Decorating with lights – inside and outside

There is a price to pay for too much of anything good. I think we can all agree that too much nice food ends up on your hips. Too much of this nice weather has resulted in record breaking rainfall with flooding many places here in Britain, and tomorrow we are facing storm number 5 in just 6 weeks. Here in the more protected and quiet corner of South East storm Eve will probably be just windy weather and a lot of rain though. Not that we need any more rain, whenever I walk around in the flower beds here in my new garden, my wellies make a ‘squish – squelch – splosh’ sound for every step I take, and the clay soil that was hard as concrete and I had such a struggle getting a spade through in the summer is now absolutely perfect - for pottery.

The most important room

I often say that the most important room in my house is my garden, and I use my garden as if it was one of the rooms in my house – all year round. I probably spend almost as much time there as I do in my bedroom on average and certainly more than I do in my living room. It was therefore about time I did a spruce-up of my seating area this summer, it has looked the same since I moved in almost 12 years ago.

Gardening when having difficulties

I thought long and hard about a title for today’s post. I thought about calling it ‘Gardening when getting older', or ‘Gardening with disabilities’, but I wanted to make sure I reached all of you and that I didn’t make a niche post for just a few. You see, I think most people can draw some nuggets from this post, regardless of your physical abilities, and even if you feel you have no issues when gardening, perhaps you know someone who has, who could need some tips.

From a different perspective

My camera is like an extension of me, I feel undressed if I don’t have my camera with me or near me. I bring it with me every day I go out in the garden and I take pictures practically every day. A lot of the pictures end up here on my blog, some are just for experimentation in Photoshop, some experiments end up nice enough to be displayed on my website and my newly opened online art gallery and some pictures are simply just scrapped. I take around 5000 pictures per year but I have taken considerably more in previous years.

Promising, promising…

The one and only question on most gardeners mind these days, if they live in the northern hemisphere, is when will spring arrive? Officially we all know when spring arrives, according to the calendar, or do we?? Depending on what you choose to follow, spring arrives here in Britain either on 1st March or 20th March, but when is it really here? When the first snowdrops flowers? When the first crocuses flowers? Or the first hellebores? Or what about when the daffodils flowers or the cherry trees? Whatever you choose to pick as your sign, spring doesn’t appear from one day to another, it’s more a slow process.

You are cordially invited!

The last 2 weeks I have been hinting about an announcement I am about to make, and today is the day! I have been working flat out to get everything ready, invitations are sent out to everyone I have an email address for, and all the rest of you get your invitation like this, via my blog.

Dreaming of spring

I am continuing my re-run of elements from posts from early 2011, when my blog was in its infancy and I didn't have that many visitors. I had no idea in the beginning about how to attract visitors and how effective it can be to leave comments on other people’s blogs in order to get traffic to your own blog. Well, I have had to learn a lot, like with most things – by trial and error and by long nights reading on the Internet :-)

Ice lantern

So that was Christmas sorted, have you got anything special lined up for New Years Eve? The Christmas holiday is a rather low-key thing in my house these days, but I do like to light up these darkest days of the year and make the Christmas and New Year period a bit special both indoors and outdoors. I made a couple of ice-lanterns the other day, and I thought I would share with you how to make these very easy, decorative lanterns as this is something you can do in minutes and freeze overnight. The result is pretty spectacular :-)

Gingerbread Houses

Have you ever made a gingerbread house? I used to make one every year when my son was a kid, and I used to make them when my sister, my brother and myself where kids too, but the last house I made was in 2002 and since then I haven’t been able to go ahead with projects that require that level of physical input.

I just love red things!

I guess you already know what this post is going to be about? Yes, the colour red! I suppose most people have a favourite colour, or some colours they prefer, and in the same way has colours they don’t like that much. I can’t stand lime green, but I like most other shades of green! But when it comes to red I have a special shade of red I really, really like. Not post-box red or tomato red, that doesn’t do it for me, but the dark red, crimson red, almost blackish-red – I think it is the most gorgeous colour!

My terrariums….oh dear!

Last month I decided to have a go at making some terrariums, after reading about this new craze on several people’s blogs. The photos I saw looked so nice and the whole idea of a closed ecosystem that only needed minimal watering a few times a year really appealed to me. I even considered giving my son one, as something like this might have a fighting chance of surviving a bit longer than the couple of pot plants I have given him. So after a thorough research and a quite extensive shopping round to get all the necessary bits and pieces I made my terrariums, two large and two small. You can read about the process in my post from 19th February. One month on I thought I would tell you how they are doing.

The blog-in-a-book is finished!

After a rather short gestation, helped by numerous cups of coffee and more chocolate than my hips actually can tolerate and with the aid of many long evenings and nights my baby, sorry my book number 5 is finally born. The delivery was short and relatively pain free, although my Internet connection was groaning in pain due to the relatively large birth weight, but I finally got the ‘Upload Completed’ and I could sigh a big relief. Book number five is here.

Another of my Garden Books

It is Garden Book Review again over at Roses and Other Gardening Joys. This meme was started in January and attracted 16 bloggers last month, who posted reviews of “any book about gardening, gardens, or books that has a garden influence in it.”

Terrariums, my first attempt

It’s been cold for weeks, then we had a few days with milder weather, just to tease us into thinking spring would be arriving, but this week-end we were back to freezing cold weather again. This weather means my garden doesn’t get much attention, but inspired by several articles and posts about terrariums I decided to make one myself. This past week I have been collecting together everything I needed to make one, as I didn’t have much of it in house.

One of my Garden Books

Here in the Blogger Community it is common practice to start so-called memes. Now, you might not be familiar with the term, even if you have seen and perhaps even participated in memes in the past; you might even have started your own meme at some point. Anyway, I am joining another meme today, and I thought I would spend a few moments explaining what a meme is, and where the word comes from.

I love trees!

I had a stroll in my garden today, haven’t been out there since last Sunday when I took the pictures for the Garden Blogger Bloom Day and I was keen to see what news my garden had to present me with today. I looked and looked and looked, and there was….NOTHING new since last Sunday, except that the one single crocus that was almost opened last Sunday was now off and lying on the ground. That’s January in London for you. With temperatures around zero at night and not much more than 5 degrees during the day the last week I suppose I can’t really expect much to have happened, I should just be grateful nothing has died!

21.12. Christmas ice lantern

Not many days to Christmas now, have you got everything sorted? Christmas is a rather low-key thing in my house these days, but I do like to light up these darkest days of the year and make the Christmas period a bit special both indoors and outdoors. I made a couple of ice-lanterns the other day, and I thought I would share with you how to make these very easy, decorative lanterns as this is something you can do in minutes and freeze overnight. The result is pretty spectacular :-)