allotment update for end April

The potatoes have been in since the start of the month, and some of them are starting to poke through, not by much but slowly, and its early days yet.

 The first 6 rows which are earlies are poking through, the last 6 rows are lates, but showing no signs of poking through just yet.

a couple of casualties

Well its the end of April and my veggies have been in for 10 days now, and so far seem to be doing not too bad.

A couple of the lettuces are looking beyond there best and probably wont make it , but there wasn't room for all of them in the garden at the start and are in pots so maybe replace some of them.

a row of carrots

 The carrots have not yet grown much but they have not withered and died either. mind the apple blossom seems to be taking over the whole garden

 One of the runner beans is looking a bit sorry for himself at the front RHS here, but the rest seem to be coming along fine.

as are the dwarf beans

sweetcorn potted on.

 The sweetcorn were potted on just after tea time tonight into bigger pots. 4 of the original seeds planted didn't even sprout, and another 1 wasn't big enough to pot on so it went in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These plants are in the small plastic greenhouse we have in the back garden, and hopefully will go out in 3 or 4 weeks.

the 3 courgettes are looking well.

the tomato plants are looking good

spearmint plant - makes nice mint tea

all in all I'm very pleased with how its all coming long, I would have expected casualties had I grown them on from seed myself and planted them out. We have had a week of temperatures as low as 4oC at night but warm and dry during the day, and therefore have had to go along and water them every evening.

*closed* My television debut and a celebratory competition.

I spotted a blog posting a few weeks ago  and it was looking for a prolific Scottish comper to go onto a television program called The Hour to talk about their hobby. Well I thought I could do that, might be interesting, so I e-mailed them to make further enquiries, and following a telephone interview they decided I was an appropriate candidate and are coming out to interview me on Friday May 20th.

Must admit I'm quite excited about getting to talk about a hobby I love so much, and between Loquax, Facebook, blogging and tweeting there is plenty to talk about. I  have had a fairly successful year for wins, nothing major but a steady stream of small wins that I am more than happy with. Am hoping for a few more small wins over the next few weeks as they are wanting me to open any I receive for the cameras.

I must admit there are a few prizes I would like to win if I had a choice,a nice new laptop something a bit smaller, lighter and more powerful than what I currently use to competition with,open more than 1 page at a time on this one and it hesitates between changes and stops responding far too regularly, a nice e-reader as I find to difficult to read books now as I have a touch or arthritis in my hands, a carpet cleaner would be useful with my gold coloured living room carpet,especially before the camera crew come out and show up my dirty marks in HD for all to see!!  or some new clothes would all be much appreciated. ( models shown just an example I'm not too fussy of make and model in reality).

So by way of celebration of my TV debut I have decided to run a competition. But what is the prize I hear you ask? I am going to give away 3 tickets for the Euro Lottery, 3 tickets for the Saturday night lottery and 3 £2 scratch cards. Think I will spilt these into a first and second prize, 2 of each for the first out the bag and 1 of each for the runner up.


You can see my debut and what I thought of it over here

To enter this competition please

1. follow my blog with Google friend connect, and then leave me a comment below to tell me what you would be the first thing you would spend some of the money on if you won £1000 with one of the tickets.

for additional entries ( each counts as one separate entry)


1. follow me on twitter  http://twitter.com/#!/pooohbear2811 and leave a comment here with your twitter name  to tell me you have done so

2. follow me by e-mail leave me a separate comment to tell me you have done so.you will then get daily updates in your google reader to see what is happening in my part of the world.

and thats it folks.

Competition will close at 12 noon on Friday May 27th , lottery tickets will be for the draw on June 3rd  for Euro Lottery and June 4th  for the Saturday night.

I will use random number generator to pick the winners, but reserve the right to re-pick a 2nd prize winner if by any chance both numbers originally picked belong to the same person, thereby giving 2 people a chance to win big.


ThePrizeFinder - UK Competitions.

The Gallery - Green

Well I have been and looked at varying other posts on this topic on http://stickyfingers1.blogspot.com/ since it went live this week.
I have some bushes/trees that I could post..... I thought about being clever and doing something "green" like some of my baby vegetables down the allotment, .....or home made natural yoghurt that are carbon footprint friendly.
But it just so happens that it was Bobs' birthday 10 days ago, and it just so happens that the icing on his birthday cake is.......green....so I thought it would be different that the other postings I saw, so here is Bob with said cake.

Competition wins Jan -April 2011

Last year I wish I had made a list of prizes I had won, for no other reason than it refreshes my memory, and when Im having a dry spell I can look back and think that it is worth while and that I do win. Many of you will appreciate that we all have dry spells, but they are a normal part of this unpredictable hobby.

I had  a good start to the year with over £350 of prizes in January.

 My first win was £300 of Neom 3 wick candles, 1 wick candles and Reed diffusers from a win on Daisy green. I have always been a smelly candle lover, but would never consider this amount of money for something I was going to put a match too, but I have to admit they are very nice and look lovely sitting on the hearth. All come in their own glass holders win neom written on them. I have never tried reed diffusers before but must admit it is wonderful left in the bathroom just as a low level constant scent, not too overpowering ( though I only hve 3 reeds in it, could add more for a bigger room)

Then I had a This Day in Music book turn up unexpected, oh will read that,  next was a TV soap book,( not overly impressed as it told me what had been happening in November 2010) a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Blue gin,which daughter No2 willing gave a new home too,  a miniature bottle of black label whisky which oh consumed in hot milk  and a mascara.











