Bead well ..... with your 5 a day!

I have been on a bit of a fruit and veg bead making stint this week, no real reason, just have.  This is a blog post on the fruit of my labours.

 

I am getting ready for the annual Flame Off event, a huge collection of lampwork glass artists, beads, torches, glass rods and tutors willing to demonstrate and share their skills.  This will be my 3rd year attending with my beads, every year has been a great success and although exhausting as I stay for the 3 days, 2 days of the Flame Off and the 3rd day is the bead fair in the same venue, I meet wonderful people, customers that buy my beads, new friends and old friends.

 

The down side is that I am now busy making beads to take with me and am unable to offer them for sale in my Etsy shop or on my Facebook Izzybeads page or on Ebay, but I can show pictures here and there when I have wired and strung the beads and taken photos with my new found skills!

 

First up is Chilli's and flowers.

 

Then we have bunny and carrots.

 





Oranges and lemons...

 



...and finished off with cherries, grapes, blackberries and of course a glass or two of home brewed wine!  Why else grow fruit??

 



 

I did have some strawberries but they sold so I will just have to make some more, I love my art!

 

Right I am now off with the daughter, gulp, another drive out in the country to photograph old and abandoned houses, won't be long before mine will look like one of those if I don't start dragging the hoover round and maybe a quick polish or dust.  Daughter is doing A Level Photography and 'abandoned' is her project, its been fun driving round and seeing some fantastic places, I really must do the blog on the wonderful house we found abandoned in Mordiford Woods in Hereford, all black and white, wattle and dab walls, very spooky but brilliant.

 



My little veggie plot

When I am not in the studio, which is quite rare I love to potter in the garden.  A few years ago my hubby and son built me three raised planters at the back of the garden next to the studio, I merrily planted my veggies and had a few disasters along the way, then last year I just didn't bother at all the weather was so horrid and wet but I missed my pottering, so this year I decided to do it again.

 

I don't spend a lot of money, I am a real cheap skate, I brought all my seeds from Aldi's this year for a total of £2, I got lettuce, broccoli, leek, onion, cabbage, carrot, chilli's and tomatoes, oh and cucumbers but I never do well with those.

 

My first veggie bed has my strawberries and rhubarb in.  The strawberries have got huge this year.  Around the garden I have those little wild strawberries, they are really nice to nibble on when I come back from the daily dog walk.  Defi and I wander around the garden tasting them, which nearly cost me my huge strawberries and in fact the first biggest one of the year as Defi watched me check it for readiness which it was only a day away from, and snaffled it!  I turned to see my lovely strawberry disappear from the plant and the juice dribble down his chin, the golden swine!

 

 

 

Inbetween the strawberries and the rhubarb - which is brilliant for wine making, but don't use on its own it has to be mixed with other fruits to blend it - I have garlic.  I have no idea how they got to this bed I sowed them in the other bed the other year, they moved!  But, they grow happily amongst the strawberries and so far no taste has been tainted, but the slugs and snails have kept away from the berries so maybe the garlic wards them off?

 



You can see the garlic now ready for lifting, tomorrows job, on the right.

 

 

My other two beds have the other veggies.  I am not a tidy gardener, I used to be, but I developed OCD years ago and battled against it, now I love the fact I don't need to put everything in its place and am rewarded by bees and birds, ladybugs and beetles, they might not be the most productive in the garden but I like them and they inspire my beads.



 

You can see my old chair in the corner, it's next to my little shed for my gardening tools and potting table, which is under a big tree just in front of my compost heap, I like to sit here and watch my garden grow!



 

 

These lettuces are Little Gem and are sweet and delicious, they are in a pot as they are the ones I separated earlier this year to grow larger.  I hate thinning my crops it feels so wasteful but I did today so hopefully more big Little Gems will be soon.

 

 

I have to plant my toms and cucumbers from the pots they are in at the moment, we are probably 3-4 weeks behind the South of the UK in gardening, but we usually have those weeks back at the end of the season.

 

 

Laney x