Garden tidy up

Lately I've been slowly getting the garden winter ready. Progress has been slow as we are still in the process of giving the house a good clear out too (which is taking forever), and our DIY list continues to demand attention. 

Wet weather and old houses don't mix well, and it doesn't do chicken coops any good either. I'm kicking myself for not getting the coop painted when the weather was dry and sunny. Pink or not, the wood is old and needs weather proofing. So I went out yesterday with the intentions of finishing the job off only to find that the pink paint has disappeared. Now admittedly, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, good riddance. May I never be that stupid again. On the other hand, damn it. Now I may have to buy more paint right at a time that I'm trying to save, not spend. That will teach me.

So the coop remains unfinished for now, but at least the chicken run is up and being enjoyed.

I still need to add some kind of supports as although it's pretty sturdy, it's a bit bowed in the middle. Other than that, the idea to make a long and narrow run over the flower bed to keep cats off and the weeds down seemed like a great idea. However I can already see the ground looking a little compacted since I moved the chickens there and while they are only little and compaction won't be too severe, it won't help next years plants one bit so now I'm thinking of moving the coop and run AGAIN. Always with the tinkering! But they need a little more cover from the wind and rain too. Also, I need to put something down to protect their feathered feet from the mud and wet. I've got a few ideas up my sleeve, one involves pallets which will thrill Dan no end, but I do love a good pallet project!

Another thing I finally got around to doing was putting up some conker garlands in the shed windows. The amount of spiders and webs we get in there is ridiculous and while not everyone believes that conkers deter spiders, I personally think they do. Until the conkers get old and dried up at least. Either way, they look pretty and make the shed look more interesting from the kitchen window so I'm happy spiders, or no spiders.

Alessi got really excited about making a bug hotel and wanted to make one out of bricks like the one at her school. I had initially just planned to drill a bunch of holes in the existing tree stump so in the end we made two. She also wanted to put up a sign and her wind mill toy, (anyone know what those things are actually called?) so the bugs would know where to go. Seriously that kid kills me everyday with how her mind works. Take the tree stump for instance, have you seen its grumpy face?

See? You can't miss it. She decided that it was grumpy because it didn't have a hat. So now he has a hat. And apparently it's only pretending to be grumpy now to scare away the bad bugs. It's things like this that make me forgive that poptart for getting up before 6am most mornings. Seriously, those of you commenting on about how you love the school holidays because of the lie ins you get? They make my face go a little bit like our stumpy friend here. I jest of course. As long as there is coffee all is good in my world! 

Early morning grumps aside, I still get to be a little bit productive in the day once the caffeine has kicked in. Yesterday I also managed to fix my little portable greenhouse with the help of some duct tape. Those bars no longer keep clanging to the floor and the roof actually stays up now! For how long is anyone's guess and I suspect that the winter winds will have some fun with this, but it's worth a go. I want to try and get through winter without losing all of my strawberry plants this time. Fingers crossed.

Speaking of which, here are said strawberries. I'm loving the autumnal colours of those leaves.

And as rain and mud is a given in our garden during the wetter and colder months I thought it would be a good idea to give Alessi's mud kitchen a bit of a revamp. I brought it up for under the shade of the apple tree, (no more hot sun to hide from now) so now it's on the patio next to the house, making it easier for her to nip in and out as she pleases and as such, more inclined to play there. It's also right next to the water butt which she loves. No more carrying her watering can up and down the garden! And you see what I mean about my love of pallets? They may not look pretty, but you can do so much with them!

And last, but not least I finally got around to mulching the potted fruit trees and honeysuckle. First with a thin layer of compost, followed by a layer of leaves from the lawn.

Followed by newspaper and straw. I gave the whole lot a good watering and bish, bash, bosh, they're done. Hopefully that will help protect the roots this winter and put a bit more roughage back into the soil. I only did this for my apple tree last year and unsurprisingly, it was the one that grew the most and produced the best fruit. So no laziness this year, I did it properly and I did it to all of them this time.

Oh, and Alessi added her own finishing touch. 

