March Blooms

The flower posts are back! I had hoped to keep them going over the winter but turns out I don't have many flowers over the winter months, probably because they are more expensive and I like the spring flowers.

I did have a few though just not worth a post all of their own, like these lovely roses for our anniversary from Tom in September

 Yes they are in a jug, I broke our large vase a while back.

Then he got me this plant for Valentines, which to celebrate our love I am slowly killing as a sacrifice. I didn't note what it was before I took the label off, and I've tried watering it often and not often and putting it in the direct sun or in the shadier areas but it just is gradually dying.

I cleaned the windows after this! Also you can see I've finally binned the 2 dead plants which were here and reused the pot. You can also see some dried lavender in a pot there. It is gone now as Tom binned it to use the jar...as he thought it was just a dead plant.

Then daffodils arrived!

 Yay sunny spring time flowers!

A few for the bedroom too to share the colour around, these also smelled lovely you could smell them as soon as you came into the flat

Tom then replenished them with another bunch, although for some reason used a small Christmas planter for them...

They are gorgeous anyway, and check out my completely accidental photo taking skills there blurring out the background and focussing on the flower in front. Couldn't do it again if I tried!

Next month I want to have some Tulips I think, I love that Spring is finally here :)

Drying Lavender

The last few weeks our garden has all come into flower and fruit, so I've been having fresh tomatoes and rocket from the garden in my sandwiches (So good!) and the lavender was smelling lovely.

So I trimmed off a few of the stalks with flowers, making sure to leave a few on there for the bees (bees love lavender and we've got to help them out) and to make sure we get more next year

I was left with a good amount of lavender, although they had different length stalks. All the things I read said to cut them off just above the leaves and this varied per stalk.

All the tutorials I did read varied on how to actually dry the stuff though! Most agreed they need to be out of sunlight to keep their colour but they varied in how to actually do it. So I thought I'd try a few ways and see what worked best. One said to tie each stalk individually then tie bunch them together and hang upside down (this seemed a lot of effort!)

Others said just to bundle together, and hang upside down or just leave in a cool dark place, so I did 2 bundles just tied together 

 I also left a few untied as some tutorials didn't ask for it to be bunched together

One bundle and some of the individual ones are just in a pot on the table, this room doensn't have any windows so gets minimal sunlight

That's mint in the bottom, we had some left from mojito making a while back and Tom thought it would smell nice in there. I like it as a table decoration.

The individually tied bunch is hung in the wardrobe in the hallway

 The other bundle is hung in my wardrobe making my clothes smell nice

 And the rest of the individual stalks are in the bottom of Toms wardrobe

We'll see which ones work best, the bundles and individual stalks are definitely the easiest and I can't see how tying them individually has any more benefit...

When it's dry I'm going to try making some drawer and wardrobe fresheners, hopefully they will be pretty easy as my sewing isn't great!

The garden is a bit changed about at the moment and we were making mojitos because just before I did this we had a barbecue so that garden looked like this

First barbecue in our little garden and it worked out ok, not too cramped, we just need to put the garden back together!

June/July Flowers

I didn't do a June flowers post as I only had a few flowers recently, and the one bunch I had in June lasted weeks, literally the best flowers I've ever bought!

They were dyed chrysanthemums from Asda, even on offer for £1.88

Then I got these lovely peonies from my work friends as an engagement gift

Beautiful!

At the moment I've got these dyed chrysanthemums as I loved the vibrant colours, I think dyed flowers might be my new favourite, you can have any colour in any season!

These are cut down into the small white pot rather than the tall glass vase because it's better to have a lower one on the coffee table...actually it's because I broke the glass vase and this is the excuse I'm using for its disappearance. Anyone who knows me knows this is a regular occurrence, so it was only a cheap vase and I'll replace it sometime with another cheap vase which will eventually be broken. This is also why we have mismatched crockery, glasses and cups as I break on average 2-3 things a month, clumsy!

Finished Garden!

The garden is the first part of our flat that I'm going to declare finished! Obviously next spring we will probably have to replace some of the plants that don't make it through winter and we will change things around as we go, but right now I can't fit in any more plants without making it cluttered and can't see anything else that I would want to add or change (other than make it larger haha).

Here are some before and afters...

View from the door before

In progress

After

The rest of the garden with the barbecue and bikes...

Before (pretty bare!)

In progress

After

To the right out of the back door and the path up to the landlords garden

Before

In progress

After

The 'in progress' pictures are all from this post back in March when I last shared photos of the garden, we had just planted a load of pots. Since then what's improved (other than the weather in the after pics!) is that the plants have all grown larger, I've bought a load more small pots and 2 larger ones, we've also gained a few more plants. 

