Orchids, swans, terns and buttercups

Northern Marsh Orchid See how the orchids are thriving!!

A swan too close - boy, can they hiss!! It wasn't us - a dog (not ours) got too close to the cygnets
The weather has been warm and sunny so a couple of days ago we had a short stroll around Watergate Park which was built on a former colliery spoil heap. You may remember that last year around this time I spotted a beautiful flower which turned out to be a Northern Marsh Orchid! Well, I am pleased to report that the orchids have multiplied and we spotted them in various locations on the side of the lake. Also, we discovered that the swans had 4 cygnets and two Terns were nesting on the lake - very difficult to photograph and after looking through 350 pictures tonight, I have selected the one below. Taken with Andreas Cannon 400D Digital SLR Camera

One of a pair of Terns (not sure which type of Tern) which swooped back and forth over the lake - very graceful, but very very quick and not easy to photograph.

Yellow iris around the pond and below a group of Buttercups

Wedding Cakes and flowers ......

Isn't this bluebell a gorgeous colour?

As far as the title is concerned, I am including some pictures my sister took of me decorating a wedding cake in her kitchen for a friend of hers. I made the pink sugar roses a while ago (see previous posts) and my sister made the cala lillies. She wired them into the sprays which were attached to the cake. By the way, the cake will be travelling from Newcastle to Gretna Green for the wedding next week so we both hope it arrives in one piece!! Above is the finished cake, with sugar flower spray on the side of the bottom cakes, a small spray within the clear plastic stand, a final spray on the top cake. The bride requested very pale pink tiny sugar hearts sprinkled about the cakes. The bottom two cakes were 'stacked' with dowels in between to support the weight (my sister makes very deep, heavy rich fruit cakes and we used 5kgs of almond paste and 5kgs of sugarpaste). The top of the middle tier was dowelled to take the weight of the top tier which was placed on a clear plastic divider.
Affixing the trim around the base of each cake - not very clear as Jackie (my Sister) wasn't used to this camera
Pale pink ribbon around each cake board
A flower spray affixed within a plastic flower 'pick' to gently swirl to the bottom board
Affixing the tiny pale pink hearts which were sprinkled over all cakes

1st June to-day and it has rained for 12 hours non-stop - at least it's good for the garden!! I've been very busy hence no blogging for ages, but here are a few pics of flowers - needless to say everything is coming on a treat. I have planted out what seems like hundreds of busy lizzies in pale pink and lavender petunias - I'm going for a green, pink and lavender theme this year - however, I'm sure to have patches of yellow from perennials !! If the rain every stops I will take some photos of the bedding plants and post them next weekend

I spotted this lilly of the valley growing behind a hosta, underneath the big pink hydrangea bush - I didn't plant it, so think a bird may have dropped a seed or a tiny bulb - wherever it came from, I am certainly very pleased to have this in my garden!

The ferns which grow at the bottom of my rockery corner are now unfurling themselves for the summer. The large clumps of purple heather are now going over so I will have to clip over the plants to keep them from getting too leggy

Summertime at last .......

We've had some glorious sunshine, really warm (we could actually eat our evening meal on the patio!!) and everything in the garden is bursting with fresh colour. Remember my first attempt at making compost in a huge plastic bin? - well, it works a treat. To-day I have shovelled 4 wheelbarrows of dark, crumbly compost - I am so pleased! I will continue to add my veg and garden waste and will look forward to more free compost at the end of the year!! I have taken some photos and here they are

A cute little Ladybird - hope she eats all the greenflyBluebells
The Alpine clematis is now in full bloom - very pretty
The cherry tree near the deck - a bumper crop of blossom
My beautiful, brown compost

The little Acer I rescued from the pot at the end of last Summer obviously enjoys living in this little bed!
Up by the deck, all the trees are in full leaf
Isn't this azelea beautiful? I got a white one at the same time, a birthday gift a couple of years ago, but it never flowers. I moved it to another part of the garden last year, but still I have only leaves - no flowers
My 'free' foreget-me-nots - they come up every year without any help from me
The rockery - isn't this Acer stunning next to the new bright green growth on the conifer?

