Everything in the Garden is Lovely

I have been out and about in Suffok, having a lovely time with the Stitch Skills Swap Shop. Their aim is to swap and share their stitch skills and they are very generous in their sharing. You can find out more about the here. http://www.4sssswapshop.com/

It was a great day – we had a talk in the morning and I gave a very quick workshop in the afternoon. I was amazed at what they produced in such a short time. They gave Clive and me a feast of a lunch and were so very warm and welcoming. If you live near Newmarket look out for their events.

We went up the day before and had time to pop in to Anglesey Abbey for afternoon tea. Lovely garden with lots of unusual trees. Wonderful colour and texture here.

The design of the garden is amazing. You turn a corner at the end of a sunny path and suddenly you are in dense shade, surrounded by ghostly stark white trees. 

Certainly a good contrast.

This week we decided to have a ‘staycation’ – a holiday at home with days out and a catch up in the garden. Unfortunately the weather hasn’t co-operated so the lunches out have so far only consisted of the garden centre cafe. Very good, though. So, instead, we’ve made a great effort to sort out all those odd jobs that one puts off all the time. Ticked off so far:

• Switched our fuel suppliers as npower proposed to double our costs.
• Re-organised the recycling with handy indoor bins – discretely tucked away
• Sorted out some money stuff.
• Chucked out unnecessary stuff that’s been in the filing system for years. Brought filing up to date.
• Sorted out books and clothes for the charity shop.

Phew no wonder I’m so tired.

The garden.

A review of today’s labours in pics. In the one below you can see our preparations for the conservatory build. The arrow shows where the wall will end.

 Here is the son of the soil, moving one of the hellebores.

This is a new bed, dug out and planted last year. You remember the problems with a certain cat and the catnip. Heavily buttressed with stakes, it survived to give good flower.

The wood working son-in-law put up some trellis to mask the shed - not a thing of beauty. Now I need to get some climbers going.

One ‘work’ thing I have been doing is to continue the commissioning of our multi-artist d4daisy book. We have some great textile and book artists. Can’t quite tell you the full list as not all the contracts are in yet and it ain't over till the fat lady (me) signs.

I can say that we have some super people and we have managed to sign up some of the ones that you suggested on this blog and on Facebook.

Finally we have a mystery concerning the birds that use our feeders. We have stopped feeding seeds for the summer but left up a few fat balls for the tits to finish off. Now we are getting visits from Jays and Great Spotted Woodpeckers. 

Odd to see these struggling to eat from the feeder – never seen them on the feeder before, although they sit in the big trees behind us.

Linie - glad you had a giggle.

Thanks for the comment on the in-depth workshop on the web topics, Heather. Lots of people in favour - none against yet.

Annie and Pat - if you haven't already email me with your snail mails. maggie@workshopontheweb.com