By the way...

The break was good. And the pressure is not so great as it was. The afternoon after the moaning post I heard that they have cancelled the Festival of Quilts this year. This is 😔 sad for a great number of people.

But the flip side for some of us is the pressure release of not having to work to a deadline when you have have the extra pressure of this stay at home thing.

Pansy tree 

Anyway, I have been spending time in the garden stitching, Doing Easter things, wasting time watching things on Facebook, cooking and other holiday things.

These photos were taken last week when the weather was lovely.

 Bleeding Heart just coming out.

Heather they have been doing well for some months now.

And my favourite bulb flower. Snake’s Head Fritillary.
Different shades of the amazing checkerboard pattern these flowers have.

I like Thankful Thursday

This week I like the lush flowers and plants in the garden...
This was nearly ready to post yesterday, but I was on a deadline. So it has to be today.

So excited about the little seed 'helicopters' growing on the acer by the back fence.

They are so cute! Like little bright red flowers.

I thought I better take a photo of my husband's hosta before the slugs decimate it.

and the lovely red roses on our climbing rose,


AND ...
Do you remember they mystery plant by the back door?

Well it is doing the beanstalk thing again. But the cool thing is that my friend was here and used an app on her phone about identifying plants. It is a Plume Poppy!! Well, I must say I tried to find out sometime ago and did come up with that name, but really couldn't believe it. It bears no resemblance to any poppy I have ever seen!

finally, a few detail shots of the twirls on our neighbour's passion fruit,
 
 
A bit like the phone cords we used to have in the 'old' days.

To see what the others like, follow the link to LeeAnna's blog.

Cyclamen

A bit more colour even though we had a frost yesterday.

These are cyclamen living at the left side of the front garden.

They have finally begun to spread. These were the type you are gifted and are meant to keep as houseplants. But when they finished, I planted them instead.

They have done well. They are often there in the spring, having lasted the winter. But they have spread slowly compared to the little ones on the other side of the front garden. I think I started with 2 or 3.

For these normal ones, I think I had around a small bag of corms to start with. They were meant to be planted outdoors, so they thrive under the Mock Orange Blossom bush. They are much smaller.

And they have been generous with their spreading. Even some come up in the grass! I would like to get some different colours.

Cyclamen are my most favourite flower. The Thoughtful Man gave me a plant when we first started dating. I don't think I had ever heard of them before. I was amazed at how they grow - twirled up and pointing down. Then before you can blink, almost, they open and fling their petals backward. This is a link to a time lapse video which shows different buds opening.
The Maker loves breaking the rules for creation now and then!

Birthday plant - just a fiver!

On Wednesday it was the birthday of the Thoughtful Man

We went to the Garden centre. I had a voucher for a free cup of coffee...He likes coffee. I had hot chocolate.

We had in mind a plant or plants for a space in the back garden.

He finally settled on this one. A Hebe 'Inspiration'

The label said £16. When we got to the till, it said £7.50! I had a voucher for £2.50. So, it was only £5! (Good for the pocket). Plus I had a voucher for double reward points. So, something else will cost less down the road.
That was a good day out!
So, we got home, and when we got to the front door, straight away we realised the plant was just right for the space where he had dug out the overgrown ivy.

And within 15 minutes, it was already planted!

I like the variety of leaf textures and shapes.
Looking forward to it growing with the other bushes there. I am not sure what the whole flowering season is, but the purple will go with the lavender.

And another Happy Birthday to the Thoughtful Man!

I like Thankful Thursday

I have been making progress on the prep for my next Ramshackle piece. I like this very much. Why does it take so much effort to get started - destroying the words in my head like; this is not going to work, you will end up doing it wrong, and such.
So, I told myself, no one else is doing this, so when I am doing it, it is right. I need to write that on the wall or something!

I like this for when my body thinks it doesn't want to do the above work.

I like the unusual colours of this acer by the back fence. It is usually more of an over all colour, but the summer was so hot, it has come out a bit more variegated.

Design inspiration!

Holly likes safe places! It has been so windy just lately (you don't really have to send the left over winds here from America!). Holly gets afraid of the sounds of the wind inside. This is because doors bang shut. (sometimes the people can't live with all the doors having a doorstop!) The doors banging was her original fear, but now she has realised the wind causes it. So, she dashes outside if she can. Or follows me around like a lost sheep. Outside is Safe. She loves the smells the wind brings!

But sometimes you need a bunker, so this one has developed over the past couple of years. Originally the plants to the left were growing all the way to the plants on the right. But now it is Safe.
Since yesterday, there is a new one under the elderberry bush...quite deep.

I like finding shapes that look like other things.

I think this puddle on the table in the back garden looks a bit like a poppy head.

And so back to work.
If you want to see some of the other likes, go to LeeAnna's blog and check out the links.

I like Thankful Thursday

I like it when solutions are easier than you thought. I like discovering sensible things when you thought it would be hard.
I liked the proportions of amount of fabric choices I had laid out on the table. How to translate that to larger on the design wall?
Oh, the Thoughtful Man says times it by 1 1/2. ok I can do that with my calculator.

and then tweak from there to get this.

