TARRAGON & THYME

Well its been a gorgeous Sunday in Peterborough but too damn hot. We nipped out to our local garden centre and came back with a few plants to sort out my hanging baskets as I do my own most years although on a couple of occasions I have been bought them as presents. Anyway here's how I do them: Get all your plants together - not sure what to use I normally make a selection from the following plants: Nasturtiums, Trailing Fuschias, Trailing Pelargoniums, Bush Fuscias, Bush Pelargoniums, Bacopia, Trailing Ivy, Helichrysum, Tapien Verbena Trailing, Brachycome, Lobelia, Aubretia to name but a few I personally prefer to use sphagnum moss to line the baskets with - I got a big bag for £7.50 today and I have done two baskets and I think there is enough for at least another three. Never done them before - they are not terribly complicated just a little fiddly at times. Take your empty baskets I always make sure the basket is supported on either a bucket or a planter Line them with the ...

I went outside to sit in the peace and cool of the Garden on Friday evening minding my own business when I heard this whooshing noise. I looked up and coming over the bottom of my garden but pretty high up was the Virgin Balloon. It looked so peaceful hanging there. I don't know what it is about balloons but I have always been fascinated by them and I would love one day to have a trip in one. I apologise as my camera doesn't have as many pixels as I would like but you get the jist.

Whoa what a week and the past two days have been absolutely barmy at work. I have been "it" secretarial wise being the only one and secretary in and yesterday I had three fee earners to support today two. I haven't stopped typing both days running - my poor little digits ache quite badly. Oh well its just the depth that varies. Well its been an interesting week; one of the fee earners has just become a grandmother for the first time when her daughter gave birth on Monday to a lovely little girl who has been given the name of Skye. So she has been off work; Another of the secretaries has been taking final legal exams - if she hadn't she would have qualified but she flunked it last year and is now on holiday recovering in Turkey;the other girl is part time anyway - she lost her mum about three weeks ago very suddenly and is a young mum herself. So its all been a bit harum scarum. So I am very much suffering Thank God Its Friday syndrome. Have just watered up all the...

Well I have a mushroom kit - now all I have got to get it to do is persuade it to grow mushrooms. I have put the impregnated straw in the bottom as per the instructions and have left it for a couple of days now I have to cover it with compost and water it - wait for a few days and then see - well that's the theory - now we just have to wait for the mushrooms. .............

I am an avid collector of Cornishware pottery particularly the storage cannisters, which I have slowly been collecting, to eventually go on my pine dressers. I have for the best part bought off ebay, but got ripped off relatively early on in my collecting days by an unscrupulous seller who had used letra set rub on figuring for a pot that I had bought from him which rubbed off as soon as you touched it. You couldn't really tell from the photos although I had at the time thought it was different lettering that had been used - just thought the company had changed their type=print as does happen. So beware if you are buying this much loved familiar pottery if you don't like the look of the lettering don't touch it with a barge pole. I played hell - reported him to ebay but he squirmed and told porky pies and I got that fed up in the end with it but needless to say he was marked from thereon in. Okay I had paid about £15 in the grand scheme of things and it was an old pot...

I can always remember as a young child going to stay with my aunty and uncle and being kept entertained with a large old highly decorated sweet tin absolutely full of beautiful unique buttons. I used to be set the task of trying to match as many of the buttons up as I could. It used to keep me quiet and entertained with some highly individual beautiful buttons being stored within its confines. I used to lay on the rug in front of the fire sorting the buttons and examining each one and admiring them for their beauty. Any clothing that was sent to the rag and bone man always had its buttons chopped off and restored to the tin to be recycled at some future date on some home produced garment either a dress or a knitted cardigan or jumper. You didn't always have a choice way back then it was a home creation and only very rarely a tailored dress - this was down to cost more than anything else - times that seem to be coming back. Times were that girls were well prepared on how to run...

Here are some more recently completed bits and bobs - no doubt there will be more to follow shortly as I tend to have two or three items on the go at once and as I run out of materials I got to the next piece until i restash and so on. It works for me. Here is the Haywain in Needlepoint Original painting by Constable Needlepoint worked by Pattypan Here is another cushion panel which I intend to back with pink velvet to join all the other cushion panels that are worked so far