just a few flowers after the rain

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When all else fails part two!

When all else fails and you feel like nothing is working and down about something you work so hard for, well there is nothing for it, put some happy wonderful music on. The BBC Proms!!! There is nothing like it.

A Celebration of Classic MGM Film Musicals

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00m10hz/BBC_Proms_2009_Prom_22_A_Celebration_of_Classic_MGM_Film_Musicals

If that doesn't work go to the bbciplayer and look up proms.

A Celebration of Classic MGM Film Musicals

I hope you all enjoy
many thanks for all your comments and support
Fiona

Buddy's Friday 'When all else fails, do it yourself!'

This is rather a strange one for Buddy's but with all that has gone on over the last year and getting todays results I thought why not. So I will start at the beginning and hopefully you will get the idea at the end. So here goes.

Last September I started an Open University course in Creative Writing, I can tell you I never been so scared, nerves and excited all in the one! I mean me, writing, it was laughable I can tell you. But I did it and over the time of the course I did really well except for one thing, the tutor I had didn't help or give advice at all and well, lets say I had an opinion about this since the course cost over £700 pounds!!!! I asked her if she would comment on our work for example, is the commas and that ok, is the voice working, are the sentences to long, is it boring, should we start again, things like that. My answer, sorry no I don't do that I will only give feedback on the five tutorials and the TMA's that you send in. Well, this was rather shocking, but I did find out from other students that other tutors were the same but some tutors were very good and gave loads and really helped out. I'm sorry but this really bugged me, I mean come on they get paid a good wage to teach us but they don't, I just got told to go the work book!!

Today I got my grade back for this course, I got a bare pass. I was not happy at all and rather felt like a failure etc. To get a bare pass I was told, you basically didn't do any of the work. What got me about this was that all my other work throughout the year was, well I must say BLOODY GREAT,

scores as follows

TMA 01 80%

TMA 02 96%

TMA 03 80%

TMA 04 56%

TMA 05 61%

ECA 42%

I was also told that we would get an average of all our scores and that would give our grade, well that wasn't true it was on the last and with the last and after a long phone call to my tutor giving me advice (won't go into that one!!!) I got only a 42%. So with all this and feeling rather let down and wasted over 700 pounds Mom (Margaret's Ramblings), and I have decided and come up with a better way of learning and sharing how to write with positive feedback as well.

Why not start up our own writer's group. One that doesn't cost anything, where everyone can feel safe and get good feedback and advice as well. The advice from reading other's work to getting your own read and others commenting. To others putting up their experiences and passing on good books, cd's, books, web sites and videos they have found over the years and it wont cost so much money!!!

I found today really hard, I had thoughts of going back to work in Asda stacking shelves for the rest of my life, when I really want to do more than that, make enough money for us to buy our very own home and to me this was a way.

So my piece for Buddy's Friday is to share and cut cost of education and start up our very own writer's group. I would love to know what you all think and will (when the Writer's Blog is up and running hopefully next week) be putting up the stories I did for the creative writing course I did. If anyone is interested in joining a writer's co operative please leave a comment so we can all get together.

As with most things in our lives,

If you want something done, do it yourself

.

please click on picture for link

Buddy's Friday, 'English Asparagus'

My favorite time of year, well for Asparagus anyway. During the year we buy from our local vegetable shop up the road, nine times out of ten the Asparagus comes from Spain etc. But, I am afraid there is nothing like English Asparagus, whether it is the English land or that it doesn't have to travel so far. My money is on home grown and it don't have far to travel. So the other day we snapped up a bunch and come home. This is how we had it.

Take a bunch of Asparagus (this is for two people).
Two eggs
Bacon, or not or sausages, really what every you like.
One basic cheese sauce (can buy these in packets, best home made though).
As many different herbs you have in the garden or house, dried if not fresh.

Put the Asparagus into a pot of boiling salted, with a little sugar water, I usually cook for about 15 minutes but depends on thickness of the Asparagus.
While this is cooking I cook up my cheese sauce but also add a pinch of canine pepper. This time I cut up some chives from the garden and added them to the sauce, really made quit a difference.