Even in a well loved garden - Dandelions flourish!!!!

colour on a grey, damp Sunday afternoon

The alpine clematis on the fence is dripping with fat blue flower buds - gorgeous. It's a bit chilly to 'garden' even though hubby has gone off this afternoon to Durham for the first cricket match of the season - warmly wrapped! I snipped off the dead daffodils and admired all the new growth - even the hostas are peeping out. Due to rain, rain and more rain since the last time I blogged, the grass is looking a bit sorry for itself, but amazingly, the little Acer which I thought was dead at the end of last Summer is covered in buds/leaves, good job I didn't bin it!! On a different subject, we're looking forward to Tuesday evenings for the next ten weeks, because J John is coming to a huge tent which has been erected at the Flower Festival site behind Emmanual College, Lobley Hill (it holds 8,000 people) for a series of talks on the Ten Commandments. If you're interested please take a look at Hillside Church web site by clicking on their link further down the right hand side. If you want to go but don't want to go in on your own, let me know and we'll meet you at the Hillside church 'meeting point' at Lobley Hill

I wonder how long the Hosta shoots will last until the slugs gobble them up?

Small flowered clematis dripping with blooms

Good old pansies - still flowering, better than ever!
The Aubretia really brightens up underneath the tall conifer. I grew these from seeds three years ago and they've been excellent value for money
Last year's wallflowers are blooming well, but they're a bit straggly so they'll have to come out and go to the compost bin when they're finished. Talking of compost, I lifted the lid on my compost bin to put the daffodil prunings in, and inside was crawling with ants - oh dear! One day soon, I have to be brave, get a spade and take out the bottom layer!! As you know, creepy crawlies and me don't get on very well. I'll have to wear gloves, tuck my trousers in my socks and use a very long handled spade in case something yukky crawls out. This is my first time composting in one of these bins with a trap door in the bottom, but I am hoping for something resembling compost when I eventually get around to emptying the bin.

Yesterday I made twenty small pink sugar roses which will become part of flower sprays for a three tier wedding cake. Andrea was taking photographs of them, sadly this is the only photograph she managed to take because just after this she knocked the whole lot over and I thought it was best to rescue a whole mornings work before she smashed them all!!!

April (snow) showers

Was it only a few days ago that I was cutting the grass because the weather was so warm and dry and the leaves were budding on the trees? Well, that all changed today, it has snowed all afternoon and forecast for minus 1 tonight! Here are a few pictures of the snow

Spring flowers during March

These photographs were put in a draft on 10th March, and here we are on 3rd April and I'm just getting around to publishing them on my blog! British Summer Time began last Sunday and the clocks went forward one hour - my body hasn't adjusted yet and when I get up at 6am it still feels like 5 am! March has flown past and I haven't done any blogging - sorry! Here are some photos of the spring flowers in the back garden - I like the miniature types and once the flowers have gone over, I can't wait to chop off the leaves - even though I know I should leave them till they die back themselves! This week we've cut the grass back and front, I've weeded the borders and trimmed the edges in the back garden and made a start on the front garden. It took ages to rake up all the leaves and general debris of winter, but it's great to see the shrubs and the trees starting to bud. I'm sad to say that a few perennial plants don't look as if they have survived the winter, maybe the odd severe frost has killed them off. The back garden gets more sunshine, so everything is much more advanced, for example, there are flower buds on all of the clematis - let's wait and see if they survive the snow showers that the Met Office have predicted for the coming weekend.A beautiful Spring day - wall to wall sunshine and blue, blue sky

Beautiful deep pink tulips in my tubs - they look red in the photo, but honestly, they are very dark pink. Andrea's favourite flowers.

