Now Wearing Purple

THANK YOU CHELSEA! We missed the Chelsea Flower Show this year, only seeing one episode, so thank goodness for Catch-Up TV. Once the Chelsea Flower show is over, the plants supplied by our local nursery, Kelways at Langport, get sent back and go up for sale at greatly reduced prices!  We nabbed some bargains this weekend, this being my absolute favourite, which sadly had no name on it. Lupins were apparently the 'in' plant at this year's show. Thankfully, the nursery's  trollies weren't massive, restricting our purchases....just as well... .... as I fell in love with this Wisteria. All packed into it's own black bag and ready to go....but not with me, sadly, although I did a bit of pleading.  Those twisted branches look amazinng, and those blooms! We have bravely decided to put more plants in the border, despite the fact that Pearl has seen off past endeavours. Since she's been spayed,  the phantom pregnancies have stopped, as ha...

It was Aunty A's birthday this week, so my sister and I pootled off to Dorset to take her out for a birthday lunch. My sister chose the venue, a novel little restaurant in an old railway carriage. The small station has been converted into this exquisite looking bar. We ate in the train carriage, though you can opt to dine at the seating area outside the station, which a lot of people did. This is one end of the carriage,  which would be great for a group get together - all those animal heads are covered in buttons!  I just love the quirkiness of  the decor. T'other end! Sister and Aunty! The carriage was originally a World War One ambulance carriage, which I found fascinating, As somewhere to dine, it's very popular, even the cast of the TV series Broadchurch are fans apparently. Sadly, and because I am an utter pig,  I forget to take pictures of the food, which was delicious. My sister had the same as me, the catch o...

Our girl popped down on Sunday for a short visit, which always makes us extremely happy. She tries to get down every month or so to see us and her friends.  They took her out for a meal, which was a nice surprise, as a thank you for the artwork she'd applied to their various body parts. Quite a few people saw her artwork online and asked if she could design tattoos for them. This made her think that maybe she should train to do it herself.  In September last year, she took a course in London to train formerly and get the proper paperwork and has had a steady flow of people wanting her to work on them ever since.  As an artist, she's found her niche and loves it, plus it fits around all the other things she does. She loves doing line and dot work, but one of the first pieces someone asked her to design was a rose and this was her very first attempt on skin. As someone who's never been a fan of tattoos and always swore I would never, EVER get one, I can't ...

A HANDY DISCOVERY Did you know you can leave pizza dough in your fridge for up to TWO weeks? I didn't and it's quite a revelation! I used Rick Stein's recipe for flatbread/pizza dough recipe (hidden away on page 307) from this book to make a batch of flatbread. It made quite a large amount of dough and I only used half, putting the other half in the fridge in a sealed container and sort of forgot about it. On day 11, I remembered it, took a sniff and found that it smelt rather pleasant, a lot like sourdough.  I decided to double check by looking on the internet , where I discovered that storing your dough this way was the practice of some pizza makers. It did look a little sad, flat and rather wet in it's container, but once on a well floured board, it was much easier to work than freshly made dough. No meat, but a little bit of red onion, red pepper, jarred artichokes, sun dried and sun blush tomatoes, olives, fresh basil leaves, cheddar cheese, moza...

LITTLE BOXES MADE OF TICKY TACKY I've been busy painting boxes and yes, they're a bit tacky, made of ply and held together with staples. But they're sturdy, we have quite a few and they needed to be made useful! The boxes looked like this back in February. I was a little stumped on how to decorate them as I haven't painted anything other than skirting boards and the like for as long as I can remember. On the advice of my girl, I bought a box of acrylic paints, as they're inexpensive and easy to use.  She bought me this book a few Christmases ago, when I said I was feeling crafty. I knew I want to have a go at painting flowers, so chose this template as a starter. Well, it sort of looks something like it....mmmm. There was no stopping me after that.  I chose flowers I love, well, there aren't many I don't love.  You can see this project was started in February, snowdrops were still about...this is how long it's taken me. I d...

We paid a visit to this little lady at the weekend. Tilly ....isn't she gorgeous. We always take a treat of some apples or carrots for her, well it would be rude not to as she provides the black gold that grows our lovely veggies. 'No carrots in here then' She's a little devil though, into everything.  I had to coax her into her stall with a juicy apple, so that  Mr could get to work loading up the muck.  She always has another one at the gate when we say goodbye.  I love spreading muck....am I strange?  I think I'll leave it there. Spent a lot of time on the allotment this weekend, getting it ready for all the plants that are growing in the greenhouse.  Courgettes, butternut squashes and marrows all coming along nicely. After our epic fail with carrots last year, when we sowed directly into the soil, we went back to planting in drainpipes.  You just slide the seedlings out of the pipe and into a t...