Start cooking your bacon, I chopped mine up in smallish pieces, looks nicer on the plate I think.
While waiting on the bacon to cook, chop up all the herbs you have and put to one side.
Put the two eggs in with the Asparagus for just under hard boiled eggs, so about five minutes.

Once the bacon is cooked, the Asparagus is just soft and eggs are ready, strain the Asparagus and place them in rows on the plate. Pour a some of the cheese sauce over the Asparagus, then place the bacon next. With the eggs we have a slicer as you can see via the photo, if not just cut up how you see fit or best as, then they go on top of the bacon. Then a little more of the sauce, topped with paprika and loads of the fresh herbs.

This is great to have with fresh bread on a really hot day.

I'll say one thing, it was bloody lovely.

buddy's friday, 'finally beating that white butterfly'

Well, we hope we have anyway. Last year we brought a few broccoli, about six I think. Planted them in the herb garden (didn't have much in it at the time) and hoped for the best. Well, as some of you would know, the white butterfly thought this was heaven and Mom spent most of her time brushing the eggs of with a tooth brush!! This didn't work. So we thought this year we would grow our own and make sure we set it up right.

First was the growing, all come from seed and WOW! We were so impressed on how easy it was to grow them.

All we did was,

buy the seeds,

pot them up,

watered them,

waited for them to grow a bit,

potted them on into bigger pots when ready,

then a few weeks later they are ready for planting.

Amazing, I can't bake a cake (seem to cook anything else except for cakes) but I can grow a plant, very strange. They have been ready to go in the garden for about two weeks now, but with going away and not having sorted the protection out I didn't really want to put them in, well lets say I refused. So last week we finally got into it and we went and brought what we needed.

First was the pipping as you can see from the picture, this comes from B&Q, is plumping pipes, cost us about £2.36 each and we needed seven of them. We are going to house these pipes in the shed over winter, am hoping they last a few years.

Next was the metal spikes that help hold the netting down. They where around the same price for a pack of ten, which should last, well at least ten years.

Then finally the netting, or mesh. This one was hard since we had no idea what we were buying and well, there is a lot of garden centres out there with staff that know nothing about gardening!!!!!! SHAMEFUL. So what we got was netting or mesh that protects from frost and insects, it works really well and is rather cheap.

Hopefully you can see from the pictures how we did this,

Plant the plants first (I also dig in some crystals that help store water)

them the pipping, just loop it over and down deep enough that they wont pop out.

Then drape the netting over the pipes (you will need two people to do this) slowly while putting the metal pegs in as you go.

After we did this we also put the bark we have all around the edges, just in case they know how to dig!!

It was so easy doing this and looks great, mind you, it is a lot easier to do when it is not windy, let alone one of the worst windy days. As we did.

Oh, there is a new friend on the stump in front of the cabbage bed, he is too cute for words but seems to be giving people a shock when they see him, know idea why thought.

(click on the pictures for a larger view)

photo's from the garden

we have a new member of the family

The other day we went to the garden center, as you do, to buy some vegetable plants that didn't want to grow from seed in our green house. £40 pound later (really need to keep away from there), and just about to leave we see this little fella. We been talking for ages about getting a new dog and decided that because of Sootie, our oldest cat, basically I think he would leave home if we did get one, we decided not to get another. But then we saw, what we have now called Toby, he is just perfect and wanted to introduce him to you all.

Toby, playing in one of our soft fruits.



Looking innocent amongst the mint that has grown in
this pot for three years.



Sage, chives and parsley, are his favorite herbs, just hope
he don't get them all at once!

Hiding in the sorrel, Toby got caught having a dig around.

This daily silliness comes from a pot, a thought and a smidgen of dirt.
All rights are owned by this blog and all nuttiness and mental behavior are owned by the reader and have nothing whats so ever to do with the writer.
She is totally sane.
HONEST

buddy's friday, 'cheaper way to string up peas, beans and tomatoes'

Over the past few weeks all I have been doing is either doing the garden or study. Days of working out side for ten hours, digging, building, planting bulbs, did I say digging? Still have more to do today! then coming inside Mom feeding me and then bed. Not even had the energy to do blogging!!! But has been worth it, the garden is almost ready for planting, the beds are all up (only one not filled yet), seedlings are growing well, with a few been planted yesterday in the garden. Mom and I both loved doing that, was such satisfaction. With planting the pea's, beans, sweet peas and tomatoes, I had to think of something for them to climb onto. Now this part is shocking, the price of chicken wire or wooden climbing frames is amazing. For the smallest chicken wire we found was up to £19.00!!!! yea like I am going to pay that. As for wooden ones, they range about £10 each and aren't that wide. So me been a cheap cow as I am, thought of a another idea.