We've had some very nice sunny, mild days and also some very stormy, windy, wet and freezing cold days - from one extreme to another. Flowers blooming are winter pansies, various colours of primroses, wallflowers, daffodils, tulips, aubretia and even the odd flower on the patio roses.

......... on a cold and frosty morning!

We've enjoyed some beautifully sunny days with clear blue skies, but the overnight frosts have been very thick - but very pretty. These are photographs taken during the past week are of plants in my garden, early morning before the sun melted the frost.

Frost so thick, it almost looks like snow

Isn't he cute? This little squirrel was photographed in the rose garden in Saltwell Park, Gateshead - it helped that other visitors were encouraging their grandchildren to scatter peanuts to attract the family of squirrels.

Is it Spring?

Blue sky, sunshine, hardly a breeze - and 14 Deg C - it feels like Spring today! I spent an hour yesterday and a couple of hours today tidying up the garden and checking to see what was beginning to grow. In fact, it felt so warm, a bee was having a feast on a pink hyacinth!

Leaves appearing on the clematis by the back door

White Primroses

It's amazing where all of the rubbish comes from!

Pansies still giving plenty of flowers

Small leaves and buds on the pink hydrangea

This little patch seems to be doing OK

The back of the garden

February comes in with a bang .....

As January drew to a close, we have been battered by severe gales and to-day the North East of England suffered heavy and prolonged snowfall. In fact, over towards the West on high ground the news were reporting that motorists were trapped in their cars and had to be rescued, and in several towns and villages primary schools were closed. We have been warned that temperatures will drop to at least minus 5C tonight and snow and slush will freeze, causing more problems!

I am pleased to say that as far as we can see, the only damage we've had has been to the bird feeders which were smashed as they were hurled around the garden - the bird table, wooden benches and chairs etc were blown about the lawn but no tiles have come off the roof. I stayed indoors today and baked bread, teacakes and sticky buns - I would have included a picture of the sticky, spicy, fruited enriched bread goodies, but all of which were demolished by my family before 6.0pm

The heathers in my garden are beginning to colour up beautifully, it won't be long before they are a blaze of colour. Last Sunday we had a fine, sunny but cold day after three days of gale force winds and I took a few photos to show that even with all this bad weather, there are still beautiful things to look at

Pink wallflowers

Wind blowing through the bare trees in a lane near us - honestly, the branches were being lashed by the gale but this is the best photo I got!

Shrub in my garden - notice the fat little buds! Can't remember it's name, sorry

There seems to be an abundance of mole hills near where we live, thankfully, there are none in my garden - yet! I did have a mole in my garden a few years ago, and it caused havoc

Snowdrops in a neighbours gardenSpring is on the way - my daffodils have buds
Even the daisies are popping up in the grass

Despite the atrocious gales, snow and frosts, see how my little yellow patio rose has buds ready to open!

When the weather is bad, I always feel like being in the kitchen and baking - this lemon meringue pie I made on Wednesday was mouthwateringly good, even if I say so myself - there wasn't a scrap left by bedtime - whatever happened to our new year diet?

Rain at breakfast, snow by lunchtime .....

It started off very wet this morning, but by lunchtime it poured with snow. I work at river level, but live on high ground - my lovely hubby managed to collect me at lunchtime but it took ages to get home as we got higher and higher! Traffic everywhere as Dunston Bank and Whickham Bank were closed due to the snow. Its forecast for minus 3 tonight, so if this lot doesn't turn back to rain and melt away, we're going to have a jolly old time getting to work in the morning! It's a long time since I've seen a snow plough clearing the roads, but we passed two on the way home from work. Here are a couple of photos of the garden, plus a very nice pigeon with a white tail who visited the bird table at the weekend. If anyone knows what kind of pigeon this is, please leave a comment.

Tiny conifers

The snow didn't last very long and it's all melted away - the sun is shining and it is a crisp, chilly day. I thought I would replant the pansy plants which the birds have pecked out in their search for insects and also plant the tiny conifer cuttings that someone gave to Andrea - I haven't a clue what they are, or how big they will grow, but it will be interesting to watch them develop. I'll take some photos from time to timeAll the Christmas china and decorations have been packed away for next year - even though the family said I was very mean - the tree and other decorations have been up since 1st December and were beginning to look dusty!

