Last days to make Elderflower Cordial

My Elder has been thrashed by the thunderstorms so last week was my last chance to make Elderflower cordial before the last of the flowers went brown. As an experiment I put half the flower heads in the freezer to see if it would be easier to remove them from their stalks - big mistake. They did come off fairly easily but within minutes went brown and horrible. From now on I'll stick to combing them off with a fork. I put some of the lemon and flower water in a bottle and added hibiscus tea, the colour was so summery. Here they are in bud and flower...

Silvery grey and gold

Neckpiece by Brooke Battles (Via Velvet da Vinci).

Brooke's neckpiece made me think of my Senecio Cineraria, also known as Silver Ragwort. Books and TV gardeners often describe it as a plant that is grown for the folliage and that you should chop of the flowers, but I never do, the bees love them and I think they look lovely at every stage. My main plant has all these stages happening on it just now so there's lots to see.

Orgran Gluten Free Cornbread

I'm hugely craving this today. Orgran Gluten Free Cornbread

Fresh out the oven with melting soya spread. Equally delicious the next day when I squished fresh over-ripe raspberries onto it, it made it taste like a raspberry sponge cake. But ever since I've been craving madly. I think it's a reaction to having increased my raw food intake to about 80%. The more I eat healthy vegetables the more I crave sugar, fats and carbs. Mmmm.

Pulsatilla - bud to seed

Pasque flower - Pulsatilla Vulgaris, April-June

Seeds are often as beautiful, or more beautiful, than flowers, as is the case with the Pulsatilla. Last year I only had one flower/seed-head, this year I had lots, waving softly in the breeze. The Honesty has been amazing this year too, with some of the clumps developing purple seed-heads, which have kept their colour even after 2 months. You can see a few are still the usual green colour at the back. See my garden in detail here.


Honesty -Lunaria annua

Otchipotchi tiny white vases

Otchipotchi porcelain vases available to buy here. I'd love to add one of these to my little collection of tiny handcrafted white bud vases but as always, it's the postage costs that stop me. If I ever find myself in Portugal I'd love to visit and buy lots of Paula's wondrous white delights.

Scottish jewellers

Iona Brown - Ring with salt crystals - DJCA graduate 2011

I love making crystals, haven't done it for years, so it was nice to be reminded of them and even better to see them incorporated into her jewellery. I don't know how wearable or lasting it is but that is part of the beauty. Lots of my own paper and twig jewellery pieces are still going strong after 20 years despite everyone telling me they would fall apart quickly.


Merlin Planterose - Necklace, Ring and Silver Bowls - DJCA graduate 2011

As someone who liked working with nature to create my own metalwork, bowls and other works I'm really liking the techniques used by Merlin Planterose to, in her father's words, turn silver into stone. She used stone as both hammer and anvil to give a beautiful natural texture to her pieces, which includes stone dust from the process which gets embedded into the silver. I'd love to see and feel the effect in real life.

Scottish jewellers

Not posted jewellery/metalwork in ages, in fact, for the first time in my life I actually forgot about Degree shows entirely this year (says something about the 'brain fog' taking over me this year, which I find worse than the physical symptoms of M.E./CFS).

Found a few online that I liked. Some from this year, some from previous years, here are two and I'll post more when my brain gets going:


Hannah Eccles - Brooches - ECA graduate 2010


Roisin Connolly - Edinburgh Street - DJCA graduate 2011

Adding June flowers to Flickr

Finally uploading my June flowers to my Flickr plants album. Not necessarily great photo's but gives a good overview of the variety of life out the window. All the plant details are available on my Folia pages, which is what these photo's are intended for, so I can keep track of what's where when they retreat underground over winter.

I love how I say fill it out, as if there is any space left to fill!


Indoors my handy salad, growing has been a bit thin on the ground because all the space is taken up with plant cuttings. Mr P doesn't mind buying annuals for his garden but mine is on a very, very tight budget so I need to grow as much as possible now to fill it out next spring and summer for free. It's making me look differently at plants I didn't used to like. Suddenly, if something is easy to grow from cuttings and takes up very little space in winter I get interested. I've got a lot of varieties of Dianthus going on, it looks more like Granny Creates than Cally Creates. Another fave is the bright Oxalis which roots really quickly from cuttings. I don't know if I can keep it going indoors through winter but if I do I'll have masses for Spring. The little piles of leaves in the previous post were prunings from the Oxalis which has already been potted on and is growing happily...


Oxalis 'Sunset Velvet'

More June FLowers - spice tones

Bearded Iris, Oxalis, and Herb Robert leaves all brought some warm spicy tones to the garden this June. The irises have finished but the others continue on rampantly with the Herb Robert always a big hit with small bees. The Oxalis is an annual in Scotland but well worth it for all the vibrant colour it brings, really livening up gaps between other plants and always great next to purple toned foliage. See my garden in detail here

Is a Vitamix too noisy for a mobile home?

Question, does anyone know how loud a Vitamix sounds in a Mobile Home?

Update 18th July 2011: I bought it, and it is loud, but I don't need my things to be smooth so I mostly only have it on for 10-30 seconds. The violence of it still freaks me out a bit and my heart races with fear before I hit the button, I'm sure my face is a picture of scrunched up worry as if it's going to suck me in and mash me into a savoury dip. I certainly wouldn't dream of having it on long enough to make soup, but that's not why I wanted it anyway. Three days in it's already invaluable.