I've been working on .....

..... my garden. It all started when one of us (I think it was me!) had the genius idea to remove the large raised patio at the end of the garden ...... so we did. It took a week of rather hard labour (cunningly timed to coincide with half term so my boys did most of the work! And there it was gone, and left in its place was a largish flat patch that we were going to fill with a smaller patio.

And then one of us (I think it was me!) said "why don't we reshape the lawn into a circle or two, we could edge it in bricks and fill in around it with some slate chippings" ... so we did.

And then one of us (I think it was me) said "rather than have a second, smaller patio why don't we build a couple of raised beds so that we can grew vegetables?" ... so we did. I say we, Mr G built these and I can't begin to describe the trauma, even a shiny new drill didn't help very much. (If you look closely you can see where he had to "patch" one of them because the wood was so warped that the soil just fell out ....)

It's almost finished ... the lawns are almost edges (photos to follow) and the raised beds are built ... we're just waiting for the compost and the slate chippings and then, hopefully, nobody will come up with any other ideas!

The veggies that I've been growing in pots are all starting to come through .....

My second lot of chilli seedlings:


My strawberries:


My potatoes (in my old wheelie bin!):



And my all time favourites, peas:

I love my garden, hopefully I'll love it even more when we've finally finished it and I can spend more time crafting!

Time Out ....

..... in Bath.

To celebrate being best friends forever (or BFF as my goddaughter would say), Catherine and I escaped from our families and spent a wonderful weekend in Bath. We managed to find a great place to stay, the Astor Guest House which was only few minutes walk from the city centre (or a long drive when the sat nav let us down!).

We had a great time, we did a bit of sightseeing (planned which house in Royal Crescent we will be moving in to!), a lot of shopping and far too much eating and drinking. I love Bath, it really is a beautiful city and I would dearly love to live there. But, for now, I'll have to settle for the occasional visit.

Back at home, we're trying to grow more this year. Our garden is rather small so we don't have room for a "proper vegetable plot so normally we just manage a couple of tomato plants or some peas .... but so far this year we've planted:

• potatoes (in our old dustbin and also in five huge pots)
• cucumbers
  
• a mix of salad leaves
• rocket
• peas
• chillis
• tomatoes
• spring onions
• coriander
  
• bay
• sweet bay
• lemon thyme
• lemon grass
• and loads more chillis
  

Fingers crossed that it all grows and that the birds don't pinch too much - they are my prime suspects in the case of the scotch bonnet thefts!