Well a very good morning to you all! And what a day yesterday was. I never did get all my housework done, the call of the garden was too strong for me to resist, although I did try!

Hubby did rather well and has now built his raised bed, not too bad for his first attempt! He did quite well at tiling the living room floor when we moved in as well, and he had never done that before! He just needs to finish the top and then fill it with compost and whatever else takes his fancy! And here is the proof of his efforts!

He did buy the blocks from a certain garden centre but the rest of the stones are the ones he blagged on his way home from work a couple of weeks ago. We did buy a bag of cement for the base and a bag of mortar for the walled parts. And he did also use the adhesive/grout that he used on the living room tiles when he ran out of mortar! How's that for recycling!!

I was also a rather busy bunny and got loads of pots planted out. I know I'm rather late at getting the seeds planted but I'm hoping to get some crops that will spur us on for next year. And the weather up here in the North of Scotland is starting to get nice and warm so the heat may just help my little plants grow big and strong. And not to mention the special feeds they are getting from me.

My own little recipe for lovely plant food is ..... tea. Yes good old fashioned black tea. Hubby drinks loads of tea. I can get through 100 tea bags in a week and I don't like to waste anything so I follow something my grandmother. I just use hot water from the tap and steep the tea bags to get some nice strong "tea". I then put it in the watering can and water it down so it is nice and weak and use it at night to water all my plants. And the houseplants seem to be thriving on it, especially my money plant. It is from a cutting of my grandmother's big huge one and my mum gave it to me and it really is thriving on my kitchen windowsill with all the sunlight and food.

I also have a vase with 3 bamboos in it and these get fed with a small amount of tea mixed with the water and they are really growing some lovely shoots as well.

Right, I must really get my behind off to bed as I am shattered and have loads to do tomorrow. So goodnight to you all and I hope your gardens are taking shape just in time for the nice weather to come in! Take care all xxx

OOPS!!!! Update number one!!

Well hello to you all. Big apologies to all of you for the gap in postings. I have slapped myself for it though!

So there has been quite a lot of news to report since my last posting all those many days ago!

Firstly hubby was coming home from work on Easter Monday (yes he had to work lol) and spied a skip at the side of a house full of stones. They were the kind that are seen in the old fashioned stone walls. So he goes up to the house and politely asked the owner what he was doing with the skip full of stones. Well, it turns out that the skip was to be collected the very next day and he was just getting rid of the stones. So hubby nicely asked if he could come back later that day and take some of the stones out of the skip. The owner was quite happy for him to do that so he came home, emptied the boot of the car and promptly went straight back to the house. About an hour later he came home with a car full of stones!!! But they are going to good use. He is building a raised bed and is using the stones to make the walls round it. But the only downside is that he needs more stones as he only got enough for one part of the wall!!!

Hubby is now a very happy bunny as his shed was delivered and he put it up straight away! It is only a small one (6x4) but it's enough for now. And he has been promised that when the money situation is better, he will be getting a bigger metal one! But this one will remain as a potting shed of sorts. The kids are also getting their own shed! My dad is getting a new one in the summer so the one he has at the moment will be transplanted into my garden as a kind of wendy house for the girls to play in and store all their garden toys in during the winter! Although this has made me wonder about this bigger shed hubby wants. I don't know if he will really need a bigger shed if the kids' one is to be used to store their stuff!

Compost bin number 2 also got delivered! So Derek the Dalek now has a girlfriend by the name of Davina! I just have to get the sticky faces so that they will be more fun for the garden! Derek is coming along nicely with his composting. I am going to go and buy some activator as hubby just will not pee in a bottle for me to use as activator for the composter! But am still working on him and I'm sure that I will get him to wee in a bottle one day - I'll just have to wait till one day when he has had a couple of beers!!

Okay that's enough updating for one post or it will end up being a book! Am off to add some photos now and will post another update later on today - I promise!!!

Day 2 and not much done yet!!

Well it's day 2 of my adventure and what a lot got done ... not! We were all late up as hubby stayed up last night watching Quantum of Solace on DVD. I popped off to bed as I had managed to watch the whole film the night he bought it! So today, got the kids sorted, fed the dalek and beggared off into town for some retail therapy!

We went to our local Poundland and got some rather good bargains. I bought 3 of those pop up green bins to use as planters. I'm advertising on Freecycle for a couple of barrels for potatoes but these bins will do for radishes and carrots hopefully.

