There's Something in the Green House...and a Herbie tip

...and it's not tomatoes!!....Actually like my craft room, my tiny little green house is a bit of a mess. Bindweed has taken over...which is one reason why, for the first time in years "we have no tomatoes!"

Things have been dumped in there, and they too, have been covered with the dreaded bindweed! The more you pull it up, the more bits break off and grow! So I decided to have a really good clear out today.

Suddenly half way through my tidying up, 'something' started moving under the black plastic, which I had put down to stop (unsuccessfully) the bindweed from growing. It was very quick and made a funny noise! Then I noticed a little path had been dug under an old plant propagator. What had been hiding under there!?! And what creature was now hiding under the plastic?
I was sooo hoping it wasn't a rat!! Luckily it wasn't! It turned out to be a little hedgehog. Too shy to show his face, he stayed curled up, pumping out the Zzzz's. So I carefully placed him back under the propagator, where he'd made a little dug out 'room' for himself, while I finished off the rest of the clearing out. And as far as I know he's still there now. What a shock he'll have when he wakes up to a tidy green house!! (don't worry I've left him a few snails for his breakfast)
This year my runner beans are rubbish!! Don't get me wrong! They've grown like mad, loads of leaves, but not one bean! (well, maybe two titchy ones) This time last year we had so many John was putting them in the freezer! (We were still eating them waaay past Christmas!)
I'm also growing little French beans this year too, and they are just the same, all leaves and no beans!! Pity they can't have a word with the bindweed! That's doing sooo well!
I only have a little garden so all my beans are growing in large pots. Something else that's fighting hard against the bindweed is this clematis, it's called 'Purple'.
Right, a gardening tip for you now, it might save a few pennies (or cents!)
If you buy your fresh herbs from the supermarket, you might usually get them in pots, like the one in the picture below. Look closely and you will see there's about thirty plants in one pot. All growing long and lanky. Seedlings really, never allowed to grow to their full size.
You pick off what you want, and after a bit, because you've forgotten to water the pot, it curls up and dies, so you buy a new pot. But when you think about it, 30 plants for one pound isn't too bad. You'd pay at least twice as much as that for one plant if you bought it from a nursery to put in your garden. .
This is Basil in the picture (Hello Basil!) and what I do is, break all those little seedlings up, leave as much soil as you can around their roots and replant them into larger pots.
Pinch off all the tops, to encourage growth. Put all those leaves. you've just picked off, into a bag and place it into the freezer. Once frozen just crush them up and use them as you want.
Meanwhile your little seedlings will grow into lots of full sized plants and last all summer or longer. You won't have to buy any more.
The best herb to try this with first is mint. Mainly because with mint, instead of pinching off the tops, you can bend or lay the long stems down into the soil and they will root again, and in about a week, three skinny seedlings will easy fill a medium sized pot and you'll have a whole load of fresh mint that will last forever! (It's best to keep the mint in a pot because it might go wild and give the bindweed a run for it's money!!)
**Up Date** Here's the picture of my Mint. After re-potting and layering them. In just over a week this is how three scrawny seedling have grown! (The Basil I've just re-potted is hiding in the back ground)

While I've been clearing out the greenhouse, Hubby John was in the kitchen cooking paella... here he is showing off his new large paella pan I bought him today! You can see he's pleased with it, can't you!
The paella was lovely!! (only I'm not too sure about the mussels! Might save those for the hedgehog!)
Coming up later an anniversary card.

Magic Beans!

No, not really, but they always fascinate me how fast they grow. Every year I plant runner beans in tubs and every year they shoot up and within a few short weeks we're eating them! (that's of course the slugs don't eat them first!