In February the  prizes were coming in at a rate of nearly 1 a day, nothing huge but nice none the less.
A chocolate Heart, gave to oh for Valentines day,  a pig led torch which came from PrizeBubble - or should I say didn't come as they never seem to send out prizes and are getting complaints on twitter.  some Zuma Red Chai and Cranberry tea bags, which smelt delicious, but unfortunately for me these already contain milk so a smell was all I got. Next was a set of beautiful slate coasters with rabbits painted on them. Turning up in the post unexpected was copy of  Gok Wan work your wardrobe book, great but he obviously hasn't looked inside my wardrobe.

Next came a beautiful set of some gorgeous glittery pink and purple butterfly wings which we decided we too young for Fifi some I swapped them with a friend at work who won a nice childrens baking set complete with hat apron, biscuit cutters etc which we have used and they have starred in a few blog postings on here. a T-shirt, novel for Fifi, a dance kinect game which I swapped with a fellow FB friend for a set of Being Human series 1 as I had previously won series 2.

Next in came a copy of snowman on  dvd, a set of purely creams and face cleaners, a case of cereals which I do believe about 100 fellow Facebookers  and every member of the family went a way with a box, as well as 2 friends who came over to visit. Next up was £25 towards some crown paint to be used at the trade centre.  Another dvd, this time a copy of  rebound, a lipstick, a spengler toy, a goody bag with yummy things in , a roll of weed suppresant, and another book.

March saw a slowing down of just 6 prizes for the month. £10 on an Ezpay card, ( which I gave away to a fellow tweeter as was going to cost me £9.99 to buy a card) a free design for a logo which hubby may or may not use,  a penis pump which may end up as a secret Santa at work, a single use  disposable underwater camera which I'm sure grandad and Fifi will have some fun with in the summer., Family quiz wii game,  and an umbrella.

 

April has again seen a respectable  average of just over 1 prize a week as well.
A box of Nature Valley chewy cereal bars which was a nice win as we eat these anyway in our house. a historic novel which should make interesting reading,  £20 of crafting goods, a pack of baby wipes and a key ring.

My baby wipes are not opened yet ( was expecting them so I know what is in it), and key ring not received yet but these are the start of hopefully a large pile of prizes to open when STV come round on the 20th May to interview me about my hobby of comping for a programme called The Hour.

fun-as-a-gran - Silent Sunday

An evening at the beach

We are very fortunate living in the beautiful seaside town of Ayr, not to mention all the lovely parks, a few country estates including Belleisle Country Estate, that has masses of room to run and play, a brilliant play park area and a nice safe bit to ride bikes. Auchencruive Estate  which has beautiful river walks that soon will be full of baby ducklings, and of course a beach.

There are 2 accessible ends to the beach in Ayr, along at Greenan Castle which is a more rocky end, slightly less accessible, but with beautiful views across to Arran and the more central Ayr Beach, which is more your traditional sandy beach. The water quality is not good and fails the water tests more often that it passes, and a lot of people use it to walk their dogs and don't always pick up after them, but it does get cleaned by the council on a daily basis in the summer months.

There is also a lovely play park at the beach all sectioned off and built over sand so safe to fall on, as well as Pirate Pete's

We went along there on Wednesday evening  when I had the children, (after letting them down on Tuesday due to my allotment plants turning up and needing planted), and after we made our Easter chicks and cards we went and had a hour of fun and running and jumping, and exercising the dogs as well as the kids.

burying Auntie Tweeze's feet

the dog decides to join in

buried...

Bob digging a hole

more holes

Fifi playing at digging as well

two kids can make a bigger hole together

Easter goodies

Part of the fun of having the grandchildren round is doing things with them, and as its nearly Easter I thought we would make some Easter themed goodies, so I had picked up a couple of packs for £1 each in a local discount shop and decided we would have some fun.

First up was some nice simple Easter Cards, some nice foam cards with peel and stick bits that surely even I could not go wrong with.

 The two of them picked 2 cards each and 2 toppers, we didn't go by what the pack said, they chose them selves.

Fifi at 8 managed this no bother.

 Bob was having fun, needed some help with peeling off some of the backings as they were fiddly  and he has limited dexterity skills.

Fifi by now is onto card 2.

 Bob starts on card 2, you will notice neither of them actually folded them into cards, but then that was their choice.
 We couldn't get the backing off of the googly eyes so had to glue them on, added to the fun.

 The finished results, not quite perfect but Im sure they will be loved by all recipients on Sunday.

and here's the one grandma made.






Verdict - well worth the £1, easy non messy and a worth while result.






Next up we made ( I use that word very loosely here) some Easter chickens.

These started off as a pile of pompoms and some pipe cleaners, some googly eyes and we added glue.

We stuck and we cut

we fell apart and we glued again, we had more glue on us than on the pom- poms, so we stuck to the pom - poms instead of the bits that should.

This one looks like its been through the mincer.









eventually we had a couple of yellow blobs with bright orange bits.

We didn't bother to make the other half dozen, maybe use the bits for a different project another day.

The 3 amigos upon completion

The one on the left is Fifi's, one eye staring to the ceiling the other on its chin, Bobs is the middle one, cross-eyed and bandy legged, a bit like Bob, and granddads on on the right, a bit neater but he cheated and didn't follow the instructions.

Verdict, too fiddly, but kids had fun.

Now I just need to turn my hanky box into a nest, put 3 chicks in it and enter another comp.