How to spend a pleasant afternoon

First, you get out a big box full of vintage French printers blocks, letters and numbers, all kind of different sizes and fonts and styles. Then you drag it into the garden, get a big bowl of soapy water and plenty of old tea towels, plonk your behind down at the garden table, facing the beautiful views over the valley,  of course, and start cleaning.

I spent a lovely warm and sunny afternoon doing just that a few days ago, before the temperatures climbed to 36C, lol. It was such a pleasure to root around in the big box and pull out these wonderful old printing blocks. There was such an amazing variety of sizes and styles! They were quite dusty from long storage so a quick dunk in soapy water and a gentle brush cleaned them up beautifully. Fitting them together like a puzzle was so much fun, finding just the right letter or number to fill a gap. And even more fun was making lots of words with the letters, lol. I think I will have to display some permanently in my craftroom, they look so interesting.

Just a few pics of the little 'jigsaw puzzle' I put together on the garden table whilst cleaning -

We have thunderstorms forecast for the next couple of days, so cleaning the next batch of these printers blocks will have to wait until next week, I reckon.

We are thoroughly enjoying the fruits of our labour, the veggie garden is supplying us with delicious new potatoes, courgettes, green beans, beetroot, lettuce and cucumbers. Yummmmmm -

Toodlepip for now, xxx

Monsters in my Garden!

I decided this morning to hand wash some of the lace I had bought a while ago. It was a hot sunny day again, with a little breeze coming up from the valley, so a good day to hang out washing. And no, these white bits dangling from the line looking like ancient mummy wrappings are not the monsters of the post title, lol, they are sweet crochet laces and beautifully hand stitched broderie anglaise -

A little while ago we had a couple of days with a goodly amount of rain. The last few days have been really hot again, temps in the mid/high 30s. So last night I decided to water the veggie patch as the forecast for today was hot hot hot. All went well for a half hour or so while I watered the tomatoes, the beans, the cavolo nero.......... and then I got to the yellow courgette. Good grief, I almost fainted when I saw those courgettes, they were monsters! Three days ago, when I checked, they were dinky little yellow courgettes, last night, they were giants, monstrous giants -

Bigger than my beautiful Sussex trugg, longer than my hand and forearm together, and weighing an absolute ton. How could that have happened in three days?

I was going to use a yellow courgette for tonight's roasted vegetables dinner,

but I picked a small one for that, lol, these giants were just too big. They'll be in a big pot of vegetable soup tomorrow with leeks and onions and chilis, and sprinkled with crispy fried lardons ( bacon bits ).

Off to bed now, its almost midnight and I am so tired, but I had to finish listing a few things in my Etsy shop and showing them on the vintageland blog.

Toodlepip xxx

The Invasion has begun!

We finally got a little bit of rain yesterday and overnight, not enough to soak the ground, but enough to perk up the veggies a little. And of course, as soon as there was moisture on the (burnt) grass and the veggies, the invasion begun -

Yep, great big fat snails, the ones the French are so famous for! They come out from under the hedges and bushes, or in our case, the blackberry thicket, and head straight for our veggie patch. How the heck do they know where the good stuff is? Do they see it, do they smell it? I have no idea, but they sure find the straightest line directly to my veggies. My DH collected dozens of them, to be released somewhere far far away from our garden, lol.

These are some of the things the little devils were after -

the butternut squash plants -

the cucumber plants -

the sweet dumpling squashes -

fortunately the beans have grown so tall now that the new flowers and little beans are quite safe -

This is what I picked this morning, while the veggies were still perky from the rain -

Patisson, Sweet Dumpling, tomatoes, cucumber, courgettes and chili peppers.

And now for something completely different!

I must show you the fabulous ATCs I received in the recent Postage People swap I took part in -

And here are my ATCs for Kimberly's August ATC swap with the theme DRESS UP -

Until the next time, toodlepip xxx