First is the sweet peas which is over by the shed and green house, with this idea it is the fence we put up so was ok to put nails in the fence, might be best to ask your neighbors if this is ok before hand.

All I needed for this was, string, a hammer, nails and a pair of scissors.

What I done was nail in nails down the main fence post, as this was the strongest part, measuring the same distance down. I used a really technical piece of equipment for this, a envelope that come that via our daily junk mail.

I did this going along five times.

Then, very tightly, I looped the string around them, making sure the string was at the front of the nails, make sure you get nails that have big heads on them so the string doesn't slip over.

This was so simple to do and took no time at all, hopefully you can see in this picture how it turned out.

Then Mom planted all the sweet peas and and other plants that will look amazing.

For the back area where we have our beans, peas and tomatoes, I just used bamboo. Bamboo isn't dear at all, it cost us last year about £2 for a pack of 10. As this fence isn't ours am not using nails here.

For runner beans, just for pieces of bamboo, grouped together, then string around the base, middle and top for support for the beans.

For the peas, I staked bamboo into the ground and did the same thing as I did with the sweet peas, as seen below, at the top of the fence I tied the bamboo tips to the fence for more support.

Last year we did find some chicken wire at a car boot for a £1, so used this up on here, just attaching with a staple gun. Pity I ran out.

Pebbles, as always keeping an eye on what we are doing.

garden update video

This was done about a week ago, have been so busy with the garden and study, time just seems to run away from me. Hope you enjoy and will have another done soon as the garden has changed rather. Below is another video of Pebbles and Sootie misbehaving.

I've had to make these smaller as for some reason makes the right hand side go to the bottom of the page. If you would like to see it larger, just double click and will take you to you tube. Sorry for the hassle, Fiona

letters in flowers

I found these on facebook, hopefully they wont mind me posting them (crosses fingers here).

just for fun, my name in flowers

Can you tell I was bored today? With all the heavy work I been doing out side has hurt my left arm, so no typing, no digging, no building raised beds etc. God I been bored, really missed doodling in my garden. Hope everyone had a fabulous Easter Fiona.

After Mom (Margaret's Ramblings) seeing this post, she suggested going here, Felley Priory Gardens, Click here for information on the Gardens HERE

They sell plants too, woohooo can't wait to go.

Buddy's Friday, 'Elderflower and Chamomile hand gel'

All through last year and mostly bargain buying at the end of the season as well we have been buying plants, roses, herbs to make our own products ourselves. David Austin roses, the smell is to dye for,

(our rose, we brought last year, the smell is
just amazing)

Lavenders, planting every kind we can get our hands on, Herbs (this is still in its early stage), planting all sorts that are for eating as well for healing etc. Mom (Margaret's Ramblings) and I love herbs and anything that smells lovely, we are always finding new smelly's for the bathroom, so last year we went through our many (its an addiction!!!) herb and make your own product books and made a list. This year we are going to have a go at a few.

(some of the lavenders we planted last year)

This is one I will try once the Elderflower (grows all over around here) and Chamomile are in full bloom.

Elderflower and Chamomile hand gel

• 3 tbsps arrowroot 100ml/fl oz water
• 2 tbsps dried chamomile
• 2 tbsps dried elderflowers
• 3 tbsps glycerine

1. Gather together and measure out the ingredients. Assemble some small screw top pots for storage.
2. Heat the water and add the herbs. Leave to steep until thoroughly cooled.
3. Warm the glycerine in a double-boiler and add the arrowroot. Stir very well.
4. Strain the infusion. Gradually add to the glycerine and arrowroot mixture and stir until it is clear and starting to gel. Put into the pots.

Note on Camomile and Elderflower

Chamomile has many healing cosmetic uses. This hand gel exploits the herb's ability to soften the skin. Elderflower is effective as a tonic for all skins.

