It's a very puppy Christmas

It's been a week of Christmas festivities here at Chez Taylor-Dyce, York Division.  Andrew came down last weekend and we bought my christmas tree, it's a little 5 footer and looks very cute under the sloping roof in my flat.  The dog was very unimpressed by the whole process and probably ate about a kilo of pine needles over the course of the day.



I've been doing a lot of Christmas crafting, most of which I can't share until after Christmas, but I can certainly show off my amazing homemade wreath, even though I do say so myself!  It's made with real tree branches so smells lovely and pine-y every time I open my front door.  A lady at work, Jackie, gave me a massive bag of cinnamon sticks to add to it, I've got enough there for the next 5 years I think. 



Unfortunately we're in that time of year where I'm going to be relying on photo editing tricks even more than normal, given the grey, dark weather.  Instagram is going to come into its own I think!



Quality Wilkinson's ribbon.  I don't have any of my ribbon stash here in York so had to resort to Wilkinsons, they had lime green or grey, neither of which are particularly festive colours

I bought the backing wreath off Ebay about 7 years ago and it's been brilliant, it's made of twigs so it looks quite natural so it doesn't matter if you don't manage to cover the whole thing, you've not got bits of bright green oasis poking through.



Amazing cinnamon sticks.  You can see the backing wreath in this photo, see how natural it looks?  Good old Ebay





The dog helping Andrew straighten the tree.  He was acting as a counterbalance - in his head at least...

I love Christmas and can't wait for us to buy a house and be able to host our own Christmas.  I'm going to attempt shortbread this week for Cake Friday so will hopefully have some lovely christmassy photos of beautiful shortbread to share soon.  Not the burnt lumps of crumbly dough I can foresee really happening...

Exploring the Lothians

A little gardening-related post today folks, just for something different. I tried disasterously to garden last year (see the Triffid-sized weeds encroaching menacingly on my little veg beds over here? Well, they are so large now that you can barely see the vegs beds at all, I've given up on the garden and barely escaped with my life...) and so now restrict my botanical adventures to the original and best Windowsill Farm, the one actually on my windowsill.

However, the gardening bug still remains and I dream of the day when I can have a little patch of land to call my own. In the meantime though, look what I came across on a recent jaunt to Linlithgow!



It's food! Growing in the street! And there's no litter or vandalism or poop in it! That's how you know Linlithgow is fancy, there's no animal (or human) poop in the fancy pavement veg bed.



I love this idea though, it was literally right on the pavement and you could have walked past it thinking it was just a flower bed if you weren't more observant. I love the oil drums with the not-so-subtle political message and I love the reclaim-the-streets vibe about the whole thing. It's run by Transition Linlithgow who stand for 'bulding a resiliant and sustainable future.' Two thumbs up to that I say!



For those of you not familiar with this little satellite of Edinburgh, Linlithgow is a Royal Burgh, complete with its own palace and history stretching back hundreds of years, with links to almost all the Scottish Kings and Queens. It was the past birth place of Mary, Queen of Scots and the future birth place of Montgomery Scott or 'Scotty' from Star Trek, both of whom have exhibits in the lovely little Annet House museum.

I miss Star Trek. They should show that on TV more often.

Windowsill Farm returns!

After my rather disastrous attempts at gardening outside last year, this year I've decided to remain focused on gardening on my windowsill. My small, overgrown shared tenement garden is just too damp, dark and shady to really grow anything properly and I don't have the time right now to put in the amount of effort needed to really make a go at it. I'm pretty bad for biting off more than I can chew and so my resolve this year to garden inside is part of an ongoing attempt to try and rein myself in, rather than spreading myself too thin and then becoming stressed and upset when I can't do my best with all my various projects.



In it's defence, Windowsill Farm can be very productive! It's only March and I already have my first harvest, the tiniest amount of dried organic lemon balm, ready to be made into tea. I'm pretty excited since my lemon balm plant was from my Gran's garden and so was free to begin with, plus it's growing amazingly quickly, I'm going to cut it down and dry it again before I go away on Saturday for 2 weeks, I'm sure by the time I come back I'll have another crop ready and waiting!



I think I'm going to need a new rosemary, my 3rd plant in 2 years. Sigh, I just can't seem to keep them going, they grow fine to begin with, then quickly develop brown tips to their leaves and stop putting on new growth. Still, for £1.99 a plant, given that they go for about a year before I have to replace them, I think I get my money's worth in fresh rosemary for lamb joints and baked Camembert...mmm...