But something is not quite right...and...after thinking about it, I think it wants the sea on top. Oh dear. a lot of unpinning and possible loss of the proportion...wait!
I have the image in my view screen on the camera. Turn the camera upside down. and there we are!

Ta Da!
Still dreading the unpinning thing in real life.
And duh, it is pinned to a sheet hanging from skirt hangers...just flip the sheet over!
Ok it just looks like fabric to you, but I am now confident for the next step.

I like discovering the wonderful sunsets. We have had quite a few lately.
over the houses in front of ours

including reflection on solar panels

walk down past the houses for a wider view

I like that swirl bit towards the middle.
and turning around towards the east a bit

My Grandfather's favourite colour was skybluepink.

Then, walking back to the house in the dusk, I see the roses in the same colour as the main part.

cool!

Today's colour is brought to you by orangeyellowpink.

Also liking that my cataract surgery date is in about a month rather than January as they had implied.

Looking forward to losing the one-eyed pirate view of life - especially my work!

I like Thankful Thursday

I am rather exhausted...but for good reason. (Sorry, I was that tired, that this post didn't happen!)

I like that this pile in my studio

became this!

Thames Valley Contemporary Textiles Gallery at West Country Quilt and Textile Show.
The exhibition was already getting good comments before we even got most of it up!
Thank you to Jane B and Carol N who worked together with me to get it up. It was a long day. I left here around 8am for the 2hr drive to Bristol. I didn't get home til 8pm!

Also, another like - cheese twills or crisps. Inspired by some of the cooking shows and using up some dairy free cheese which even the men around here think was Very Smelly. When they have been baked, the smell is much more tolerable and they taste very good.
This was a lactose free mature cheddar. You can do this with normal cheddar, too. That is where the original idea started.
before - piles of shredded cheese

after - baked!

Because it was more like normal cheese, it still had a lot of fat that rendered out of it. These have been given to the men who like mature cheese because it is still tooooo strong for me.

The Thoughtful Man has been gardening. These are Hollyhock seeds.

But why they have to hang about by the cooker, I don't know.

I like words and finding out about them. So, palimpsest - this word intrigues me. I know what it means - in a sense - because people use it a lot.

and then it came to mind when I discovered this at the back of one of the rows of galleries at the Bristol Show.
It actually means, according to Wikipedia, a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document. I knew about that, too, but I didn't know it had a specific word to describe it. So, now I know about the old meaning and about what the word now describes.

I like getting a chance to meet up with friends we haven't seen for a Long Time! Our friends, visiting from Australia, are here just a short time in the UK, so we decided to share their time with other friends together at church.

No, no one has any connection to potatoes, but I forgot to take a photo! These photos are about making potato salad for the shared meal.
Because it was the day after the exhibition set up you saw at the top, I ended up sitting on the seat of my walker to peel and cut these. I normally don't peel - takes too much time and peelings don't kill you. But this was a special event as we hadn't seen these friends for 7 years!

And so, Friday became the rest day. Including considering some of the ideas which have been coming forward during the summer.

As usual go to LeeAnna's blog to see what others like this week.

Hollyhocks

On the other side of the front door

The hollyhocks in the front garden have really enjoyed the fact that they are no longer competing with the ivy. (we had someone take it down and then the Thoughtful Man dug out the 'trunk' and the roots.)

The stems of the hollyhocks are very thick, enabling them to stand on their own without being staked.

Just a few blossoms now, but they should be pretty when they are full of blossom.

I would like to grow some other colours, if possible.

Roses

Apparently, this is a good year for roses.

just by the door in the front garden

The Thoughtful Man is very conscientious about deadheading the roses. It makes the Roses keep producing flowers longer. He usually snips them when they are about to lose petals.

Because of the warm weather, they are going from bud to full-blown quite quickly. I asked him if we could save the petals this year. We did a bit of that one year, but not purposefully.

I didn't expect so many! This is about the 4th/5th time I have had a batch of petals to dry.
I have been spreading them and tossing them periodically. They feel so silky smooth! With the heat, they are drying fast. I have been filling loads of dishes and vases around the house.

Some of the roses we have.
When we bought them, we looked for scented ones. But the lovely regular rose scent, not the perfumey one that we smelled in one of the RHS gardens. I don't know how to descibe the difference, but I think most of ours are like David Austin roses.

I love yellow roses.

This bush has a darker yellow than the cluster above.

These orange ones look amazing when they are fully open. Such different orange shades and variations.

I usually put them in a low dish of water for a bit just to get a bit of pleasure from them for a while.

There is one called 'chocolate'. But at the moment, it just has buds.

But I absolutely love the depth of colour in it. Actually more like cinnamon.
The photo isn't really showing it. But here is a close up of a couple of the petals in the mix that is drying.

And somehow I wasn't consulted about this purple veined rose being planted alongside the red through yellow roses!

But it does make its own statement there in the shade of the firethorn bush.

We do have a white one, which blends well with the yellows because it looks cream colour as it ages. My mother-in-law gave it to us for our 25th wedding anniversary.