Outdoor Tomatoes

I have tried growing tomatoes for the first time this year. Unlike a lot of gardeners out there I don't have a greenhouse, I have a weird plastic tent thing that I used to start some of the seedlings off this spring but that is no use for fully grown plants. And isn't very good in strong sunlight as it seems to melt slightly.

So I have had to grow my tomatoes out in the open and hope that they didn't get hit by blight or anything nasty like that! This does mean that my garden seems to be slightly behind other gardens as I have not had any ripe fruits yet.

But I do have my first ever green tomatoes growing nicely :D Happy days!

I do have my tomatoes growing slightly weirdly, I haven't taken out all the side shoots as I didnt have the support to grow them that high and am more interested in number of tomatoes than the size of each of them. 

I may yet regret this decision :p

 

And yes I do have bright orange nails!

 
Fruit on the golden cherry tomato plant still very deep green but hopefully lightening soon :D

Fruits on the Beefsteak tomato plant, some have started to lighten already but some are still a deep green colour. The fruit on this plant came out first and so is further along in the ripening process than the other plant I believe. 

The only down side is where the plant is located this one gets a few hours less direct sunlight than the cherry tomato plant. 

Only time will tell me how this will actually affect the fruits.

Wordless Wednesday

Flowers of my Garden:

 

Back in the land of the living

Back in the land of the living... Well maybe not living but at least phone signal!

A lot of stuff has changed over the time I have been away. 

The squash has taken over the bed and another courgette has ripened :) very tasty last night :D

In addition there is now some colour in the garden...

The various colours of lavender have opened up and are attracting a number of bees and the like :D

And the Yellow Chard is really getting hold and kicking off a good display:

Finally the lilly bulbs that I got from T&M have opened out to produce some gorgeous red flowers:

And the most fluorescent coloured flowers I think I have ever seen

Its good to be home. But now I have the huge task of the hedge to tackle over the next few days !! Wish me luck...

Falmouth II

I have now been in Falmouth for nearly a week and still have yet to set foot in any shop other than tescos and the local bakery. Much to my dissapointment, there are so many shops I would love to spend so much money in. Im sure my bank account is happy about this turn of events.

I have been out on the water every day which might not seem like such a hardship, and it probably isnt but it does limit the shopping and pasty eating time. I have yet to be able to eat a pasty as I have to be out on the water before the bakery has them out yet. I am having to make do with a double dose of sausage roll to make up for it.

I also cannot moan about the weather, with the exception of Tuesday, when half the chem lab ended up in the sink after one much larger than expected swell wave, there has been very little in the way of disturbance on the water. Today for example was as flat as a mill pond! 

This was me trying to take a photo of the sunfish that we saw with my iPhone camera but it shows the stillness of the water.

Unfortunatly the dolphins made an appearance at the geophysics boat but have yet to make themselves known to the offshore boat when I have been on it. They had them out on Monday before I had arrive but not again since...

Here is another early morning scene, we had probably been out surveying for around a couple of hours. Soon after this I decided it was too hot on the deck and had to spend time inside...

More lovely weather just before returning home around 4pm

Hope to be able to get some more proper pictures to you soon, My camera is still being cruel and not letting me connect it to my laptop :(

Coloured Lavender

Today I have been lacking in motivation. Im not 100% sure why but it is turning into one of those weeks. From Friday onwards I am going to be super busy, with my results coming out on Friday, then having to be at the boat for 4:30 in the morning on Saturday to go sailing :o then either travelling to Oxford for a family reunion or travelling to Falmouth for work! 

Busy busy busy...

But for now I am taking it slow, too slow if anything. So to kick start myself I went to Portswood (the local highstreet) today and went charity shop touring and was good and only bought books (ok and one necklace to cannibalise) and met with a friend for coffee.

This trick seemed to have worked for a little time, and when I got back from town I headed out into the garden to do a little work. On the way into the garden I stopped to look at the Lavender bush that is starting to block the steps...

There are the typical Lavender flowers (deep purple casings and flowers) 

 ... and flowers which have pale casings on the flowers. Taking a closer look at these I have found that the inside flowers appear to be both pink and purple, although they have not really started to open yet.

I appologise for the quality of the photos my proper camera has decided to stop talking to my computer so I have to utilise the mobile phone camera for this.

Pink:

and Purple:

You can see the purple better in the close up:

I will have to look into taking cuttings of Lavender and glowing some new plants from them as I am planning on moving the Lavender hedge next year and having different colours in it would be wonderful.

My Latest distractions...

