Well, I went with my urge and posted on Sew Green about my plan for a green driveway from old ski slope. Oh, I really hope I can get some, but maybe they have it all earmarked now that they have started to use it on the paths. Fingers crossed.
I'm super excited about it but incredibly frustrated as I need Mr P and his car to get the stuff as it's bulky and heavy, but that is part of what is so good about it. No chance of it sliding away in the rain as it came from this steep slope...
Hmm, I guess I'll need his help getting up the concrete too, but I've clocked up 5 years of credit from cutting his hedge, DIY in his house, general garden maintenance and of course, practically being his PA as he is not good at keeping in touch with folk and organising himself. But it depends on him having free time, which is pretty rare.
Look, the daffodils beside the home delivery van of my favourite shop...
Can I just say I LOVE BLOGGING. I'm still pretty much bed-bound with this neuralgia, but at least in my good moments I can still be green by doing my posts, I really love that, it really is distracting me from my sickness* some of the time, though it's thanks to Mr P and his laptop as I haven't been able to sit at my own computer for weeks. Yey Mr P. Yey iBook. Yey broadband.
*Liz R, I really think you should start a blog for doing on days when you can work on your laptop. Your wit, interior taste and crafty pursuits would be great all in one place, I'd visit and I know others would too x.
For Julie's colour week, today is pink.
I have a strange relationship with pink, when I was a kid I hated it. I was a real tomboy and it stood for everything I was not. I still, in my head, think of myself as someone who doesn't like pink, yet my love of the 50's and of colours that look good with turquoise means I actually have a lot of pinks around, even in my clothing. It's a bit like anchovies and radishes, I think it makes life better if you can enjoy and appreciate these things rather than having them limit your choices. And I certainly went wild for the pink tractor (above), at the farm shop.
But Julie, I couldn't limit myself to one pink picture as I simply couldn't choose, so here are some more...
my pink vintage necklace on the one day when we had snow for more than 30 seconds.
The sky is one of the thing I love most about where I live, the sun sets in the west over the hill.
And here my continuing obsession with photographing my pegs, and wooden doors...
Joining in with Julie's colour week, today is green. (ok, it was tuesday when I wrote it, but I've been kind of sick and I didn't realise I had wandered off and not actually posted it!)
Grass and stains on my knees, steamed veggies - my almost daily delight, the spring onions that I ate today that survived winter(!), the weed that floats on the surface of rivers, the sea with it's bluey greens that I love most of all. Fabrics I use in my garden in summer, balls of wool and thread in my sewing room, the hills and fields that make me feel at home. I love green.
So the picture...
I love the way the grass grows into the dry ski slope. I was thinking about maybe using that stuff to create a green driveway. I always see piles of it lying around from when the slope gets redone, it would be great to recycle it. I'm sure it would be sturdy enough to take the occasional visitors that have cars, but would still let me have soil and low growing plants, grasses, even herbs like thyme and chamomille growing through (but maybe not to be eaten, what with the car fumes on them). Hmm, now I'm wondering if maybe I should do a post on green carparks for Sew Green, as I've always liked them. Perhaps.
I think there's someone hiding in my pocket!
Here's what a bunny in fancy dress looks like...
Hmm, can you imagine why there is only a head in these photo's, let's just say it's not because I had a visit from the Easter mafia!
Andy eats a lot of tinned fish, enough for me to have cute tubs for all my different sized nails and screws. Buttons would look good here but they live in clear lidded tubs.
Joining in with Julie's colour week, this brooch is part of my vintage jewellery collection.
Ok, I'm off to bed now, been up all night with dodgy breathing/chest trouble. The silver lining is that much blog reading has, at last, been done :0) And much listening of music (mostly french).
Still technically on my computer break so not checking emails or comments till tomorrow. I may have missed my camping holiday opportunity but I did have some holiday fun eating a Lindt bunny that appeared in my blue bag. How'd it get in there? Bunny pics to follow. x
I had deeply hoped to be going to sleep near here last night. And then waking up here...
Cramps dictated otherwise, which is a real shame, but I intend to have a quiet time anyway with books, films food, no computer and hopefully some animal visitors...
Spring Magnolia just before the sun disappeared behind the hill for the night. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend wherever you are. I'm going to have a mini blog break so I can at least pretend to myself I'm away, can you believe I've not had an actual not visiting people holiday for at least 4 years!
That's why I was so keen to go camping. Every bit of holiday time I've had from work over the 4 years has been used up visiting friends and family, which is lovely, but not the same as having time to yourself and freedom to just do whatever takes your fancy in the moment, to eat and sleep at any time and to change plans without having to run it by someone else first.
Can't wait for the next few days to pass, cramps to go, meetings to finish and then, a bit of social life! I'll be going to meet Daphne for a picnic in town, weather permitting. I'll be taking my camera with me, Daphne is a great photo buddy, she's more than happy to spend time off the beaten track having a gentle adventure and taking pics of random things. Remember our day in town last year, we had a real day of finding colours we love (blues for me, yellows for her). Here are a few of the photo's I never quite got round to posting last time...
Have a great weekend folks, don't eat too many eggs, as tempting as it may be!
Are you green and creative? Why not have a go at the Inhabitat T-shirt design contest. They talked about it here today after yesterdays post on Organic T-shirts by T.S.Designs.
I love Inhabitat so much, they have been such a huge inspiration to me through the ongoing refurb of my mobile home. Did you see this recent post they did about the possible greening of the gherkin in London? Given that I love pod shapes I ought to like that building, but I don't. Or rather, I didn't, until I saw the rendered image of it with plants growing around and on top. Much nicer.
I've been working out ways to use waste plastic bottles, the big kind that water and things come in, and one of my experiments is in using them to create a green living wall to cloth part of my house with. Nothing to show yet, I don't have enough bottles yet, but I think it could be quite effective.
Also shown last month were nifty little mini wind turbines (seriously, they are tiny tiny tiny), which I thought would be ideal for powering a greenhouse heater to extend the growing season in cooler weather). Not that I have a greenhouse yet, but I will in the future.
I was also immediately drawn to the article about the cow poo eco flooring! I'm very 'earthy' (says Mr.P) when it comes to poo, and often pick up dried sheep and rabbit droppings to make things with. Seriously folks, they are cute, and really just little grass sculptures. And cow pats, when they are fully dried, can be really gorgeous and have amazing colours. I'm just a country girl at heart.
Did I mention the sun is shining gloriously today? And I can hear the tractor cutting the grass between the houses so there will be that lovely smell I call the smell of childhood. It's a proper spring day so I marked it with an outdoor skin brushing session this morning. I don't much like skin brushing indoors, too dusty! So when the weather is good I get out to the private corner of the garden and have a good go at restarting my lymphatic drainage system. Very invigorating I must say.
Barbed wire or blossoms, which would you choose to see against a blue sky?
I liked both when I took the photo's a few weeks ago, and then I realised they were relevant to my 1st Sew Green post today, Ethical Banking.
It's basically about how your savings can make a real environmental/social difference by being in a bank that supports ethical investments (blossom) rather than being used to fund unethical sh*t like the arms trade (barbed wire).
I hope you'll link in for a read and hopefully it'll be food for thought (but not preachy) about what is happening with your money when it's not being used to buy that incredible can't-believe-no-one-else-has-spotted-this-yet piece of fabric in the charity shop.
Yes, you know where I'm coming from with that experience. You see, you lunge, you look round expecting someone to fight you for it, but then realise they couldn't give two hoots about some old retro rag. You head home with your swag bag feeling like you won the craft lottery.
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