Wednesday, February 15, 2012

{Wordless Wednesday} Nature Wins



Monday, February 13, 2012

Indoor Garden

I was all excited last week to get my seeds and bulbs out.  Sadly, that excitement has now faded since all I have to look at is bare earth which seems an impossibly long way off from the garden plan I made.

Yesterday, with little else to be done, I couldn't resist playing with some garden related crafts.

Each season I collect various bits and bobs from our walks...shells, pebbles, twigs and leaves all end up in a big box near my craft desk and I vow to turn them into artistic masterpieces at the soonest opportunity.  Of course, most of them tend to linger there for months before I get around to doing anything with them, so I was pleased with myself for actually finishing not a project this weekend.

These frames are for a large blank wall in the living room.  I had originally wanted to make a living wall garden, with moss and airplants, but the moss I found was pretty ugly and I couldn't seem to find any airplants that weren't already glued into hideous cliches of stumpy logs.

I'd still love to do something like this...



In the meantime though,  I found these three frames at a charity shop ages ago for 50p each.  They came with hideously twee little wooden bunnies and tulips fastened to the inside, but the top of the frames are tealight holders so I thought it was worth picking them up to see if I could strip them back to a more minimal and stylish version.


The twigs are ones that I gathered last November, but they have stayed bendy.  They were from something that looked like a shrub, and I'm not sure what they are.  I love the little buds.

I cut up some astro turf from a sample square metre that I bought and laid it on the bottom of the frame, then just bent the twigs into shape.  They still looked a bit bare so I added two twig balls that I had from a set.

The whole thing is held in place by tension,  so it will be easy to change it any time I want.


When it came to the white frame, which will hang in the centre of the two green ones, I wanted to do something different.

These greenish white roses are from a bunch I bought online.  They were the cause of my biggest case of buyers remorse ever, since they looked like beautiful silk roses online and turned out to be cheap tat that I could probably have got in the pound shop.  Glad they are finally proving useful for something!


Now I can enjoy a little bit of garden indoors, coupled with candlelight just in time for Valentine's day.

Monday, February 6, 2012

And so it begins...

After the mess that was my home office last Spring I decided to invest in some proper seed propagation trays this year in order to keep my house looking a little less like a crazy person had taken over.

Quite a difference!


All of the precise little pockets are filled with John Innes seedling compost, and each is just waiting for me to plant a little seed into it tomorrow.

I was also astounded by the resilliance of nature when I stumbled across three wrinkled Hyacinth bulbs, which despite having been lingering at the bottom of a soilless pot for over 12 months in my shed are not only sprouting but boasting flower buds.  Needless to say they have been rescued and tucked in to a pot of compost, watered and given pride of place on my dining room table.  I wonder if they will flourish, or reel back into hibernation from the shock of such lavish attention following their cruel neglect?