Frosty visited

The sun has been out since 7am

The sky is blue, clear blue

There is no wind

but

plenty of ice

 This photo was taken after 10am

Iced borage anyone?

Perfect hot air ballooning weather

Maybe next week if our friend comes to stay

It is definately cold enough

For those of you who experience snow in winter

this must seem a bit lame

I just can't imagine it getting any colder than this.

It is very hard to get myself out there and prepare for spring.

I have to harvest my rocket seeds from this circle

and reclaim some growing space

All of this was self sown

It does pay to relax and enjoy the flowers for a few weeks

Tidy gardeners rarely have self sown rocket

Do yourself a favour and leave the flowers to set seed.

Camel lamps

There is nothing quite as exciting as a new idea.

This one happened as a result of many mosquito's in the pottery studio.

The first one actually blew up because I was in such a hurry.

I was excited.

It became a great reminder to my young students, things can blow up.

The first few models were hard to fill, hard to put the wicks in etc.

With most of those technical issues solved I am having fun with the idea,

The next one will be wearing a cowboy hat.



Celery

I have grown celery for the last few years 

But this year is the most successful.

I think the soil conditions must be just right in this circle.

It is quite heavy clay that I have added horse poo to.

It holds the moisture, keeping the plants sweet.

 I have been experimenting with tree guards for blanching,

I does work and keeps the stems white.

Personally  I prefer the regular green celery

that has grown free from constraints.

Flavour is the same but I feel better about the freedom.

I pick bunches for the market and these plants have been providing for some months now.

I was reading about wild celery the other day..........

In the wild they do not stand up straight as we like to think of them.

More like a flattened rosette

I found this seedling that must have missed out on being planted in the circle.

It was reverting to type.

I was amazed it was still alive. I will reward its persistence

with a place in the circle.

We added dried celery flowers to a sausage roll mix last week.

Mmmmmmm will do that again!

I went to the hardware shop with my market money this morning

and came home with plenty to keep me working.