Summery Gardening Things

It may well be six degrees today and drizzling greyly, but I am wearing thigh-high socks instead of woolly tights and listening obsessively to The Pierces and The Mamas and Papas – I don’t care what you think, summer is definitely here.

I was going to blog about my scenic painting photos from January, which have finally managed to ‘find a destination’ (apparently) on my laptop... but quite frankly, all I can think about is gardening.

So while the weather sorts itself out a bit more, let me share with you some photographs from last summer at my old house...

My little slither of garden was nestled under a huge sycamore tree and was very dry with practically no sunlight, making it nigh-on impossible to grow things in! Here is a raised shelf I made to try and catch some more light. As you can see, I’m not really into minimalism...

 Spot the following - two points for each:

-          A handmade candlestick, originally from the Picture Of Dorian Gray installation

-          A stone painted to look like a ladybird

-          A slightly wilted-looking tomato leaf

-          Three chilli plants with cunning copper slug repellers

-          A pot stand robbed out of a German dustbin

-          A lump of green driftwood

-          A morose-looking toad

-          A tiny headless stylised pottery figure from a set model

-          A broken rear-view mirror from my first Mini

-          My (former) jelly-shoes

-          A piece of mirror out of the skip at drama-school

-          A broken vase

-      A tile-effect bit of set from Dead Dog At Drycleaners

Another shelf-photo, featuring

-          A tiny broken cup, formerly owned by Rowena

-          The hand of a doll, brought as part of a box-full at a car-boot from a man gleefully selling off his ex-wife’s crafting supplies

-          A bashed up spice tin, gleaned from a fly-tipping site I used to browse

-          A naked lady tankard, formerly my Dad’s

-          A bee home, cunningly created from a can (spaghetti hoops, if my memory serves me correctly)

-          Another bit of pottery set, from Salome

-          A carnation, loving propagated by yours truly

-          A glow-in-the-dark skull, from, er, Asda.

A pillar I painted orange. I can’t be bothered to go into much more detail, but I will tell you this:

-          The candle-holder thing I found squashed in a local field

-          The broken bit of cup I found outside the doors of Ikea. It was made, glazed, packaged, transported, unpacked, stacked, brought and then dropped without ever getting so much as a sniff of a hot beverage. I was so wounded by its wasted existence that I took it home with me.

Well here are three of your answers from earlier.

I have a book on stone-painting from the seventies. Apparently the key is making them look like fish. Seventies fish. I went through a bit of a phase.

 The succulent above the headless man (John the Baptist, if you must know) was stolen from someone else’s garden as a cutting. I have no idea what its proper name is, but it has beautiful purple flowers and the leaves have this amazing texture, like tiny squid tentacles. I can never get enough of touching this plant. Succulents are amazing – I also love House Leeks (previous photo, another spaghetti hoop can). They have such a sculptural quality to them – whilst being proper hard! – they can withstand all sorts of weather and temperatures with very little soil!

St Pauls Oil painting and a plastic cherub, glimpsed through the chrysanthemums.

My horse chestnut tree! This came to be when I was around twelve and attempted to keep the best conker shiny by wrapping it in a rag from a favourite ex-dress (lamentably too small) and kept it in a damp Pringles pot... and now it is taller than me!! It’s on the way out in this photo, but is covered in lovely sticky buds as I type.

I laid this herringbone pattern flooring myself! Just behind the aquilegia, you can see a ceramic snail that I made when I was ten.

A mouldering plaster foot sticking out of a clump of stinking geranium. This is actually a cast of my own leg that I made in my first year of university.

As I’m sure you appreciate by now, I find the dressing of an outdoor space just as important as an interior or a set, and fill all the spaces in my life with little bits of junk that make me feel happy.

Please let the sun come out!!!