The Weekend

This weekend was mostly about plants..

Saturday:  I worked from home and then  watched Gardeners World on catch up.  We were particularly taken by the 20 year old Jamie Song who had made his home into a haven of tropical plants.  I love greenery in the home but hold back due to the space needed …seeing this young man's lovely plant home has inspired me to rethink this though, we need to think vertically!

Check out Jamie's Instagram *here*

I had a credit on Amazon for some picture frames that never arrived, just as well as Ilater found better ones for a quarter of the price. so treated myself to this book to guide and inspire me, it has really good advice about light, soil type, temperature, watering, positioning and multiplying your stock ....

The book arrived within 24 hours which was earlier than promised.  I was immediately inspired to try a small experiment with propagating my own plant to keep costs down .. also have separated some of my cacti to grow 'babies' into bigger ones.  My next trial is going to be a leaf cutting.

I was interested in about 5 other books, but remained sensible and found them all on my library website.  The library is open now and we are lucky to be borderline with two counties so get to use both Surrey and West Sussex.  The latter will allow you to order books free online and collect when they come in - perfect!  So now all I have to do is wait.....

In the garden:

The pumpkin planted in honour of Ambercat (nickname ginger pumpkin) has flowered and I am hopeful of a big fat pumpkin in time for Halloween.

The tomatos have fallen everywhere after the heavy rain and high winds, rather than risk snapping them I have left them to do their own thing with the bench to support and the fruits are beginning to ripen nicely.

We have a lot of birds visiting, I sit out most mornings and watch babies coming with their parents, jay and blackbird but also greenish yellow birds whose young look like swifts with long tails, black/white brown, with white fuzz on their heads - they are very tame and are taking aphids and ladybirds from the apple tree (isn't natural clever, the ladybirds eat the aphids then the bird eats the plump juicy ladybird …  I haven't been able to photograph the birds as they are small and move quickly.

We had the hous to ourselves hubby made a bbq and then we watched 'The Secret She Keeps' on BBC IPlayer - really good although it felt strange having the house to ourselves, there's usually someone rumbling around 24 hours a day!

Sunday:

We went for a walk a short distance from here at Outwood - the windmill is the oldest working windmill in the UK and I have blogged it to death and the surrounding bluebell woods *here* but today we went over the opposite side and found the lovely National Trust grounds of Harewood House - we didn't visit the house although it's on my to do list...  but we did get a lovely walk in the woods and across fields - the wildflowers were spectacular.

The Outwood cricket club is at the beginning of the walk, they have made this novel gate with a ball for the handle and incorporating the coat of arms and a cricket bat into the gate itself....

We stopped at the garden centre on the way back.  I have wanted a spider plant for ages and my friends plant just won't produce babies although I have waited about a year patiently! so I bought one - it was in neglected condition, looking anaemic and pot bound, they gave me 10% off the £12.99 price tag, a bit stingy, but I was the winner as when I repotted it, I found I had three plants there.  I always buy potting compost with a new plant, it's worth the investment to give them a new start.  These will need some kindness as some of their leaves are broken but just after one night in their new surroundings they look happier.

pot bound spider plants

Other plants around the place have come back indoors after a week outside while we had that rain, plants love fresh rainwater!

The palm above came from Ikea earlier this year, its growing fast and I found it likes to be up high, hence its moved to the ledge.  This one below I have shown you before, its  my favourite, a ficus and likes to be outdoors, if planted would  grow up to 60ft I got it free from work when it was half dead a year or two ago as they refurbished, it was in a dark corner being fed cold tea and coffee! In the HR dept.  It has trebled in size since those sad old days.

Baby variegated ficus growing well...

Repotted cacti, I dont know much about cacti so hope they will survive my experiments. 

Other news is the vintage Indian silk scarf arrived - will post a pic soon.

So that's me for now, please leave a comment if you have time, I will try to reply and/or visit yours.  I am really enjoying blogland just lately as everyone is getting busy homemaking, with diy, cooking and nurturing their families and homes, showing how they save money, make their masks, clean their homes, tend their gardens - I love all of it!