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!!)

Should we build an ark ?

Should we build an ark? Who would believe this is SUMMER, the schools have broken up for their 6 week holiday and the central heating is back on. As I write this all I can hear is the torrential rain which continues to flood the UK with many parts under water and more expected as 16 rivers are under a 'Severe Flood Warning'. Thousands of motorists are still stranded on motorways in the south of England and even central London, Berkshire, Warwickshire, The Cotswolds and many other places suffered flash floods. My plants are taking a battering and my beautiful pink hydrangea has almost collapsed under the weight of all those huge flowers dripping with water. I took a picture of some flower heads (above) during a dry spell yesterday and show below the gap and broken branches in the centre of the bush - it's much worse this morning, the flowers are hanging down to ground level but it's too wet to photograph - I fear it will be completely ruined by the time I return from holiday. The peach lilly is looking lovely, but won't last long in this weather. Look at the sunflower plants in my pot of busy lizzies - the birds must have dropped the seeds in, because I didn't plant them. This is my last post until I return from a warm and very sunny holiday - I'll be very disappointed if it's as wet as the UK!

The day that the rain came down ......

It's been a fairly pleasant day, even though I've been at work since 8.30a.m with sun and variable cloud, and fairly warm. However, Andrea and I popped out after work in pleasant sunshine, no coats or brollies, then it began to rain, then hailstone, then thunder and lightning - worse and worse and worse and when we drove back UP the steep hill, we had to drive through a torrent of water - very scary!! - all of the drains and manhole covers had been forced off and the water literally shot up out of the road!! We had to drive around the debris and thought we'd never get home. We even saw in some places the tarmac on the road had just cracked open. We got home safely, to find that the electricity had gone off and most of alarms in the houses round about were ringing merrily away. Thankfully, the storm passed and as I write this note, the sun is shining once more - let's hope it stays that way. Roll om our summer holiday to Italy on Sunday - we're hoping for hot sunny dry days!! We saw on the news that various places in the UK had been hit with flash floods, even some of the people who had suffered terrible floods only weeks ago have been flooded again - what a topsy turvy summer this is turning out to be. Andrea took these pictures, one is of the street and one of the neighbours over the road.

I've got a very clever sister

My great-nephew Jack is 4 years old - here is the cake my sister Jackie made for him - isn't it cute! and isnt she clever? Of course, Jack thinks nothing is too difficult for his Grandma and he really wanted a dragon cake for his party. The spine down the back of the dragon are pieces of Toblerone and the flames coming out of the nostrils are red licquorice

Lazy Sunday

Back Border
Just a bit of dead-heading this afternoon and looking at the flowers. The Buddlia flowers are in bloom so we'll be having lots of butterflies after the nectar. More flowers on the hostas and the back border is looking very colourful - the slugs didn't eat all of the petunias!

Front garden tridy-up

On Friday I spent a couple of hours weeding and trimming shrubs in the front garden. Here are a couple of pictures of the front rockery (the whole site slopes, so I have my fair share of rockeries). The ornamental cherry trees are covered in bright red cherries which drop all over the lawn. Pity I can't eat them - has anyone tried them? they look just like edible cherries.

It's summer at last!

The right hand side of the garden

At last, a few days of sunshine! Our lovely friend Sue from New Zealand is over in England for her daughters graduation at Oxford University - well done Corrie on your M.A. Hons (Classics) have a great day on Saturday. We sat in the sunshine on Sunday afternoon and had a good old chinwag. I've had a very bad cold/virus so haven't been in the garden for a while, hence no blog. All that rain we had plus a few days of sunshine have brought out my pink hydrangeas but the bush seems to have doubled in size compared to last year. The lillies in the borders and pots are beautiful and the purple hebe is dripping with flowers. I love the combination of white daisies, white lillies and pink carnations and roses which are in pots and my little rose border are a treat for the eyes. The borders on the left side and the right side are looking very nice and here are the photos I took to-day.

The hydrangea bush seems to have doubled in size!

The left hand border

Buds and birds

Sunshine and heavy showers today. Here is one of my woodpigeons which visit the bird-table every day (I also get two collared doves, bluetits, a couple of blackbirds and a robin) I took this photo myself, but had to be very patient and actually took about 20 pictures till I got the one I wanted

The buds on the Stargazer lillies are just about to burst into flower and the pink hydrangea flowerheads are almost open, another couple of weeks and they'll be a blaze of colour. I am getting a second flush of flowers on my blue alpine clematis which covers the fence behind the garage and the peach patio rose is in full bloom, despite the amount of rain we've had.