A guest in my garden - and on my blog

Hello folks, I am guest writing on the Graphicality blog today and I just wanted to tell you a bit about what’s going on in the garden right now. But let me present myself first....

Yippee, post number 200!!

Hello, you have come to the right place, in case you for a moment was in doubt! It’s just that my blog has had a bit of a refurbishment the last couple of days and look a bit different, but everything is here, it’s just the wrapping that has changed. I passed my 2 years as a blogger in silence last month, should probably have made an announcement, but I thought I would save that for today’s post, which is post number 200!!!

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!

Plantaholic’s season

Oooops, I did it again! I have been putting aside money for a while to buy plants, now in the winter, when they are cheap and on sale, and a few days ago I sat down on the Internet and put in my orders. But I just can’t seem to restrict myself, there are so many plants I would like to have! So I ended up ordering more plants than I had intended – again. Not a problem in terms of my garden, after the complete overhaul last year I have room for quite a few new plants, no, this is more a problem for my bank account I guess….although I must admit all the plants I have ordered are really good choices for my garden, they are really good offers and plants I have researched and wanted for a long time. I can sacrifice a lot of other things for some new plants for my garden, which I will have to do this spring I suppose :-)

28.08. Under the stars

Hello again, tonight I got some quite spectacular photos for you, no plants or flowers in sight, promise :-) You see, every August Bank Holiday, Newham Council has a 4 days event in my local park called ‘Under The Stars’, and the 4th  day, the Sunday – today, the event is rounded up with an amazing classical concert by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra. So first we have to endure an evening with modern jazz, on the Thursday, and then on the Friday evening it is different kinds of Asian music, Saturday the theme can vary, this year it was ‘Newham Rocks You’…but I think they had dug up some really old rockers…perhaps a bit too old ones, they didn’t rock me, what I heard of it anyway.

15.06. Hip replacement

Hello, I have been mentioning lately my upcoming hip operation, and that I would write a bit about it in a post this week so I guess I just got to get on with it :-) I am so busy preparing for my operation though; the last 2 days I have, with the help from my son, turned my house upside down. Most of my sofa is now upstairs in my bedroom, apart from the corner section which doesn’t go up the stairs because it is too big. My coffee table and the living room chair is also upstairs, whilst my king size bed and night stand is downstairs in my living room! As I said; my house is turned upside down, all in preparation for me coming home after the operation. Because I live in a Victorian house with extremely steep stairs, climbing those stairs every evening and getting down again every morning, plus going down and up if I needed the toilet during the night to get to my downstairs bathroom is just out of the question. I therefore decided to move my bed downstairs. When I had my first hip operation in 2007 I thought I would be able to manage the stairs by the time I got home from the hospital, but it was such a frightening ordeal that this time I am making it very simple by not needing to go upstairs at all.

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.

22.03. At Royal London

Hi, I hope you have had a good, interesting and productive day! I have had another time consuming day at the hospital, and yes, I am going to start this post with a bit of moaning today :-) I spend quite a lot of days per year at different hospitals around London, and quite often I think about how many hours I just waste waiting around doing nothing, when I could have been home wrapped up in bed or doing something useful. Take today for example, when I had an appointment for an endoscopy exam of my bladder – something I had been told was going to be very quick. This was my schedule:

15.01. It's not raining!

It’s not raining today! Yeah! Well, small things make me happy :-) I have been outside in my garden for over 2 hours today, clearing up mostly, and I have managed to get almost half of the long beds done. I have taken out dead twigs and leaves from last year’s plants, and thrown away all the other strange things I find in my flower beds. Today I found: 4 vertebrae of different sizes from an animal that can only be a cow or something of similar dimension...don’t ask me how the cow got in my garden...I assume it didn’t climb over and die here, I haven’t found any other leftovers...so I guess I have to blame those bloody foxes again, for dragging their dinner into my garden. Somewhere in the neighbourhood, someone is either feeding the foxes or being rather casual with their rubbish. I also found two cable ties, something I find quite often in my garden; usually the ones made of metal, but today they were black plastic. It is the birds that bring them into the garden, they use them to build

14.01. Still raining

It’s been raining and raining and raining for what seems like forever. I get so fed up with this weather, and it’s going to rain the whole day today too, but tomorrow it seems like we are going to get a small let-up during the day. I can’t wait to get out in my garden and do a bit of clearing up. I got quite a few plans for things that need to be done by the time most of the plants start to wake up for the spring, it is just so much easier to do things when the beds are almost empty and I don’t risk stepping on small plants emerging out of the ground. However, all this rain has made the ground pretty saturated, and any kind of digging is rather heavy work! Speaking of rain, it is quite common to have a lot of rain in the beginning of the year here in London, so it’s not as if we have any unusual weather, just me being fed up....but sometimes we do get more days in a row with this than normal. Have a look at this 10 day forecast I have saved from January 2010, it is a screen print, no cheating. Pretty depressing

09.01. Packing up Christmas

I decided to put away the Christmas decoration today; it’s something I always put off for as long as I can, usually until someone makes a comment about the fact that I still have my Christmas decoration up...and then I reluctantly put it away. But it’s only 9^th January today, so I’m not that bad this year, I have been known to keep it until last Sunday in January :-) On the other hand, I am not one of those who drag the Christmas decoration down from the loft in October and has the whole house wrapped in flashing lights with a nodding Santa outside the front door. No, my decoration is a bit more subtle than that, and nothing comes out until

01.01. Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to my brand spanking new blog. And, hey, Happy New Year to you! Did you have any New Year resolutions? Nope? Neither did I, but I did promise myself to finally get started on a personal blog, something I have wanted to get myself for a long time; so her it is: MY BLOG. Awfully long, white empty space...but I suppose I will soon fill it up with all the exciting things that go on in my life... Not! Well, it’s not as if the Internet hasn’t been filled with rants from my corner already, I do have an 11 year old web-site which I regularly update with snippets of things that occupy my mind at the moment, especially on my garden section. But a whole blog, just for myself – well, that’s a new thing to me. I do hope this blog can eventually develop into a bit of a conversation with my visitors, so please leave a comment if