Two weeks hard labour

It has been two weeks since we were handed the keys to our new allotment and we have been doing ALOT of digging, weeding, planting, watering, lifting, shifting, causing trouble and getting excited.  I'll start with the getting excited:

The sunflowers that we were going to plant at West Town Farm are now in the allotment (59 in total) and when we arrived yesterday we saw the very beginnings of our sunflowers (not very clear from this photo, but trust me they're on their way!).  Not just sunflowers are finding their feet or more appropriately roots at the allotment:

We have beans (in the foreground), next cabbage, then sunflowers, followed by a row of courgettes and squashes (the first row with black mesh), then a row of pumpkins, next tomatoes and more courgettes, two rows of strawberries, and today I added a row of radishes and a row of beetroot nom, nom, nom!

There is something very important missing from the photo above......the shed!  We've moved it from the front to the back of the plot where it is shadier and is going to be a challenge to grow things.  The plan is to sit out between shed and apple tree, drink cider and watch the world go by.  The other day we discovered a crate of beer had been left in the shed by the people we are sharing the plot with :)  After moving the shed we discovered a mass snail graveyard, as far as the snails of the allotment were concerned under our shed simply was THE place to die, there were 1000 plus empty shells that when we shoved them into rubble sacks crackled like bbq charcoal when really hot.  Odd.

The strawberries are making a good start, we've had one ripe fruit so far which was tasty, tasty nice (the other was eaten by a creature boo).

To continue with our new found Good Life theme Sam and I were out harvesting elder flowers ready to brew elderflower champagne.  Removing the flowers from their stalks is an arduous task and the pollen is a nightmare but we did manage to collect enough to brew 5 gallons of champagne:

Large mixing bowl of elder flowers ready to brew.

Barbara or Anna?

Working the Barbara look with me new specs, geek chic is ok though right?

Back to my roots?

It shouldn't come as a massive surprise to discover that I be a proper Devon maid tho innim.  Mum has been researching our family tree and as it turns out I am from Chagford farmer stock, which is perhaps why I feel a massive draw to grow veg.  I can't take all of the credit of course, last year my soon to be sister-in-law took us to her allotment and I ate peas fresh from the pod, and oh. my. god were they tasty nice.  So here it is: our new allotment...

Man inspects his first shed, happy, happy days!

Spot the frog:

We've been told that the plot will be hard work, it has bind weed, it's overgrown and man alive we have been doing some crazy digging today.  I hurt, I mean I REALLY hurt, but what has made it all better is that the previous tenant had left some potato plants behind so on day two of owning an allotment we dug up our first harvest, as I write this we have roast potatoes and homemade pie cooking, nom.

On a different note, mission confetti is ongoing, last week at the car boot sale mum bought me some tulips with ragged edges, a variety of tulip I had never seen before so when it came to removing the petals to begin drying them out I was struck by how feather-like they are:

Should make for some interesting confetti.



Oh My Days!

Oh my days!  Or to over punctuate: Oh.  My.  Days!  Sunday was the glory day of car boot sales, I am seriously considering buying an old lady style shopper on wheels, but to go jazzy and modern, or old skool and green tartan?  Either way it needs to happen, I had to make two trips back to the car to offload the good stuff.  Below is a photographic gallery of said 'good stuff':

A vintage Ritz tin to keep with the old lady theme I seem to be heading for.

Old lady buttons in old lady jars, next to an old lady glass jug on an old lady blanket I'm working on, well if you're going to have a theme you might as well do it properly.

Old lady.  No, no these are just beautiful, perhaps a touch old lady-ish but all good, and building on last week's theme of bird related glassware.

Perhaps my best find of the week:

The photograph doesn't do it justice, it was one of my first finds (of the second car boot sale of the day) so I had to sling it under my arm whilst browsing, it drew a lot of comments.  I have to say by the time the tenth person had asked me if I would sell them an ice cream my smile became a little more fixed.  Ha ha ha. No.

Re-used, re-cycled, re-markably ace (sorry, bad pun).

Sam re-potting sunflower seeds, we have quite a flower factory going on at the moment, everything is crossed we can keep them alive long enough to use them on the day!

I will be making activity bags for the children coming to the wedding, with colouring in bits, sweets and now barnyard animals!!

Oh.  My.  Days!  It's Ruth-a-tron who makes me smile when the wedding stuff gets a bit too much.





