How are you, and how has your week been?  I have the day off work today and am brewing up to hosting our annual family reunion; the kitchen is an explosion of pots, pans, sticky spoons and odd streaks decorate every surface (passata? chocolate?? let’s hope so..).  The windows are steamed up which is helpful, hiding as it does the fact that the garden is being lashed with rain and gales, and our carefully hung bunting is now drooping rather dejectedly and is speckled flamboyantly with mud.

Ah well, it will give us a chance to play how-many-adults-can-you-squash-onto-a-sofa and other such games, if the heavens do not comply.

In the meantime, here’s a couple of projects I did in the garden recently when the weather was much kinder; planting up hanging strawberry baskets and a hamper full of lavender.

I repurposed a couple of our Easter egg hunt baskets and added a binliner to help with water retention, then filled with potting soil and planted a couple of young strawberry plants we’d been coaxing along on the windowsill;

Whilst strawberries are delicious, strawberry plants are undeniably quite dull, so I added some of these gorgeous cappuccino-coloured trailing bedding plants to provide a bit of colour and contrast…

I then twisted rubber-coated wire firmly around the handle, creating a double-strength cord to hang the basket from the tree (I used this make);

Hang from your chosen tree (I used this one under which we play our noughts and crosses)

Wait about 2-3 weeks, watering frequently, and suddenly… STRAWBERRIES!!!

Pick and enjoy immediately..

I also planted a wicker picnic hamper with lavender, using a plastic box as an inner to protect the wicker and stop the moisture from evaporating so quickly…

The lavender has grown quickly and filled out, creating a lovely feature on the patio…

And a helpfully portable one!  A nice welcome for our guests in the spare bedroom…

The hamper fits beauitfully in my old delivery bike, which I recently painted (admittedly in a rather half-assed way; it needs another coat..); we prop this against the garden gates whevener we’re expecting company…

And my final outdoor project, which is very much a work-in-progress; I’m trying to grow a living skirt for my vintage mannequin, after dressing her for Christmas and spring.  Climbing roses and clematis are slowly but surely weaving their way skywards; in my head I’m picturing a sea of cascading white flowers and delicate tendrils.  If the weather has its way though, I suspect I may instead by rescuing her from a tree, or even from next door…

Have a wonderful, relaxing weekend.  Ours may be wet and wild, but it will be enormous fun, of that I’m sure – we have a 30ft bouncy castle arriving at dawn and no-one can resist that… .