Flowers galore 🌼🌸🌷🌾

Hello! I am writing on a sunny Tuesday evening, after a very warm, outdoorsy, spring kind of day 🌞

What life is like when you're the cat of two plant people 🌿

Last week Ed and I planted lots of veg (potatoes, carrots, parsnips, cucumber and courgettes), we also pricked out our dahlia seedlings (with the help of Juniper as you can see below). It's nice to have lots of green-fingered things to be doing together on our days off. A few days later we potted up the chillies, leeks, sweet peas and tomatoes 🍅 We've also got zinnias and catnip popping up in seed trays upstairs...so there's lots going on over here! It feels very exciting after a long, dark winter, and the lighter evenings are making all the difference.

Juniper being a snuggly bean:

Our "studio" had slowly devolved into a messy dump room over the last few weeks so I spent an afternoon tidying it up again on Monday. It gets lots of nice light and warmth in there so we are currently using it to grow most of our seeds and also dry the washing....it is yet to really fulfil its purpose as a studio but we'll get there one day! When I was tidying I found this sweet thrifted dish and it made me want to show off more of my various second hand trinkets and oddities that I've gathered over the years, maybe I'll make a post about my favourites some time.

A bunch of lovely daffs from work (one of the perks of the job!) 🌼 I like the contrast of the yellow with these pinky purple orchids, we've got 3 orchids flowering at the moment and the other 2 are almost there! 

The big twig in our hallway has had an Easter makeover:

The daffodils in our garden have finally decided to show their faces! We bought a bag of mixed bulbs so it is fun to see what each one looks like when it opens up 😄

A couple of our neighbours have had big pink camellias flowering recently which has brightened the road up nicely 🌸🌸🌸

And a few more daffodils pics for good measure! These ones we stumbled across on a little afternoon drive to pick up a cat tree for Juniper...

...ta daaa! Juni is now enjoying being queen of the castle and we are glad that she's taking out some energy on something other than us and our carpets 😅 we did some good old DIY and attached a wooden plank across from the cat tree to top of the bunk bed for extra fun!

I fell a bit in love with ranunculus flowers recently, so when we popped into a garden centre on Sunday I couldn't resist getting a few different colours to go in a pot. They are so pretty 😍 I'm obsessed. We originally went to the garden centre for a grape vine as Ed thought that the one he got last year had died...well it turned out to be alive so now we have 2 grape vines growing, one red and one white! 🍇

These are the most recent surprise flowers to open in the garden, from the batch of wedding bulbs we planted in the winter. They are tulips called Cynthia, how sweet 💛 I love the two tone colour, it reminds me of those fruit salad sweets!

Juniper has been enjoying these sunny days, her favourite outdoor activities are eating grass and chasing insects. She almost caught a butterfly yesterday! I'm glad she didn't, I would have felt very bad for it. She looks so cute with the dandelions though, I'd have to forgive her 🌼🌾🐈🌼🌼

This morning Ed and I made the most of the warm weather by going for a walk around the lake, the sky was so blue and lots of people were out enjoying the day.

It felt so good to be outside in the wild, so fresh and bright. We saw ducks, squirrels, a coot building a nest and a pair of pheasants nibbling around the ground, but our favourites were the massive family of rats living in this idyllic little home by the water's edge. We sat watching them for ages as they darted out to grab little bits of bread in their tiny hands and went back into the bush to eat. It seems like they have a whole rat village going on with little holes in the ground here and there and a big log which I imagine might be hollowed out inside with little rooms like the Brambly Hedge books I loved as a child (except they were mice!)

I would spend ages looking at these illustrations 😌

To finish off we have this week's loaf of bread 🌟 and a shiny car reflection selfie to celebrate that I have my wheels back after almost 3 weeks! Hoorah!

Thank you for coming back to my blog and I hope you enjoy some sunshine and spring blooms this week! 🌷🌿🌼🌞🌟✨🐝🐾🍃

P.s. I'm currently knitting my 5th pair of socks which I'll share with you some day.

