week, writing my post number 50 :-) and after 4 months of blogging I am pleased to say I think I will continue with this...I enjoy making these blogs, I hope you enjoy reading them!

29.04. Meditation for pain

Hello, how are you? You know, sometimes I wonder who you are; my visitors....although I do know a few of you. I know my Mum, who checks my blog every morning to see if I have written anything; hi Mum!...and I also know a few other of my visitors, who are spread around in Britain and in Norway. But the rest of you I don’t know who are, even though I know most of you live in Germany, USA, Britain, France and Norway. I try to imagine who you are though, what you might be interested in hearing about, what kind of pictures to put on the posts etc. That’s why this blog so far has been a mix of things I do and make plus some posts in between with a more of a philosophical theme, trying to cater for a wide audience, but still keeping within a kind of a theme. There are many things you won’t find here....you won’t find anything related to sports, ever. And nothing to do with computer gaming. And there are a whole lot of other things too you won’t find here I suppose. But you will continue to find things related to creativity, photography, art and crafts and gardening, but I though perhaps

26.04. Red lily beetles

The heat wave is over, for now, and we are back to normal temperatures for the time of year. It’s quite a difference in just two days; from 28 degrees on Sunday to 17 degrees today...it was chilly out there today! I did, however, brave the chill, put my usual garden-cardigan on and spent a couple of hours in my gardens.

23.04. My gardens

Today has been another glorious day, I know I keep repeating myself – but honestly, it was 28 degrees at 3 pm! I have got quite a lot done today, mostly in my new garden next door, with staining the log rolls for the second bed, a slow process which has to be repeated several times after the logrolls are in the ground to make them last as long as possible.

22.04. Sizzling hot April day

Hello! Is it nice weather in your part of the world at the moment? If you live in the UK, especially in the South East, you probably have been enjoying the same glorious weather as I have the last few weeks, if you live somewhere else and have been expecting great weather, but haven’t seen any lately; now you know where all the good, warm weather has ended up! The news here has been filled with reports about people who booked their holiday for Easter for going abroad, people who booked it months ago, when we had the coldest winter in 100 years. Now they are calling back home to family and friends in the UK, complaining that the weather is better back here than where they are on holiday, in Southern Spain, Turkey and other Mediterranean countries! Well, we certainly were due some good weather, I just hope we won’t get all in one go, like we did last year in June. It was great for about 3 weeks, and that was it. I wouldn’t mind having this weather until late October :-) Only minor issue is the cost of all the water I have to pay for, to water my garden, but that is a minor issue, because in this warm weather I don’t need much gas for heating, so I save a lot there.

18.04. More Bonsai

Hello, did you read my post yesterday about my Bonsai tree? When I was researching on the Internet trying to find out why all the leaves were falling off, and whether I was doing all the things I could to treat it right, I saw an article about how you could make your own Bonsai trees. The article claimed that in principle, any tree or bush could be turned into a Bonsai tree, if you restricted its growth and pruned it correctly. That might be almost true, but there are trees and bushes that would never do well being treated like this; they would just become too stressed. I got of course very fascinated by this article, and being the kind of person I am, I just had to have a go!! So today I have made a Bonsai garden :-)

17.04. Bonsai disaster

When I had breakfast this morning, two elderly women stopped outside my house and started admiring the flowers in the window baskets on the wall of the front garden. They talked to each other and smiled and stood and pointed and gesticulated and one of the women leaned over and started talking to and smiling towards the plants. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I could hear her voice, even though the windows were shut...I live in a Victorian house, I can hear the footsteps of people walking past on the pavement! Anyway, I am all for being nice to your plants, but her behaviour was pretty peculiar. I have blinds in front of my windows, no net curtains; I can’t stand net curtains, so during the day the blinds are down but open so the light can flood in – that gives a bit of privacy, but people can still look in if they really want to. After dark I close the blinds and it blocks everything out. OK, back to these two elderly women. I got up from the sofa and walked to the window, taking care not to get too close as I

16.04. Stepanotis in flower

There’s been a small miracle in my bedroom lately. No, no...not that kind of miracle, I haven’t finally got myself a boyfriend; no, this is more in the region of a horticultural miracle – that’s probably the only kind of miracles you can expect at my humble abode :-) Let me explain....Many years ago I bought a houseplant called Stephanotis floribunda, you might know it as Madagascar jasmine, not to be confused with the many types of ordinary Jasmine you can have both in your garden and as houseplants. Other names for this houseplant are Waxflower, Hawaiian Wedding Flower, Stephanotis jasminoides and Marsdenia floribunda. In warmer climate this plant grows outdoors and can be a 3-4 metre tall climber, in our part of the world it is kept as a houseplant and mainly cherished for its highly scented flowers. Back to my purchase from 2004...I just had to try to grow it outdoors...yes, I know, pretty mad when all instructions say it has to be kept frost-free, but we had had many winters in a row without any frost by then so I thought I would give it a try. I re-potted the Stepanotis in a large pot and let it grow quite big during the summer and autumn, so it perhaps would have a chance of surviving. And it did survive...until March the following year! That’s when we got a few nights with well below minus, and most of the plant was dead next morning. See, it almost survived the winter! Well, I cut off the few pieces that were OK, put them in water and let them root, and then potted them on later.