So the garden's autumn clear up is over for another year and now I'm toying with the idea of making a little winter fire pit out there somewhere. Realistically, I'm not sure how often we'd get to use it, this is Britain after all and winter usually just means rain. But on the off chance that it does stay dry, some days out in the garden baking potatoes on a fire pit does sound pretty awesome don't you think?

And it'll be a good way to use up all that left over pallet wood I'm going to have lying around! 

Sorry Dan.

Harvest time

I love this time of year, but parts of it are so fleeting. Like the period of spring when the blossom trees bloom and for a short time pink petals turn trees in to candy floss clouds and sprinkle the pavements with nature's confetti. Autumn also has it's fleeting beauty, apple trees weighed down with fruit, conker collecting, catching the best of the autumn colours as the leaves turn and fall. They all happen so quickly that sometimes I'm scared I'll miss it all. There is always something so stop and appreciate at this time of year. And right now for me it's the harvesting phase.

I used to do so much with my little garden. I was having a good old trip down memory lane the other night reading old blog posts and I found this photo of me sitting at the bottom of the garden, feeling very sick and sorry for myself while pregnant with Alessi. But look at the garden!

There's not much in the way of lawn. The majority of the garden was dedicated to the chickens and my vegetable patch. Fast forward four years and the landscape has changed dramatically. The chicken run has gone, the vegetable patch has been pushed back and the garden is almost entirely lawn again. And this is exactly as it should be. The garden is and will continue to be for years to come, Alessi's domain. Also, since she was born and even more so since I started the business, gardening has been right on the bottom of any to do lists, if included at all.

So it's with some pride that this year, despite not having spent much time out there and the slugs and snails eating the shit out of my sunflowers, I still have a healthy, albeit small, garden harvest of apples, sunflower seeds and strawberries from the hanging baskets. Which FYI, is a brilliant way to grow strawberries if you're pushed for space, as well as making it a lot easier to keep slimy critters off the fruit!

And although I've never tried it before, I harvested the seeds from one of the strawberries too. Fingers crossed these will grow in to lots of little strawberry babies next spring because I have another project in mind involving a pallet. My husband is THRILLED. 

So we are in full autumn mode here in Casa Bliss and I'm loving these moments of calm because in all other areas, things are pretty chaotic! We have one more week of Alessi's settling in hours (her school does them for a whole month) and the lack of a consistent routine has been challenging for all of us. Autumn has been our consistent and steady anchor.

My creative cup, it runneth over

I've been on something of a crafting frenzy lately. May has been pretty quiet as far as sewing new things for the shop goes. Which could backfire spectacular as my dress and skirt stock are starting to run a little low. But I promised myself that as soon as my fruity skirts were finished, I'd focus on making a few things for myself before starting on anything new for the shop. Me Made May which I referred to in my last post came at the perfect time and while I don't have many handmade items in my own wardrobe (I'm always on the bottom of the priority list), I took the pledge this year anyway. I figured it would hold me accountable and keep me motivated. Also posting photos on Instagram acts as a record and I'm hoping that next year I'll have even more handmade clothes and will feel a sense of achievement when I look back and see the progress I hope to will have made.

So far this month I've been wearing my leopard print kimono, green Edie dress and my black and gold heart skirt. Although I forgot to take a photo of that last one so I'll have to try again next week. I've also made myself a lovely summer dress which I haven't worn yet because as soon as it was ready, the weather remembered that this was Britain and brought back the rain. So now I'm back in jumpers and the occasional blanket because I'll be buggered if I'm putting the heating on in May.
Next on my list of makes is a pair of pyjama bottoms and I found some fabric which I have fallen hard for. It's wonderfully kitsch, bright, fun and softer than I could have imagined. PERFECT! I can't wait to see the end result.

And once you start getting creative in one area of your life, it appears to spread in to others without you even realising it. It's like a tap that you can't switch off.

While playing with Alessi and her Hama beads (will her love for these ever die?!) I made a very bright garland for the conservatory window. This in turn prompted her to want to take all her bead creations out of the box and hang them on her bedroom wall.

