in my garden

We moved into our flat 3 days after my daughter Isla was born. She arrived 6 weeks early, the day after we completed on our house, and its been a roller coaster ever since. She turned 1 last week and I still can't quite believe its been a year. We've been working on our house most of that time but as summer fast approaches its the turn of the garden. We both find it really hard to be indoors when the weather is good and especially now the evenings are getting lighter. We have cleared loads of debris, built a studio for me (which I will tell you about another time) and emptied all the old, overgrown flowerbeds.

The first one to be re-planted is one of my new herb beds. I have always wanted well stocked herb beds but never had the room so I'm really excited about being able to do it now. So far I have 3 different types of mint including chocolate peppermint (which smells like after eights!) lemon balm, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, oregano, feverfew, lavender, sorrel, sage and rocket. I've also planted marigolds and edible nasturtiums and made a step up to the deck out of an old tree trunk.

I made a mad dash yesterday to get this half finished; my daughter was asleep and it felt like a storm was brewing. That's probably what gave me the burst of energy to get it done. My partner says he can always tell when there's a storm coming because the cats and I start acting really hyper! I will get the other half done soon.

In other parts of the garden we have some beautiful roses in bloom and we've made a seating area from some more tree trunks that a friends gave us for our open fire. They were so well cut we couldn't bring ourselves to chop them up and they make a such a lovely place to sit.