Gardening

As it's a bank holiday today in England and Wales I did the traditional bank holiday thing of pottering in my garden. It means so much to me to actually have a garden to potter in! As I'm only "borrowing" this garden for a little while until our new house is built, I don't want to change much. So today it was just a bit of late spring tidying and potting up some container plants that are pictured above.

When my parents visited yesterday they took me to Homebase and I picked up a lavender, fuchsia, sage and a thyme plant which I potted up today. (Pictured above) They may look a little small at the moment but I'm sure that in a months time they'll look more than comfortable in their new pots!

My back garden is small and south west facing, the soil is good, the lawn poor and everything is a bit over grown and wild, as you can see above. (Although that picture was taken after I had done some tidying!) I quite like that though as I like wilderness gardens and wild flowers, like the foxgloves pictured below. So I am leaving the back of the garden semi wild, which the birds and insects will enjoy, particularly the bees who need all the help they can get!
The border to the fence was completely overrun with herb-robert, which is pictured below. The flowers are a pinky purple, the stems red and in autumn the leaves turn scarlet too. The herb smells very strange too, particularly when disturbed, apparently it's a good mosquito or midge repellent and has many old traditional herbal uses from curing sickness to disinfecting wounds. So I've only cut it back to half way up the garden. The back of the garden is set aside for the herb-robert to run riot. It gets lots of bees visiting which is good.
Near the kitchen door though I want to keep the border neater and more tidy so I did pull the herb-robert back. It has shallow roots so is easy to remove and from looking at advice on the net it won't grow back once dug up though when the remaining plants seed later in the year it could come back. I've had to stake the rather pathetic rose that was being over run by the herb-robert. I think its supposed to be one of those climbing or rambling roses but it wasn't so much as rambling as just lolling! I've added a campanula which I'll add too I think. I also transplanted some plants from further along the border, so we'll have to wait and see if they take.
The birds seem to have appreciated me turning over some of the garden and generally rummaging about through the plants, sending the insects scurrying about.

I'm yet to start on the front garden, apart from adding a hanging basket and sorting out a rather ungainly rose out there too. I'll take some pictures of the front in the week when I go to work on it. I'm glad I made a start today though as there's a lot of rain predicted for tomorrow!

Biggleswade

I have been living in Biggleswade now for just over a week and so thought it was about time that I introduced you to some of the delights of my new home. Above is a picture of the trees outside our house. It makes such a difference to look out on to the lush leaves rather than the concrete of south Wimbledon. The trees are teeming with life from creepy crawlies and spiders who also like to explore our house, to birds and squirrels. Some of the birds are quite tame accustomed to being fed but the squirrels are incredibly shy. Sometimes the bird song is so loud and varied that I feel like I'm in a rain forest!

Below is a photo of the market square and a lovely coffee shop called Surfin' cafe, they're into the web surfing rather than the wet suit and surf board kind. The baked goods, cakes and sandwiches are superb as is the coffee. Behind the cafe you can see part of the bus station which also doubles as a Karate Dojo hence it's rather Japanese architecture. The market is held every Saturday - we went along yesterday and I bought some knitting needles and wool. I was trying for 5 hours yesterday to remember how to knit properly but just couldn't get it right! I may try again later today! If I still can't make head or tale of it I do have a couple of neighbours who I am sure will be able to give me some pointers! Biggleswade has a large population of over 60s.
Biggleswade also has a large population of under 25s particularly children so it is a good mix population wise. There are lots of town centre pubs which you'd expect for a market town on the Great North Road. Below is a picture of one of the pubs just off the market square.

Anyway I hope that gives you a picture of what Biggleswade is like. I hope to go for a walk along the river this week so I'll take some proper pictures then. We also should have broadband this week which will mean I can get back to blogging regularly!

I've moved!

Apologies for not blogging for 3 weeks but I do have a very good excuse. We have moved house.

So much has changed in the last 3 weeks, we have a new coalition government, and I no longer live in London. During the post election excitement Jason and I were furiously packing up our lives into hundreds of boxes (well it felt like hundreds.) The task seemed never ending and the stress of it all was overwhelming. On more than one occasion I threatened to climb into a box myself!

I'm going to blog more about my experiences of moving and the highs and lows of the post election politics but for now I just wanted to make sure that my readers knew that we have landed safely in Biggleswade and I'm enjoying the peace, quiet and birdsong :-)