A Cautionary Tale

These fabulous and terrifying beauties are the result of covering for too many people at work, running a charity in my spare time, too many late nights, and definitely not enough rest.  Love them as much as I do they are definitely not a wedding must.  I jokingly wrote on facebook that when I opened the box it was like opening a box of children's nightmares, but actually I really don't think we can get these out until the children have gone to bed.  The plus side is they have brought me so many laughs already, they are child size and look ridiculous on an adults face I suspect those who choose to camp for the evening will make good use of them - Wicker Man anyone?

I have treated my little seedlings to a new home:

It may not be the most beautiful thing in the world but like a damn fool every evening when I get home before even taking my coat off it is compulsory to run out to the garden to check on progress.  I am pleased to announce progress is good.  Sunflowers are on the up, I have more coriander than I know what to do with, beetroots are peeping through, the flowers that Lynne sent me are doing well but the packet was in French so I have no idea what they are, and finally my sweet peas are flopping about all over the place.  They've made it onto the list (the good list, there is another but you don't want to make it onto that one).

Spring is pretty ace for many reasons, but perhaps one of the best reasons is that the car boot sale at Matford grows and people have a clear out and we swoop in like hawks of kitsch tat and magpies of all things shiny.  Here is a small selection of what we have been gathering for the big day:

Slightly wonky display.

Best glasses ever, especially the bird labelled 'Troglodyte', Sam's favorite - natch.

Pineapple glass vases, still not sure about these, but they were going cheap, surely a good enough reason? 

To round things off a non-wedding, non-car boot sale item:

Throne of happiness.

Sometimes I don't want to think about, talk about, organise or think about the wedding, so this weekend I completed a project that was on the back burner for almost two years.  Happy days.

"Helping"

I am very conscious that we will be dealing with the temperamental British weather for our wedding, ideally we would have loved to have been married in May but alas the registry office was booked, so July it is.  I have everything crossed that the sun will shine and the day will be hot but just in case I have been working on some blankets.....

I went a little bit crazy a couple of years ago and bought so much acrylic wool in every colour imaginable for a project I was working on.  The project only needed a small amount of each colour so I was left with bags of wool, whilst I'm not a huge fan of acrylic wool the positives for this project include if anyone gets chilly they can wrap them around themselves or if they want to sit in one of the surrounding fields and soak up a bit of sun the blankets will be able to withstand the rough and tumble!

As you can see I had a little 'help' from the furry beast-cat that is Ella (also known as Pigga, Catface, Pudding Head, Wiggy, Wiglet, Woo-Cat, Chairman Meow, Beasticle etc).

Another fine example of my little assistant lending a hand:

I couldn't possibly pack away the wedding decorations without my cardboard box inspector checking all was in order to proceed.

Last but not least, my next batch of potential confetti petals, not sure if they'll work but I'm enjoying the beautiful blooms whilst they last. 

The Calm Before the Storm Perhaps?

So last weekend I had my first wedding dress fitting, I was really nervous but thanks to my fantastic soon to be sister-in-law I am now the proud bride to be of a fantastic bespoke 50's style wedding dress of utter joy!  I wish I could post photos, but I guess somethings should be kept a secret.  There are two very valuable lessons I learnt that weekend as well: 1) I need to get a tan, good grief the dress almost disappeared against me! 2) as it turns out when a camera points in my direction I develop a double chin and a naff smile, hmmm not quite the stylish look I'm aiming for.

Back at home some exciting developments include the growing of wedding flowers from seed, not something I have tried before, but as you can see it's not going too badly!  Below are sweet peas, basil and coriander we want to include herbs in the flower arrangements to add gorgeous smells and beautiful greenery, so far so good....

We will be meeting with the venue in the next few days and will hopefully have some photos to show you, in the mean time I thought I would share some photos of a venue we were considering, the beautiful orangery below is located at Bicton Park Botanical Gardens whilst very tempting the guests would have had to stick their heads around palms and other plants and the grounds were too public.  I'm not great at being the centre of attention at the best of times, so the thought of having Joe Public rubber necking us and the guests didn't appeal too much!

Not wedding related at all but fab nonetheless, came home to find a catastrophe!  (I was going to insert some sort of egg pun here but thought better of it.)

Hard Sell Muesli

So things are moving along with the save the date cards (no photos I want them to be a surprise!) which means I have spent most of the evening counting out tiny, tiny seeds in preparation for sending them out with the invites so people can get planting. Alas the lines of sealy bags along my living room floor makes it look like I now deal in hard-line seeds.

Fab sunflower seeds

Fiddly cornflower seeds

Ready for the black market?