Come into my greenhouse.....

.....says Froggie! He was a gift from a friend and used to live in my craft room ~ she thought he was hilarious because of his solar-powered eyes 😵  I rather think he likes living in the greenhouse much better than the craft room 😉 

Of course, much like the kitchen garden, having a greenhouse is all new to me so I'm on a learning-curve.  I decided to go with baby plants from Marshalls again this time but I shall have a go at growing from seed next year.

For some reason I bought cordon tomatoes ~ I was convinced that I'd gone for bush varieties!  I don't have a lot of headroom above my staging, so I will pinch out the top of the plants once they get to the height of the bamboo canes in due course.  I went a little mad with the tomatoes, buying Marshalls' "buy any 3 packs for £15" offer LOL  There were more than three little plugs of the varieties, as well, so I ended up with rather a lot of plants just for the two of us ~ well, three I suppose as I like to send Beverly home with produce when I can 😍  I gave some of the extra plants to friends.  I've got: Paruche, an orange-coloured cherry tomato; Chocolate Cherry ~ self-explanatory, although I don't think they actually taste like chocolate!; and Buffalosun, a yellow/red beefsteak variety. 

I also went mad and ordered 15 dahlia tubers which Marshalls had on special offer.  I wasn't expecting them all to send up shoots, if I'm honest, but 14 of the 15 eventually came through so I'm really pleased.

I had a mega-tidy up in the kitchen garden, including the strawberry bed where I also had three Funberry plants.  It hadn't occurred to me that since these are a cross between a strawberry and raspberry, they would send out lots of shoots!  I've now replanted the original plants in large pots in an attempt to keep them from taking over, and potted up some of the babies I pulled out of the bed.  Hopefully they will survive as I didn't decide to save any of them until sometime after I had actually pulled them out!

The tomatoes seem very happy and it wasn't long before they got to a size to be repotted.  As you can see, when I tidied up the strawberry bed I also had a lot of runners to contend with that had planted themselves all over the place.  I should have kept more on top of things last year, but with one thing and another, the garden was somewhat neglected.  These are the smallest ones that I removed; the bed itself now has 24 plants ~ I started with 12 😄

Garden-ready plugs for my summer bedding this year: osteospermum Berries & Cream, and marigold Durango Select Mixed.  Although they are "garden-ready", I thought it would be better to grow them on in the greenhouse for a little while before planting them outside.

Sweet pepper Redskin, which came as a pack of three.  I've since given one of the plants to our neighbour.

The tomatoes are going from strength-to-strength, and I thought it was time to put in some bamboo canes.  

The peppers are growing more slowly but are making progress, unlike when I tried to grow them in our front porch.

Sweetcorn Swift, which should only grow to about 45cm (18").  I thought I'd try growing sweetcorn again, even though I was unsuccessful last year ~ despite cobs forming, I just ran out of summer.  I'm hoping that giving the plants a tad longer inside will move them on a little more quickly when I plant them outside.

Cucumber Mini Muncher.  This grows to 2m (80") but I'm afraid, like the tomatoes, they too will have to have their tops pinched out when they get to the ceiling of the greenhouse!

These three little geraniums, Apple Blossom, are from last year's summer bedding ~ they managed to survive the winter in the old wheelbarrow I planted them in!  I found them when I was clearing it out ready for this year's bedding, along with six argyranthemums which had also survived.  I didn't take photos of those, but brought them into the greenhouse for a little while, too.  They are now in pots in the garden and will be brought in for the winter this year 😉

I can't even begin to tell you how excited I've been with the growth of my precious little dahlias!  I've been playing "musical chairs" with them, moving those with shoots further along the staging until I felt confident that I could move them into larger pots and start putting them outside.....

.....albeit giving them some time in my makeshift coldframe first!  I put the pots right to the back, gradually moving them forward as I brought more outside until finally.....

.....I was brave enough to put them in the garden with no shelter at all 😊

Great excitement!

