Sweet roses and anemones + garden news.

    After a long summer holiday I am finally able to spend a little time on Roland-designs and re-charting of antique patterns.

    Here is the one I've been working on this week, I have a very large Berlin wool work pattern to chart but though to easy back into work by doing a small one. But as often is the case, this one was very hard to chart. The colours are all overlapped and no matter how hard I tried to fit all the colours in, the pattern seemed to shift and not align. Well, as I always say ' You can't go wrong with florals', so I hope you will be happy with the result.

Sweet roses and anemones

Look at the little pencil marks, looks like someone at one point had wanted to add/extend the leaves....

You can find the replica here: https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/244785581/sweet-roses-and-anemones-cross-stitch?ref=shop_home_active_1

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Garden news

    I really wish I had more time, somehow the summer came and went so fast and I barely kept up with all my plans for the garden... but on the other hand it seems the slugs had plenty of time for mischief and made away with my salads once again !

   Last year after my salads had succumbed to root aphids and slugs, I decided to quit trying to grow green lettuce and instead switch to red salads - as I had read somewhere the slugs did not favour them. I was of course wrong, the slugs did enjoy a diet of reds...... I tried putting coffee powder around the plants and while that helped a bit, it did not completely repel them either.

    Any tips on how to grow leafy greens without losing them to slugs would be appreciated.

I wish I could show a photo of a beautiful, home grown head of lettuce... but, alas the truth is the slugs had their way again.....

Alain the super-slug-exterminator, with his powerful weapon - the salt shaker !

I feel blessed every time I fill a vase with my own garden roses.

My 'Elodie' lilies always bloom in August, just when my sister Elodie has her birthday.

These yellow roses were actually a free gift from a plant catalogue, it came as a little stick with some roots attached to it. I planted it and had to wait a couple years before it was fully established, but this year it bloomed generously.

Mr Kitty