I've been gardening but I'm not finished yet

This was what my garden looked like last week, then last weekend Kerry and Jamie added the rest of the pots. I think you'll be surprised at how much is there now but you'll have to wait until next week to see it.

These are just some of the supplies I had stored in the bush house. All of them have been used now and new potting mix bought this morning.

There are two of the roses I'm growing - the pink one is called Pinky and I've forgotten the name of the other rose. I have it written down so when I present my gardening post next week, I'll have it for you along with the names of all the other roses. I have a mix of Old English roses, Floribunda bush roses and miniature roses as well as lavender, salvias, butterfly bush, gaura and pelargonium.

I thought I'd be writing about gardening in this post but I'm not ready to present the garden to you yet. It's taken me much longer than I thought it would because I've lost a lot of my strength. After I do a couple of things, I have to sit down. I'm using a walking stick when I'm walking on the grass now ☹️ and that's slowing down much of what I'm doing. I ran out of potting mix yesterday so this morning I went to the local farmers' co-op to pick up another six 30 kg bags. They were loaded into my car and after driving home, I've only managed to get two of them out. I'm using my trusty green plastic trolley that I used to declutter the house last year. I can lift a bag out of the boot and let it fall into the trolley (difficult), then wheel the trolley through the garage to the clothes line (easy), then wheel it over the grass to where all the pots are (difficult). And the icing on the cake is then I have to sit down for ten minutes to recover! grrrr. Apart from all of that, I'm enjoying the process and I only have the smaller pots to deal with now. I think it'll look lovely when it's finished.

She's watching her bedding dry.

Gracie and I are doing well. I've just brought her bedding and blankets in after washing them so she'll be wrapped up warmly tonight. The temperatures have dropped and although it's not as cold here as it is in southern Australia, it's dropping to 6 or 7 or 8 every night this week.  I'm warm in my bed because I have an electric blanket and two doonas!  LOL yes, two, otherwise my feet get cold.

I did my fruit and vegetable shopping at the local roadside stall this week. I love it there. They sell produce from local growers and backyards, much of it is organic or chemical-free and all of it is fresher than the fare at Woolworths.

I made a madeira cake, aka pound cake,  through the week. I used my little bread loaf tin and baked a really tasty cake.  Here is the recipe I used. If you haven't made one of these cakes before, it's a different texture to a normal cake or a sponge, it's heavier than both of them but it moist and full of flavour.  I used a light icing made with plain icing sugar and orange juice. It would be a good cake for lunchboxes.

I've heard terrible things about the weather across the US, I hope you've not been in the areas of extreme heat, storms or floods. I hope the time you've had at home has been comforting and productive. Have you baked a cake this week? Or maybe you've been sewing or preserving. Let me know what you're up to. 

❤️ 😊 ❤️

ADDITIONAL READING

A week in wildlife

‘Africa’s most resilient lion’ and his brother filmed making 1.5km swim across dangerous African river

Self sufficiency vlog

Rose syrup and garden vegies