St.George & Potatoes

With the sun shining, the dirt & dust show, so it's been a week of Spring cleaning here. While mucking out my bedroom (a fairly accurate description of the process involved...) I discovered hidden behind a chest of drawers a piece of embroidery I did while I was at school. It was dusty and stained and starting to come apart in places. We had obligatory needlework lessons in my school which I thoroughly enjoyed and managed to stretch working on this piece out for over a year. Even back then I was fascinated with the different stitches and effects that could be achieved with thread and beads.
So I've soaked and washed this very carefully and got the worst of the staining out. Now it needs some TLC repairing the horse and St. George's belt, as well as addressing the hole above his bicep. Then after pressing , I think it deserves to be put behind glass in a frame before it gets any more damage.


Last year when I was painting potatoes, one of my favourites both to paint and to eat was 'Truffles'. The colour was mesmerising and the flavour was the most potato-ey potato I have ever tasted. At the time, I asked the author of the book if he could get hold of some seed potatoes in order for me to grow my own....today I collected them and planted them in my modest pair of potato sacks on the patio, along with some Bonte Desiree.


I still have some left over, so I'm going to have to find a corner to squeeze in another bag. This is the first time I've attempted to grow potatoes - wish me luck! I've also planted some runner beans, one lone strawberry plant, and got some tomato plants growing nicely indoors. The spindly bush on the right is my Goji berry which amazingly survived being buried under eight inches of snow for a fortnight during the winter - perhaps it will even have berries this year.

This time of year I get very impatient with my garden - everything is just on the edge of getting started and I want it all to get going NOW. At the moment all I'm doing is proving that staring at grass seed and blossom buds on a twice daily basis does not make them grow any faster...