Between the passing showers

I snuck out to take some quick snaps in the demi-second of rain-free weather so that I could show you the evolution of my funny little coconut pot:


Some string, knots, and I've got a funny little hanging coconut pot.
It's quite nifty, they hang off odd little nails along the fence where I can admire them. A word of warning though, they dry out very quickly, so I've only managed succulents in them, everything else has carked it too quickly.

Another great ideas for quirky pots are Claerwen's op-shopped wooden bowls over at Home Girl, I definitely want to give that project a shot!

My housemate recently gave me this book:


The Thrifty Gardener, by Alys Fowler

It has some fantastic ideas that are right up my alley, even if I have doubts about whether I'll manage to find such glamourous boxes to recycle.


Lovely photography as well, sorry the re-photographed photos aren't quite as impressive!


Alys also had a blog over at the BBC Gardeners' World, she's wrapped it up now, but to be honest, I think the book's better! There's a few other projects in it that I want to try, if I do I'll put some shots of them up.

And finally, I just thought I'd include a shot of what I'm looking at this week.


I read somewhere that having fresh flowers nearby had been proved to help creativity, and I thought my essays would benefit from some creativity. Instead, I think my procrastination methods may have got a little more creative! Not sure about the actual essays though. Hmmm.

Plum Concrete

I remember loving Margaret Mahy's Jam: A True Story, a picture book all about a family who make masses of plum jam - so much that they use it for everything, including reattaching tiles in the bathroom.


If they had wanted a recipe specifically for concreting with plums, I probably could have helped. Last night I attempted to make jam but managed to over-reduce the mixture to a point where it's more like solid plum/sugar mix. Not quite sure what to do about that just yet. I even took pictures in anticipation of a blog post, and in my head had already held a tea party where people complimented the jam and I was able to tell them I'd made it myself. Pride certainly comes before a fall.