Summerhouse with a View

Well yesterday was the day the summerhouse had a much needed haircut.

This is the before picture….

….and this is after some serious cutting back.

But I will really miss this view, but hey it won’t take long for it to grow back and in the mean time I will be growing lots of annual climbers to fill the space.

Also while clearing behind the summerhouse I found lots of clay pots that had been buried under several years worth of beech leaves from my neighbours lovely tree along with a family of mice. I hope the mice have now managed to find a new home hopefully not in the greenhouse. The clay pots are now all neatly tidied away.

Some of these will be going to my friend who gave me lots of small clay pots last year. Fair exchange I would say…..

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Is it another Bag ?

No it’s a Journal….made using hessian wallpaper that was used in our first conservatory 30 + years ago and found in the loft. Lined with some found old linen fabric and the pages are 1000 grade lining paper washed with water colour paint to age them. The buckle was found in my stash box and is goodness knows how many years old. So using all old materials I have created something that perhaps looks new but feels and smells old. I am going to use this journal to record lots of textures that I find in and around the garden, using mixed media to replicate, eg hand stitching and french knots to look like moss, maybe painting, torn paper who knows  …..watch this space, this might be a full years project.

Loose Connections

Don’t you just love it when life throws up some nice surprises that are loosely connected. This happened this week.

It all started a couple of months ago when I bought a pair of 1950s Lucienne Day curtains from our local Oxfam shop. These are now in my stash pile waiting to be transformed into something else, but anyway I digress. So last Sunday Mr Malc was walking to the allotment when he saw a young woman coming towards him walking a dog, nothing unusual about that, but as she got nearer he thought he recognised her. Well he did and we haven’t seen her for 30 years, so to cut a long story a bit shorter, we asked her to dinner last evening. We had a fantastic catch up, and found that she was house sitting for a friend whilst the house was being cleared and sold. I had been telling her about all the things I buy from charity shops and mentioned these curtains. She immediately asked if she could see them, and yes you guessed it, they had been taken to Oxfam by the family selling the house. The last connection is that the house belonged to my daughters English teacher and I had also been in the house many years ago to give the teachers husband lessons on machine knitting……

Oxfam purchase ‘ Tarn by Lucienne Day 1957 ‘

….but the biggest connection is that we have found a long lost friend who will now stay in our lives…. 🙂