Oh yes indeedy!

when we first moved in

First, though, let me take you on a little trip back down memory lane.....

some much needed support going on!

walls lovingly painted by Adrian LOL

.....by now I'm sure you can guess why I've been so excited 😵

Ta-daaa!  

Yup, I am now the very proud owner of a fab new greenhouse 😍

The lovely Kenny of Hutchison Windows came out to give us a quote, and we ordered said greenhouse last July.  We knew that Kenny wouldn't be able to start work until at least October.....

.....which was fine.  But October came and went because we then hit the winter weather, which put poor Kenny right back with all his orders.  In the end, it was finally built in March.  As I'm sure you can imagine, I was (and still am!) a very happy bunny!

I already had the potting bench (it came with us from our old house), which I painted a couple of years back with Annie Sloan chalk paint in Primer Red.  You may have noticed that the greenhouse door isn't full height.  This is due to being restricted on the maximum roof height because the block wall is only as tall as the original stone wall behind it.  This made it a tad difficult to get the potting bench into the greenhouse ~ once we had tipped it on its side to get through the door, there wasn't enough room to swing the bloody thing back up again!  The solution, of course, was to take the top shelf section off.....which had we thought of doing before we moved it out of the garden shed, would have made the whole thing a damn sight less heavy to cart down to its new home!  And to make matters worse, it wasn't until we had got the bench into the greenhouse that we remembered the shelf in the lower section was removeable, too 😃

It was a bit of a pallaver to take the top self section off because before I painted it, Adrian added strips of wood to make a back-board as it was just open originally.  When we put it all back together again we decided that although it would fit against the wall at it's original height, it would in fact look better being slightly lower, so Adrian shorted the whole of the upper back section.   

Once the potting bench was finally in place, we then had to see about greenhouse staging.  Naturally, we couldn't get anything readymade to make maximum use of the space available 😕  In the end, we got the staging made-to-measure by a chap here who recycles wood to make garden benches, planters, etc.

Scott put it all together whilst we were away south a couple of months back. 

I now have lots of storage space beneath the staging.  The only pots I can't fit in are the really big ones so they are being kept in the garden shed ~ plenty of space in there now that I no longer have to use it as a potting shed 😉

I buy the compost 10 or 12 bags at a time and have them delivered from Wellpark Garden Centre over in Kirkwall.  Most of them sit on a pallet up near our compost bins and I now store a couple at a time in the greenhouse ready for me to use.  I use our home-made compost to replenish the soil in our raised kitchen garden beds and to add to the borders, too.

I put an outdoor rug down to make the concrete floor a bit softer underfoot.  All my pots sit in large plastic gravel trays so that when they are watered the floor and lower shelves don't get wet.  The little stool belonged to my Grandma ~ I think it may originally have been a kitchen chair; I crocheted the cover a number of years ago. 

Despite my natural somewhat chaotic personality, I'm keeping the greenhouse neat and tidy 😄

All these vintage bottles were dug up in the back garden!

As you can see, it can get pretty warm in there 😲

As this has been such a photo-heavy post, I'll leave it here and show you what I've been growing another time!

Little words of wisdom

 

Too much yarn? I don't think so!

I am way behind with my blogging but I'm pleased to report that the guest bedroom is now ready for visitors 😊 I'll be taking up-to-date photos in due course to share with you!

In my last guest bedroom post I mentioned that we had been wavering between a king size or double bed, and in the end decided on a double (4'6") to give that little bit more space around it ~ and here is the bed we chose in the end. The shape of the bedroom made it somewhat awkward to accommodate a large bed, so we're glad we went with the double.  Adrian went to Kirkwall to order the bed (we'd already decided which one we wanted and which headboard) and he selected the mattress when he got there.  Obviously we want our visitors to sleep well when they come to stay with us, so we'd already decided that we would go with a slightly-higher-than-mid-price one.  Until it was delivered I had no idea it was going to be quite so deep, though!  Still, it is very comfortable and hopefully our guests will find it so as well 😊 

And just look at the storage capacity of the bed ~ isn't it fabulous!  We'd hummed and hawed over what storage configeration we should go with but in the end chose the maximum.  Which was just as well because.....

