Beach treasure and hallucinations

It wasn't a 'good' mental health day but Andrew managed to get myself and Toby out the door for a mini adventure on Saturday and in the end I was glad :) We went for a drive along the famous Causeway Coastal Route, I really wanted Toby to experience Maggie's favourite beach in Cushendun. Plus we just love the drive, any wonder it's TripAdvisor's highlight for 2018.

On the way we stopped off at Glenarm Castle tearooms. It was the first time I'd been since the extension and the addition of other small businesses. It's a beautiful place to celebrate my leaving the house and I had cake for lunch 🙂. Our food was delicious and we even had a second coffee each (personally I needed it to keep me going, boy I have been constantly exhausted these past weeks).

I picked the cafe table and instantly got out my new wee camera to have a play around. With views of the kitchen garden right next to me, how could I not? What an idyllic scene and what a lot of gorgeous mulch they had! Tractors were needed - so jealous. I wished we could go out and really have a good poke around but it's not open until St. Patrick's day.

Onwards to Cushendun and the lovely beach there. I think this is one of my all time favourite wee villages and I love it's beach; we see so many lovely people, friendly dogs and even horses on it. The village also has a resident goat that is usually tied up by the bridge beside a monument erected to all the poor animals that had to be put down due to the foot and mouth disease in 2002. Plus it has a wonderful very old pub - Mary McBrides.

Toby loved the beach, just as I hoped and it was beautifully clean as always, besides the seaweed from the recent big weather. He ran about all over the place and was a very good boy, until the very end when we were walking back to the car, at this point he ran up to a lady and bashed into her leg head first. He is a little crazy sometimes, hahaha.

We did find some little pieces of sea-glass that we see as treasure, it's always been a fun pursuit. Andrew also found a mysterious plastic animal...a giraffe or maybe a seahorse. We took it home anyway.

On the way home we had chips in the car, all of us - Toby loves a good chip.

As for the hallucinations, well how about these during this week.... Sheep in the street and grazing on the neighbours grass and this, a bumblebee in the back garden! A bumblebee in January and he had pollen on his legs which I can only assume came from the little box hedge flowers.

We are determined to at least look at the allotment in the flesh this weekend, no matter the weather!

My love and hugs
Carrie

Bee friendly plants

So here I am in Scotland for the week and what a week....RHS National Gardening Week - celebrate! Oh I know I shall just have to drink some fine local whisky to add my own merriment to the occasion ;) Click the link to see their gorgeous website.

Ahhh, Scotland, the land of raspberries and oats and whisky...sing along now ' these are a few of my favourite things'...

The RHS website has ideas for ways to celebrate ( if you have time!) But come on,if you read this blog I should like to think you love wildlife and such and shall be celebrating this week as with every week! Plus, crikey there is so much to do, so many seeds to sow :) It would be incredible if you could show a child the magic of planting a seed though (sunflowers are fab, they germinate in about 2 days) and watching the life cycle, but don't go pilfering kids without parents' consent ;)

I love to think of bees. I've had quite a few buzzing  around the allotment and then there was that one that knocked itself out flying into the patio doors whilst I was drinking coffee - scared me, what a boop! He was okay after a moment - fear not.

I saw this on both Pinterest and Tumblr and thought it would be perfect to share.
ALL credit to Hannah Rosengren!

Found on byhannahrosengren.tumblr.com

Much love
Carrie

Love bug housing

You may remember a while back that I received a gift from Prezzybox.com to review and it wasn't to my taste - flower grenades, that looked a little too much like grenades for me.. Well the lovely people at Prezzy box read my review and were slightly horrified to learn I had been offended. Dear love them, after sincere apologies they offered me anything else from their gardening range to review and I choose this insect house :)

Now this is more my thing and it was utterly delightful to receive, to make and soon I will have the pleasure of putting it up in the lottie. Plus I get a cute little tin to keep essentials in like plasters and antiseptic wipes or maybe all  the labels and pencils etc... It's a great wee gift and this, my friends I would recommend. :)

Look how cute the tin alone is and the contents are laid out so prettily too. I got stuck into building my Bug House right away and it was delightfully easy and I'm super pleased with the results and the 2 ladybirds that came with it = adorable!!

Ok, I am quite sure bugs aren't that fussed on how beautiful their homes are but darn it I'll try anything to welcome on board and help us fight the enemies...

