Design

All work is copyrighted to their respective owners.

In spite of the rain which dampened the morning the day turned into a real scorcher and stayed that way until I got home again. The Rambling Rector climbing rose has finally taken off and can be seen flowering amongst the trees. Jack met me as soon as I got home so once I had changed out of my good clothes we met up in the garden for some companionable gardening. He told me all about his birthday plans for him and a friend to drive a 5 ton digger and make a mud camp while shifting a few trees at the same time. Pure fantasy but so real to a 7 year old. Sarah, his mum came round leading a pony for him to ride but while he enjoys riding in shows he's not so keen to practise at home and prefers his quad bike. How many children have those choices ? He reappeared a while later still in his school clothes to tell me about his dad assembling a new gas barbecue and how he was listening out for any explosions. I think the visit was more to escape a telling off for not riding Gift. During...

Green Garden House Walk in Greenhouse Hot 57"x29"x77"-1 Latest Deals Green Garden House Walk in Greenhouse Hot 57"x29"x77"-1 Overview General Feature: * High quality, heavy duty power coated, steel framework, Rust Resistant * 145 gram Heavy duty transparent Polyethylene with Green Net * Zippered front door for easy access * 4 Shelves for the plants * shelf size: 29" x 13" * Distance between Shelves : 17" * All necessary Hardware is included * Instructions are easy to follow Please read: The roofs are are not designed to hold the loads of standing water or snow. You must keep the roof material properly tight. Note: ITEM NEEDS TO BE ANCHORED TO GROUND TO HOLD AGAINST WIND. SELLER NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WIND OR STORM DAMAGE TO ITEM, REGARDLESS OF ANCHORING METHODSTORM DAMAGE TO ITEM, REGARDLESS OF ANCHORING METHOD Available at Amazon Check Great Offer Now!!! Before Time Out...

Quictent 12'x7'x7' Portable Backyard Large Greenhouse Green Garden Hot House New Latest Deals Quictent 12'x7'x7' Portable Backyard Large Greenhouse Green Garden Hot House New Feature Double zippered front door and 6 exhaust vent for cross ventilation and venting on hot days High quality, heavy-duty powder coated steel framework Heavy-duty transparent reinforced polyethylene roof and wall material for maximum solar performance Easy to set up, portable ISO 9001:2000 standard certified manufacturer Quictent 12'x7'x7' Portable Backyard Large Greenhouse Green Garden Hot House New Overview Let your garden grow year round with this compact, lightweight, walk-in greenhouse. This spacious walk-in house style green house sets up in less than 5 minutes-no tools required -on soil or hard surfaces such as concrete. This high quality, large, walk-in greenhouse is crafted with a powder coated steel frame and middle rails for additional stability against the e...

The rain held off today so I have been able to spend plenty of time working outside. I did my usual thing of walking up in the night (I sleep badly these days), and because I had lots of school plans whizzing through my head I ended up getting up at 4.30 to work on the PC. Then I remembered that Peter had plans to give the Rayburn burner a clean which involves turning it off for the day so I put a large chicken (which I had bought reduced yesterday), into the oven at 5.45. After that I decided not to go back to bed and instead did more school work before making an early start outside. When Peter eventually dismantled the Rayburn burner he was absolutely furious with the man we had called in last time when Peter's wrists were too bad for him to do the job himself. We used a local firm who are normally very good but an older chap came and apparently did a really bad job which caused damage to the burner. He cut the wicks too long and folded them instead of cutting the right shap...

A lot more sun today so when I got home I took the opportunity to mow all the grass. We have been promised a very wet weekend so it is good to get that job out of the way. The second half of my class did their reading SATs today and I have to say that I am very pleased with the standard of reading. There are a high proportion of children in both classes who are reading at about a year in advance of the average for their age. As many came into school with very low overall scores this is a good reflection of the way the school has encouraged reading and all literacy skills. The media keep on producing scare stories about how many children leave school unable to read  and this has simply not been my experience in this school, and we only go up to age 7. My next major gardening job is to tackle the weeds that are springing up between the flowers. The steep hillside will be covered in flowers for the next few weeks and it would be a shame to see too many weeds poking through. Every...

The heavens have been watering the garden for most of the day. At school we were lucky enough that the sunny spells coincided with the children's playtimes and we were not forced to keep them indoors for the whole day. That is a trial for everyone. We have just started work on our new topic 'Greece'. The whole school topic is Europe and we decided that it would be better for each class to focus on one country. I chose Greece because we spent a happy summer there many years ago and there are so many subjects we could cover from Ancient Greece with its inventors, philosophers, the Olympics and myths & legends to modern Greece with its music & dancing, food and geography. I have stayed on Santorini so we will be learning about volcanoes as well. Today we did a little map work and then I had the children tasting halva. This was a new taste experience for all of them even though several have spent holidays in Greece. Some of the children absolutely loved the halva while ...

Cold, grey and for most of the day, wet. Typical Devon summer weather. Romas has just phoned from Jamaica where he is having a wonderful holiday with Vicky and her parents. He's going to have his first pool dive tomorrow and  the coolest it has been is 29C. Lucky lad. The rain did dry up in the afternoon and I finally got the veg plot planted up with the seedlings I've been nurturing in the conservatory. Lack of space and my mad impulse to plant potatoes has meant that everything is planted a bit close so I suppose it's intensive veg growing. Plenty more projects to be getting on with in the summer holidays. Each day more flowers appear to brighten up the garden. Certain of my 'garden' flowers might be considered wild flowers more likely to be seen in the hedgerows rather than in traditional gardens. Some like the foxgloves that pop up around the place or the buttercups that brighten up the woodland corner arrived by themselves and others like the red valerian and...

I made the most of the good weather by getting up fairly early so that I could spend most of the day outside. As the weatherman predicted the clouds started to roll in and by the afternoon a few of the darker clouds let loose with some light rain. We still managed to fit in a barbecue down by the house on the new table (evening meals are usually up at the scree garden to catch the sun and we use an old small table that I made so that I could chase the sun around the garden). Peter got the chainsaw going and started to chop up the trees that still lie by my veg plot but when he refilled it,  it became temperamental and wouldn't start up again. We have bought some fresh fuel but the Husky is too big for our needs so we are thinking of trading it in for something smaller that perhaps even I could handle. Our evening has been spent at the annual charity 'Stars In Their Eyes' evening at Pilton. This year the theme was songs from the musicals and the standard was pretty hi...

It has been one of those rare summer's days that we long for on this misty isle. The sun shone all day and the temperature of 28C was made comfortable by a cooling breeze. After the usual session of 'school work' I escaped outside to spend a happy day gardening ... and relaxing. Mostly weeding and I think I've got rid of all the brambles, for the moment at least. It was still nice and warm when Peter came home and as the weather is set to turn by the end of tomorrow he cooked up a barbecue for supper. Shop bought (reduced) lamb kebabs on skewers with extra seasoning , plain boiled new potatoes and a mixed salad. A lovely way to end the day. Old English roses or.... .....  modern roses? The old roses have a wonderful scent but have a brief season while this gaudy modern rose has little scent but has a long flowering season and the petals stay on through the windiest of weather. Something I always used to admire when visiting gardens were stone walls covered with flowers...