The one where I made marmalade 🍊

I started writing this post lying on the floor next to Juniper, she was all woozy from her spay procedure and I was keeping an eye on her in her too big post-op onesie. I brought the spare duvet down into the living room and she was purring like mad, glad to be home I think. I ended up making her some scrambled egg because we didn't have any other cat suitable bland foods to give her, I felt like a proper crazy pet parent getting out the frying pan to cook a meal for my cat 😂 

Anyway, that was a few days ago now and Juniper is doing just fine. In fact, I don't think she even noticed that anything happened to her. For the first day she was wobbly and very funny but on day 2 she wiggled out of her onesie and never looked back. A surgery wound wasn't going to stop her from running and leaping around like usual, we gave up on trying to get her to rest lol.

I've been meaning to make a blog post for weeks but things have been busy and a little bit overwhelming at times around here (e.g. my car has been in the garage for two weeks and counting 😁), and the longer I've left it the more my photos are building up and now I feel like I don't know where to start. Stay tuned for lots of pics (more than usual hehe) in a probably non-chronological order to sum up the end of February and most of March avec moi.

We have been enjoying going for evening walks in our fleeces again (no scarves and no raincoats 🌝), we discovered the big hill nearby is good to see the sunset...ahh this particular evening was delightful, we wandered round houses where we hadn't been before and it felt like lockdown 1 in the best way.

A 10/10 panorama.

Juniper has been helping Ed with the weeding and watering:

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

I dried clothes out on the washing line for the first time last week! It wasn't quite warm enough or breezy enough and it hasn't quite got to the time of year when our garden actually gets sun yet BUT I just couldn't wait any longer 😆 they were still a bit damp by the time it got dark but it was worth it. 

An almost perfectly round loaf which made some holey toast:

Family photo:

 

Where's Juniper?

 

Recently Juniper has started to become interested in the snails, she's probably just trying to work out what on earth they are and why she can't get to them.

A couple of weeks ago we inherited some bunk beds that my dad was getting rid of, one day we might have people come round to stay the night but for now it's Juniper's climbing frame/throne/cosy cloud.

 

Ed and I spotted this loaf of bread lying in the river when we were out walking, and when I passed by again a few days later it was still there, looking exactly the same 😂 I wonder if it's still there now, and how long it has been there? 

Time for the marmalade!!!! 🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊 🍊🍊 This was my first time making marmalade and it was fun, although it took longer than I expected! It took about an hour just to prepare all the oranges and my arm was aching afterwards 😆 but it was worth it of course and I ended up with 6 jars full at the end.

🍳🍊🍳🍊🍞🍴

Everything is starting to come alive in the garden 🌹 we weren't sure if any of our tulips would flower as we had replanted them from last year but these red ones have been the first to pop up and there are more on the way!

Another golden hour walk, this time down by the stream...I loved the way the sun shone through the catkins 😍

This is the little planter I put together for Mothers' Day...it ended up with a yellow theme so I added a rubber duck for good measure 🐥

If you're wondering whether Juniper is still a shoulder cat, the answer is yes:

(Spot Ed's monstrously huge mother of thousands succulent 😳)

This week I completed my 4th pair of socks, this time for my sister's birthday! They arrived on time and she loves them so I'm very happy about that 😊 To let you in on some behind the scenes info, these socks caused a bit of drama in the house when a hyper Juniper got her leg caught up in my circular needle and a bunch of stitches all slid off....I was not pleased to say the least! But it was all fine in the end and I managed to calm down and rescue the project.

She always looks so calm and serene in my photos but trust me, she can be a little nuisance when she wants to be 😂

Some very exciting news (well exciting for me anyway!) 🌿 this peace lily which I have had for about 4 years is finally pushing out a flower! It was flowering when I bought it originally (at Home Bargains for £1.99 I might add), but since then, absolutely nothing at all! I've been trying my best to look after it well and it has got some big beautiful leaves but I was coming close to giving up on it to be honest...until now! I'll make sure to take a photo when the flower is open (yes, technically it is not a flower but a spathe...google it!)

We planted some freesia bulbs recently, I'm excited to see them pop up in the summer! I hope they are as nice and colourful as they looked on the packet 😆 Plus a colourful mask + earring combo at work the other day:

Some more bread! This one turned out to be a lumpy shape but was particularly tasty 🍞😋

😇

Snakeshead fritillaries opening up in the garden 🐍 such a cool flower!

And just like that, we made it to the end of my photo backlog! Hope you enjoyed a peek into the last few weeks of early Spring delights 🌷🌼🌱