Easily Distracted...

...cor blimey and thrice alive!!!  It has been one of those weeks... you know, when you start the week full of goodly intentions to "do stuff" and end spending most of it doing "something else instead".  Well, my "something else" has been distracting me good and proper all week!  Oh yesh, the Greenhouse-That-Grim-Built has kept me occupied all week so all promises of sharing some of the stuff from the Jones' Retailer Day last Sunday has kind of been overlooked.  I meant to type up a blog post the other day but this week has fair whizzed past though.  You see, Grim has been on night shift all week and being as I am of a clumsy persuasion, I find it really hard to be as quiet as a mouse whilst he is in the Land of Nod during the day.  And why, when you are trying to be mouse-like, does everything end up being realllly noisy??  Anyways, taking the opportunity of the good weather and the fact that I have several hundred weight of cucumber, tomato, gourd and sunflower plants to pot on, I have been hiding out in the Greehouse-That-Grim-Built all week!

When I say several hundred weight, I am not joking!  I have never grown things from seed properly before - well, apart from a seed tray on a window sill which isn't the same thing - so this year, armed with packets of seeds and a new greenhouse, I got all down and dirty and planted all the seeds in all the packets... plus a load of seeds I had collected from Calendula and Morning Glory plants last year.  Little did I realise how easy cucumbers, gourds and tomatoes are to germinate.  At one count, I had over 40 cucumbers, 33 tomatoes and 43 gourds (not sure how that happened as I only sowed 37 gourd seeds!)  And of course, once these little beauties start to grow, they need potting on (get me, proper terminology and everything!)  Not to mention the Phlox, Sweet William, sunflowers (lots of sunflowers) and Sweet Peas.  The Sweet Peas kind of caught me out too... mainly because I didn't read the packet... after a month, not a single smidge of green was showing in the tray of Sweet Peas, so I got a bit grumpy, went and bought a different flavour of seed and sowed those too.  Impatience is not a virtue... Two months later I have 30 odd plants as they all decided to show their faces (not that I am complaining) so the one big tub of Sweets Peas in now three big tubs!

Anyways, the point of this waffle is my excuse for being a baaad blogger!  It would be just plain rude of me to ignore all those little plants - by the way, I have done a "clinical trial"  I decided that this "talking to plants" thing might be worth a punt.  So, I have little chats with them as they are growing... except for one pot of chilli seeds that I decided to ignore.  Well, sure enough, all the seeds germinated except for the single pot of chilli's.   There it sat, a pot of compost looking a bit forlorn... until a week ago when I said "if you don't start to show your faces soon, you are for the compost bin"  Sure enough, a couple of days later little green shoots have appeared!  So, it is true!  Chat to your plants and they will grow!  Simples!  Oh and I almost forgot... we have already had our first harvest too!  Oh yesh, I grew some radishes, just to see how easy they were... and nom nom nom!  They have grown perfectly and already been scoffed!  I have a massive tub of different flavour radish on the go now and another I am planting at the start of next week so that should see us through to July at least.  I am loving this gardening lark!  I hasten to add that I have found homes for a lot of the cucumbers/toms/gourd plants... there is only so much salad I am prepared to eat lol

This post is peppered with pics of the two tags I taught on the Jones Retailer day last Sunday - the blue tag, which is a Graphic 45 tag base, is from the morning class and is using the gorgeous new Kaisercraft Storyteller range of papers and two fabby stamp/stencil sets from Hampton Art... and the red tag is the afternoon class, that one is using the Be-YOU-tiful collection from Kaisercraft.

The card is using the Be-YOU-tiful collection too; the butterfly is a Kaisercraft stamp, the sentiment is also from Kaisercraft and the flowers... yep, Kaisercraft - these are Fire Fly colour - aren't they lushness!!!   I shall away now, I have bent your ear long enough with my tales from the greenhouse!  Have a great day... don't forget to check back tomorrow for the brand new CC3 challenge too.   Thanks for looking... TTFN

Hels x