Look who I found in my Fern Garden !

 

                                                  A sweet little cherub   .                                 

Helleborus orientalis - The Lenten Rose

 

                                        Helleborus orientalis - The Lenten Rose

 In a corner of my messy , winter ravaged garden . This has been quietly blooming .

                           People walk past her ......only I know she is there  . 

                    

Sewing , sowing or snowing ?

 

                             

                        I gathered  a small quantity of pebbles from the beach .

I had already re-potted this precious Haworthia and just needed to smarten it up with a nice mulch.

I did have a better idea for this , but that will have to wait  and this will do for now .

I got the seedlings on my bedroom windowsill re-potted .

Cucumbers , Tomatoes and Sweet Peppers and then didn't have enough space on my windowsill for all the new size pots !

So I have shared them out to several other places .

I am worried about this bit of a cold snap we are forecast , but I have no choice . I took some up to the shed . I can see through the window that the germinating lettuce seedlings are now turning green and they too will need pricking out and potting up very soon . 

           These Tomato seedlings survived last night's 3 degrees  just fine .

          The Cucumbers really did not enjoy being transplanted and the cold night . 

We have a first casualty !  ...but I won't give up on it just yet . It might settle in and revive .

I brought the rest of the Cucumber babies back inside on my windowsill and some in the front porch .

Tonight the temperature is said to be going down a bit more , so I have covered them over with a couple of pillowcases to keep them cosy .

With my garden operations finished ,I lit the fire and settled down at the table to sort out my seeds .

                        Leeks will be next .       A mixture of all of these .

   I'll be sowing these in the new few days up in the shed . It just depends on how cold it gets . I might wait until Monday .

So then I thought I'd make myself a nice cuppa tea , went into the kitchen and thought how lovely the Camelias are in the vase on the windowsill .

   Then , see that plant on the end ? It was a cutting from my mother's  plant and about thirty years old and many, many more years old originally coming from my grandmother's plant .

   In my last old cottage it had become a beautiful huge specimen and looked stunning when it bloomed ...then one day a horrible teenager had a temper tantrum and smashed it .  I tried to root all of the broken pieces , but they all withered and died , except one tiny piece . 

      It is so slow growing . Anyway it looked a bit dry so I gave it a drop of water .

 As I moved away , my shawl got caught on it and it fell off the windowsill . I caught the plant in my hands , but the rest of the pot and the earth tumbled out into my wellington boots down below and all over the kitchen floor . It's o.k. I stayed calm and as you all know by now , those wellies were rubbish , had holes in and I needed a new pair anyway .

  🎼🎵🎶 Always look on the bright side of life ...di dum , di dum di dim di dum 🎶🎵🎶

                                          Rhipsalidopsis gartnerii

Having just watered it , there was also a fair bit o' mud trickling down over my dress and my feet .

This meant I had to get out Henry and hoover up all the mess .

 Followed by other trip up to the shed to re-pot the plant .

I was happy to find the plant label tucked inside it anyway .

I watched my little friends on the bird feeders whilst waiting for the kettle to boil  .

Then returned to sit by the fire , enjoy my cuppa tea and do a bit o' sewing .

How's your seed sowing going ?    Are you sewing , sowing or is it snowing where you are ?

                                                                         🕊️

 

Primroses and Daffodils

 

                                                  Raindrops on Primroses .

                                                    Miniature Daffodils .

Immortality Plant , Cucumbers , Cucumbers . Tomatoes , Sweet Peppers .

Ignore the Cucumbers which I did sow far too early . So that now , when I repot them , they are going to become happy monsters on the bedroom windowsill with their huge leaves and no room for all the peppers and tomato plants ! Yep ...ignore the Cucumber plants !

It is time to repot the tomato and sweet peppers . Sigh ........o.k. I'd better get on with it !  Bye ! 😃

Cowslips

                         Delighted to find Cowslips in my herb garden today !

Taking a rest from pruning bushes .

 I had to have a rest from all that lopping and chopping bushes and trees, and from trying to pull up weed membrane and old carpet . My whole body is aching from it , one elbow in particular .

Do a couple of things , a bit more gentle . I needed to repot this Haworthia . I lost the label years ago , but it this a lovely white variety that my husband was gifted  by a very kind gentleman work associate to take home and give to me .With the appropriate CITES permissions he was allowed to bring it all the way from Cape Town in South Africa  . This was such a wonderful surprise and thoughtful gift for me . I never expected anything .No one ever thought of me back at home with the children while he was away .

