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.