Softpots

Here's a craft with a difference!

There is a lovely lady called Annie who has a craft/gardening business in York called Softpots.  I found her quite by accident late last year, one wintery evening, as we were walking through Stonegate.  Her business is in a tiny little alleyway, sandwiched between other shops, and here I discovered a miniature wonderland of plants, fairy lights and sculpture.  I was instantly hooked.

Doesn't this look so inviting?  I had to find out more!

At the end of this alley, Annie was busy potting up plants in her own unique way - you will have to look at her Website to find out exactly what she does, and how she pots up her plants, it's a secret method!

I was so intrigued, I bought a little booklet from her, explaining the process.

Fast forward a few months to last week and another trip to York.  I decided I really wanted to have a 30-minute training session, to learn more about creating Softpots, so while the rest of the family went to look at nearby York Minster, I had my training session, and made my own softpot under Annie's tuition.  Here is my finished work of art.

Doesn't it look pretty and unusual?  The colours come from sisal and gold threads and sequins - I love sequins!

I love this process, because I am not a gardener, although I do try, and so I have little rockeries in my front and back gardens, covered in blue slate, with lots of little pots of plants everywhere.  I really like the idea of introducing a few softpots into the garden, to give it a different dimension, a different medium.

Here is a little video, showing lots of the things you can make with softpots, I can't wait to make some more!

Does anyone speak potato?

I consider myself a fairly good linguist, as I am a fairly fluent French speaker, but try as I might, I cannot speak potato.

In the interests of growing a few potatoes on the patio, I have been doing a little research.  Now, I'm not thinking  of self-sufficiency or anything like that, just a sack of home-grown charlotte potatoes would be great.

But I am bombarded with potato-language like 'earlies' and 'second earlies' and 'maincrop' and 'chitting'. Is there a translation manual I could buy?   Or could my lovely, knowledgeable readers help me out?  I don't know how early and maincrop relate to a normal non-gardening calendar.

I really don't intend for this blog to become a book blog.  I want it to reflect everything that interests me, books, knitting, christianity, home, garden, everything, I don't want to specialise.  However I have read a really good book this week...................

It's a story about the bad old days of psychiatric hospitals, Esme Lennox is incarcerated into an institution at the age of 16, basically for being a bit odd, for not wanting to get married, and for not wanting to cut her hair. She ends up staying there for 60 years.  The story starts with her release, and her first taste of freedom.

The ending was a bit predictable and disappointing all at the same time, but that didn't spoil the book.

I am now in the middle of a very intriguing book called The Roundabout Man by Clare Morrall....

about a man who decides to break away from his past, in his sixties, and live in a caravan on a big traffic island.  I've got a feeling someone really did that once, and died a few years ago.  Maybe that was her inspiration.  So far it is really good.  And it is in English, not potato-ese!

A Fresh Start

I've been reading some of my favourite blogs, and a theme that emerges is one of a fresh start.  We are not quite at the start of a new year yet, but Christmas is behind us, we've eaten far too much (oops!), and the promise of  a new year beckons.

I am already thinking about things I would like to do or achieve in 2012.  Last year I grew a few vegetables for the first time.  I am already collecting yoghurt pots, ice-cream tubs etc. to sow seeds early in the spring.  Also, having a new granddaughter called Poppy, I would like to sow some different types of poppy seeds, in her honour!

Another project for next year is to live more frugally, and to decrease my carbon footprint.  There are wonderful blogs, such as Life After Money that inspire me in this direction.  By spending less, I hope to be able to be more generous to others.

We constantly need new starts and plans, because we are fallible creatures, who stumble and fall, and need to pick ourselves up again, time after time.

York

Here is some Christmassy eye-candy from the beautiful, historic city of York.  We went there two weeks ago to visit youngest son who is currently studying there.  He comes home this weekend, yippeeeee!!!

We pushed the boat out a little and had tea in Betty's tearooms.  You can just about see us below.  I am wearing a red coat, youngest son is wearing a stripy scarf, and eldest son is wearing a green coat.  We stood and waited outside Betty's for over an hour in the rain, along with all the tourists from all over the world.

It was well worth it though, the food was delicious, and we ate fat rascals, which Betty's are famous for.  But we only ate 2 of them between four of us, in case we turn into fat rascals ourselves!

It was a very long day, we spent over six hours on the train altogether, and didn't get home until after midnight, but it was absolutely wonderful.

I met a fascinating lady there called Annie Austen-Meek, who runs her own business called Softpots, which involves plants growing in old tights and stockings!  It sounds a bit funny but go here to see the amazing gardens she has created.  Below is a sample of the magic that Annie creates.  I was overawed by her creativity and originality.

All the plants here are growing in old tights, and even all the cobbles and statues are just tights filled with soil, moulded into shape and painted.  I'd love to try out this idea next spring in my garden. The whole effect looked really magical, right in the centre of York.

Gardening for non-gardeners

Hello, I've been gone such a long time, busy with family and work and life in general.  One of my latest adventures, shared with Mr Letters From Home, has been a brief foray into gardening.  Now, although I love all the domestic arts such as knitting, sewing, crochet, baking etc, I have never quite got ino gardening, it's never been my thing.  But this year the gardens were looking a bit sad, in need of cheering up, and a bit neglected, so we decided that despite our horticultural ignorance, it was time to do something about it.

We started with the little rockery at the front of the house.  Here are the 'before' pics.

Some nice shrubs and a eucalyptus tree, but no colour - apart from brown and green!

Mr LFH covered the area with slate chippings, and we discovered some old cobwebby pots in the garage, which I cleaned up and filled with plants.  Now it looks like this!

We then turned out attention to the rockery in the rear garden.  There is no 'before' pic as I was so ashamed of it.  It looked like The Land That Time Forgot.  So we filled three wheelie bins with brambles, nettles and weeds, cleared the area, and covered it with bark chippings and found more pots and bought some more pretty plants from here and here.

By this time our confidence knew no limits, so the next step was to buy some packets of easy, quick-growing veg, and have a try at Growing Our Own.  I didn't want to spend a lot of money in case it all went badly wrong.  When I am buying yarn, I am happy to buy luxurious, expensive natural fibres, because I know I'll be able to create something lovely with it, but I am less confident with gardening, so with my 'easy seeds' I bought some plastic pots and compost to create my mini patio allotment.

Don't you love my trendy wooden markers?!

It has been a week now since we sowed the seeds, and amazingly nothing has died, I even remembered to water everything on most days, and some days it rained, so that gave me a day off.  There is no action on the carrot front, but there are little green fuzzy bits in the salad trough and bag, so one of these days I might be sitting on the patio, eating a meal al fresco, that includes some freshly picked salad leaves.  On the other hand, there might be some fat, happy slugs and pests wandering around the garden, thanking me for their dinner.  We shall see.

Any comments, advice or inspiration that you can give a clueless but enthusiastic gardener like me, please feel free to comment!

Oh, and another thing, even if I don't blog regularly, I do love to read your blogs, and if you ever feel like giving up blogging, please don't!