A very small pretty garden ...

I thought I would show you a few photos of how my garden is changing.... The photo below was taken in the spring...

I moved to this house over nine years ago...I have never really been happy here, mainly because the house is just so small. This is a two bedroom house and I have the smallest room as my son Charlie has more things.. uses his room more...and need a private space to do the things 15 year old boys do. The second bedroom only being big enough to fit in a double bed along the window wall with the headboard and footboard touching the walls from end to end. I have a single wardrobe and bed side cabinet, which in no way have or ever will accomodate my clothes shoes etc. 

The other thing I hated was the garden. It has taken me nine years to get it all fenced and make it private. Originally there was low chicken wire fencing and if you stood at the end of the garden you could see along the whole terrace of six houses. When I moved it the garden was muddy turf and there were no plants. My father dug up the whole garden and laid new turf. My mother showed  me how to plant which I had never done before. After a couple of years the turf had turned to mud again...The soil is heavy clay and the garden flooded...

My father replaced the lower lawn with crazy paving which looked really pretty...but still it flooded. I raised the bottom half up with bags of sand and had a soak-away dug...eventually I covered it in pebbles as the whole thing was messed up and I still got puddles... last year I dug up the grass from the top ...raised it and layed a wooden frame work with slabs and pebbles for drainage...it still flooded!!! So this year I took it all up again ...dug out the pebble areas deeper and dug two big soak-aways which I filled with broken slabs and pebbles. How many bags of stones are in this garden I hate to think..all is I know it has been extremly hard work...hurt my back and cost a lot.

I have four old chairs that my parents gave me and told me off for using in the garden!!! Over the years they have been outside most of the varnish has come off so I am in the process of scraping off the remainder and painting them with wood stain. The one above is in my favourite colour and is for my little sunny decked area at the top of the garden...

Only one half is decked at last years good weather ended before it could be finished...

This is the area where I sit and chill...or try to as I am usually stressed....

 

I had to show you my new flip-flops...pretty aren't they...very cheap from Asda..

 

 I am starting to love my garden.....

I am allowing myself  to endulge in whatever I feel like adding to this little area.....

The fence here is just three large pallets turned on their ends with the underneath facing inwards...I did it this way as it gave me shelves to support the window boxes . The backs are filled in with off cuts of decking and whatever would fill them for privacy...It is arty...peaceful...private...sunny...and totally me.....x

Retro shabby chic ....

This morning it is really lovely outside...The sky is blue, not a cloud in sight, no wind and at it looks like it will be a sunny day at last.

I have been up since 3.30am! I couldn't sleep...things turning around in my head. I have been creeping around so as not to wake Charlie.

 At 5am my cat Bloopy came bounding across the fences so pleased to find me sitting in the garden at an early hour. I gave him his breakfast...then...the naughty cat shot upstairs into Charlie's bedroom. I managed to get him out without waking Charlie and shut him in the sun room where he is now fast asleep on a nice clean ironed cushion cover.

I have had tea and coffee in the garden ...read my favourite blogs...looked at face book...read my emails and felt at a loss as to what I could do that was quiet. So..I decided to show you a few photos that I have been meaning to put on for a couple of months.

This is just a little ornament I picked up at my local charity shop. I am not really into ornaments...mostly as I hate dusting. I couldn't resist this at 49p...it is kind of retro, I like the flowers...

This is a little Ikea chest of draws that I bought about eighteen years ago...it is getting a bit scratched now but I still love it. I painted it fifteen years ago and have not been tempted to re paint it which is unusual for me...

I would say my style is shabby chic, although I like a broad range of vintage, antique, rustic and modern alongside retro, French chic,floral and country. Basically...I think that means I like a bit of everything....

I looked up retro...which implies a vintage at least 15-20 years old...

I looked up vintage...a term used to describe items that are more than 20 years old...

Now I know what i am talking about !

I bought the cats above for Charlie as they look like our cat Bloopy... I found them in the charity shop about three months ago 50p each...

Try as I may I can't get a good photo of these tea towels... My auntie Pat gave them to me as a gift, I just adore them. The top one is actually white with a beautiful embroidered bird on it, far to nice to use as a tea towel. I can imagine them all getting grubby with Charlie around, so they have remained in a draw forgotten until I found this photo. I think I may make the embroidered one into a cushion....

 

My mum gave me this Cath Kidston tin...I opened it with glee...only to find there was nothing in it ! There was a cup and saucer inside that my cousin Sue gave my mum....I got the empty tin!

Well ....I do like the tin...the only Cath Kidston item I own, and it will come in useful for something I guess....