And Then There Were Three

There were four in the bed and the little one said ... 'Roll over! Roll Over!' And they all rolled over and one fell out, there were three in the bed and the little one said.... Okay! Who can spot what's wrong? Well, not wrong, as such. I just decided to only put three of the four hedgehogs on the card. Y'see, I stamped them out and the fourth one was a bit smudged and his little arm was missing, so instead of not using the image or putting it away to use for decoupage at a later date, I decided just to use the three hedgehogs. I've fixed them on using a 3D sticky pad, just to give them a little bit of a lift. Coloured them with my water colour pencils this time and also used a sketch from a past challenge (The one with the Frogs by the pond)
No sentiment yet as I'm not sure if it'll be,"Happy Birthday" "Best Wishes" or "Hope we didn't miss your birthday!" or just "Sorry We Missed The Party!" ...but we've brought balloons and pressies anyway...Something will go on just before I post it off ... along with a bit of fiber or ribbon. If you have any ideas, let me know!! Added note! It ended up having 'Just for you' put over the ribbon where it crosses)
And looking into my crystal ball, I think I might enter this card into the C.R.A.F.T. challenge sometime in the future!
Nothing much else to report, only the beans I planted a few weeks ago are looking yummy (if you like beans) This one's about a foot long!! (You should see the size of the snails...) Thank you for stopping by, catch you all later, and have a really crafty weekend!!

I Made A Card...

I've made a card...yep, just one card and this is the mess I made! (It was tidy before, honest!) I'm quite pleased with the card, but you can't see it yet... because it's not quite finished. I'm playing around with the inside. I thought...(Ouch!) I thought if I scanned the inside and saved it, I could use it again...and again... and believe it or not, the scanned version looks better, sort of digi- scrap, without the scrap, coz it's a card!
Today's been quite eventful. Had my wonky leg Xrayed. 'XRay Man' was a man with a mission, he really loved his job and took more photo's than they did when I first broke it! I was twenty...where does the time go!! He said I was the event of the day!
Back home the runner beans are in, looking a bit sad, because of the wind yesterday, but they'll pick up if the slugs don't eat them first! And the blackbirds and the Starling's babies turned up. All wanting feeding. The Starlings are the noisiest!! Squawk! squark!! squark!! One of the impatient babies flew into the living room.. Frog (the cat) thought teatime had come early! It let me pick it up and put it back out side. I put loads of food out for them today, I know they say the early bird catches the worm, but on my bird table, if you come late you get wild birdfood, fat balls, fruit and sometimes bacon rind!
See you tomorrow!

Day in the Garden

Okay...I know this is supposed to be cards and crafty stuff...but it does say Spyder's Corner up there and this is what I do when I'm not doing anything else... My runner beans are taking off...in fact you could even say they were running out of the green house, their little tentacles making for the open window! So I was hoping to get them planted outside today.

We have a very small garden so there's no room for neat rows of veg. They have to grow where they're put! (except the strawberries, you can't argue with a strawberry, they grow where they want.) We've got potatoes in dustbins and black bags, a pear and a cherry tree in pots and a potted apple tree that produces three different kinds of very small but very juicy apples...well, there were about half a dozen last year, four pears and the blackbirds got the cherries! Today though, something else was going on in the garden. Every year a pair of Blackbirds nest in our garage, on a shelf or on top of whatever's on the shelf! But this year, we had Robins and today the little fledglings left the nest.. I was getting the large pots ready for the runner beans when I heard chirping and there it was, a tiny little robin in our garage. I swooped it up and put in down at the end of the garden where there's plenty of cover. Mum, dad and a couple of siblings soon showed up. Aw, so cute! I continued to dig out some soil from the large pot, looking for those horrid little white grubs that eat the roots, I found a few, nipped off to get my camera and they were gone! Found a few more and caught one of the robin's helping himself. Pictures show one of the robins calling the babies; one of the babies; the white grubs with their parent, that black beetle type creature~they eat the leaves~(note I'm wearing gloves! ) the other picture shows the robin helping himself to the grubs from my old wheelbarrow.
After all that, my poor beans still didn't get planted, I couldn't find a ball of string anywhere...I wonder who's nicked off with that? Probably the hedgehog. Still, tomorrow's another day!