Cats in the Kitchen, Flora in the Garden

I am now working fully in Autumn mode, I started it this Sunday, which was a rainy. This is how I like to spend my cold weather Sundays. My husband gets up bright and early as usual, and I snuggle back under the quilt for a lie-in. I then get up and open the bathroom window wide and run a hot bath. I enjoy this leisurely bath fragranced with my favourite oils, the water beautifull warm, yet lovely cold air coming through the window. After my bath I go downstairs where my husband has cereal and coffee waiting for me. Whilst I eat my cereal there is a piece of bread toasting in the toaster which I enjoy buttered and with cherry conserve, because it is a Sunday, then I partake of another cup of coffee. Whilst I am eating my breakfast, I have my secret indulgence which is listening to the omnibus edition on BBC radio of The Archers.

This is a radio soap an everyday story of country folk set in a mythical village in England called Ambridge. Archer is the name of the main families in the village. It is on the radio everyday for fifteen minutes but I like to listen to the omnibus on a Sunday. I have been a fan of The Archers for thirty two years. I think some people might think it is a bit of a cult thing, but I am a firm longtime fan, there are characters I love and characters I hate, but it is fimrly established as part of my Sundays. I don't know if any of you have heard of this programme or not. After the Archers my Sunday is just what I want it to be on that particular day. No firm plans is part of the fun.


Yesterday there was a lovely sunny warm hour or two at mid-day, so I took my lunch, coffe, and book into the garden for a pleasant hour's reading. Then I got to work tiding up some of the plants, pulled up all my sunflowers, to hang up their heads to dry, collected some minature sweetpea seeds, and emptied a couple more troughs ready to plant bulbs. This put me in mind to post some more gardening photographs, off the last film I had developed. The photo above top right, is the last of my wonderful deep pink stargazer lilies. The photograph above is of the side wall leading to the alleyway up the side of the barn, plants in this bed, are my lavender bush, cotoneaster, ivy, broom and other shrubs, it's my deep green corner, most of the year.


The above photograph shows my beautiful purple phlox that came from Germany, I bought them at a continental market that was in my local town, there was a nurseryman there from Germany who had many beautiful plants at really reasonable prices. These phlox are in their third summer and have really flourished, they are slightly larger than my English phlox. You can also see the start of my sweetpeas climbing up the wall.


This is one of the sunflowers of this summer, I thought at one point they were not going to do anything, they were a different variety to the ones I usually grow, they certainly did not grow as high as last year's but I have to say their heads were very large. Even so, it's back to my old common or garden variety next year.


The final gardening photograph, sorry about the light quality on this one, shows the selection of pots lining both sides of my alley way that leads up the side of the barn and the house next door to my house. At the very height of summer, this was just full of beautiful colour. Lots of petunias, lilies, lobelia between pots of herbs and succulents

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In amongst my cutting out of numerous Daisy Faes, fabric animals and making felt brooches, I have been sewing these little squares, which I enjoy doing as relaxation. I try to make them look slightly rough and frayed around the edges to add to a shabby sort of quality. I thought I would post two here to show you them, and then I have got one in mind to send to somebody.

I having been having some serious thoughts, after talking with a friend about opening some sort of web store to sell my handmade items. I used to sell years ago at craft fayre type events, but you have the problems and expense of travelling to and from them and then paying for your table. It might be easier to sell on the net, I know about ebay stores and have been registered with etsy in case I want to purchase anything, but I am seriously considering opening an etsy shop. Has anyone any knowledge about selling on these and has anybody any preferences for either ebay or etsy? Let me know because if I decide to do this I need to activate the idea pretty swiftly to sell things for Christmas.


I don't think my uploads of these little squares, show them very well, I just stuck them in the scanner, the actual squares that is, and scanned them straight into the computer. They seem to look a bit rumpled, which they don't in real life, but at least you get the idea of them.
Well it has actually taken me twenty four hours to get this blog posted, as my mouse died a sudden death yesterday, and I had to travel to my nearest town this morning to buy a new one. Also bought a new mousemat and just as an experiment put it down and tried my old mouse before installing my new one. Guess what? the old mouse came back to life, so it can't have liked the mousemat, well I now have a spare mouse for the future.