More photos from the garden

 Hello! Well, we have finally finished the term today, and I would do a little happy dance if I had the energy! Instead I am sharing with you some photos from my garden over the last week. First up we have a baby blue tit...

 followed by some wild strawberries...

 and a bit of x rated hoverfly mating!

 Here is some soothing lavender...

 and a baby goldfinch.

 Next is a rather lovely self set poppy that I have no idea where it came from...

 and look at the tongue on that bumblebee! Quite proud of this one!

 Here is a shasta daisy

 and a tiny snail...

 Another hoverfly....

 a baby robin...

and my little wood mouse friend, who really likes those pink fat pellets we buy for the birds!
Hope you enjoyed a few minutes in the garden with me. Thanks for looking!

A quick card and some more garden photos

Hi there! We still have another week at school, and I am so tired, I may have to sleep for a week once we finish! I needed to make a birthday card for a lovely friend, so decided I should ink up the gorgeous Card-io stamps I bought at Doncaster at the beginning of June. I made the background with ink dusters and memento inks in dandelion and rosebud.
We had another baby bird at the feeders this week - a baby longtailed tit! They are so cute - just like a fluffy ball on a stick!

Next up are a couple of photos of a plant I bought on a whim last year, and it has continued to flower this year. Not at all sure what it is, but the geometric nature of the petals really attracted me to it.

It really is sunshine in a pot!

I have a couple of planters that I have bedding plants in...

but many of my plants are grown for wildlife, either for berries....

or for bees

Thanks for looking!
Edit: Thank you blogging Friends - it is indeed a Gazania Daybreak Red Stripe, so definitely sunshine in a pot!

A baby card or three

I needed a baby card for a colleague a little while ago, and I happened across these stamps as I was wondering what to do. They are Visible image stamps that I treated myself to a couple of years ago and I hadn't got round to inking them up. Now I don't normally do pink, but the recipient does, so I used Spun Sugar Distress in and memento rosebud for the sentiment. The Die is timeless rectangles. I dusted middle of the die and the hands panel with Spun sugar and added faux stitching round the base card with a distress marker.
I then went on to make a blue and a yellow version...

 

using Tumbled Glass and Salty ocean Distress ink...

 using Memento dandelion and peanut brittle inks. In real life this one looks much more subtle! I was so busy I forgot to take photos of these until after dark today.
I will leave you with a few photos from the garden today...

 A Californian poppy,

 A blackbird,

A cream spot ladybird,

 A male house sparrow

 and a wood mouse at the 'all you can eat bird food buffet' (sorry he is a bit out of focus)!
Thanks for looking!

A Walk in the Woods

 Grab yourself a cuppa and a chair. This is a picture heavy post!
This afternoon Meg, Steve and I went for a wander around Ploughman's Wood, a small but beautiful local nature reserve about ten minutes drive away from home. I took my camera (okay, I have hardly put it down since I got it!) and took quite a few photos!

 We went to see the bluebells, which were beautiful

 as were the wood anemones...

 There was also a lot of greater stitchwort and the hawthorn was just coming out too.

 In the woods the lesser celandines were like little stars shining.

We also heard lots of skylarks, saw yellowhammers,

 several large bumble bees

 and some tiny spiders. This last photo was taken by Megan and she managed to capture the webspinning in progress.

It was such a lovely afternoon, and we will definitely be going for a stroll around there again soon.Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoyed the photos.

A few hours in the garden

 

I just wanted to share a few pictures of the garden that I took today between little showers. It was so lovely to be out there with all the scents and colours.

 

The insects were very busy and I was pleased with the wide variety of bees and hoverflies that I saw.

The veg plot is a little overgrown, but the beans and peas are full of flower and we have a good harvest of turnips. The rhubarb always gives us a good crop, and the apple tree is laden this year. Lets just hope the Bramleys don't go through the roof of the greenhouse!

I have recently registered our Garden on the 'Big Wildlife Garden' website. Our vegetable production has been a bit hit and miss over the past few summers, and we were getting a bit depressed with it, but by registering our garden and looking at what we are doing for wildlife has made us look at it all from a different perspective. Insect life and bird life in our garden is thriving, and I am sure some of this is down to the herbs and native plants we have. All I'd like now is a resident hedgehog!