A rant and calming pretty pictures

Today is La Tomatina in Valencia, Spain and, as with every year, I feel my heart breaking at the wastage of all those beautiful red tomatoes in a world were we had an aphid apocalypse in our greenhouse and too many people are truly starving to death or have illnesses like scurvy.

Yep, I'm a spoil sport and I hope everyone who takes part in the festivities today gets hit - whack bang!, in the bum at least once. Damn it.

Deep breath

So I've been ill again for a while and to be honest I still am and the exhaustion accompanying it has had me sleeping whole days away. For you though, I have imbibed much coffee and here we go with a calming post of all those photos I just haven't got around to sharing; I'm also hoping that this will wake up my resolve to get the lottie and use my new Fiskers SmartFit pruners and bring some more flowers home ..... I also have a new book to review on flower arranging crafts so...

forget-me-not

mushroom

climbing french beans

Blackberry bush is covered in fruits = fingers crossed; it's us against the birds!

White Cosmos - I love them so

last handful of mangetout

white cosmos, white dahlia, yellow dahlia, pink rose, yellow poppies, red poppies

little red peppers (some have dried tomato flowers petals on them)

Right, I did it, I wrote a wee post and now the whole idea isn't so daunting! I shall be back soon with more photos (I hope to go to the plots this evening) and reviews :)

Much love
Carrie

(3rd) Happy Days Project

Still loving this project of collating an instagram photo a day to make up a collage of happiness. Okay, I may have missed a few days here and there and it isn't exactly the continuous stream it ought to be but in my world some days are just best forgotten.

Anyhow, here is the third instalment of my Happy Days (varied I know, but hey, lots of things make me happy when I think about it).... Click to enlarge!

41 - A night in alone :( Made better by this - bubbles and chocolate!  42 - Maggie has designs on making gourmet dinners for herself.... 43 - Cows :) God I love my countryside!!!  44 - Never thought of this before....zebra = tiger horse ;) 45 - Damn you human!!! A bath??! I smelt wonderful. But oh, a biscuit? Well okay... 

46 -16th Century village trapped in time and cared for by the National Trust - Culross, Scotland 47- Stunning golden lion's head door knob. The Golden Lion Hotel in Stirling, Scotland. 48- Ohh my good god! = happy! 49- Just some of the veg seedlings to be planted. 50- Summer dinner no.1

51- Beautiful vignette of plot 14b. It's so messy at the minute! 52- Super cool elephant drawing on the community board in Starbucks today. Loved it!! 53- It's true! 54- Butterfly on the brambles, this showery April morn. 55- Chocolate chip dog shaped shortbread :)

56- Pretty important day for anyone who cares about democracy in our country! What a privilege it is to vote. 57- Moving On by Ainslie Henderson. Incredible.
www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/05/movining-on-stop-motion-ainslie-henderson/ 58- A mini schnauzer as seen in the wild...how majestic! 59- Celery, carrots and hummus out of our new handcrafted pottery...yummy Saturday nights in. 60- Tree peony at Rowallane
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I'm exploring a load of different printers at the moment and have one more I really want to try before I decide on my favourite - price/quality etc. I have lots more photos on my instagram page here and am toying with the idea of selling some either as perfect little squares or as greetings cards.

* If it seems that it wouldn't be expensive I would open up the option to my readers - what do you think? *

Love and hugs
Carrie

Bonny Scotland :)

The weather in Scotland was fabulous last week, we couldn't have been luckier. Andrew got to do some work, looking at castles etc and I got to do a little photography (when I felt up to it). We drank many different whiskies and ate terrible food (I had one good meal, one!) Then we came home exhausted and in need of a proper 'do nothing much and read a book' sort of holiday :)

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Castle Edzell
Their wonderful looking box hedge garden had box blight - bad news :( It has looked much happier in the past. I believe they are going to slowly replace it all with yew hedging. Plus all those holes in the walls will have plants in them come summer. I declare that we all must have a little summer/tea house at the bottom of our own gardens.

Stonehaven

This is what our 1st B&B looked over and I swear, watching the sunrise over this harbour was one of the best sights ever....http://instagram.com/p/mzdIrqK8RN/

 Dunnottar Castle

I have too many photos - here is a good overview, I hope... it's a stunning and huge attraction....

Glenfiddich Distillery

I'm even getting bored with my own photos now, hahaha. I took so many on my phone that it's just about enough to fill a book, if I kept going.

So we also saw the Culloden Museum and Battlefield and Castle Urquhart (on Loch Ness - no bloomin monster!)

Then a glorious drive towards the ferry again ...

You see I have so much gardening to talk about and beauty in the garden and allotment plus a fantastic new book  which I've reviewed (out next month!) I best get writing xx

Hugs and love
Carrie

Signs of hope and happiness

As you may remember, last Saturday I wrapped up as warm as I could and went to the lottie to see for myself the glory of the horse manure delivery. (Who in their right mind ever gets to write a sentence like that!) Anywho, I was suffering with the flu and didn't want to just stand about whilst Andrew shovelled some into the compost heap (see below) so I took myself off for a wee dander round our field (Field A - the first and best, haha, I'm biased).

