'Vintage' Spring Gardening and bunting blowing in the wind!!

This photo is a little fuzzy but I really like this type of moving image -  Bronte holds the key as to how to do this so I am at her 'mercy' for photographs!
Anyway aren't the plants growing like Topsy at the moment!  Ours are growing like bamboo - I am sure I can see them moving!!  As you may recall we have a tiny garden so every single thing in it has to either carry some meaning or look beautiful - preferably both!  Our garden is 'vintage' because many of the things in it came from elsewhere a long time ago.  I have wittered on Flickr about the hard labour that went into our plot - when we moved here it had not one plant but two layers of concrete slabs.  Dom dug out all of it and then we laid down this brick area, we built the little pond using bricks from our neighbour's pulled down chimney (edged with tiles that came from an Edwardian barn from my childhood...sniff, sniff).  My blue chair was bought from a local junk shop and I had to repair it a bit - but a little plaque reveals that it was made using timber from HMS Powerful (which was built in 1895 and had sailed into our local harbour a hundred years ago after serving in the Boer War) - cost me £20 and I love it very much.  Lots of the plants were originally in our mum's garden and though the tree peonies sulked for a few years now they are fantastic.  The hellebores have seeded all over the place - how do they know the best places to land!

I have a few vintage rhubarb forcers (bought from a local car boot but worth lugging home) and lots of old galvanised buckets that we use for vegetable growing....oh and some old enamelled bowls...and one or two enamelled potties...and china tureens...Steptoe and Son...

Dom has repaired out little shed (again!) - fresh lick of paint and it is a right as rain (its window, that you cannot see here, is made from stained glass that we found in our cellar).  I have a few of these bay trees in little pots - in the front garden there was an old bay with suckers which I potted up.  Some I plaited in threes and some I twisted - this is a twisted one.  It is a bit rubbish really as you have look hard to find the twist and it has taken about eight years to get it to this point!  Never again. Note the broken pot....some things are difficult to throw away (and many have been mended over and over again).  I keep an old enamelled bread bin full of old crocks. Oh I do like an old watering can.....


Also we have several large tubs that have pygmy water lilies in - this lovely copper tub I bought for about £10 many, many years ago.  We used to keep it in the house for logs but it is has been outside for the last 10 years or so (I have seen them for sale for several hundreds of pounds - crikey). You can just see in this picture one of the two concrete 'memories' we did with  prints of the children's hand and feet - dated 7.4.02.....time flies

Little watering cans for little watering jobs...

Our mum's old bee hive - a little more falls off it each year...
Just sending some older photos of our garden in the summer - something to look forward to

I grew our banana from seed and it has been outside for years - I have not seen any sign of it this year so sadly think that the cold winter has not been kind. The tree fern has been our only real expense in this garden - I bought it when my mum died as something special and a rememberance

It sounds a bit daft bit we also have a few sea worn wood things in the garden - they have shells and sea 'bits' embedded in them.  They take some lugging up from the sea front!

I like this photo most of all as it reminds me of the best of British summers - tea and cake of course (my vintage Chinese lanterns that usually are used in the dining room at Christmas have been thrown in for good measure)!

Must get on with some more seeds! Have a nice weekend
PS Blue tits have not moved into bird box but Great Tits instead!