Lashings of summer cheer!

If my blog was a stage I'd be tap dancing my way onto it right now, repeatedly tipping my sequinned top hat and grinning my head off.  That's how I feel - it has been such a lovely weekend.  We've done very little but I've rediscovered ice pops, planted all of my little homegrown seedlings and had a lovely afternoon tea at a lovely local garden centre with my lovely friend.  Lovely.

Our garden is the size of a postage stamp and although I've dug a little bed for my cut flowers, it just isn't big enough for all the seeds I've grown.  So I've been planting into the vintage crates I bought last year.  They look really nice in the garden with the rusty old galvanised steel buckets and wicker planters I've collected, I'm super-chuffed with them.  

Here's the garden before we'd done anything with it this weekend.  See - tiny.  We do have another garden behind the hedge (behind the dog) but that's more of a yard and needs some serious prettifying (next weekend's job).  Thank goodness you can't see it from our lawn, it's a bit depressing!  That little bare patch with the peony on the left is now chocker with my plants.  Eek!  I just threw them all in, kind of in a random order (!) and am hoping for the best. It's my first year of growing cut flowers - this is all experimental.  When (and if!) I manage to pick my own bunch of flowers you will hear me whooping across the length and breadth of the country.  I am not holding my breath, though.  At best, I will product a decent bunch of sweet peas.  

It was lovely in the garden, we brought out the radio and did a bit of dancing as we worked (Andrew was painstakingly digging out the weeds from in between the patio slabs - a horrid job).

Today I made coffee cupcakes, which had all disappeared within an hour, and we lounged outdoors.  Then I put on a floaty summer frock and took my friend out for afternoon tea to celebrate her last day of singledom - she's getting married tomorrow.  (Good luck Mel and John!  Big kiss!)  We had a really nice time - there is a garden centre near us called Beckworth Emporium which also has a big farm shop and cafe/restaurant.  I love it there.  We sat in the garden and ordered afternoon tea:

Not the most elegant presentation but it was bloody delicious.  We took boxes of the cake home with us.

We sat in the shade and had a good gossip for a couple of hours.  Mel was all glammed up with her hair, fingers and toes all buffed up. :-)  We came home with bellies full of cake and brown paper bags full of fab things - fresh strawberries and cherries, pink geraniums, old-fashioned ginger beer and fabric patchwork Union Jack bunting.  Happy girlies.

Tonight, Andrew and I laid a blanket on the lawn and had a picnic of cheese and coleslaw open sandwiches with apricot flapjack and big mugs of tea.  We followed it up with a late evening walk with the dog through the fields.  Absolute bliss.

♥♥♥♥♥

Now, we are music lovers in this house - the radio or ipod is always playing, more so than the TV (I hardly watch any TV at all).  One of my favourite ever albums is perfect to listen to in this weather and I thought I'd share my fave summery track from the album.  This is Hafdis Huld and 'Daisy'.  Hope you like it. 

It's from the album Synchronised Swimmers - I can really recommend it.  I can listen to this album on repeat and never get bored of it.

Have a good week lovelies!

Nicki 

x

PS - Remember in my last post I talked about dealing with the wanties?  They hit hard and I was powerless to them, but I know now that you girls 'totes' get it!  Cuckoo's fault this time:

Starry Polish ware with strawberries and cream macaroons