I'm hopefully bringing back with me from my Mum's garden an African violet and a bay plant, the bay plant I'm especially excited for since I buy fresh bay leaves reasonably regularly for cooking, it's going to be amazing to grow some for free instead!



Also, check out my amazing crafty stickers my friend Lydia bought for my birthday last year. They're so cute! I'm pretty anal about organisation so it was an awesome present, I quickly set about using them to organise my 'important things' file, my tins and mason jars in the kitchen and my sewing notions. So sad but so satisfying!

Thrifty window gardening

Well, the Windowsill Farm is back, after the disastrous attempt to grow veg in the garden (and indoors).

The potatoes in containers got waterlogged and rotted, the tomatoes on the windowsill generated about a dozen tomatoes before succumbing to a MASSIVE aphid infestation, the beetroots, carrots, leeks and broccoli all may well still produce veg but we're rapidly running out of good weather so I'm not holding my breath. The thyme, rosemary and coriander all died, the beans germinated but didn't get far enough to produce anything before the weather turned and the slugs ate all the strawberries. The onions and garlic vanished (pigeons maybe?) and the salads all grew nicely but were quickly populated by weeds from the rampantly overgrown rest of the garden, meaning I was too worried about eating a poisonous weed to eat any of my salads.

The problem with being on the third floor is that you're not close enough to the garden to check it regularly. I've only really been checking it when I take out the compost, which is about once or twice a week, and so I haven't been keeping a close enough eye on what's going on. The garden is so shaded and damp though that I've decided to cut my losses and move the Windowsill Farm back indoors.

Except this time I've been bitten by the Pretty Plants Bug. I always thought that plants should have a purpose, be edible or smell nice or produce flowers for the house, but now I'm starting to appreciate plants for plants sake. I went to Ikea last week and bought some plants and pretty pots, they make me so happy as I go from room to room in the flat, admiring their variagated foliage or trailing leaves or brightly coloured flowers. I bought a Christmas cacti with bright pink flowers and a pot to match (except I can't pot it up until it's finished flowering, it's a bit small for the pot at the moment) and I'm already getting excited for the thought of it's bright pink flowers complementing the bright pink pot. How cheery will that be in the depths of winter? Once it's potted up I promise to share a photo!



I swapped this succulent with the lady on the next stall at the car boot sale last weekend (I made £30, woop!) for an old filofax and it looks really smart in this old plant pot I had in the house. It sits next to my orchid (bought reduced to clear in Tesco) on the sideboard and they really complement each other.



This sage plant was 20p in Homebase at the end of the summer and it's now sitting on my kitchen windowsill, soaking up the sunshine in it's terracotta charity-shop pot.



These cacti were free with an Ikea voucher I got with my Ikea family card and the lovely container was inherited from Andrew's grandad (who was an unsuccessful bonsai owner). Don't they look lovely now though?



This is my new rosemary so fingers crossed I don't kill it again! The plant and terracotta pot were from Homebase, the plant was £3 and the pot £1.50 so I figure I got a bargain. The peelings tin is another charity shop find, so the kitchen windowsill is now populated entirely with thrifty plants and charity shop finds!

It's made me realise that gardening in the house is every bit as satisfying as gardening outside and that plants don't have to cost the earth to be pretty and useful. I love thrifting, whether it be buying something second hand, swapping it with someone or just plain finding a bargain in a regular shop!

Windowsill Farm in June

Here we go, finally up to date with the garden updates! I filled the second veg bed and planted it up, so it's now full of beans, tomatoes, broccoli, leeks, carrots and salads. In theory. We'll see how things grow over the summer.

The second veg bed:


The strawberries I got off freecycle last year. Look how big they're getting, they grow up so fast - sniff


Come the autumn I want to clear the weeds and put grass seed down. There's an abandoned pile of bricks in the garden as well so I want to use them to build a path to the compost bin. We'll see how all these grand plans work out!

Garden in April

OK, so this post is embarrassingly late but here's the garden in April. Windowsill Farm just keeps on growin'!

As you can see, I haven't made much of an impact on the weeds (and it's even worse now, photos to follow...) but the first of the two veg beds was filled and ready to go in April. At the time, I planted onions, garlic, strawberries, a climbing rose and some irises. Tune in later to hear what happened come June!

The first veg bed:


Look at the weeds!