I went on a trip over to Gloucester a while back and raided all the pound/99p/bargain shops for garden stuff. I came home with a pretty good loot, small pots from the pound shop, plastic watering globes were in packs of 2 for £1 and do really work (I also have the pretty glass ones from back here), I also picked up plant food, bug spray and a patio cleaning solution (not got round to using that yet). 

Most of the plants are doing really well but some fell pray to slugs and snails like these smaller pots which did have flower seeds in to add in some colour but the shoots were all eaten

So I got some of this tape on a recent trip to the B&M shop in Gloucester, it stops slugs and snails climbing up the pot apparently

I ran out so haven't done all the pots but if it works will go and get some more. 

Also from there I got 2 plastic pots (£1.99 each) one to re-pot some sunflowers into which I'd planted from seeds and were ready to go out, and one for the lavender which is growing like crazy, then I used the pot from that to plant the rose bush I got for my birthday (After planting it I noticed the label actually said that it's an indoor plant, hopefully it'll be ok until winter)

These pillows (£1.99 each) were from the same shop on a previous trip, although they aren't actually outside cushions I bought them with the garden in mind, when the weather's not good they can go on the armchair in the hallway

Some close ups, these guys are all doing really well

Left to right - Lavender, Forsythia, Mint and Parsley, Clematis (It did flower and looked really pretty but I didn't get a photo!) and a random shrub left by the landlords.

The random shrub is actually doing really well and did have a few small flowers, and it's a nice shade of light green and has pretty shaped leaves (anyone have any clue what it is?) 

The edible side is also doing well, the tomato plants (right) are getting big although no fruit yet, the herbs are actually too large for the pot we really need to start using them more! Unfortunately no basil yet but a few shoots are appearing. The pot to the left is spring onions and rocket which is starting to grow up now.

We also now have some sunflowers which are growing fast and a rosebush which may or may not make it as it is not meant to be outside...Those are the pound shop watering globes, not as pretty as the glass ones but £1 for 2 so a lot cheaper, and hopefully once the plants grow in a bit they won't be so visible

As far as budget goes it's a bit of an estimate as a lot of the pots we already owned and some things were gifts but I'd say we spent no more than £100 on the garden this year and no more than £200 in total. 

That breaks down as (per shopping trip):

Blooms Garden Centre - Plants, 2 oblong planters and compost - £60

Pound Shop - small pots, watering globes, plant food, patio cleaner - £15

B&M Gloucester - 2 larger pots, slug and snail tape, compost and pillows - £13

B&Q - Barbecue and bike covers (rough estimate) - £10

Already owned pots, mostly from B&Q and Homebase - About £90 spent if I remember (It was a long time ago but I remember being shocked that a few terracotta pots could cost almost £100)

Gardening in containers is really my kind of gardening, no digging borders or mowing lawns just plant and enjoy! As long as you water them regularly and use a plant feed I find you can't go wrong with plants in pots, we had the same at a previous house and loved it.

The weather was so beautiful over the weekend I couldn't not be out in the garden, although I did get the office finished and it is looking good so a post on the coming up soon!

April showers bring May flowers...

Well we had enough showers didn't we? The weather finally seems to have caught onto the fact that it's summer now!

This is the monthly flowers post, I actually thought this would peter out after a month but we seem to be sticking to it!

I got these white tulips reduced for £1 a bunch at Sainsburys, they had a bit of life left but only lasted a few days really (although for £2 I wasn't that worried)

When they were dying off Tom brought home these lovely mulitcoloured tulips to replace them I think also from Sainsburys (Or Asda it was with food shopping any way!).

He's a keeper :)

Anyway then there's these 3 which although they're plants not flowers I'm going to include

We have loads of cards around, my birthday and engagement at the same time we can't find a place for all of them!

This one was a thank you from my manager for orgnanising our open day on the 27th of April

Then Tom's mum got me this one for my birthday as a coincidence, it's quite nice having the 2 matching plants in different colours! They both come in bright little pots as well

My friend Sam then got me these roses for my birthday, we need to get some more pots for the garden as we need to move some plants to larger pots so I'm hoping to get one for these and put them in the garden

I also bought 2 bunches of these for our engagement party table decorations and ended up not needing all of them so some went in a vase in the kitchen. In the rush of making the decorations in time for the party I threw away the packaging before I made a note but I think they were £2.50 a bunch and I think they're carnations?

My mum and Simon also got us this engagement present, from the supermarket in Holland they were in when I rang to tell them we were engaged. It looks lovely on our little garden table and is easy to move when we want to eat on there (Or I'm actually writing this post on Saturday evening sat there with a glass of wine)

All in all a pretty floral month! the garden is also growing nicely and some more flowers will hopefully be out soon, I'll share photos once they are.