A Day in the Garden

Today was another gloriously warm Spring day and I saw the first Peacock butterfly in the garden. As usual the Brimstone butterflies were too fast for me to photograph!

I managed a quick trip up to the garden centre and purchased a tray of these sweetly-scented primroses called Cherry Delight.

Viola Molly Sanderson is in bloom again on my patio.

The sun is also encouraging the Tete-a-tete to bloom

and the Winter Pansies are still looking beautiful on the patio.

I've been busy in the greenhouse, sowing many varieties of tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers and a few other veggies and flowers.

The window sill in the living-room is full once again.

I even managed to book our holiday :) but I'm not blogging about that yet as it is a surprise for my daughter's 18th birthday.

Birdworld

As we had some "Tesco Days Out" vouchers to use, before the end of March, we went to Birdworld on Sunday, where we spent an enjoyable afternoon feeding dried mealworms to the birds.

These are just a few of the birds we saw:-

Rufous-crowned Roller

Striated Caracara
Humboldt Penguin

Greater Rhea

European White Stork

Great Grey Owl named Boris

Eurasian Eagle Owl

Rainbow-billed Toucan

Bar-headed Goose

Red-legged Seriema

Superb Starling

Blue-crowned Motmot

Victoria Crowned Pigeon

This pigeon, from Papua New Guinea, is named after Queen Victoria and is the largest pigeon in the world. Like all pigeons and flamingos it produces milk for its young.

The Birdworld website has this page with lots more interesting facts about some of the birds.

Spring Sunshine

At last the weather is noticeably warmer, last week there was even a high of 18'C in Norwich, whilst here the sunshine has encouraged the flowers to bloom.Maurice has been warming his whiskers in the sun.

And my husband picked the first bunch of daffodils from our allotment.
I have dug over our back garden, being careful not to damage the new shoots that are breaking through the soil and generally had a tidy up. The first Tete-a-tete narcissus are in flower and the trees are in bud, promising a pretty display of blossom. I'm a little late sowing seeds this year, but they will soon catch up now that the days are warmer.

Mini E

On Saturday, we had the chance to look at the new electric Mini prototype.

It will run for 100 miles before it needs a recharge and then will "quick" charge in 4 -4.5 hours!
As this is a prototype, it is just an ordinary Mini chassis that has been adapted to run on electric. We didn't test drive it, as in truth only my Mini will do for me and I don't like automatic cars.

My husband on the other hand, has a new hybrid car, a Toyota Prius, which he loves.

Mother's Day

This year, for the first time in a long while, I was able to spend Mother's Day with my Mum. I baked and decorated a cake for her and on our journey up to my parents', bought a large bunch of pale pink tulips for her.

I also crocheted a flared rose brooch to decorate Mum's gift.
My Mum and I always say that Jay and his Grandad are alike and they proved it, yet again, by both saying the brooch looked like a rabbit! :)
My children gave cards to me with lovely cats on. They know how much I love cats. This year, for the first time, I rather cheekily said what I would like as a Mother's Day gift. I have long admired the personalised necklaces on Etsy and thought that one with my children's names on would be an appropriate gift for Mother's Day. This one is called Close To My Heart from BragAboutIt.

Favourite Flowers ...

... that I am enjoying this week.

These richly scented hyacinths, in my favourite shades of blue, are looking and smelling divine in my living-room.

The flared rose brooch, that I crocheted from oddments of Rowan yarn and decorated with seed beads.
Another crocheted brooch, this one is using left-over DK yarn and a mother-of -pearl button.

The guilty pleasure of new shoes! Complete with leather flowers.

Crocuses, Cats and Crochet

1st March was the first warm day of the year here.

Ella enjoyed rolling around, on the lawn, in the sunshine.



I finished sewing my crochet flowers onto the coat hangers that I had padded and knitted covers for as part of the CL Knitting Olympics.

I used left over yarn from making baby clothes for my children many years ago. It is lovely to have something to keep, knitted in these yarns.

The covers are knitted in moss/seed stitch, garter and stocking stitch, using 4-ply and DK yarn.

The flowers are crocheted in a variety of yarns.Inspiration for the flowers came from two books I own - "201 crochet motifs, blocks, projects" and ideas by Melody Griffiths and "100 flowers to knit & crochet" by Lesley Stanfield.

I bought 2 of the buttons recently at unravel and the wadding to pad the hangers, all the other items were from my stash. The 2 Liberty, violet buttons I have had for over 20 years! :)

Now I need to get back to knitting my "tank top", otherwise it will be summer and too hot to wear it - hopefully!