Inspiration

Beautiful roses to cheer a cold, blustery day. I may have to make an early dash for home if the white stuff begins to fall here in Sheffield, if I'm going to have a hope of making it back over the hills tonight. (Yippeee!)

A bargain ebay buy, these tiny cigarette cards are a series of old fashioned roses and I could happily have every one in my garden, if only I had the space.

I'm not completely sure where they will find a home but I think they may appear in the corners of a few mirrors or picture frames, perhaps on a shelf, even on the bookcase. But I'll have to be subtle though because Woody has a pathological hatred of roses, mostly the planted kind - I must be careful. I think it comes from too much pruning as a teenage Saturday gardener.

He even wants to put a stop to any in the garden but as he doesn't have a single green finger he can whistle! I think I can hide some in amongst the perennials and a climber over the garden shed should be ok, anything but those standards in the middle of a bed in the lawn that were my grandad's pride and joy.

I can't wait to get into our new garden and start sorting. At the moment it's very square, very bare and very brown. Everything is in straight lines and really bland so this book has given me lots of ideas and inspiration. I think the author used to be the gardening columnist for Country Living, fancy me liking this book so much!

What a dream, a border like this! My plot is rather small though so the ideas need to be radically scaled down. I'm pretty much a novice but I've made some plans and lots of lists (I love a list) of what I'd like to see flowering each month and as soon as the nurseries begin to fill up, my teeny monthly treat fund with disappear into their tills rather than ebay!

Cow parsely is my favourite wild flower and this pink version will definitely be squeezed in

Of course I could get ahead and plant some seeds but there is something you must know- I am rubbish with seeds. Much compost is bought, many packets perused, mulled over and savoured. Beautiful packets, brightly coloured and full of summer promise are neatly packed into my special tin and even arranged in date order for planting. Even the boys join in with the sowing and watering and wondering what will appear..... and then I forget about them until a couple of weeks later when someone knocks a tray of very dry and dusty compost into the kitchen sink and shouts "uggh what's this!"

I know - useless! You wouldn't believe how often I've done it so no more.

(Readers of this blog may have realised by now that I'm the sort of person who loves thinking of new things to do but might not really be the best at finishing them! I'm determined to have some finished projects to share in the near future though - I promise!)

(This is top of my wish list - an oriental poppy called Patty's Plum)

Fortunately mum is a bit of a plantswoman with overflowing borders that often need thinning out so lots of plants are on their way in the spring. At the old place we planted a bed together that flowered from May to October with just a bit of deadheading and watering required. It was completely glorious and I'm hoping I can do the same at No 25. This is what I'm aiming for so we'll see!

Thanks ever so much for all the brilliant advice and hints about embroidery and especially the link to Primrose Design which has the most brilliant online photos of how to do stitches (thanks FK - fantastic!) You're all so kind and the encourgement means the world to me, (husbands I find don't really appreciate embroidery after a long, hard day.) I'm sorry if I haven't managed to write back to everyone individually but hope you'll take this thank you as your own, from me, from the heart.

While I'm waiting for the vintage embroidery transfers to arrive I've been having a little practice on an old sheet. French knots (which I now know are what the little bobbly stitches are called - how embarrassing!) didn't prove too difficult and I've managed to do lazy daisy stitches to make flowers (going to be very useful!). It turns out that my bargain embroidery silks are too fine, even using all the threads they're too narrow for the look I like. I want something a bit woolly and chunkier. Oooooh - I feel a shopping trip coming on....