Then there's the garden and we've been planting all sorts of plants in to all sorts of things. Sunflowers in my old wellies, Geraniums in Alessi's old wellies, a purple plant in one of Dan's old trophies, you get the idea.

I bought a jasmine plant from the local garden centre, stuck it in a hanging basket and hung it above My Spot. 

Speaking of hanging baskets I replaced the rotted and broken willow ones and filled them with the old strawberry plants. Some had died off over winter (that will teach me to leave them out) so I topped them up with new plants.

Now we're nearly set for the summer. All I need now is to work out exactly which herbs and salad leaves I want to grow in the raised bed and we're done. Maybe.

Oh and something else too! Anyone who knows me knows that I HATE cooking. Really, I loathe it. I'm no good at it and Dan will attest to this (I once gave him food poisoning with salad leaves).
Anyhoo our food shopping bill has been creeping up lately and we've been struggling to keep it to the £70 a week budget.  I'd heard of Jack Monroe's first cookbook and recalled that they had only ever been raving reviews. I took another look and before I knew it, I'd purchased a copy.

I don't regret it. It's amazing. Jack's kind of cooking is right up my street. I don't go in for pretentious ingredients and lots of faffing. Cooking still isn't my thing, but I want to be able to make decent, healthy meals for Dan and Alessi, without too much faff and without spending a stupid amount of money. With the help of this book I'm starting to check all of those boxes and I personally think that's pretty bloody impressive. Our last shop came just under our £70 budget and the week before that we didn't even come close to it! And yet we all ate well and enjoyed our treats.
We're in that stage of trying some of the recipes out to see what works and what doesn't for us, tweaking them where necessary. But no other cookbook I've come across has managed to inspire me to even try. So as you can tell, I'm a huge fan.

And as if that weren't enough, we've also been getting creative with the house too. We're focusing our energy on our living room at the moment. It hasn't been painted since we moved in ten years ago. Damp walls and a growing toddler all took it's toll. Earlier this year me and Alessi pulled down the wallpaper. The damp had been so bad that it just peeled away. So there were marks where the paint underneath had come away with the wallpaper. On another wall there were crayon scribbles for a certain someone. And on another wall there are still the greasy hand prints also made by a certain someone with her cheese covered mitts. On the one hand, I feel like these are memories that we'll be painting over and it makes me sad. On the other, I hate the fag-stained colour we currently have and that makes me sadder so I also welcome fresh, crisp white!

So, where was I going with this? Oh yes. Dan booked a day off with the intention of painting the whole room. He did one wall and then decided to rip up the living room carpet instead. I was at work. It could have gone so, so wrong. But luckily we love the exposed floorboards underneath. And they're actually in pretty good nick. All we need to do now is decide if we want to go down the sanding or painting route. Either way, the end result will look SO much better than our old, stained, BEIGE carpet. Beige. What on earth were we thinking??

There is so much more I could write about, but Dan will be back with Alessi any minute and this post is plenty long enough already. Well done if you've made it this far!

Natural cat repellents for the garden

Spring is definitely in the air now. The sun is warmer and a little higher in the sky. The birds are back, singing and visiting the bird feeders and unfortunately, so are the cats.

Some neighbouring feline fuckeries (apologies cat lovers) have decided that our garden is the perfect spot to take their morning constitutional. Well I've got news for them.

So the other week, when Dan took Alessi to the park I embarked on a mission to make up the perfect cat deterrent.
I concentrated on two separate concoctions; one made with black pepper and the other from orange peel. Apparently cats don't like the smell of either. Fantastic.

So off I went. Boiling up pots of water, adding orange peel to one and the black pepper to the other. Then came the draining and decanting into spray bottles. The black pepper mix made me sneeze so much I thought my head might blow inside out. I took this to be a good sign.

And that was basically it. Making up the deterrents is a pretty simple game. But were they any good I hear you ask?

Well yes, it appears so! The cats used to visit the garden every single damned day. It's been just over a week now and while they are still visiting my garden, they're not 'lingering'.

I've witnessed it too. The come, they sniff, they move on. It's a beautiful sight.