I'm in a love bug mood these past few weeks since I started to clear up the embarrassing messy parts for the plots. We are seriously lacking in helpful bugs and though I made a makeshift bug house years ago and purposely put lots of grass and stones under our shed for bugs - we seem to have counted 4 ladybirds between us, 2 frogs (yay!!), lots of bees but not much more than that :( I want more good bugs! (Who ever thought I'd say that!!) The leatherbacks and those damned New Zealand flatworms of the past 2 years have destroyed the lovely balance.

So here is my Bangor Blue slate hotel which also has lots of dead and decaying leaves in and around it since I took this photo. On the other side of the wee fence is this pile of rotting wood and an old pipe where a frog has been living.

Plus we have a ready rotten log over on 14b where our other frog lives and lots of woodlice etc and I have been leaving the artichokes to flower to try and encourage butterflies and bees etc. Next year there shall be sunflowers too (I forgot them this year) and more echinacea and black eyed susans etc. Yes 2 frogs *happy dance* and you know why I'm so happy -  they eat loads of insects and nasty creatures and the ultimate enemy, Slugs and Snails!!!!!! Hurrah

Is it just me or are the slugs much bigger this year??

The RHS answers the question about who might check into your bug hotel.....

"A surprisingly wide variety of invertebrates including nesting mason bees and leafcutter bees, woodlice hiding from the sun – and woodlice spiders hunting woodlice, earwigs hiding their babies from predators, ladybirds and lacewings hibernating over winter, beetle larvae feeding on the dead wood, funnel web spiders spinning their traps and centipedes hunting down their prey."

Good stuff I say :)

Thank you Prezzy box for increasing our chances of more friendly, useful bugs on the plots and as for the flower grenades - well I have taken the seed out of the clay containers and shall be scattering them this weekend over by the field boundary.

Hugs and best wishes to all
Namaste

Why don't the plants love me back??

Sunday afternoon was fabulous, a glorious day at the lottie and hardly a soul there so I wasn't even panicky = result! BUT as I was cutting the grass and moving along between plots the grass pollen attacked and I was vanquished, left as a sniffling, dripping, itchy mess; completely bowled over :( Why?? Oh Mother Nature, why!!

I cut all that my hand and let me tell you, you cannot think when doing work like that. It is fabulous; menial work yes - but you have no room to think negatively - the mind is clear :) Plus I met a gorgeous frog in amongst it all, sadly he was very camera shy.

Anywho, I got my medication from the Dr. today and by the weekend I shall ready to once again go to my plots. But it's so cruel, my anxiety and depression hasn't been that bad the past few days, yet I still couldn't/can't go and get in an hour of Allotmentherapy - life can be so nasty sometimes. Boo and indeed Hiss

However - I shall not let this get me down :) No dear reader I have photos from the weekend and the pollen therein can not affect me through the laptop screen. So here we go, let us bathe ourselves in the beauty.....

I am loving the flowers on 14b, both my Poppies are doing really well, the red one is flowering as you can see, even though it went through a big move in the winter from one plot to the other, the purple one has loads of buds and I can barely wait :) I left the chives and the big artichokes to flower, the bees adore them and I don't eat them so its a win win situation. And ohh! look at the all the blossom on the blackberry (or as I like to call it the brambleberry - which makes life awkward for me sometimes when I call my phone my brambleberry too hahaha) Then the 3 roses, well they are now 2 :( Remember the photo I put up of the white 'Polar Star' covered in green fly and aphids, well it was worse and we just had to get rid of it, it's never been the healthiest plant...aww well I have an excuse to buy more :)

Another bed we have left for the bees is the now bolted purple sprouting broccoli - oh isn't a mecca for insects over there :)

Here is that updated photo of the garlic - so proud of it! Yet here is a photo of one of the apples that has fallen victim to the 'June Drop' and I just heard a moment ago that loads of leaves have suddenly fallen off the cherry tree.

Ahh, Nature, she teaches us so much. We can worry ourselves stupid about things but truly we are not in control, never are, never will be. Gardening is a roller coaster and such a get metaphor for life.

