Gardening Diary

I try to keep gardening diary, but fail often miserably. I do manage to write down the first spring sowings and have made a plan last autumn how I want to plant this year's garden. I do practice crop rotation, so it is important to make a note of the planting, because it is oh so easy to forget where the different plants were. Above is my diary in its new jacket. I ended with IKEA waterproof cloth, as I know that I will handle this book with dirty hands, which is in clear evidence in the picture below.

It looked like this to start with

One of those white jobs bought as a lot of five. I chose not to glue the cover this time, but made pocket ends.

I thought that the pocket outside could hold a pencil and a seed packet or such. Ehm...that seam looks awful! I just could not be bothered to do it again as it is purely decoration, the binding. Sometimes I just let be as is and that's ok as well.

I am not a real green thumbed gardener as I have not perused all the seed catalogues as yet...I will soon though and I will consult both my box of seeds and the notes of what I have planned to plant. I try to get something new to try for each year, although the newness might be just another variety of a vegetable or flower I am already familiar with. A certain new thing I want to grow this year is a cucamelon.

Do you have gardening plans as yet? Will you try something new?

Green things

 I had the luck to get some pretty fabrics from my very local quilting studio. The talented owner Josie runs classes and sells also fabrics. She is online as well here and is situated so close to my front door that I don't even need a jacket to go and visit. Luckily the studio is not open daily, it is tempting enough as it is. Josie had two day January sales and I went to see if there was anything I could see immediate use for. Actually I was after a dress fabric, but alas, did not find one. The fabric above came home and I am now thinking what I am going to make out of it.

Similar colours in this fabric, which I decided to use as a table cloth. I had a trial run, the cloth unhemmed, just to see how I liked it. I did like it and as it was a tad short, I made a border out of some hand dyed batik from Africa.  I even did the border in double , so no raw seams are visible and the cloth stays put a bit better with more weight around the edges.

Another green craft; a bookmark. Very simple, a leather thong with some big wooden beads. I have used it a lot and might just make another, as I always have more than one book on the go.

 Apart from sewing in green, I have been busy supporting the local Green Party. I might not agree on every policy the Greens have, but their ethics and most of the policies coincide with my personal ethics and wishes. I cannot see how the mankind will survive if we don't make quite many drastic changes on how we live on this planet. (And that is just looking at some pretty recent reports on fauna/flora/climate changes we have caused). The changes need to be both individual, local, national and international. I also like the fact that they don't campaign by rubbishing others, but by telling how they would like to do things.

You could see what policies/parties align with your thinking here. "Vote for policies, not for personalities" online questionnaire is a great tool to narrow down the party/parties you might want to have a closer look at preparing yourself for the voting in parliamentary elections in May. 

On the creative front my mind is awash with all sorts of projects and I might even make a note of them as I don't think that I manage to get them all done before the mad gardening season begins. At the moment it is very cold though and the wind has blown a hoolie both yesterday and today. In my sleepy state yesterday morning I thought that a jet was flying past us, until I realised that the noise continued be there and that I was listening to the waves crashing on the seafront, not far from our house!