I thought I would have a lot more time to post on here but I have recently been distracted by a few things.

 

On Wednesday I had my Graduation Ball and so Tuesday and Wednesday were taken up with refashioning a dress that I wore to my year11 prom into something suitable to wear to my last ever (Southampton) University Ball.

After doing this, my sister decided that we needed a sowing machine that did not require winding! So we made a trip to John Lewis and are now the proud owners of a shiny (pink) sowing machine.

With this purchased we set about creating an infinity dress for my sister. Check here for my initial inspiration for this dress at a very lovely crafty blog I follow. 

Due to a slight rookie error by the lovely sis I had to make a short dash back to the fabric shop on Friday to pick up some more of the fabric, but this did leave me with a lovely pre cut (if slightly large) circle of fabric.

After entertaining some of the bf's friends at my house over night Friday the weekend was spent at his house as his parents got to grips with the first of their B and B guests. 

Arriving back this evening I have used the left over material and created myself a simple skirt inspired by this. But had to rouche the skirt as the hole in the centre was much larger than my waist.

I do love how it has turned out and its such nice material :D

Wordless wednesday

The gorgeous foliage on my free Lillys :D

This flower turned up in the Daffodil pot, not sure what it is...

Gorgeous mix of colours in a pot given to me by my grandmother Rosemary

Honeysuckle

Green Spaces

Today on my way to NOCS I stopped in town to get breakfast and by lunch before heading on for a heavy day of dissertation work.
After buying breakfast and a much needed Latte (I didn't have any milk in the house this morning due to a very forgetfull moment last night and leaving it in my friends fridge when popping by for a catch up) I decided to have my breakfast in the park in the middle of town.
I have to say a very grateful thank you to southampton council for keeping up the park in such a nice state. It was wonderfull to sit in such a green and luschous area in the middle of a busy town. You coudl still hear the busses and cars driving past but they were shut off from view and cancelled out by the sounds of birds in the park.

Since starting writing this post a lot has happened. Today I have spent more time updating the BBC news site than ever before. My uni building is inside the dock and there has been an incident upon the nuclear submarine that is docked down here at the moment and a sailor was killed. This makes me even more apreciative of the time I took to reflect this morning. I will make sure I tell M I love him this evening remembering that life is short...
I hope that everyone else remembers this too but doesnt have reason to be reminded of it often...

Recent Photos

Recently I have been trying to work hard on my dissertation but keep getting distracted by things. Todays distractions consists of using the decent photoshop software on the uni machines and editing a few of my recently taken photos.
So I thought I would share a few of them with you.

More crocuses from Chateau Morfee with one of their native (and increasingly rare) polinators.



Taking a well earned break with a cup of tea and the garden chair :D
I do Love this photo from some reason



A very nice looking seed head. I love the texture this photo gives

My bedroom Orchid. One of my many purchases from Ikea this summer and it is on its second round of flowers... Makes me feel very lucky :D

Belated Blogger Bloom Day...

Well apparently yesterday was Blogger Bloom Day!

So a little late perhaps here are a few snaps from my garden recently (and one that is from my bf's mothers garden but I have only just got round to processing it):

Crocus's from Bf's Mothers garden

Beautiful Bells.

Potentially Pulmonaria 'Trevi Fountain'

Iris Seeds Showing of their Colours

Shiny Ivy

Lucky Ladybird

Spring is on its Way

This is a small selection of the photos I have taken recently and more should be going up soon, when I have finished editing them (must not let it take up too much of the dissertation time). 

But at the moment more can be seen on my Flickr (either on the side panel of the page there is a gadget or click here)

Love to all...

Home Made Plant Labels

planning to grown a lot of plants from seed this year I needed a way to identify which plants were which and really didn't feel like shelling out money for those little plastic labels that all garden centers seem to have these days.
So I decided to try making my own and if I may say so myself, they seem to be working very nicely.

Here is my first How To:

I have made my labels out of an old milk bottle but you could use any of a similar type of plastic.
I cut into the bottle to remove the top and bottom, leaving a ring of plastic which was cut down one corner and opened up.

From this ring I cut out the individual tags but cutting it into strips vertically. Then cutting one end to a point. 
The lines drawn on the plastic are to show you how it was cut but i normally don't bother when cutting it myself.

After these were cut out I wrote the names of the seedlings I have onto the 'inside' of the plastic, because I didn't manage to remove all of the label on this bottle. Also the inside it generally smoother as a lot of companies make the outside textured.
Finished labels waiting to go into my pots :D

I hope you enjoy using this method, as it is much cheaper and environmentally friendly.