Magic of Herbs by Jane Newdick's

For more buddy's friday, please visit Margaret's Ramblings, here

watery wednesday, the joy of water

The joys of water, for my boy Garak there is nothing like it during the hot days of summer. For this only reason does he like water, a bath or a swim he will not go near the water, but if the sprinkler comes out, well, we haven't worked out weather he is out to kill or just in love.

These pictures where taken a few years ago before we had our fencing up, this year he will have the freedom of the garden and me chasing him around the garden with the hose. I can't wait!!



'It keeps coming, I swear the water is laughing at me'

'Maybe if I just keep biting it, Nope, that don't work, I'll
sneak up on it'



'Will you just stay still'



'Oh I give up, time for a roll'





'What, you turned the water on, a boy is gona get wet'


'How perfect a summer's day, the joy of playing with the
water, then a snooze in the afternoon'



'Just hope she forgot that I really need a bath now'

For more Watery Wednesday photos, please click on this link

buddy's friday, 'the shed comes alive'

This week is on our shed, 'how to put up a shed with ease and what and not to do.

First up, before even buying, have a good look around online as well as at your usual places to buy, this one here we got of Ebay (please make sure you check their feed back, if in doubt don't buy of them), it only cost us £340.00. For the same size at do-it-yourself stores would of cost us about £500.00 before the cost of concrete slaps and wood for underneath the shed and for someone (if you don't already have someone) to help you put it up. So we saved ourselves well over £150.00. Which we spent on pots and plants, well had to really ah, LOL.

The next part was painting, since ours was going so close to the fence I thought it a good idea to paint it frist, I used a spray which was sooooooooo easy. As you can see from the picture below, I was thinking of play school at the time.

Here is the house, here is the door etc etc etc.

One thing I didn't do (slaps self) was check that everything was there via the little peace of paper that was inside the other bits, not everything was there and had to wait a week to put the finishing bits up for the windows. We were very lucky and it didn't rain. So please MAKE SURE YOU CHECK THAT EVERYTHING IS THERE AS SOON AS IT ARRIVES.

The people who we got it off where great, we got the bits that where missing within days.

The next thing we needed was, our lovely handy man, it does take two people to put up a shed and if like us only me about to do it, it does pay to get someone in. We are lucky, he knows what he is doing and did it properly. Below you can see him working out the slabs and has put on the wooden poles to help with dampness. It keeps the shed of the ground, also helps with rats as well, they can't nest under there. Mind you saying that, Pebbles would love that idea!!!

After the floor is laid, up goes the sides, we worked on the back side then the end up.

Can see here how he has worked it, more support he said, then went onto the back side again working our way round to the front door.

Here you can see all the walls up and just waiting on the roof to go up, we needed a cuppa.

When we put the roof up, the instructions told us to use nails provided, we decided to use screws, for one it would be a lot quicker and easier and two, would be more secure. So look at what size you need and get some if you think it would be better. He did say that some that are nailed in have popped up over time.

We had our worked checked all the time, you can see Pebbles here making sure that the walls are safe for jumping on.

and the windows.



and the roof.



Well, she had to check the floor out.

I'm really sorry but totally forgot what the roof stuff is called, I'll call it outer roof for now, this was laid in three peaces, first the two outer pieces down by the window and other side, tacked in with nail tacks, then the middle and same done again.

Then the doors went on.



End of day one, windows went in kinda for now, just in cased it rained.

One week later, The window wood bits arrived and where put in, over the week while waiting I painted the inside with cream paint and then painted the finishing pieces off.

TA DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

One finished shed, we love this shed is our pride and joy. We spend the afternoons sitting in the door way having tea and watching Pebbles, Sootie and Garak play around the garden.

watery wednesday

This is another picture taken in Wales, but this time it was when we went to the Hay on Wye festival 2004. Not sure where abouts this is as we didn't have a sat nav back them and did get lost a lot LOL. I just love the old stone bridge and look outs, they are all over Britain and Wales, such history.
Wales is a beautiful place and we are headed back there again in a few months for the festival. We can't wait!!!!

For more Watery Wednesday photos, please click on this link