Sewing, planting, burning

Life seems so much easier when the sun shines, doesn't it?

Things happen as they should.

Children play happily together (mostly) while parents happily pootle about in the garden, enabling salads to be planted out and sugarsnap peas to be sown:

Now I have a promising few rows of salads tucked into the lovely damp soil (after yesterday's mad downpours), awaiting further waterings in by the more unsettled weather forecast for the coming days...

• 1 row of lettuce 'Tom Thumb'
• 1 row of Ms Raven's 'Asolo salad mix' (a new trial for us this year)
• 1 row of 'Lollo Rosso' (not my personal favourite, but grandma had left an old opened packet of seed so I thought it might make an acceptable addition to the mixture)
• 1 row of 'Merveille de 4 saisons' (which has always done excellently for me, tending to cope even in the driest of periods. However, this batch of seedlings does look a little weedy and feeble for some reason so I have potted on the extras leftover and will keep them in the greenhouse just in case these fail to thrive)
• also 1 wide row of Sugarsnap pea 'Sugar Ann', sowed as peas always are by me, with a little prayer for leniency to the gods who supervise these things...I generally very rarely have anything to speak of to harvest from peas.  They don't seem to like me.

There was also intended to be sown, far left of the photo, a wide row of maincrop pea 'Rondo', again more in optimism than expectation.  Unfortunately this did not occur, as this happened instead:

Ouchy ouchy ouch.  And a choice selection of other words too.  And tears also.  For my own stupidity and bruised pride.  I did a thing I swore never to do again.  I was too lazy to walk to the garage to get the rubber mallet to wallop in the sturdy posts either side of the pea netting.  Instead I chose to pick up a conveniently close large rock (amongst many recently excavated during anti-bunny fencing works), and bang the post in with that instead.  A mistake.  As we can see.  Walloping merrily away with the rock in my right hand, making very sure that I kept my left hand well down the post out of the way (thought I was clever, you see)....only somehow I seem to have bent my fingers round the rock a little too much in my grip, one slightly misaligned wallop and oops! (Insert similar but more colourful alternative of your choice).

To be honest, it hurt (and still hurts) so badly I was convinced I had broken it.  The harsh reality of going to the minor injuries unit on a Bank Holiday Monday, to be basically laughed at and then sat in a corner waiting for 8 hours, coupled with the complete absence of any trace of sympathy from A (who admittedly was expecting me to be halfway through cooking lunch at this point so that we could whizz off to the tip and garden centre straight after), led me to assess the damage properly...at which point I discovered I still had full movement, though ridiculously painful, in the joints, so concluded that I had just managed to crush the top part of the finger including the nail - which I fully expect to turn black now and drop off.

So in true 'mother' fashion I popped a few arnica and paracetamol, doused it liberally with arnica ointment, and soldiered on, whilst whimpering and moaning gratuitously whenever the poor damaged appendage came into direct contact with anything.  That's the trouble with finger tips - too many nerve endings!

So off we went to the tip, followed by a quick dash round Monkton Elm and home with my haul of baby tomato plants:

2 Gardener's Delight, 2 Shirley, and 1 each of Sungold, Supersweet 100, Brandywine and Beefsteak, along with a cucumber 'Mini' that I sneaked in - I must remember to cut these every day once it gets going, last time once in full swing I ended up foisting ridiculously long cucumbers upon everyone who came to the house, just to get rid of them.

Now potted up and into the greenhouse in the newly vacated space left by the salad seedlings.

I also managed to squeeze in an extremely swift recce with E (ever my partner in crime) of the current wool offerings of the Monkton Elm craft shop, in readiness for beginning my 'beach knitting' project.  I have found it indispensable to have a good sized cardigan on the go to help while away the hours spent sitting on a rug on various beaches in the spring, summer and autumn, watching small people (and A) happily dig endlessly in the sand around me.  I find it easier to pick up and put down than a paperback...

Current colour options appear to be:

Nice deep indigo blue

My ever faithful favourite tealy blue

Nice mossy, mid olive green - looks much nicer in reality!

Sort of soft damsony purple

Deep burgundy - though this is my least favourite option

I must dig out my hoarded patterns and make a few decisions.  Though that will probably require a whole post of it's own.  Not my strong point, after all.

Back home and I was blown away by E revealing the creative outpourings she had been quietly getting on with in the sewing room/office whilst we had been playing in the garden:

...practically a whole new suit of clothes for her bear Bon Bon!  Tasteful beige corduroy tailcoat, and underneath a flashy cerise linen waistcoat.  Apparently she had overcome her buttonhole faux-pas of yesterday, when she cut out a round hole instead of a slit and found the buttons wouldn't stay fastened...only to find that Bon Bon was slightly more, shall we say, 'rotund' than she had originally thought so her first attempts were a bit tight.  Undeterred, she simply decided to sew on an extra large front and set the buttons to one side (resulting I think in a slightly oriental look to the finished items, don't you agree?) She is very pleased with what she had managed to do, all by herself without running to me constantly for reassurance.  I am so proud.  It almost makes the squashed finger pale into insignificance.

Next challenge is to be trousers, which she is a bit more concerned about.  So am I.  I'm thinking elasticated waist is the way to go.  It was always easier that way when I made toddler trousers for L.

What better way to round off a good Easter break, than with a nice smoky evening bonfire?

I have only just come in, it was very peaceful sitting out there in the dark staring into the embers glowing rhythmically like lava, cup of tea in hand.   I do like a bonfire.  It got us thinking about the possibility of this south west corner of the garden becoming a sort of 'fire-pit/bonfire/real BBQ corner, once the pile of horse chestnut logs has been re-homed in the new wood shelter (still to be constructed, though design process well under way!).  Its a sunny spot in the afternoons and evenings, I could plant it around with aromatics like rosemary and lavender and....

How come one project serves to create a list of 10 others?

Oh well, keeps him busy and out of the pub, I suppose!!!

xxx