They're taking over :-(

Windowsill Farm expands

Windowsill Farm has grown! I finally decided to get my wellies on and get into the garden, the weather has been lovely over the past couple of weeks, although typically it broke as soon as exams were over and it's rained ever since. I acquired the veg bed off my friend Aletheia, she made it herself but then moved house and couldn't take it with her, so I swapped it for some shelves that were left over from an Epic Fail of a DIY project.

These are the before pictures, I need to take some of the work-in-progress pictures but it's been raining the past few days. I'm planning on growing veg and some flowers and so far have planted a climbing rose, some irises, garlic, onions and strawberries. Inside in the propagator (Christmas present from Andrew!) I've got leeks and broccoli and just pricked out chillies and tomatoes. I've also got potatoes to plant out as soon as the shoots are long enough.

Aletheia's veg bed:



My little compost bin (look at how overgrown the garden is!):



Steps up to the garden:



The shrubbery at the edge of the garden:



As you can see it's hideously overgrown, I don't think it's been touched in years. There's basically no clear soil, it's all grown over with chickweed and ivy. I collected some manure off a lady on gumtree last week to start planting up the veg bed so I'll take photos of that (exciting stuff!). Ideally I want to get to the point where I could sit out there on a sunny evening, drinking wine and watching my veg grow but sadly it's overlooked by all the tenements and at the back of the Thai restaurant so I think for the moment it'll just have to be a veg production site, rather than a proper garden!

Windowsill in bloom

So here we are, the updated Windowsill Farm. The peppermint is sprouting away, the strawberries have new leaves, the aloes are loving their new holders and Amy is a happy little gardener. I'm about to potter off and plant my Grow Your Own Christmas tree from Change the world for a Fiver, a sweet little book Frances and Vicky gave me for Christmas one year. I hope they're still viable seeds, they've been sat in the packet for about 4 years now!

RIP teapot

Today is a sad day. Today is the day that I must announce the passing of the World's Greatest Teapot. In his short but happy life, teapot brought joy to many people, especially Amy and Andrew. He never dripped, was easy to clean, always bright and cheerful. Amy has a special bond with him, having rescued him for £4 from the Bethany Shop. Ironically, a week before she carelessly broke him by dropping a mustard pot onto his head, she found the exact same teapot for the exact same price in the exact same charity shop but didn't buy it. What a mistake. A week later we must mourn the passing of the World's Greatest Teapot and reflect on our stupidity for not buying a spare when we had the chance.

Farewell faithful friend, we barely knew ye.





For those who subscribe to the Buddhist faith, you'll be pleased to know that teapot was later reincarnated a plant pot holder.

The ongoing saga of the windowsill farm...

I've recently been inspired to start growing my own food. And by food I mean anything that will grow in a planter on the kitchen window sill. This is proving trickier than I anticipated as I'm now onto my 4th batch of herbs. They just keep dying! I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, I'm not over watering, under watering, they get plenty of sunlight, they're not in a draft...I'm beginning to think there's some conspiracy afoot.

I just came back from a fruitful trip to Dobbies and now have a very smart plastic planter installed, complete with my 2 strawberry plants that I just got free from a lovely lady on freecycle (plus some amazing windfall apples that were quickly made into a crumble and devoured by all my friends). I took a gamble and bought myself another rosemary plant, with the intention of making rosemary-infused olive oil as part of my grandparent's Christmas present. I repotted up EVERYTHING after a strange outbreak of black flies from the cheapo Asda compost, all my plants are now happily sprouting away in Miracle-Gro-infused compost so if anything dares to die I will not be impressed.

Photos of the new set-up to follow, but in the meantime, here's photos of the sad looking creatures pre-Dobbies trip:

The peppermint is the only remaining herb from the first ever attempt at growing herbs. It looks pretty healthy here but let me assure you, it was plagued with flies. The latest photos will show, it's shot up since being repotted!



The aloe, a totally useless plant that you can't eat, was given to me by my grandmother so I don't really feel like I can pass it onto someone else in return for something edible. Ah well, it's pretty resiliant so I can't complain. I've started potting up its babies into vintage teacups with a vague idea that I might sell them (not sure how, they won't post well).



The saddest of the lot, the basil and coriander. The third in the list of Herbs I Have Killed, not long after this photo was taken they were consigned to the compost bin. But not before I discovered they were the root of the fly infestation. Hopefully no more flies now they're gone!