A couple of March makes

Happy Easter 🐰

I hope you are all enjoying this Easter Sunday.  The children have been to collect their Easter eggs, no egg hunt this year as the garden is still too wet and soggy.  Me and Mark have enjoyed a lovely roast pork dinner followed by a quiet afternoon, me knitting and hubby watching tv.

As it's the end of another month, (they go too quickly!), I thought I'd pop in and share a couple of  the things that I've made during the month of March.  I want to keep this post short today so I will pop back soon and share the rest.

If you are on IG you will probably have seen my first make, it was all over instagram for a while, and I did resist for a few weeks before I jumped on the travelling sewing case bandwagon.  

 It seemed a shame to pull apart a perfectly good jewelry box and I wasn't really sure mine would turn out as good as some I'd seen but It turned out alright, not as fancy as some but It serves my purpose just fine.  I did wonder if it would be useful to me but I found it works great, everything is in one place, no hunting for scissors or another needle, I have everything at hand, and I'm enjoying using it, which is the main thing.

Another make this month was only done yesterday, and will probably be a work in progress for a while.  It's been in my head since last Autumn that I wanted a wildlife pond.  I cleared a space back in September /October last year when everything was dying off, I mentioned it to Mark and I don't think he was convinced at the time.  

I was going to buy a pre-formed pond from Amazon, then I saw something pop up on IG where a large container had been used to make a small pond, and I remembered that I'd seen the perfect thing in The Range the week before.

The weather was beautiful yesterday so Mark dug out the hole and set the container in the ground, he did dig in a lot of sharp sand because the ground is still so boggy and we have a heavy clay, hopefully it won't move too much.

And here it is at the moment

I used some wood from a bush we chopped down last year to soften one side but I have to buy some rocks and cobbles to finish the edges, I'm so happy with it.  When we first moved here we used to see lots of frogs in the garden, not so much now but hopefully they will return once word gets around.

 I will get some plants to put in and Mark, who is convinced now, (I don't know why he doubted because he knows I'm always right 😀😀) thinks we should get a pump to aerate the water, he even admitted that the frog I bought last week and which he laughed at looks at home there 😏

I posted these photos on a gardening group on FB and someone commented that the pond was too small for fish and they would get eaten by cats or birds???  So, before anyone gets worried, I can assure you there are NO fish in the pond, the orange/red you can see are reflections from my camilia which is in flower, I can sort of see why she would think they were fish though, ha ha.

I made a coffee and walnut cake this morning and there is a slice calling me from the kitchen so I will leave it there for now and pop back again soon and share my other makes from March.

Enjoy the rest of the Easter holidays

-X-

Sowing ALL the things

These last couple of months have been so wet and my garden is still quite muddy in places.  The grass at the top end of the garden is still too wet and soggy to walk on, it will need to be re-seeded as soon as it begins to dry out enough to walk on.  Up to yesterday we still has little pools of water in a few places, we need a week of good weather to start the drying out process.  

The top left photo is the grass, more mud than grass!

I have been able to tidy up some of the less boggy areas

And from down on the patio it all looks fine :-)

I decided to try my hand at growing some things this year, I sowed cosmos, sweetpeas, cornflowers, lupins, larkspur and a couple of other flowers, all have germinated and are growing nicely.  I also wanted to try some veg, so we have two variety of tomatoes, cucumber, courgette, aubergine, peas and potatoes.  Not sure if I will sow the carrot seeds I bought, I'll have to see if there is room.

I bought a planter for the strawberries and bought another few plants to fill it.  The ones on the left are the new ones, a different variety and growing slightly better than the ones I already had.

It will be interesting to look back on this post in the following months to see how my growing adventures are progressing

Today the sun is shinning at last, usually I take each season as it comes, I don't wish one to pass any faster than another but this year with having so much rain I'm glad of a dry sunny day.

This was the view from my kitchen window this afternoon, I just love the window-box full of daffs, such a cheery sight when I open the blind each morning, they are almost coming to an end and I'm wondering what to plant in there for the Summer months now.

Hope you are all doing well, I'll try and pop back at the end of the month for a round up of all my crafty endeavours 

-X-