A couple of points worth mentioning if you plan on making some yourself is not to bother using a spray bottle with the pepper mixture. I found that despite draining it through a muslin cloth twice, enough sediment still got through to cause problems with the bottle's pump. Which was annoying.
It's much quicker and easier to to boil up a big pot, let it cool and use a watering can instead.

Also, I've been using the deterrents every other day, but you'll need to do it daily if the weather is wet. Otherwise it'll just get washed away and you may end up right back where you started.

Someone told me yesterday that old coffee grounds can be used in the same way so I might give that go next.
What about you? Do you know of any similar natural cat deterrent recipes?

Sunflower Harvest

Last week was something of a write off as Dan, Pip and I all came down with colds, coughs and sore throats. I managed to lose my voice at the start of the week and although I'm feeling much better, my voice is still more Tom Waits than Kim Bliss. 

Still, it's that time of year so I can't complain too much. That said, I was suffering a little from cabin fever by the end of the week, so yesterday I ventured outside as soon as the sun broke. I've heard the weather is supposed to turn pretty cold soon so I'm going to make the most of what warm sunny weather we have left.

The peony's seed bulbs had just burst so we spent a happy few minutes collecting all the seeds. 

The sunflowers were definitely ready to come down. The flower heads were drooping and the plants had that crunchy, brown look that they get at the end of the season. We've put them on the conservatory window sill to start drying out.

But seeds aren't the only thing you can do with sunflowers. Did you know that you can dry out and use the stalks too? I find this especially useful with the giant sunflowers. The longest one we have is over 8ft high and I had to use a saw to cut it! 

When they dry out they're as hard as wood and very sturdy. And as they grow straight, they can be used for all sorts of things. I've used them as curtain poles in the past, but they can also be used to stake next seasons plants too.

I'm toying with the idea of growing Pip a sweet pea tipi in the garden next year. If I go ahead with this I now have three decent sized sunflower stalks to make it with which is a good start. 

So all in all, it's not a bad harvest considering I did very little with the garden this year!

P.S.  I've read and re-read this post a thousand times and each time I do, I find a different typo or another sentence that doesn't make sense. Bear with me, I'm sure that I'll make sense again once this lurg has passed one. Please let that be soon!

Spider Mite - the battle rages on

Some of you might remember this post from September last year when I mentioned what an utter nightmare I'd had with spite mite. Well the buggers are back and this time, they're looking to take down my beloved grapevines.

This is my sunny sit spot. Even if it's too cold to go outside, I can sit in here and get my shot of natural light. I can sit down with the door wide open and watch Pip play outside and it sounds so soothing when the rain hits the roof too, (unless of course it's pelting down in which case it's just plain deafening). In short, it's my happy place at this time of year, guaranteed to make me smile.

..Unless I look up and see this. The first sign of spider mites. They live on the underside of leaves and feed on the chlorophyll which causes the leaf to turn mottled as shown in the picture above. If left untreated, leaves will eventually turn completely yellow and drop off the plant. Fine cobwebs along the stems and leaf corners are another sign. So far I can't find any of that, but a quick search did uncover a fair number of mites and yellowing leaves. They are definitely back and growing in numbers. 

You can use chemical bug sprays and last year I have to admit to being so desperate that I actually tried one. It was fairly effective, but bloody hell...almost a week after I sprayed the stuff I watched a spider crawl across the conservatory floor. It didn't even make it to the other side.

And yes, I had mopped the floor after using the spray! To add insult to injury, it didn't even clear the spider mite, they just regrouped and marched on.

Therefore this year, I'm using a much softer solution. Water and washing up liquid. Easy. 

I've read that it works, but the trick seems to be frequent spritzing. Spider mite thrive in dry, arid environments and that's my conservatory to a T at this time of year. I'm hoping the solution won't just kill the spider mite, but will also be non-toxic to the grapes and of course, allow Pip to play in there safely.

The big question is who will win the war this year, spider mites of me? 

Me. The answer is me.

