Gentle gardening

                                               

                            

 I'm really wanting to get out in the garden with a spade in my hands .and make a start on creating the flower bed that went on hold last year. However I think I'm being a bit ambitious just yet. I did try to do a little but...Mr France and my body are telling me to hold on a bit and take things slowly and gently, So I listened and this is what I've been  doing this past week.

Something easy.

planting bulbs in baskets which later Mr France can hang on the terrace.

I did have big ideas of planting loads of bulbs in the bank I call the wild part of the garden.  

Now I'm thinking maybe later. I hope I don't run out of time before the frost comes.

These were bargain 2kg bags.

 63 Tulips and 65 Varied Daffodils

Which will have to stay in the trug for a little while longer

 I was able to tackle a bit of tidying up, which was easy, I pulled down
 a few branches of the Virginia Creeper and was about to dump it, then 

as I was pushing it into the wheelbarrow it started to

 automatically twist into itself making a rough garland,

so I instantly  rescued it, and look at these wreaths I made.
I'll put them on one side until I have gathered enough
bits of natural things to decorate them.

Even though I wasn't able to bend and dig, I was quite pleased

 with what I did achieve.

What do you think ?

                                             

à bientôt

Barbara Lilian

Leaving my garden to look after itself.

Not done intentionally , but sometimes things have to happen that way.

I'm back after my stay in hospital, having treatment on my back.

Although not completely sorted due to a little hiccough with my blood pressure,

which on the last day of my treatment decided to shoot sky high,

which meant I was unable to complete the full treatment,

 and will have to go back in a months time.

It is greatly improved, but I still can't do any gardening for awhile.

 

 

  

Fortunately his basket was planted up some time ago
so we did have a few nice things to see
 Tete a Tete daffodils
 

 

 

 

 

So regretfully I'll have to leave things to Mr France.

Gardening is not his thing.
 Not so very long ago he couldn't tell a weed from a cherished plant.
He does all the hard ground work and I do the planting.

I'll be giving advice and asking him just to do the most important things.
 

My big new flower bed will not happen this year.

 

At the moment it's looking like this.

 

  

 

But it's not important.

I'm thinking when the soil is levelled off, I'll just lightly rake in some seeds
which were gathered last year and hope for the best.
 

This is what they looked like last year when my niece collected them for me,
 it's where we go on one our favourite walks.

 

 

Our communes have been sowing wild flower seeds en-mass in certain areas for the past few years.  

They're left to grow on their own amongst the grass with no attention what so ever .

 but look so pretty, and as my garden is on the rustic side in places

I think they should fit in quite nicely.

 

 

 

This is the view from the front of our house.
 

Shall we start with the potting bench, where most of the preparation  begins.
 

 

 

Trailing Fuchsias which we over wintered indoors, coming along nicely

 

 

 

 

 

 Something I could do was watch & nurture
some of the cuttings growing, that I took back in September.

So what's been happening around the garden, naturally and unassisted?

I'll take you on a tour showing the good the bad & the ugly.

 

Work in progress, hopefully this will get finished.
Mr France loves to build rustic stone walls,
 using the stones left over from the renovation he did when we bought this old ruin 20 yrs. ago.

 

 

These Tete a Tete miniature daffodils are new

 they were planted last year in the work in progress new bank area.

 

 

Muscari  bulbs in bloom planted last year.

Two different varieties. 

 

 

and the ones in the trough appear every year

a little on the small side due to neglect, put a pretty blue.

 

 

 

These big blousey Tulips were planted here by my Danish daughter in law

over 15 years ago. They come up every year, but this year I think this is the best they have looked.

Maybe they put on a special show for me, to cheer me up for when I came home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No seeds have been sown this year, I will be buying trays of plants this summer.  

 

Some trays of summer plants already bought for the window boxes & baskets.

This year not as many as usual.

Could be a sitting down job next week.

 

 

 

 

 



 



 

 

Hopefully, slow but sure I'll be back to my old self soon

doing what I love best

 pottering about in my garden.

 

Before I went into hospital I bought myself a new Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook.

so while I was passing the hours in hospital I did some water colour sketches.

I'll show you some I did later in the week.

 

and maybe work in my garden will have progressed.

 

 

Thank you to all my friends who have sent me their kind wishes for my speedy recovery.

Some of you are also suffering with back problems, so I hope things are improving for you too.

 

 Even if I didn't leave comments on the usual blogs I follow I've loved reading your posts,

 keeping up to date with some of the things you've all been doing.

à bientôt

Barbara Lilian

 

 

 

A little bit of this and some of that.

What do you do when it's raining ?

 I'm indisposed as they say !

even if it wasn't raining,

I would only be doing armchair activities.

A good time to get the camera and paints out,

but half way through the day, I felt tired due to the strong pain killers I'm taking.

Which means I will only be showing the shots I took of my indoor gardening. 

Hopefully the paintings will get done when I feel in the mood.

Back in November I bought several packets of dwarf daffodils,

 for the new area we started near the deck.

and thought it would be fun to plant some in unusual containers,

 and grow them on a sunny window ledge.

They took awhile to sprout , but are now shooting up, some more than others.

I thought I'd take a few photo shots, to test my improvement

 playing with Mr France's camera..

This is a vintage cup I've had for a long time and never used for tea,

so thought I'd put it to good use.

I planted these dwarf daffodils at the same time I planted the Paper whites.

which have been and gone.

The daffodils indoors are all growing at different paces .

This is a square glass container I use for  displaying  lots of different things.

It was full of dried Lavender and dried rose buds before I planted the daffodils.

 I like this simple shot.

I use Picasa  for the photos I post on my blog.
Usually for creating a collage.

Look what I did with the above photo. 

Today I tried clicking on a few other things to see what else I could do.
 and found several things like this sketching method. which I'll  certainly be trying in the future.


maybe for a watercolour of the cup and saucer

I collect things I like, not because they have a certain name.

But for all of you who collect pottery

this cup has a group of pretty little flowers on the inside of the cup

and the name underneath is

Soliam ware

made by 

Simpsons Pottery Ltd.

 Cobridge .England

.

The saucer is one of a few pieces I still have from a full tea-set.

which I had a long, long time ago.

Made by Johnson Brothers .England.

I hope you liked seeing what I did with my cup & Saucer. 

When they're in bloom I'll show you what they look like.

à bientôt

Barbara Lilian.