I like to look at my Spode 'Christmas Rose' tea set in the dresser, but am too nervous to actually use it - I must have been feeling flush when I bought this set - I certainly couldn't afford it now!

I have been collecting Spode 'Christmas Tree' tableware for about thirty years and have quite a collection now. It all comes out on 1st December and we use it every day until it is packed away for the next time

A Winter Wonderland

We woke this morning to proper snow. To my fellow bloggers in Australia and New Zealand - don't you wish you could wake up to this?

Happy New Year

It's New Years Eve and I've just got round to sorting out the Christmas photos. The weather is now very mild and amazingly, some of my roses are still flowering. Above is 'Mary Rose' an 'old english rose'. We have all had a nasty sick/tummy bug which is going around so haven't been anywhere over the holiday, not even to Church, so as not to spread the germs - a quiet time, very little cooking but lots of book reading. As everyone knows, we love chocolate, and I can't believe how many chocolate goodies are lying unopened !! piles of it - I don't think the diet will be starting as planned on 1st January.

Winter Jasmine looking great on the fence

Spring is not far away - the bulbs are just peeping through

Christmas dinner table and below Santas been!!!!

Happy New Year !!

Christmas pie .....

I was so inspired by Gordon Ramsays recipe (Gordons Christmas Pie - BBC Good Food Magazine) that I just had to try it out. Then I read another recipe for a chocolate desert which contains not one, but two Terrys Dark Chocolate Oranges, Grand Marnier and loads of double cream - I've bought the two choc oranges, but will try to wait until Christmas to make it!!As well as eight hard boiled eggs, it contained a fillet of pork, a pound of pork sausages, a tin of lean ham. a chicken breast and a small onion, all wrapped in a hot-water-crust pastry. I served it for tea on Sunday and it had almost disappeared by bed time!! I will be making this again between Christmas and New Year.

We really enjoyed the Rat Pack concert on Saturday night - here I am with my little sister Jackie during the interval. Dean, Frank and Sammy D. Jr almost sounded better than the real thing, and yes, they did sing loads of Christmas songs - excellent.

ps The missing Santa tree ornament has still not turned up ..... oh dear, I think he's run off with Jaki's (Australia) bird ornaments - she's can't find her box of six!!

The first snow of winter ........

Saturday 8th December and we've got the first snow of winter! The weather men have promised snow in the past few weeks, but it keeps missing us out. It's very wet snow, but is just starting to show on the grass in the garden. The red geraniums up on the deck are STILL flowering, even though we've had a number of frosty nights - amazing. It's very chilly, but the house is decorated for Christmas, the fire is cosy and warm, the bread is rising in the kitchen for tea and tonight we're going to the 'Rat Pack' show at the Sage in Gateshead with Jackie and Joanne - sure to have a great night and I hope whoever is singing Dean Martin songs includes 'Let it Snow'

The fireplace is decorated for Christmas

Christmas Tree 2007 - will try for a better photograph later in the week. We've been searching for a missing decoration this week. Andrea's Nana gave her 6 glass Santa Claus ornaments when she was a baby and five of them have been broken over the last 31 years. The remaining Santa lives in the china cabinet, inside the sugar basin of the Japanese tea set, to keep him safe and we all saw him there just a few weeks ago - however, he's completely disappeared!!

Mid November

Well, it's mid-November and the house is full of the smell of Christmas Cake baking in the oven - lovely! Too wet underfoot to garden so I popped out to take some picturesI love winter pansies - such cheerful little plants and no trouble at all. I've got them in pots and borders. The flowers will die off as the weather gets worse, but they'll bounce back in the Spring.