Bring back the bees! (with thanks to some Friends)

I love guerrilla gardening and I really ought to do more - as you know I haven't been well this year at all, but the anarchist in me wants to get there and plant wildflowers again on the dead industrial area near my house!! Who shall follow me and take up arms full of seeds!
I am passionate about local wildlife and so when Friends of the Earth contacted me about the plight of the bee I was more than happy to promote their campaign. I have seen local honey for years, the last I heard the hives had been attacked by a disease. I love bees themselves - here, this is a picture I took of a little bloke at the plots last summer; he has so sleepy in the sun, but there were kids screaming and poking at him. Well he got moved to my big blooming Echineachea and those kids haven't come back to our plot (I was firm but fair in my words!!) He's gorgeous, I hope he was okay :)

But if you are more the person who likes grown adults dressing up like bees and acting the maggot, here you are. The Friends of the Earth Bee Cause launch today, haha - great suits! Here they were 'creating a wildflower meadow in the shadow of the Royal National Theatre, London, to highlight the need for more bee-friendly habitats.' I think this may have been noticed by one or two people :)

Here's the link to whole album of fun photos -
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.384283401595236.89347.110861655604080&type=1

But for all the fun - it is a serious issue, here Friends of the Earth (who I have no affiliation with other than a love of nature) got Reading University to give them a hand with some facts for you..... Here is their Press Release.

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UK COULD FACE ANNUAL BILL OF £1.8 BILLION WITHOUT BEES– NEW CAMPAIGN

Friends of the Earth gives away 10,000 free packets of seeds to encourage bee-friendly gardens

It would cost the UK £1.8 billion every year to hand-pollinate crops without bees – 20% more than previously thought – according to new research launched today by Friends of the Earth as it unveils a new campaign to save the bee.

The new figure – which would inevitably be passed on to consumers in rising food costs – comes from research conducted by leading bee experts at the University of Reading on behalf of the environment charity as it launches The Bee Cause to call for action on bees before it’s too late.

In recent years Britain has lost over half the honey bees kept in managed hives and wild honey bees are nearly extinct. Solitary bees are declining in more than half the areas they've been studied and some species of bumblebee have been lost altogether.

Bees and other pollinating insects are responsible for most of our favourite fruit and vegetables. One reason for their decline is a shortage of natural habitats, so Friends of the Earth has outlined simple steps people can take in their gardens to help provide it:

• Sow bee-friendly seeds and plant bee-friendly flowers in your garden such as mixed wildflowers packets, single-flowering roses, open and flat-headed flowers like verbena and yarrow and tubular-shaped flowers such as foxgloves.
• Create a place to nest for solitary bees by piling together hollow stems and creating a ‘bee hotel’.
• Try to provide a small amount of rainwater in a shallow birdbath or tray which honeybees need to keep their hive at the right temperature.

Friends of the Earth is calling on David Cameron to commit to a bee action plan to save bees and save the country billions of pounds in the future. To support this action and find out what else you can do to help bees, join The Bee Cause and claim a free packet of wildflower seeds at www.foe.co.uk/bees.

The campaign is supported by celebrity gardener Sarah Raven. Sarah said:

“Now is the perfect time to get out in the garden and it's not hard to make a few changes to make life a bit more comfortable for bees.

“Without bees, we'd all be in serious trouble and our diet would be, without so much veg and fruit, incredibly dull. I’ve backed The Bee Cause and would encourage others to do the same.”

Paul De Zylva, Nature Campaigner at Friends of the Earth said:

“Imagine a world without strawberries, apples or even coffee – bees are about much more than honey and our food supplies will be in trouble if they bite the dust.

“Unless we halt the decline in British bees our farmers will have to rely on hand-pollination, sending food prices rocketing.

“But there are a few simple things we can all do to help – planting wildflowers in your garden or herbs in a window-box is a great way to provide food for bees and help them thrive.”

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As close as I've gotten to the lottie magic

This divine thing was brought home to me about an hour ago - joy heaped upon joys; our first Strawberry!! Well Andrew had one too but as I am feeling so poo with this hayfever he gave me the big one and had a wee tiny one himself....It was GOOD!

I was at our little deli today and asked about local honey. Unfortunately the local source has none. The harsh winter had had a nasty effect on his bees and they just didn't make any beautiful amber honey. He said that the deli is in touch and just waiting hopefully for a phone call someday soon (I'm now anxious for that call too). I have a secret desire to be a beekeeper though - maybe I should look into this, ummmm....