Naturally I started with a walk through 24a to get to the path out. Goodness I love Kale and the 3rd pic is off a little glass globe style thingy on a pole :)

So this was the first time I had my good camera out with me for a long time; these are just some photos I liked, searching out moments that spoke to me and trying to capture them 'in camera' (ie. no computer effects used). This year I really do want explore that side of myself again - hopefully the blog will benefit :)

Finally back at our plots and this is all I am willing to share of the disgraceful 14b. A wilderness if ever there was one and somewhere that is soon to be attacked, once I get over this flu. There are fabulous plans in the making for this half plot - so far our work hasn't quite paid off over there but we are determined.

 Back then on 24a and I thought these were pretty cool; naturally freeze dried raspberries. Oh and two suicidal gnomes - sad, so sad....

Hope your day is going well, better than the guys above, that's for sure! We just got a packet full of packets of seeds through the letterbox :) Andrew ordered some vital items, we'll also pick some fun new things together. I'm going to let him open the packet and see everything first. So much happening and people think Winter is a dead boring time to be a gardener!

I just ran out into the back garden with my hot water bottle and saw that YES the Snowdrops are through and starting to open :) Happy signs indeed :)

Hugs

Fruit and Veg all over the wall

We are finally getting the kitchen decor finished up - hurrah! I have 'before' photos and some 'during' and soon enough there shall be 'after' ones too. I shall share but bare with us as the weather here is dry and the lottie calls today again. So I thought I show you some of the photos that are going up into a massive multi-aperture frame I have... I'm a proud lottie mum :)

Do you put up any of your photos of your homegrown food up on your walls?

Developments!

I don't like appointments, especially when the subject matter is me and my mental health, so today has been terribly tainted by a visit from my social worker. This was made all the worse because after an hour waiting for her and getting more and more uptight, I rang her office and she'd written down the wrong time in her diary. Luckily she was able to come straight over and luckily Mamma G had been in the house with me. I just hate lateness and the panicky feeling hasn't died down all day. So I'm grumpy and need Andy cuddles, but he's at an allotment committee meeting and so it's just me and you (Maggie is comfty with her Nana downstairs).

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Prepare yourself for some devilishly clever play on words......
After months of going through a particularly awful and serious depression low I finally have some good news. My photography (developments - eh, get it?!)  has been accepted by a lovely gallery here in Co. Antrim and I am to hand in my first batch next week. The owners are absolutely lovely and both creative and artistic people. David is a stained glass specialist who has done churches, homes and our very own Stormont Castle - a large piece to commemorate the setting up of the offices of First and Deputy First Ministers. Stunning - see their studio here.

On top of that news, all our seedlings are just so excited to be growing (I imagine them having parties at night and being very rowdy - but I'm just mental). I must point out however that I have planted only some broad beans and sweet peas, Andrew has done EVERYTHING else and boy has there been a lot of it. Below are a few photos of the seedlings in the cold frames at the lottie but there are the same amount again on Mamma G's window sills and really goodness knows how many he had planted directly.

I haven't been down at the lottie except for about half an hour last week - my passion for life in general has dwindled and I am finding it more and more difficult to socialise or get things done.

Not quite back on my feet again and writing this is like pulling teeth, so I'm off to have another nap and then tomorrow I shall return with avengance. Hear me roar!!!! My heartiest wish is that you had a lovely Easter; I shall catch up on all the Easter-y posts later on tonight, thank you for you're Eastery wishes to me by the way x. Andrew and I went to Rowallane gardens and I'll hoke out some snaps from that day - it was lovely and Maggie had a whale of a time with all the the other dogs and sweet kids that wanted to play with her.

I WILL be cheerer tomorrow, promise x

Right, enough whinging

Okay, so I have had a terrible time of it but I have to share the good with the bad. I am glad to say that I am feeling stronger and even managed a walk with the dog and a photographic trip out into the back garden yesterday by myself. I just needed rest, lots of it and I still need more but I can cope better today and therefore here I am with all the love and thanks in the world to those who encouraged me and supported me through yet another blip.

Here are a few of those photos from yesterday, it was sunny for a while!!....



Insects; fascinating up close.

I have concentrated on the photography side of things and opened my own on line shop of pics from holidays, but mainly from the allotments and of nature in general. I only opened it yesterday and already sold one photo! We did visit the lottie last night but to be honest I have been neglecting it and found it to be overwhelming - too much to do! Plus I made the mistake of dandering over to Bobby's plot (which is eerily perfect in every way) and made myself ill with jealousy. My strength suddenly was zapped from me and we went home! What an effect the 'competition' can have on you, so silly.

Plus our new road is so far looking far from promising. I hope major improvements are afoot as the new hardcore that's been put down is already potholed and terribly thin (to my, albeit, untrained eyes), as a surface for delivery lorries and the odd car to drive down, never mind a person to walk down safely. Arrrgghhhh! I hate it when things aren't done right. I must give them the benefit of the doubt and just hope it gets good.

So, as I said, I still need a heck of a lot of rest so I'll leave it here for today.

I just want to thank those who cared, worried and wrote messages, it honestly helped; when I am so low I can't see a way out and you helped me fight on xx