  Usually my husband would be gifted bottles of wine ....nice for him , but , I've never acquired the taste for alcohol . 

The other lovely gift I was surprised with was an L.P. of Chopin's Nocturnes Piano music to dance to -  I was so surprised and delighted ! 

 Anyhoo .... so I got the Haworthia  sort of half potted up . I need to get some nice horticultural grit or something nice to mulch around it . It was trying to climb out of it's original 3"pot ! It has room to spread out now .

If you know what this one is called , like it's proper Latin name , please let me know so that I can give it a new label .  I'll sort that out tomorrow and I might have an even better idea for it .

So the next job was to re-paint our old fire back . This we bought from a reclamation yard many years ago , somewhere in Kent .

It is probably the heaviest thing we own . We had help lifting it into the car .

It was a miracle that it didn't fall through the floor of the boot and I have no idea how we got it out when we got home .

It has been in the inglenook of two thatched 16th century cottages and now stands outside as our fireplace here is not big enough for it to be put into . Well actually it is big enough , but it would be hard to manoeuvre it behind the woodburning stove  . 

 I found a couple of paint brushes and an old pot of metal paint .

Goodness knows how long we've had it . It was hard on top , but I managed to make a hole through it .

        This was a nice easy job , I didn't have to be too precious with it .  I could just slap it on .

                  Poor old Mr Fairfax .....oh sorry ..... General Lord Fairfax .

   My husband says I wouldn't have liked you . He also says that you wouldn't have liked me !

             I'll like him better with some pretty flowers around him .

It's a bit too early for putting out hanging baskets with Pelargoniums  just yet , but I will be thinking about it .

But then again , this window-box has survived the Winter . I had just forgotten all about it . I guess it is on a more sheltered South facing windowsill .

There are trailing Pelargoniums , Erigeron little white daisies , an Agave , and a Petunia !

They are saying we will be having cold winds blowing from the North in a few days time  . 

I'll see if I can find a piece of fleece to go over it , but then it has survived that strange icy haily snowy few days of weather we had towards the end of last month (17th January I think ) .

One last bit of thrilling news . The Voodoo Lilies are coming up !  Well they thrill me anyway .
 

                            So that just leaves this job to finish tomorrow .

Please forgive any spelling mistakes as I am too tired tonight to check it all over !  🌿

Just walking in nature today

 

Dahlia dreaming again ..shall I ? shan't I ?

 

I want to start them . 

Don't ! 

But I want to . 

No ! 

But I really , really want to  .

Sigh ...so these are the ones I dug up and over-wintered in the shed . I am itching to pull one up to see if there are any little new shoots .

The weather people are saying that we could have another cold snap . I think I'll give them another week or so .

Then we were at the garden centre and I fell in love with a packet of three different sorts of red ones .

My heart was racing ! Two of them , had delicious little red shoots appearing already . 

                         So they were coming home with me and off up to the shed .

It's all systems go up in the shed .

 I want to pot up the tomato and sweet pepper seedlings that are in 1" modules on my bedroom windowsill , but when I do ,they will need to go into 3 1/2 " pots and I don't have enough space on the bedroom windowsill for that many . I don't want to put them into this shed  just yet . I'll wait for this cold snap to pass . They say it might not even happen down here on the Lizard.....but that it still , just might 🙄

These are the last of the Lettuces and Pak choy that I have grown over winter . We will have those tomorrow and I think I will get to it and sow some more  .

Oh ! That's where the string went ! I need to fix the wind-break mesh on the fence ..oh good I left the needle in it too , that was very thoughtful of me ! 

And then I got my hands into the lovely compost and potted up those three Dahlia tubers . 

It felt so good !  I am so happy !

I didn't have any labels to hand so I decorated the top with some pretty shells from Trefusis Beach over in Flushing . 

Husband has family history over there . His Grandpa and Great Grandpa lived in the converted chapel there and their schooner would be moored up at the coal yard at the end of the road  . It's a vey special place to him..... if very narrow to get through .  Flushing was not built to accommodate motorcars . His Grandpa was one of the first in the village to actually have a car  , he was quite a character I'm told ! 

 I'm waffling ! 

I'll tell you about Grandpa and the schooner another time . It's all very romantic . (Although his Grandpa would definitely not agree ! )

 

So there we go . I have the first of my Dahlia dream babies all potted up .

It's turned warm and foggy here today . Maybe the cold snap won't happen , fingers crossed .