Hubby bought himself some gardening gloves and I bought 4 packets of seeds. Not bad you may think but it gets better. Each packet of seeds had 6 different varieties of seeds! So 24 different seeds for £4!! Bargain!! Well happy and it looks like I will be growing my chillie peppers after all! Hubby was dubious about chillie peppers but I'm not going to use them in my cooking too much, I love to use the dried ones to flavour olive oil so will be able to have a stack of dried ones. We only spent £12 in the Poundland so well chuffed with my bargains. Oh I almost forgot ... I got a gnome!!! He is rather cute with a little plant pot attached to himself so once there is something in the plant pot then I will definitely post a photo of him. You should have seen hubby's face when he saw my gnome in the basket! I'm calling him Gordon after the kids cartoon series (Gordon the Garden Gnome!).

The only downside was that the kids were with us (only joking really!) and they insisted on buying easter bonnets as well. We then went outside and stopped off at the easter market on the street. Hubby bought some herbs from a Frenchman who had a stall. He had grown everything himself and his sun dried tomatoes were delicious!! So another £13 went there.

Then it was back to get the car after it had been washed in the local shopping centre car park, complain about the fact that the car was still filthy and there were scratches that were not there when we parked the car! So hubby got his money back and off we went to see the dolphins. Although when we got there the water was quite choppy and although I didn't see any dolphins hubby and the kids did. I was much more content to collect mussel shells on the shore. I came home with a good pocket full and they will be crushed tomorrow and sprinkled in my dalek just to keep him hungry (he is called Derek the Dalek now!).

On the way back we stopped off at Focus for some more retail therapy (!) and got some already potted herbs for hubby's herb garden. He already has a rosemary bush that accompanied us all the way from Germany and a bay tree that we got in B&Q last week. So this week he got thyme, oregano and sage. They will be re-potted along with the chives from Tesco's tomorrow and hopefully they will grow quite happily in our little garden.

And then the bombshell. I bought hubby a shed! Focus has a 6ft x 4ft overlap shed on sale for £109 but we had to pay £25 for delivery so in total it cost us £134 plus another £33 for the stuff we bought for the garden! So no more spending for us for a big while!!! Shouldn't have really spent that much but we desperately need somewhere safe to keep all hubby's garden tools and his bike but we now have to wait for the delivery so hopefully that won't take too long.

And that's about all of our day today. Not much really got done but we did buy supplies and hubby is determined to get out and de-turf some more of the garden tomorrow and hopefully get the herbs re-potted. He has also suggested that when we have a bit more cash to spare to buy a better shed, that the one we bought today can be used as a potting shed! At least he isn't planning on just getting rid of it!

We are also going to get a second shed in the summer. My dad is getting a new one and the one he currently has is the same size as the one we are getting but my dad is going to take his one apart and put it in our back garden as a kind of wendy house for the kids! So at least we don't have to spend out over £140 to buy them a wendy house when they can get a perfectly good one for free. All it will cost us is some manual work and a couple of tins of wood preserver and we are going to try and get the stuff that comes in funky colours so the kids know which one is theirs.

I'm ordering a second dalek next week as one just is not going to be enough, and I think I may just have to go back to focus next week and buy some of their compost accelerator to help get the bins working a bit quicker (or persuade hubby to have a wee in them lol).

Tomorrow am off down the shore with my kids for a nature walk with a twist. We are taking one of the little pop up bins and we are going to fill it full of seaweed. take it home and feed it to Derek! Between that and the mussel shells he should be a happy bin tomorrow.

Have just checked my household rubbish as well. My wheelie bin was emptied on Friday. Normally by today there is one full black bag and usually a couple of small carrier bags of rubbish. Well as of today we have only half filled a black bag in the bin! So we are really cutting down on our waste already by just having Derek!

Am also going to be pickling some eggs as hubby loves them and I absolutely hate the price of them in the shops. It is much cheaper to buy eggs and big jars of pickling vinegar and do it yerself! And I find that they taste much better. I have pickled eggs and onions before and they do taste much better than the ones you buy in the shops so may just have to go get some pickling onions as well!

Enough rambling for today, am off to take some photos and hopefully get them posted here, then its off to bed so I can get up really early tomorrow and make a good start!