The brightest flower in the garden to-day is this purple primrose

. The leaves have all dropped from the trees, most of them on to my lawn!
This is the nicotiana that lived through last winter - it's still flowering!! I'm keeping an eye on it to see if it manages to last another year
The geraniums on the deck are still flowering outside. The cuttings I took a while ago have all taken and are safely indoors
The pink patio rose is still going strongMy wallflowers can't wait until Spring !!
Poor, sad, collapsed hydrangea - this is the hydrangea that collapsed under the weight of it's huge flowers back in the Summer when we had all that terrible rain. I'll have to be brave and give it a good old prune!!

The litle viburnam is covered with white/pink flowers and clusters of buds

I tried to take a photo of the yellow winter jasmine, but I didn't want to walk over the wet soil. Anyway, you can just about see it on the fence

The garden in November .....

The big cherry tree in the front garden is looking stunning in autumn colours, but one more gust of wind and I'll be picking up piles of leaves again. My compost bin is full to the top already. We've had a fairly busy week in the garden, pruning the smaller cherry tree in the middle of the front lawn as it was getting too leggy. We also tidied the tall Leylandi hedge in the back garden. No time to garden today, but I did buy some more pansies which I will plant later in the week. I'll also try to do some more tidying up which will probably be the last chance before winter sets in. The clocks went back a week ago and I just can't get used to the fact that it's dark at 5.00pm !! Here are the trees over my left hand hedge - very pretty, but not many leaves left.

I've still got lots of colour in the back garden from roses, red geraniums, purple pansies, berries and the fading heads of my huge pink hydrangea bush. Even the spring wallflowers and some of the primroses have started to flower! It's been fairly mild and dry for the time of year, but weather forecast is for much, much cooler weather in the week ahead. Next weekend we're off to the NEC in Birmingham for the craft exhibition. We're also collecting a new cutting machine which Andrea pre-ordered - I believe it weighs in excess of 10kgs so we'll have fun carrying that back to the car, along with the huge pile of stuff she usually buys!!Andrea bought this adorable snowman - he's supposed to be a Christmas decoration, but he's so big, he's standing in the sitting room - I wonder how long he's going to be there ????

Autumn walk

Andrea and I had a lovely walk in Thornley Woods this afternoon armed with a camera each and took some great pictures. We only saw one squirrel, but we made too much noise walking over the leaves and scared him off.

I love walking through crisp golden leaves, it's almost as good as snow

Andrea snapped me taking photos behind this tree

We were fine going down the various sets of rough steps, to the stream at the bottom, but when it came to climbing back up through the woods it was hard going. (Especially when a family at the top of the last flight of steps shouted for us to come up, so we felt we had to keep going even though my legs felt like jelly!!!

Elderberries

Holly Berries

The last of the Blackberries


The bark of this tree was amazing!

We both had rosy cheeks when we'd finished our walk

Andrea

Autumn in the garden

Early October was very damp with mist at nights but now we're into mid-October and it's bright, sunny days and very cold nights - we had to scrape the frost off the windscreen this morning! I've done a little bit of work in the garden. There is still plenty of colour and interest in the garden and plenty of jobs to be getting on with. I've done a bit of tidying up and pruning in the front garden and we dug up (with the aid of a circular saw !!) a root which had travelled at least six feet under the lawn from the big cherry tree - hopefully it won't decide to fall over in the next heavy winds!

Centre of one of the flowers on the baby Echinacea plant


Baby echinacea with purple hebe in the background

Slightly enlarged conifer bed at the left hand side of the garden

One of my little acers seems to have given up and died, there are a few leaves left alive but the rest have shrivelled, perhaps not enough water? so I've left it in its pot on the patio and will hope for the best. I decided to take the other one out of its' pot and plant it in the garden. We enlarged the small conifer bed slightly and managed to squeeze it in there. We also moved my little blue fir tree (which will probably grow to 30ft!! in a few years time), first up on to the back of the rockery, but it didn't look happy, then into the left hand border. (We had to use a pick axe to make the planting hole big enough due to stones and roots from the trees and the hedge) My new highly perfumed old fashioned 'Rosa Mary Rose' has got 5 buds, I didn't expect any this year and I'm waiting for the first flower to open up - if it doesn't open soon I will cut this bud and take it indoors to encourage it!