The little tree was a reduced Easter find from Salisbury's...I like it on my decorated telly cabinet along with the cats. I must watch out or I shall end up with clutter again, when I promised myself I would only have useful things....

All of these things are from the charity shop as well....I bought a set of six original unused 70's plates for £2.50 !!! I have four of the little pale blue plates which are from Next and cost me £1...and the spotty mugs were in the end of season sale...half price...25p each...and there were five of them. All the china is new and unused....

I know it is very late....but I had to show you the Easter chocolate my parents gave me... I had moaned on face book that this was the first year in my life that I did not get an Easter egg...then I was given these.....

My auntie Pat...bless her heart...also gave me this cushion as she knows I dream of having a camper van....

How on earth can I slim down when mum and dad come over from France laden with goodies...chocolate...biscuit's...cheese and wine....

It is 7am now...time for kettle on and wake up Charlie with what he loves best

....... A nice cup of tea ......

And another excuse for me to sit in the garden x

Growing strawberries in the garden ...

Hi...so sorry I have not blogged for a while...no excuses really...  just that time just seems to whizz by and I have been very busy.

I thought I would show you some photos of my garden that I took a few weeks ago.I have been meaning to put them on and have more on my camera , I hope to get up to date as every day my garden seems to change.

I didn't buy many plants this year as I have divided older plants ...grown from seed and been given many from my auntie and my mum....

I have never grown from seed before and was unsure of what to do with the seeds my mum collected from her garden. Her instructions were ....scatter them!!! So I did. I was thrilled when they started growing...however... Mum took one look and pulled a face that told me all was not well. Mum said  'They are far to close together...there are far to many...you will have to pull some out'.  Well I haven't pulled any out...I couldn't bare to. I have decided to wait and see what happens!

My Bluebells....





Some Pansies...



 Primroses..

I made this trellis last year by lashing together canes...I was a little surprised that it withstood the winter... I planted  honeysuckle,clematis and Jasmin, which are now winding their way around the canes and obscuring the view .



Clematis...

 Nemesia...

Snapdragons...

 This mirror was made many years ago by my Uncle Mike who is sadly no more with us...I  treasure the mirror and have painted it many times. I thought it would look good at the end of the garden which is my special place. This little area is where is sit and chill...I am letting myself indulge in my favourite colours..it is arty and decorated with found objects. The back fence is made from pallets stood up an end and the decking is also on pallets... 

Forget-me-nots...

Clematis...

This photo is taken from the end of the garden.. Last year I bought a strawberry plant and let it run into other pots until I ended up with eight plants. This year I have put some of the plants into hanging baskets. Apparently the runners will hang down and I will have hanging strawberries..also the slugs can't get to them....

 More clematis...one of my favourite flowers...they are filling up the trellis...

The view up my garden to the sunroom....

I love my little garden...Thank you mum for showing my how to grow flowers x

Painting laminated furniture ..

I first started hand paining furniture many years ago when I moved from Sevenoaks. I was buying a house with a boyfriend who changed his mind and I found myself homeless with my furniture in store and had to stay with my parents in Horam.

 There was not much in the village but there was a secondhand furniture shop where I bought small items and painted them to pass the time and dull the pain of living back with my mum and dad.

 Inquisitive as to what I was doing the shop owner asked to see what I had done, and impressed offered me to have an area of the shop in which to sell my items.

 I moved to a farmhouse in Firle where I had outbuildings to store my furniture which I rag rolled and stencilled as was the fashion at that time

One of the regular customers to the shop in Horam was Roger Daltrey's wife, who bought a couple of my things. At the time I was teaching myself to do marbling and I was invited to Rogers house to look at the work he had been doing. He had marbled his bathroom which was quite beautiful. Sadly he was not there so I did not get to meet him.

I continued to do this for a number of years and also rented part of a shop in Forest Row.

Below is a photo of my television cabinet. It has taken me a while to do this as I have done it between other jobs. I thought I would show you the finished photo first .

I shall never know what induced me to buy this in the first place. I do not like modern furniture let alone fake wood. At the time it seemed like a good idea. I have pondered this for a while, really wanting to get rid of it, but I decided to give it a make over until I find something I fall in love with.

The first thing was to give it a sand over and wash it down with soapy water.

You can buy paint specially for painting laminated wood and I have used it in the past. It chips easily so I have just used self undercoating satin finish water based paint. I did not want to spend any money doing this so I used what I already had. If I was buying the paint I would have used oil based. I always use satin finish as you can touch up the inevitable scratch and re paint woodwork without having to Sand and undercoat. I concentrated on one area at a time and did three coats. 

