Meme time!

I have been tagged in a meme by the lovely Jac of Reflections in Raindrops - a blog name that I adore as it's something I'm always striving to photograph!

Well this meme word is quite a new one to me and I don't really know how to use it, so I'll just explain for anyone else who doesn't understand, that it's something like when I have received a blog award (only there is no actual award here); you just answer some questions about yourself and then nominate some blogs to pass it all on to. It's a way of helping to promote other blogs.

The rules are really simple:
- Post five random facts about yourself.
- Choose five deserving blogs with less than 200 followers to nominate and link into your post.
- Tell your nominees that they have been chosen by leaving a comment on their blog.
- Answer the five questions the tagger has asked.
- Ask five questions of your chosen nominees.
- No tag-backs.


Five Random Facts about me:

I'm sure I did one of these before when I received a blogger award last year. I may be repeating myself.

1. My motto seems to be "never do today what you can put off until tomorrow"

2. I loathe autumn, particularly the months of November and December. Winter is not so bad!

3. The thought of anything pink decor-wise in my house repulses me, yet it's my favourite flower colour!

4. I was born in Fiji and for a period of time whilst living in England I was classed as an 'Alien'. Yes, officially! :-)

5. I once met Lonnie Donnegan and he said I made a nice cup of tea!


The Five Blogs I've chosen:

Sarah's blog A little slice of Eden
This is a true gardening blog and Sarah not only features her own beautiful English garden but also other gardens that she visits.

Kim's blog Mantid Microcosm
The only non gardening blog, but a blog about the tiny insect life living within Kim's Australian garden.

Miss Ladybug's blog and website Miss Ladybug's Garden
Miss Ladybug has a great blog full of gardening hints and tips and many recipes for preserving.

Steve's blog Mr Tomato King
Steve knows everything there is to know about growing tomatoes and his blog is full of helpful tips. 

Brittanygirl's blog Living in 22
This blog is just about what it says in the title; it's about BG's life in dept 22 (Cotes d'Armor) in Brittany, France. She keeps livestock, grows veggies, has a polytunnel and takes lovely photos of everything and anything.


Questions to answer:

1. What, if anything, have you done that you have later regretted?

I guess it must be the time my 14 year old friend and neighbour taught 17 year old me how to inhale cigarette smoke properly.

2. What do you consider to be your worst habit?

Question 1 will give you a clue. Yes, I'm one of those smelly smokers. Yeah, I know!

3. What is your favourite thing to do to relax?

It was pottering about the garden but now it's pottering about the garden taking photos!

4. If you could travel back in time and spend a year living in another time, what era would you choose and why?

I'd go back to the punk era 77/78 as that was probably the most fun time in my life - although I had to go to college and study for exams at the time there was also plenty of time to have a ball before serious stuff like having to work started!

5. Post up one picture that you feel defines your 2012

This photo sums up my year because it's of my 'wildflowers for pollinators' meadow, which was an experiment last year I started in an area of my veg patch, to see just what interesting species of pollinating insects would come to visit from a packet of seeds that I sowed.

It covers my love for flowers, my new found interest in all things buggy, my new(ish) love of photography, and being sited in my veg patch covers my love for veg growing too, in a roundabout way!

My 5 questions for you:

1. When did you first get interested in gardening? (or for Kim, bugs)

2. If money was no object and you could travel to any ONE place in the world, where would you go, and why?

3. Do you have any plans for 2013 that involve something that you didn't do in 2012?

4. What is your favourite comfort food?

5. Which book are you reading at the moment?

Wet wet wet

Nah, not that awful 80s pop group who I always thought were really drippy. It's the drippy garden I'm talking about! It hasn't really rained for about 4 whole days although we've had some of the very light rain we call here 'pissy drizzle'. It's just that the grass and everything is sopping, and that makes working in the garden hard as I'm rotating about 4 pairs of gardening gloves around, always a couple drying by the fire as I wear the others until they are sopping wet and muddy (which takes about 5 minutes actually).

There are photo opportunites when it is damp like this but I'm really trying to get on with jobs that I should have done back in November and December, so I can start on the winter jobs. I'm so behind!

Anyway, here's a photo of my lake and that cherry tree which has flowers on right now, which I took out of the 2nd floor shower room, the only room in the house upstairs which actually looks out over the back garden and lake.  You can see how spindly the tree is but at least the blossom shows up and looks pink from here. The ripples in the lake are not caused by the Breton equivalent of the Loch Ness monster but my useless ducks. Useless because they don't lay eggs any more (neither do the hens right now either). I am buying eggs for goodness sake!

More photos of drippy things, because it's more interesting than pictures of muddy wellies and gloves.

Horse Chestnut branch - do you think that's why it's called that, because of
the horseshoe shaped marks on the bark? I really must look that up one day.
That's a raindrop reflecting a branch by the way.

'They' say that lichen indicates good clean air - we have tons of lichen here.

Drippy discarded duck feathers from the useless ducks

PSB leaves - always covered in droplets it seems

Ditto the purple Curly Kale - I love how photogenic this plant is.
Which is just as well, as despite mild weather it's not growing much!

Lime (Tilia) seeds pods and bract

I decided to be brave and show you my weedy old veggie patch, just to prove there is a bit of work in progress. I have dug a sort of L shape round the edge of the bed with the leeks in (top left). The nicely dug bit in the middle is where I've planted my garlic.

As you can see below, that's not all of it, there's two more plots on the right and I haven't even pulled out the dead things in those plots yet.

And that's just the veg patch! There's the rest of the garden to attack. But I did get my red and blackcurrants pruned, so that's something.

I've also finally cut back the dead growth on the asparagus, which I should have done a couple of months ago. I haven't mentioned my asparagus bed yet on this blog, because growing it from seed is a long process and takes three years before you can start to harvest it. I'll feature it when it emerges in the spring - only one more year to wait until we can eat it!

Cherry blossom and garden birds

I'm so glad it's January and all is back to normal again! I now feel renewed vigour to get back out into the garden as I have so many chores to do. At least I have got my garlic in and have made a start on clearing up and digging the horribly weedy messy veg patch.

As I'm not likely to show you photos of that just yet I have taken some photos of an ornamental cherry which is covered in blossom. I thought this was odd because it also flowers in the spring but often has some flowers in late autumn and early winter too. At the moment it's quite covered in flowers but they are not as showy as it looks in spring, and as you can see in the first photo, against grey sky the flowers hardly show unless you get close up. Still, in January, who cares - just having any flowers is great! A friend suggested to me that it may be Prunus x subhirtella, which having read about it, I think it probably is. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/3345615/Winter-beauty-Prunus-x-subhirtella-Autumnalis.html

Ornamental Cherry blossom

A close up of the centre of the flower, just after a shower

Some of my Primroses are covered in flowers already!

I've been practising taking bird photos on our feeders but finding it rather hard as they are very flitty, and even when they are settled on the feeders they are still continually moving as they eat. I need far more practice but these are the best of what I've taken so far.

Blue Tit. We have tons of these cute little birds.

Two Blueys (as I call them) and a Great Tit

Great Tit

A little Blue Tit in my wiggly Hazel shrub

From further away - a Blue Tit and Greenfinch sharing the fatballs

Great Spotted Woodpecker
Regular visitors to the fatballs and peanuts!

Starling taken through the window on the last of the apples
in our orchard across the road

My OH took this one through the double glazed window,
even so it's not bad. This is a Sparrow Hawk who obviously missed
grabbing a small bird from the feeders!