An Owl and More Flowers

Well here is the Night Watchman update and, when I added the pic to my Webshots album and compared it to the previous one, there's actually been more progress than I thought: I set myself a goal of stitching all along the top edge to the opposite corner before going on holiday - goal achieved. Yay! I'll be taking this and the small Cleopatra kit with me. I'm not sure how much, if any, stitching will actually be done whilst we're away - we tend to have evenings playing Trivial Pursuits and nattering with Uncle, Aunty and cousin (with liberal quantities of wine and nibbles always available for those who want to partake) - but at least I'll have a choice of pieces if there is a chance to sit and stitch.

I've made a token start of the holiday packing but can't do any more until DH is here, so I know what he wants to take - normally he would have today off as well but he had to go into work this morning because the Italians are over here again and he had to be there for the morning meeting with them. The problem is the weather is nice at the moment but it isn't guaranteed to stay that way, so what shall we take - mostly summer or mostly winter clothes? Oh, the joys of holidays in England. ;0) LOL

Thought I'd follow up with a few more pics of my garden. As we step out of the back door and face down the garden this is the area we first see, which is to the right of the air raid shelter. DH put the pots on the board hoping it would deter the slugs and snails from eating them but, as you can see, it hasn't worked. Look closely and you will see an orange tub in the top right corner of the pic: that's the beer trap, which is highly successful. I don't like killing critters but we can't have the slugs and snails thinking we're planting all these flowers just to give them a hugely varied diet - at least with the beer trap they die sozzled and happy!

The rose tree, called Friendship, was given to me for my birthday at least ten years ago by a friend - I knew her through her DS and mine being friends at school but, unfortunately, I no longer saw her after she started working full time. You can also just about see one of the lavender plants my Dad gave me - looking forward to that blooming later in the season. :0)

To the right of the above area is a path that leads down the garden, to the old shed, and the privet hedge between our garden and the neighbours. These pots sit along the wider bit of the path:

The little garden ornaments were gifts to DS, when he was little, by his Nana and Grandad (my Mum and Dad) . There's an owl, a bunny, a hedgehog and a tortoise (who is hiding behind the bunny). The large green pot has a bay tree in it, along with a rocket plant (DH likes that - I don't, yuk!) and some spring onions. The little brown pot has a fern in it that I hope will recover after it was frost damaged earlier in the year. The two bushy plants to the left and right of the big pot, plus the Lupin in the blue pot, are waiting to go in the front garden. That tatty old fencing is at the base of the privet hedge and just about helps to keep the neighbours rabbits in their garden. :0)

This is my Lady pot: She is to the right of the front door and is planted with the trailing violas we bought last weekend. Aren't they pretty? They are also doing much better than the cyclamen that was in there previously - another casualty of the late frosts.

This is the corner of the front garden:
The bluebells are trying to take over the place at the moment....... as are those pesky little dandelions. We haven't done much with the front as we need to do some work here: firstly putting in a new water pipe to the house, then having the driveway block paved. We'll be keeping that garden area around the edges of the walls though. :0)

That's all the pics of the bits that are fit to be seen, so I won't be boring you with any more of those. :0)

Right, that's me off to have a pre-holiday catch-up with Blog reading while DH has a sit down and a cuppa, then it'll be on with the packing.

Thanks again for visiting. Hope you all have a great weekend and an enjoyable week - be good while I'm away! ;0)