I've got a good crop of berries for the birds, they really brighten up the corner of the garden

I've taken out most of the bedding plants and put in lots of miniature daffodils and winter pansies. I dug up the carnations and have put them in the front garden with some of the lavender plants which were getting a bit leggy. I took cuttings of red and white geraniums and also repotted three of the best ones from the pots on the patio. They are all doing OK in the utility room, but the fuschia cuttings didn't take at all.

The right hand side of the garden. The patio roses are still producing nice flowers, but one of the dward conifers in the small bed has died.

September in the garden...

Hello, September has arrived. The last few months has been declared as officially the wettest summer since records began in the UK, typical that now it is September the sun is shining!

This is Andrea again, recording the events in our garden. Mam has been in hospital for a small operation, she's back home and recovering now but obviously no gardening or computing for a while so I'll be in charge of the blog for a little while :)

Our free sunflowers thanks to the birds, they very kindly dropped seeds from the bird table directly into our patio pots!

This is our new clematis that we bought in the market in Hexham a few weeks ago, my Dad finally got around to putting up a new piece of trellis for it to grow up - poor thing has been struggling to stay upright in the horrible weather we've been having lately.

Before Mam went into hospital we had an adventure in my mini cooper to Harrogate to visit the RHS garden, Harlow Carr. We spent a lovely afternoon with the added luxury of sunshine and a cake from Betty's teashop.

Then, after we had walked around the gardens we popped into the plant nursery and bought an old fashioned rose called 'Mary Rose', it's pink with a beautiful old rose perfume. A blue geranium called Rozanne also jumped into our trolley as well as an Echinacea purpurea 'Maxima', we had admired all of these plants growing around the garden so the little mini car was packed to it's capacity on the journey home.

I'll pop back in soon to keep the garden blog updated, love from Andrea xx

Normal service will resume soon

Mam's shoulder is feeling a lot better and she'll be blogging again soon. Whilst she's not doing any gardening she's planning a huge list of jobs for us all to do!

I've popped on to share some photographs of our garden visitor who arrived yesterday.

Although we get lots of birds in our garden we've never had a squirrel in this garden, he caused quite a stir when he arrived.

Love from Andrea x

Service Temporarily Suspended...

Service Temporarily Suspended... whilst Mam recovers from damaged muscles in her shoulder. She has her arm in a sling so just as well it is raining as she can't garden anyway. This is Andrea updating the blog with some photographs that Mam took last week.

Hoping for a lovely sunflower - we didn't actually plant any sunflowers but we did feed the birds with sunflower seeds! The first marigolds.

The geraniums are doing very well.
The ivy is growing faster than the busy lizzies!

Also last week we had an adventure at Beamish Museum which is not far from where we live and is like stepping back in time. We had great fun riding on a tram, going back to school and buying sweeties in the olde sweetie shoppe. The most interesting place was the old co-operative store which brought back many memories for Mam from when she was a little girl and was sent on errands to buy butter by the quarter pound and sugar which was weighed out and packed in blue bags and of course a half pound of broken biscuits. Woe betide her if she forgot to giver her mothers store dividend number. Grown ups were always served before children so sometimes you had to queue for hours. I've pinched some of photographs from my blog but there are some more here.

Hopefully Mam will be back in blogdom soon!

Love from Andrea xx

Italy 2007

We had a wonderful time in Italy - first week in Jesolo near Venice and the second week on Lake Garda at Riva. The weather was perfect, hot and sunny. We spent most of the time lazing by the pool relaxing - just what we needed.

Gondolas
Venetian Veg

Lake Garda

View from our hotel balcony
Riva del Garda
House in Malcesine
Italian Garden
Italian Ice Cream (of which we ate plenty!!)