Guerrilla Gardening - Seed Bombs

On Mother's Day, me and Pip got a little seed happy and potted up some flowers for the garden. We had plenty of seeds left so I decided to make some seed bombs. Of course Pip helped. Anything which allows her to play with mud is right up her street!

Hollyhock and sunflower seed bombs ready for launch, chocks away!

And here's the target. This is the view from a parking spot I regularly use. It's left to its own devices at this time of year so providing little critters don't eat the seeds first, they stand a good chance of germinating.

Will it work? Stay tuned..

Spring in the garden

You can't hold back the seasons and so signs of spring have started to show in my neglected little garden now too. This photo sums up the overall look in the garden perfectly. Spring is here, along with remnants of the winter just gone.

 Usually leaves are raked up and added to the compost bin by the start of winter, but we were a household of sick for the end of 2013 so I just left it all. Nevertheless, some stubborn daffodils and weeds are managing to poke their heads through the mulch and the primroses are holding their own.

The main reason for the delay in planting anything is this. A distinct lack of fence between ours and our neighbours garden. Thanks for that storm. You wet and windy bastard.

However, despite having no intention of doing much with the garden this year other than to play and sit in it, I do have some tentative plans to grow something. My green fingers are itching.

The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

You may have seen the adverts on TV for this weekend's Big Garden Birdwatch. If you haven't the idea is a very simple one. You spend an hour over the weekend to count the birds that visit your garden. Then submit your results online at the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch website. Easy. It's free to register and submit your results and I thought it would be a fun thing to do with Pip.

I must admit I've been a bit slack with the bird feeders lately so this seemed like a good a reason as any to get back into it. So we popped into the Guildhall market in town and bought a couple of bags of cheap bird seed. Sorry RSPB. I'm a big fan of your work, but not the prices of your bird feed. 

Then we made some bird feeders out of old milk bottles and tea cups, filled the lot with bird seed and now they are hanging up ready for the birds. To be honest, so far I've only seen a blackbird and blue tit, but fingers crossed, more birds will find their way into the garden by the weekend.

This isn't a sponsored post by the way. I just saw the advert on telly and my inner bird nerd thought it would be a fun thing to get involved in. So is anyone else taking part in the Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend? .

An Autumn Garden and a Clear Mind

I love this time of year. I wait for a sunny day, pull my boots on and tidy the outside ready for the colder months. It's hard work, even with my small garden and I absolutely ache at the end of the day, but it feels wonderful.

Last week when I looked out on to my lawn, I kept seeing all the things that needed doing outside. And then I'd start thinking of all the other things that needed doing inside and my thoughts felt muddled and chaotic.
Then on Sunday evening, I sat in my spot in the conservatory, looked out on to the garden I'd spent all weekend getting winter-ready and felt calm again. Not a lot has changed and those other things that need doing, still need doing. But some how, tidying up the space I like to gaze out on to has made the biggest difference to the way I feel.
Right now, sitting on the sofa in the conservatory watching the world go by outside is my new favourite thing to do. Especially when the sun streams in through the windows and shadows dance along the floor. The conservatory has become my sanctuary these days. To that end I also spent a little time tidying it up and making it a little pretty, fairy lights, glass jar lanterns, the lot. Now even if the sun and dancing shadows make way for dark and gloomy skies, I have something to brighten it (and me) up again.

The other reason I love this time of year, apart from being a chance to declutter, is that it's also a chance to look back on the gardening year gone and take stock. To think about what worked, what didn't and what you might do differently next year.
Personally, I've realised that it might be sensible to knock the homegrown thing on the head for a couple of years. Or at least limit it to the odd pot here and there. I'm thinking of setting the veggie patch to seed and turning it  back into lawn. There was far too much toddler chasing done this year for my liking and next year I expect to have even less time to keep her from mud chomping. I might grow a pumpkin or two just because I love them. Oh and strawberries because, well, I don't have much choice there to be honest. This year's strawbs had little strawberry babies and now I have more than I know what to do with! One season on and I have double the amount I started with. So that's next year's Eton Messes sorted then I guess!

So that's been me lately. Considering how reluctant I was to see the end of summer, I'm well and truly loving autumn right now.