Garden, Cats and This & That....

Hello all, have you finally got some sunshine in your neck of the woods? I remarked to Mr G "There's a funny yellow ball in the sky" yesterday when we awoke to a sunny day.


I forgot to show you my sweetpeas, that I planted out (during a short pause in the rain) last week. 


I didn't have anywhere to put them as my dahlias have gone in the bed the sweet peas were in last year, so when I was at my Mum's I asked of she had anything going spare I could plant them in and low and behold she only had a fab butler sink she said I could have:

It took Mum, Stepdad and me to get it in the car it was so heavy!! But I'm so pleased with it and it fits perfectly on the horrid manhole cover outside the conservatory.


I'm hoping my sweet peas do better than they did last year when they grew halfway up the canes, didn't flower, got covered in greenfly and I killed them with washing-up liquid solution!!


This year I have grown them from seed rather than buy plants from B&Q (which the man from the British Sweet Pea Association whom I contacted after being disappointed said not to buy) so I'm hoping they'll do better.


I also have eight dahlia's I've planted out and I hope they do as well as the three I had last year, which kept with a permanent vase of flowers from July-October.


While I was out taking photos in the garden Bear escaped:

He's meant to be a house cat, but he is also a Houdini and escapes from the cat run everytime we put the cats out in it. He loves to have a pootle round the garden and it causes a bit of dilemma in that he so loves to out in the fresh air, yet we said these cats would be house cats after we lost Gizmo, one of our Tonkinese to a RTA when he was just over a year old.


We live in a very quiet cul-de-sac, and our garden is surrounded on all sides by other gardens, but Gizmo made friends with another neighbourhood cat (Morph, a Bengal who was actually ours until he rehomed himself with the family on the corner!!) and they would go out of the cul-de-sac and cross the road, which although not busy can be a bit of a rat run.


So, do you let cats have a free and full life with the risk that it may be cut short? Or do you ensure a long life for them but without any freedom? It's a toughie.


On the crafting front I have been making more signs:

I really enjoy doing these and am pleased how it turned out, I've put it above the door in the kitchen.


I've also been practising my roses, still not happy with them though:

Fortunately, my friend C who runs Horton Heath Ceramics has kindly offered to teach me the "one stroke" method of painting roses in return for a blogging lesson - I do love a bit of old-fashioned bartering!!


So, that's all the news I have for now - tomorrow we are off to a vintage market in Southsea so I shall be back to tell you all about that.


hugs,


S x


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