GARDENING'S BEGUN, 2011

Gillian, my lady gardener, came yesterday to start the gardening season - a month earlier than previous years. She's been coming to me for a couple of hours once a week since 2005.

I've always kept a gardening book so I knew what I'd bought, where and the cost, what had been sown or planted and all the other work I'd done in the garden. However, getting older limits what you can do - It's so much trouble struggling to get up that it's not worth trying to kneel down these days, so my gardening is limited to strolling up and down the path with the book during the week making notes about what needs to be done. I can still prune, sweep the path, a short burst of anything that needs attention at ground level but I'm mostly a gofer and tea maker.

The picture above is the pink hellebore (at Gillian's feet) and a selfsown primrose among the bloomin' oak leaves. I have a couple more pink hellebores which flower later, including one which my daughter brought from Holland last year and which has a nice fat bud on it now. To Gillian's left are the common creamy hellebore although they do have different markings. They self seed like crazy!

This hedgehog holly produces flowers every year but they don't turn into berries.

Gillian cuts my little patches of grass which separate different areas of the garden, wheels the barrow away when it's full of weeds, prunings etc and brings back the pots of bulbs which have spent the winter behind the shed at the bottom-ish of the garden.

The honeysuckle which covers my trellis arch is sprouting. A couple of weeks ago I asked Stuart to come and oil the weathervane which had been stuck all winter and wondered why he was laughing when he returned. A honeysuckle had wound itself round the upright of the weathervane and, although cut, hadn't been dragged off! Mind you, the weathervane is tilted because the pigeons find it a comfortable perch, the space between the owl's wings just fits their undercarriages.The tilt is exaggerated because of where I'm standing - and it's raining!

TRIANGLES QUILT FINISHED - AT LAST

At last I've finished this quilt and it's 'all right' but can't say I'm that thrilled with it. It's my first attempt at machine quilting and I'm disappointed with how it makes the quilt feel - compared with hand quilting it's flat and quite rigid so perhaps I'll just use that method for smaller pieces.

After I'd bound it I decided to put some quilting in the border but just at the corners extending along both sides for a short distance. I have plastic templates of hearts and stars in different sizes so randomly quilted those in red, blue or white (well, cream) quilting thread. It's a fairly satisfactory result except that I was getting bored with having to do this on my lap so didn't complete the centre border sections.

Another corner with more quilting - I prefer quilting when the work is in a frame, except that even a tiny frame like mine takes up 'so much' room when I include the magnifying light, too.

For the backing I used a duvet cover which I bought on eBay during the summer - it's stars again! For the binding I used a pillowcase with stars, moons and suns on it which came from Gillian, my gardening lady. I thought this backing would be an ideal design to cover up the mess that the machine quilting would turn out to be...well, it's not so-o-o bad but I wouldn't give this quilt away!

Now, why would the camera change the colour from maroon to this rather nice hyacinthy blue?

Well, it did - and it's my new Canon camera, too. I tried all sorts of meanderings on the backing including trying to do flowers. Some things worked and others didn't so I'm not showing those.

Here's another collection of tryouts but these are balls, marbles, loops, call them what you will.

I think I'll stick to hand quilting next time, I like to stab stitch my way through the afternoon listening to a film on TV or the digital book channel, someone to talk to me, as it were. I do like the random coloured quilting thread on the back and the front has pale creams and whites as its quilting thread.

I think the camera will be OK when I get the hang of the things I want to use it for but I DON'T like having the manual on the computer - how can you check something when you're out???

It's a real palaver having to set up the computer! Couldn't get any pics to download from the camera to the computer following the manual's instructions so did - something - which I hope I can remember next time, and it's worked.

If we don't speak for a few more days, Have a Happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

GARDEN ORNAMENTS or something

Some years ago I bought a very nice concrete garden ornament of a reclining gender-free person, head on arms and feet in the air. This cropped photo shows it in its prime.

And this is how it looks now, rather sad and sorry..... It's just split into slices, probably due to the very hard winter we had at the beginning of this year, and age.

This lamb was originally an impulse buy and it lived on my bookshelves as a bookend until I needed the space, when it was relegated to the garden. It's grown a handsome mossy coat in the time it's been outdoors.

My gardening lady, Gillian, made this for me two years ago, as a present. Nice lady! It's usually facing the other way up. It hasn't broken or acquired any mossy growth - well done, Gillian!