A photo tour of our holiday to Guernsey

Here are some photos of our trip to Guernsey two weeks ago. 


We went to see and take part in the Victor Hugo Festival.

Angelique Lihou playing cello amongst the flowers at the Le Friquet Garden Centre

Bunting in St Peter Port

All the post boxes are blue!

My friend Pamela Wyn Shannon and me, performing at Fermain Beach Cafe 

We stayed a fantastic B&B, Maison de bas Villa.  

Chickens! They laid our eggs which we ate every morning

The formal gardens at the B&B

Here are the lovely and noisy cats that lived at the B&B

Mum cat

Son cat

And here are the friendly dogs

A paradise beach

Dipping toes into the blue sea

We visited the Little Chapel, a fascinating little building, built out of little shells and colourful broken china. 

We took a trip to the beautiful island of Herm. The plants were an interesting mix of British  and Mediterranean. 

Flowers growing everywhere

Shell beach - beautiful white sands and blue sea

Such a beautiful place to visit.

Cucumber and tomato flowers, and cats hanging out

There are some lovely flowers in the greenhouse:

Cucumber flowers

Tomato flowers

And some of those flowers are turning into fruit... here are my first tommys!

And here's the first photo I've managed to get of Seren and Yogi hanging out together in the garden! 

A friend comes to call

You may think this is our lovely little cat Seren.


You are wrong! This is Yogi! He's our neighbour's cat, and he loves Seren. Yesterday he came to our garden to call for her.

 Sometimes they touch noses and play together. Yesterday Seren gave him the cold shoulder. Poor Yogi.

Today's sweet peas

Today's sweet peas are for Rachael. x

Take a seat

Just back from a fantastic holiday in Guernsey. What a beautiful island! Will post some photos up soon. 


In the meantime, I returned home to a lovely surprise, I now have a fantastic bench in Grainy's Garden, from my parents. I have eaten my breakfast sitting on it for three mornings in a row now! Thanks so much Mum and Dadx

At last, some good harvesting, and growing, and sunshine

Mum and Dad have been visiting, and helped in the garden yesterday, on a rare sunny day. We harvested some mange tout:

They were delicious with our dinner. 

Mum helped dig up my white snowball onions that I planted in October last year:

We laid them out on the VIP area to dry out. 

Here's the bed dug by Mum, now ready for some leeks to be planted. 

The sweetcorn are growing well:

And look here, my first tomato! 

Lots more flowers coming too on the many tomato plants in the greenhouse.

The lovage has grown really tall, way taller than the greenhouse. It's flowering, so I cut it back so that the seeds don't spread. It's a lovely plant, but I don't want it all over the garden. Here are some photos before I cut it back:

And here's the obligatory cat-enjoying-the-long-grass-in-the-sunshine pic. 

Mistaken identity

Have a look at my lovely chilli plants. 

Except they're not chilli plants at all! My Dad identified them as fat-hen, a plant that often grows in disturbed soil, for example on new road construction sites. The chilli seeds must have not germinated, but the fat-hen did. It could have been laying dormant in the compost I bought, maybe it hadn't been sterilised. 


The interesting news is these plants are edible, cooked like spinach, and used a lot in Indian food. 

fat-hen

Luckily some of my real chilli seeds DID germinate, here they are. They're not particularly big, and not flowering yet, but they're certainly chilli plants!

Failures...and successes

This is my entire broad bean harvest this year. Tasty, but tiny.

Damn those slugs.

They ate all my climbing beans too

And many of my squash and courgette plants.

But there have been successes. This beautiful poppy bloomed today.

The bees are loving the honeysuckle.

There are lots of roses now.

The greenhouse is full of tomatoes 

And we ate some radish with tea tonight.