I wanted to add some colour so I got samples of wallpaper from B&Q and stuck them in the backs of each area using pva glue. If this had been solid wood I would have hand painted the designs.

 I covered the top and bottom of each shelf with paper.

Sorry the photo is not very clear...it is so dark in here today with the rain...

x

Butterflies in the garden ...

Firstly I must apologise for not blogging for a while...

I have just been so busy...up to my eyebrows.

I had to take some time off with the Easter holidays to spend with my son. I had some orders to finish and my parents were due to visit which meant a massive tidy up. My parents live in France and mum had to re do her passport...it was sent back as in the photos she was too close to the camera. By the time they had the photos re done, sent them back and waited for the return of the passport Easter was long gone.

My parents arrived on Saturday and needless to say I had to down tools and spend time with them as they were very much missed. 

You may remember this photo a few posts ago....

And this one....

Well...I finally finished it...

I decided to put it in the garden ...mainly as I could find no where suitable in the house.

I gave it a couple of coats of varnish....





and hung it on the side of my shed.

I had quite a problem working out how exactly to attach it and sorting through my tools I came across some white 'things' with nails in that are used to attach cable to walls...I think!

Anyway...they did the job. I did however manage to bash a lump of paint off when I missed the nail and hit the side of it by accident... 



To the left of the butterflies is a clematis that I am going to train across it..

and I planted some white Nemesia in the window box below it..

This may have taken me ages to finish .... but I love it !



This is just a little peep at a cupboard I have nearly finished...another on going job.

This is one of those things you think about for ages...mulling over exactly how to go about it...putting it off as you know it will be time consuming....and then starting it and sort of wishing you hadn't.



x

Hippie camper van ....

He he he ....I did this some time ago and thought you might like to see it...

This is my old car...

I have a parking space at the front of my house and when I wash up I can see my car thought my kitchen window....

When I open the front door.....

This is what I see.....

A terrifying monster staring back at me.

I know it's just a car...

And I can drive quite well....

But it has an evil ghoulish face....

A creature straight from hell....!!

A camper van is what I'd like...

With flowers painted on it.

I don't care what little power...

Lurks beneath it's bonnet.

I'd like to go for long weekends....

And trundle down the highway.....

I do not care what people say...

I'd like to do it my way....!

I wish ... x

Flooded garden ...

I have just realised that in April I will have lived in my house for nine years....

Previously I had  a three bedroom Victorian terraced house with very large rooms and I had a lot of furniture.

My son and his friend helped me move in and put the beds together so that at least we had somewhere to sleep. Charlie has the biggest room and at the time I had two single beds, so I slept in with him for the first few nights until he got used to it.

 That evening I sat on my back door step and viewed the garden with such dismay....it sloped down to the house with a path of large cement slabs down the middle...there were no plants...the grass was a muddy mess and the fence was just awful...a low chicken wire fence with grey cement posts. My furniture was stacked all in the wrong places and I knew I would have to part with many things in order to fit into this tiny two up, two down.

I sat and sobbed...

 

That first summer my father dug up the entire garden...he levelled it into two parts...dug me a border at the top, edged it all in bricks and re turfed it for me...it was really lovely.

Three years later it looked like the photo above.

It kept flooding so I dug up the grass on the lower level...raised the whole level by a foot and put down crazy paving on sand...it still flooded killing off many of my plants...we dug a soak away filled with a ton of pebbles...we put in a pond and my dad made the seat with trellis for me. I dug down about fifteen inches in the left hand border removing sack fulls of clay and re filled them with compost... and I built them up about ten inches.

 

I fenced the garden last year but bad weather stopped us from putting up the last panel. During the winter the fence started to lean backwards as I do not think we used enough cement.

On Saturday we dug out around the posts and added more cement pulling the fence upright and put up the last panel....I am so pleased... you can not imagine how much...at last it is private. 

There are buds on the apple tree...This is royal gala grown by Charlie from a pip..

 

 

I have raised flower beds at the top of the garden....they are made from an old wardrobe.

This is my washing line post which really bugs me...

 

 

I cut some plastic covered wire trellis and wrapped it around the post.. I planted some ivy to grow up the fence...

 

 

And....I bought this wonderful...evergreen clematis armandii.

 

It says...it grows six meters up and across....with scented white flowers in March...April and May....

This is when I wish my mum was here as she knows what she is doing....I very carefully planted it and unwound the leaves that had wrapped around each other and the supporting cane....I only broke two!

This should grow up the trellis and hide the pole....then along the cane trellis I made that adds height to the fence to obscure the view.

 

I have three other clematis growing up the back fence...also a honey suckle and Jasmin....They are climbing up bamboo canes that form part of a trellis I lashed together last summer.