Distraction

So the weather is nicer, there are green shoots appearing, and I am being distracted by the garden and the allotment, and not getting a lot of crocheting done. I started all of these things for Crochet Month, and now I just want to dig and sow seeds. :-)

Today saw me get into the garden to  dig over last years potato and courgette patches. Since we have an allotment of our own now, that is going to be given over to fruit bushes and herbs, maybe some garlic and leeks later in the season.

Our garden is small, but I have planted in an L shape - up the left hand side is raspberries which are established. Then a goosberry, to the right is another gooseberry, a blueberry and my new baby bay bush. I have planted a couple of other blueberries in bigger pots there as well.

So far we haven't sown much, basil and courgettes and rocket, but I will get some more things sown soon and transplant a couple of other gooseberries down at the allotment. We are developing a perennial strip which will have an asparagus bed, maybe a strawberry bed, and some gooseberries and eventually some redcurrants, as well as some herbs.

That is the plan. Sorry no photos, but it does mean I have actually been busy in the real world!

PS, I am also reading a book. Never Let Me Go by by Kazuo Ishiguro which Martine has lent me.

Progress and the real world.

So the Ribbed Baby Jacket is finally finished! She has actually been wearing it for over a week now, but I am just getting around to posting a photo.  I immediately wanted to start something new, and talked to R about doing some yoga socks for her, but then she went off to college and I changed my mind about the pattern, so I had to start something else. :-)

Am crocheting a dress for the baby in a rather bright green cotton, but I am not really happy with how it is going. It may fit when she is three. And then I got out an old lapel jacket from a Bernat pattern that I started when I was still pregnant and completely forgot about. It would probably only take me a couple of hours to finish, except that I must have been addled by pregnancy hormones while I was doing it as what started out as a jacket crocheted from side to side with 100 now has about 120 stitches. WHAT!?!?

So I thought I would go back to finish some other things I have forgotten about, and am back on the Gentleman's Socks that I started as a Violet Green KAL in Feb 2008. Oh Dear. How time flies. The socks look lovely, but for some reason, this pattern and me are not a good combination. It is slow and slow and slow. So I gave up. But I am back now, and will finish at some point.


At least I hope I will. (No, really, I WILL!) But the real world does keep infringing on my knitting time. Firstly is the Toddler. Lovely, but has decided to distract me from things yarny by wrapping herself up in my working yarn, or just by climbing on my lap, as if it is hers. :-) She is far too cute to ignore, so away goes the knitting. Until I get insomnia.

Plus Al has got this week off of work, and we are getting jobs done. Spent yesterday in the garden getting ready for some planting and rearranging things.

 

This is my new white disentra (bleeding heart). I have wanted one of these for years, and here is it in a relatively shady part of the front garden, behind the snowdrops, and protected from full sun  by the  Viburnum bodnantense. (Just found out what that one is called, thanks to the lovely staff at Hulme Garden Centre,  so I am showing off a bit.) 

Here we have the other bit of the front garden, which doesn't get much full sun because of the plants in the bit in the first photo. Big green pot is strawberries, little green pot is lemon balm, orange pot (to be changed soon) is my favourite Verbascum, (Southern Belle) some of which I have put in the ground there as well. In the terracotta pot is the dessert gooseberry which I took out of the ground because it stopped anything else from going in.

In the ground are tulips (transplanted at completely the wrong time of year, so fingers crossed) and some lovely dark pink Astilbe which is just coming up, and some trailing ivy to cover a bit of ground. It is all there in the photos, but you won't really be able to see until summer, when things are flowering.

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Here is the veg patch in the back garden.
This was Al's digging. :-)

In the corner you can see a couple of pots, these are two of the tree blueberry pots. They are doing well and will be transplanted soon to bigger pots. In the ground are a couple of dessert  gooseberries. This is where the tulips were and why they had to be moved.

Here are the raspberries in front of the new fence the neighbours put up. I hate it. It blocks us off from one another too much - it is too high. But I pulled up all the weeds around here yesterday, and cut back some new shoots so the energy will go in the fruit growth. They are actually budding, but hard to seen in this photo - it is only my phone camera.


Along the fence on the other side of the garden we have strawberries, Michaelmas daisies, chives, more gooseberries, more strawberries and some other stuff which we are not sure what to do with right now.This patch up against the other neighbours fence is in shade most of the time, except in the late afternoon in high summer. I think we are going to put some climbers in, and train them up to the trellis. There is a pretty white climbing rose behind the compost bin which I may try to move. 

 

We used to do most of this with the kids, but they have other interests now, so Al and I just get on with enjoying our middle agedness. :-) Although we did have the Babe toddling around picking up leaves and putting them in the garden bags with us, and eating dirt. Of course.

Nice Things

Here are some nice things.
We have been growing a few berries in the garden. We have Raspberries, a couple of varieties of strawberries, (3 if you include the Alpine ones)  and we have 4 new dessert gooseberry bushes and 3 new blueberry bushes.

And here is the babe, with a pink face, after eating lovely raspberries...

She is also wearing a Confection Shrug that I made for her last week. I finished of with crochet instead of the ribbing, and the collar is a bit floppy, but it still looks cute, and is just the thing when the sun stops shining and it cool off.



Other nice things, the kids performed their productions today, from the Home Educators Drama Group Experience. I haven't laughed so hard for a long time. They were BRILLIANT! Absolutely hilarious, and real performers. I shall be laughing spontaneoulsy for ages.   :-)