.....this is what was to be stored beneath said bed 😉 In fairness to myself, I feel I should point out that my yarn stash is a fair bit less than it was as I had quite the clear-out before we moved up here, but it still covered all of Adrian and my bed ~ which is a king size one!  It took me the best part of three days to sort through all of it 😮

I was quite proud of myself, actually, as I was very methodical in my approach to the task, laying out the yarns by keeping the same plys together.  I've also "re-discovered" the stashes that I had planned on using for gift blankets; they are now tucked up together waiting to be transformed. 

As I ploughed on through the task, I confess that I became a teensy wee bit worried that it might not all fit in the bed!  Thankfully, as I was sorting through it I had been sensible enough to let some of the yarn go that I couldn't realistically see myself ever using.  Now that it's all stashed away, I'm pretty sure that I could actually fit a tad more in there but it's probably best if we keep that just between ourselves, eh 😄 

Not much crocheting going on lately...

...but I did make another kitty blanket for Beverly's cats ~ I do like to treat my grandkitties equally 😉

I made this second blanket the same as the first, using up more oddments from my stash.

Remember those three dishcloths I made? Somehow they ended up in Beverly's kitchen instead of being sent to the person I had in mind when I was making them!  I've come to the conclusion that my daughter has an obsession with both crocheted blankets and dishcloths 😄

A new chair for Jane

You may remember that this is the little chair given to me by my lovely Auntie Mavis many years ago, and I had originally planned on it being in the guest bedroom.  However, since my last post about said bedroom waaaaay back in January, I have changed my mind ~ "oh what a surprise, Sharon!" I hear you say 😉

It really is a sweet little chair made, I think, from oak.  I believe it could be a nursing chair, possibly Victorian or Edwardian.  According to Wikipedia:

"In Victorian times the nursing chair was a low seated partially upholstered chair.  Nursing included caring for children as well as breastfeeding.  The low seat of the chair allowed the mother, who would have been wearing a stiff corset, to interact with small children without bending over."

I hadn't really examined the underside for quite some time, so hadn't realised just how much the old fabric was perishing.  What prompted me to have a good look was all the little bits falling onto the new bedroom carpet!

I don't think this was the original fabric ~ it has more a look of the 1930s or 1940s.  Despite how nasty it was looking when I took off the loose covers, it must have been rather lovely when it was all clean and new.

Although the loose covers were not to my taste, they were made extremely well.  The cover on the back was fastened with a row of hooks and eyes, affixed to cotton tape, down each side ~ no velcro in sight LOL

Ta-daa!  Doesn't the chair look wonderful with it's new upholstery!  The lovely Doris from Orkney Upholstery has done a fabulous job, using a pair of vintage curtains I spotted on Ebay a few years ago.  I never got round to using them in our old house, and the windows here at St Abbs are too tall for them.  They are not an upholstery-weight fabric but as the only person sitting on the chair will be Jane, Doris was happy to use them 😊  

I decided not to do anything about the finish of the wood in the end, other than give it all a good clean and polish before it went to Doris; the wear is part of it's vintage charm and shows how well used it's been over the years.

The underside now looks neat and tidy ~ no more bits of perished fabric falling on the carpet.

And here's the little lady herself 😊 Jane is very pleased with her "new" chair and has a grand view of the bedroom.  Although she still looks like a baby I've had Jane since I was two, so she is at least 59 years old now.  The teddies (Arthur and Fred who I've had since I was a baby, and Archie who was Sam's when he was a baby) hang out on the bed, so Jane has the perfect vantage point to keep her eye on them and make sure they behave themselves 😉

Peace...

 

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)        

Little words of wisdom

 

Peace...

 

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)        

Little words of wisdom

 

Peace...

 

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)        

Little words of wisdom