Apparently you're meant to do this blogging thing quite regularly...

Hello chums, some more wittering here... special end of year edition.
Well, I've had a lovely christmas, it was peaceful, I got lovel presents, and recipients all seemed pleased with theirs.

As is traditional, I finished the Christmas knitting three days after christmas... oops! Next year I shall cast on christmans projects earlier, honest.

So, its the time of year for New Year's resolutions. I don't really 'do' New Year, or new years resolutions, but that said there are things I'd like to do for myself.
I used to be so much more organised than I am now, and I'd like to get some of that back, so with this in mind I've organised my knitting plans for the year (nearly all of it from stash!) and I intend to meal-plan.

I've had the resources and intention to make my own clothes for a while now, so that's something I want to spend more time on, as well as more arty things.

And of course, I should blog about all of these things!

Hmmmm, lets see how that goes shall we?

Erm, hello!

It would be nice to say that the reason I haven't been blogging because I've been too busy gardening, but it wouldn't be true. I have been neglecting both I'm afraid!
That said, the little bits of gardening I have been doing are paying off.
That sad plot of wilderness is now looking much better, although still wild.
It's the sort of wild I like though, look!
I have poppies:



I also have loads of this stuff... Unfortunately I don't have a clue what it is!



I'm also excited to report that I have potatoes! (well, I have potato plants, hopefully they have some potatoes attached to them!)
Most exciting of all though is this cheeky little unseasonal Narcissus, which defied all odds and has appeared in my border from the mysterious and rotten looking bulbs found in a bag at my Grandads house.
Narcissus! In September!



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Not a travel blog

As an antidote to my recent text-only whingy posts, have a gratuitous picture of a seaside donkey, escaping from it's handler to chase a seagull:

Long time no wittering

Well hello there blogland, how are you?
Progress on the plot is slow and disheartening right now. After my chemical drench, the horsetail and nettles took the opportunity to just carry on growing... Presumably blowing raspberries, pulling faces and singing ner-ner-ner-ner-ner at me at the same time.

So, summoning up all the determination of her dad*, my mum took a dual attack approach yesterday: strimming till the blade fell off, then immediately drenching the lot in more weedkiller. I wait in anticipation...

As well as the plot looking like somewhere dinosaurs might go to play, I got home from a weekend at the seaside to find all my seedlings had died... Have managed to revive some of them but I think I'm going to be re-planting.

It's not all doom and gloom though, there are blooms too... Well, sort of, but blooms rhymes so I'm sticking with it.

I've been given a chilli seedling, have had some new ideas for ways of tackling things, a friend has dug over a good starter sized bed, and the border is blooming and full of cheer.
My mum alsodiscovered that someone has planted some pansies and primulas at the front of the plot... RAK for me!


*My grandad was a fantastic gardener. My grandma is convinced he used to lie in wait for new shoots of horsetail to appear...

Looks like I may be buying veggies for a little while yet.

Well, blogland, long time no see eh?
Spent Easter Monday with a watering can and some weedkiller, dousing everything except the border, the rhubarb and the gooseberry bush.
A couple of weeks on, and the result is disappointing. I now have slightly sickly looking horsetail and nettles poking through some yellowed grass! Not quite the spectacular result I wanted. I'm certainly going to need more weedkiller, and I think may have have to put plot planting plans on hold till next year.
Never mind there are always containers!


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Prehistoric Monsters Have Invaded My Garden

I knew there was horsetail in the plot, I thought I'd pulled a lot of it up and there were just a few patches left.
What a fool I was.
It's now over-run with the stuff.




It's quite pretty in a way, but that doesn't mean I want it overtaking my whole garden like this




Fifteen minutes with the strimmer, now I need to go back out with the weedkiller.
This is not a good time for mystery fatigue to hit. Hmmph.

On the upside, I have a lovely lovely hyacinthoides non-scripta that has fought through the prehistoric spikes!



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Things I found while tidying the garden:

Amongst the expected pile of broken glass, beer cans and sweet wrappers I found:
Three different bits of a lock mechanism.
A large colony of woodlice.
A single, solitary bed spring.
Two pence.
Some very pretty bits of china.
A knife and fork (not a matched pair).

I feel like it's an archaeological dig, not a gardening project!

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A Short Restart, with Art

I set up this blog over a year ago, as an addition to my more ranty and emotional livejournal, with all good intentions of updating it regularly with cheery things... as you can tell, that hasn't quite gone to plan!

So here I go again... I will bravely endeavour to post more often, I promise!

I was pondering today that one of the things that I am passionate about is actually something I rarely blog about: Art.

I love art. I love that something that human hands have created for the sake of creating it can move me so much that will cry, or exclaim, or laugh, or, most often,just want to stop, and look and look and look.

Sometimes I forget this. this weekend I have been reminded of it by a tv programme: I spent saturday afternoon catching up with BBCFour's 'Romancing the Stone: The Golden Ages of British Sculpture'.
Sculpture is possibly my favourite form of art: certainly, if I had to pick a favourite artist, it'd be Henry Moore. There is something about it that stops me in my tracks more than a painting usually can.
What I hadn't realised until very recently was how wide my love of sculpture is. I recently visited the Cambridge Museum of Classical Archaeology, and I was absolutely awed by it. Watching this show reinforced this: so many styles, so many differences in scale, in levels of realism, and I loved so much of it.

My favourite, though, remains Henry Moore's Recumbent Figure (1938)