Swapping plants – long distance

I have written about the plant swapping site I am a member of before, a site called Green Plant Swap, and the whole point with it is to meet and swap plants, basically to see each other’s gardens and perhaps find something you might like and see if whatever you can offer can be used to swap with whatever they have to offer. That’s fine if you live around the corner for each other or at least in the same city but what if you don’t do that?

Sink or swim!

About 2 years ago I wrote a post about ‘the troublesome corner’ in my garden. I told the story about how I had tried for years to make things grow in that bottom right corner and that a combination of dry shade, cats and foxes jumping over the fence and foxes digging a tunnel under the fence through to next door garden made that corner a real challenge. You can read that post here to get the rest of the details.

Ice lantern

So that was Christmas sorted, have you got anything special lined up for New Years Eve? The Christmas holiday is a rather low-key thing in my house these days, but I do like to light up these darkest days of the year and make the Christmas and New Year period a bit special both indoors and outdoors. I made a couple of ice-lanterns the other day, and I thought I would share with you how to make these very easy, decorative lanterns as this is something you can do in minutes and freeze overnight. The result is pretty spectacular :-)

The Norwegian Christmas tree

Living in London, UK, I often hear at this time of year about the famous Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, often referred to as “the tree given by the people in Norway to the people in London”. As a Norwegian, knowing the story behind the Christmas tree, I thought I would use the opportunity to tell who the gift is from, and why, since I don’t think that’s something widely known here in the UK, and certainly not around the rest of the world.

I just love red things!

I guess you already know what this post is going to be about? Yes, the colour red! I suppose most people have a favourite colour, or some colours they prefer, and in the same way has colours they don’t like that much. I can’t stand lime green, but I like most other shades of green! But when it comes to red I have a special shade of red I really, really like. Not post-box red or tomato red, that doesn’t do it for me, but the dark red, crimson red, almost blackish-red – I think it is the most gorgeous colour!

My son’s kitten is growing

Hi everybody, just a short post tonight, with some photos I took last Sunday when I visited my son. I have been busy in my garden every day since Thursday as the weather has been sunny and great. And even better, the nice weather will stay at least the week, with warmer weather, possibly 18 degrees towards the middle of the week :-)

The squirrel is back!

I sat here today having my late afternoon lunch and suddenly a squirrel jumped up in the window box right in front of me! I am not exactly unfamiliar with squirrels in my window boxes, but I haven’t seen any squirrels for months, and the squirrel that was here today actually looked exactly like the one that was here most days last year!

One of my Garden Books

Here in the Blogger Community it is common practice to start so-called memes. Now, you might not be familiar with the term, even if you have seen and perhaps even participated in memes in the past; you might even have started your own meme at some point. Anyway, I am joining another meme today, and I thought I would spend a few moments explaining what a meme is, and where the word comes from.

I love trees!

I had a stroll in my garden today, haven’t been out there since last Sunday when I took the pictures for the Garden Blogger Bloom Day and I was keen to see what news my garden had to present me with today. I looked and looked and looked, and there was….NOTHING new since last Sunday, except that the one single crocus that was almost opened last Sunday was now off and lying on the ground. That’s January in London for you. With temperatures around zero at night and not much more than 5 degrees during the day the last week I suppose I can’t really expect much to have happened, I should just be grateful nothing has died!

31.12. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you! Tonight I have been blogging for exactly one year! When I signed up for this blog, New Year’s Eve one year ago, I wasn’t so sure I was going to have much to write about….hmmm, well, I guess I had, since this is post number 120! And I wasn’t sure anyone was going to read what I wrote, if I ever got around to write anything at all – guess I didn’t have to worry about that either, my 120 posts have been read over 5.400 times!

29.12. Gingerbread photos

Christmas Day was a mild 14 degrees here in London, in sharp contrast to last year when we had snow and minus degrees for weeks. The mild weather has continued the last few days and today it was 12 degrees in my garden, not that different to some of the days we had in July! I had a stroll in my garden today, but with the grey, muggy weather we had today it was not a day for taking photographs. I will wait until we get a nice sunny day, and then I will share with you how far my crocuses has come :-)

21.12. Christmas ice lantern

Not many days to Christmas now, have you got everything sorted? Christmas is a rather low-key thing in my house these days, but I do like to light up these darkest days of the year and make the Christmas period a bit special both indoors and outdoors. I made a couple of ice-lanterns the other day, and I thought I would share with you how to make these very easy, decorative lanterns as this is something you can do in minutes and freeze overnight. The result is pretty spectacular :-)

14.12. The Norwegian spruce

Living in London, UK, I often hear at this time of year about the famous Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, often referred to as “the tree given by the people in Norway to the people in London”. As a Norwegian, knowing the story behind the Christmas tree, I thought I would use the opportunity to tell who the gift is from, and why, since I don’t think that’s something widely known here in the UK, and certainly not around the rest of the world.

The Christmas tree is a gift from the citizens of Oslo to the citizens of London, not from the whole of Norway, and that’s actually a bit of a difference – Oslo is the capital of Norway and has a population of just over 600.000 people, Norway in total has almost 5 mill people. But it is the story behind the Christmas tree that makes this an interesting piece of history.

04.12. Gingerbread Houses

Hello, it’s the first Sunday in December! Ohhh, you already knew, well, to me it actually came as a bit of a surprise that it’s exactly 3 weeks till Christmas Day today, but that’s because my weeks are flying past me faster than I can keep up with at the moment. I have spent the week-end printing out the rest of my Christmas cards and I have ‘glitter-glue’ decorated and written about half of them. Both overseas parcels and Christmas cards are off to the post office later in the week, and that’s my Christmas shopping done :-)

15.11. Christmas Cards 2011

Most of my family and friends live abroad, and the last day for posting parcels to reach them in time for Christmas is 12th December. Yesterday it was 4 weeks left, and I know how quickly those weeks fly by, so I have spent the last few days making this year’s Christmas cards. I still have a few presents to buy, but most of them are already bought, I usually start in September so I can spread the cost over several months.

05.11. Post number 100!

Hello and welcome to post number 100! When I started this blog in early January this year, I wasn’t sure whether I would be able and interested enough to continue writing to the end of that month, let alone the rest of the year. And here I am, in November, writing post number one hundred. I find it strangely addictive and it certainly means a lot to me to see the visitor numbers steadily go up and up. I mean, that’s why I am spending all this time making the posts; so that people out there can look at the photos and videos and read my words :-)

28.08. Under the stars

Hello again, tonight I got some quite spectacular photos for you, no plants or flowers in sight, promise :-) You see, every August Bank Holiday, Newham Council has a 4 days event in my local park called ‘Under The Stars’, and the 4th  day, the Sunday – today, the event is rounded up with an amazing classical concert by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra. So first we have to endure an evening with modern jazz, on the Thursday, and then on the Friday evening it is different kinds of Asian music, Saturday the theme can vary, this year it was ‘Newham Rocks You’…but I think they had dug up some really old rockers…perhaps a bit too old ones, they didn’t rock me, what I heard of it anyway.