Charity shopping.

Technically, I haven't bought any of these things, they were all presents! 

This is Oscar Gerald, he's been sitting in the charity shop window for weeks, unclaimed, until Joe bought him home for us after a particularly poopy week.  

Kitsch kitten, 50p, local Age Concern charity shop. 

My mum got me this awesome bit of vintage woven trim from her charity shop.

Vintage trim, present, local Oxfam shop.

My Aunty Rose (not my biological aunty, but the lovely lady who I lived next door to for 25 years) passed away a little while ago and this is some of the stuff from her house that was deemed not good enough for the charity shop.  It's all a little chipped but I don't mind!  I love the Phoenix flowery dish and the snowflake Pyrex, and I just couldn't see all those glass dishes go to the landfill.  The big clear bowl is Pyrex and I'll use it for baking.  I've also made use of Aunty Rose's colander in the garden.

My Aunty Jenny (my biological aunty this time!) saved these from going into the bin at her charity shop up in Widnes.  There's several meters of woven garland, a little rug and whatever these pretty knitted thingys are.  There was loads more in the bag too, more knitted stuff and socks and gloves, I chose what I wanted and the other stuff went to my mum's charity shop, I believe to be sold by Oxfam at festivals. 

Have you bought, or not bought, anything good from the charity shops lately? 

PS. Check out my other charity shopping posts for more like this! 

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Garden visit, Gardener's World Live 2019.

Joe and I had a lovely time at Gardener's World Live today.  We saw Alan Titchmarsh and the presenter from Gardener's World who always says 'plont' not plant, and on the train I sat opposite the actress who played Martha Jone's mum in Doctor Who!  And then I ate 2 Pret vegan chocolate cookies. But most exciting were the gardens, here are some photos.

I loved this yarn bombed garden, it was so colourful it made my heart sing, 

The Clockmaker's garden won the best garden prize, it was so lovely, 

Can you spot the bunnies? 

Here are some more of my favourite bits, 

This is our 2nd year at Gardener's World Live and we bought our tickets for £12 each from Wowcher.  If they've run out of cheap tickets for Gardener's World, look for tickets to BBC Good Food show, one ticket gets you entrance to both shows anyway, and they're much cheaper than the £25+ official tickets. The cheapy tickets give you entry from 1pm, which is perfect to spend around 4 hours wandering round and having a couple of sit downs before beating the rush out when it closes at 6pm.  After a couple of hours you'll have had enough of people running over your ankles with their folding shopping box cart thingys anyway.  This year we got the train early and had lunch in Grand Central station Birmingham before carrying on our journey to the NEC, which was a good idea because it was cheaper and less stressful.  Even though the BBC Good Food show goes on at the same time as Gardener's World I still struggled to find something I wanted to eat, that was vegan and that hadn't all sold out, last year.  If you're planning a trip to Gardener's World Live, I hope these tips help! 

Check out the other garden's I've visited too. 

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My homegrown harvest, May 2019.

I've had a few tiny, tasty harvests this month, I hope next month there'll be much more! 

I picked these chive flowers and have popped them in a bottle with some white wine vinegar to make chive blossom vinegar, so far it's very pink! 

I've had my first pickings from my front garden raised beds. I planted my red onion sets and garlic cloves too close together on purpose so I could strategically pick the thinnings for an extra harvest!  I've picked a few stems from my perennial Welsh onions that I've planted out in my flower beds this year.

I've picked a whole load of mint to dry, Joe buys mint teabags but I hope he'll like homegrown instead to save some money and the plastic-y teabags. 

That's about it for this month, have you been harvesting much from the garden this month?

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Diary of a permaculture (ish) garden, May 2019.

This month we got new garden furniture!  It's so lovely to sit out in the garden in comfort and the set is modular so it comes apart and goes back together in lots of different configurations.

In other, actual, gardening news, my front garden raised beds are going good.  The potatoes have all come up and so have broad beans, peas, coriander, borlotto beans, carrots, beets, onion, garlic, kale, cabbage, chard, sweetcorn, peppers and tomatoes.  I love having 4 raised beds instead of a car on my driveway! 

In the back garden my raised beds need some attention, but I've got broad beans and dwarf borlotto beans and lettuce and a crazy cauliflower in one bed, and some onions and bolted chard in the other.

I planted some 'walking onions' a while ago and I guess it's their time to go walking, cos they're growing little onion bulbs on their tops and flopping all over the place trying to plant themselves.

My Hotbin composter seemed pretty full so I emptied it and got some lovely compost to spread on my cottage garden bed.

Speaking of the cottage garden bed I've been pulling up all the many, many, many forget me nots, chopping up some of them and laying them down as a mulch, then putting a layer of Hotbin compost on top.  I've also watered with worm wee from my wormery and sprinkled some poppy seeds and other random seeds that came from cleaning out my seed tin.  I hadn't added compost here for a few years and you could definitely tell, the poor soil was as dry as dust. 

My Aunty Rose (not my biological aunty, but the lovely lady who I lived next door to for 20+ years when I was growing up) died this month, and I inherited (or rescued!) quite a lot of her chipped kitchenware that was heading for the tip.  One of those things was this old colander, which I've lined and filled with sedums.  I did this little metal watering can too, it was left in the garden by the previous homeowners and it leaks, so it's much cuter as a planter.

My apple trees have set some fruit!  Yey!

That's it really.  The garden is looking pretty and I'm feeling pretty tired after doing lots of gardening this month! 

How's your garden doing?

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Easy green actions and articles.

Here are a few easy online actions and interesting articles to make the world a better, greener, happier, place, 

Edinburgh has become the first city in the UK to have traffic-free days!  I love this idea and hope it spreads to other cities and towns. 

This is an interesting article, if the government actually does something - like put it's money and power behind eco initiatives, the UK could cut it's greenhouse gas emissions to ZERO by 2050 - yes please! 

How can I write one of these blog posts without mentioning Extinction Rebellion.  Oh my gosh, I may have wept a little bit watching the action taking place in the UK and all over the world to stop a climate catastrophe.  You can check out their website for what's happening now and to find your local group. 

Don't forget to donate to Extinction Rebellion if you can.  There's nowt doing in my town in terms of an XR group or protests, and I couldn't get to London for the big protests, the least I can do is give a donation.

Over the Easter bank holiday Britain went 90 hours without using electricity from coal - woop woop.

It is still not too late to act. It will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take fierce, fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceiling. In other words, it will take cathedral thinking. I ask you to please wake up and make changes required possible.

5 awesome quotes from Greta Thunberg.

Sign Friends of the Earth's petition asking the government to adopt their plan to stop a climate emergency.  See their 6 part plan here. 

And finally, the UK government has become the first in the world to declare an environment and climate emergency - and I'm really interested to see what'll happen next. 

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