A little place of calm

We were given a rose plant as a wedding gift, which i think was a lovely idea – i like flowers, but it's nice to have a plant that lasts. It is growing quite beautifully at the moment:

I'm so glad i've taken photos of the Leucothoe Scarletta plant, otherwise i would not realise how dramatically it has changed colour through the seasons. This was in June, mostly green and yellow:

At the end of July it was beginning to change colour:

Now in October, it has become a beautiful deep red. Just look at it now!

Resumo: Hodiaŭ mi aplikis por laboro en mia urbo, kaj mi promenis en la kampojn, farinta fotojn.

So i didn't really know what to do with myself today after my London plans were scuppered by South West Trains. For one reason or another i followed a few links and discovered a Ruby on Rails job in Winchester! I'm not even looking for a job, but somehow i ended up applying for it! I just thought, "Well, why not! Give it a try, hey!"

This afternoon i went for a lovely walk through the fields of oil seed rape, taking lots of pictures. I think i felt my Flickr account was somewhat tainted by the nemews and i wanted to counterbalance it with some real beauty. I took some shots which i am quite proud of, particularly this one:

I can't say what it is i like about it. I'm not a photographer so i don't know. I suppose i like the angles, and the perspective, and the colour. Pffft what am i talking about?! I'm no pro. Although …

My Flickr has gone over 200 pictures and i have now lost the oldest ones. I am wondering whether to upgrade to 'pro'. I do like having them all recorded online. Is it beneficial to upgrade? I was going to say £24.95 is a lot, but now i notice that's dollars, so only £12.75 which is not so bad for a year. Hmm. I'll think about it.

Just cos i love to whore my photos out on here, have a few more …

Resumo: Mi kulturis ĉi tiujn florojn el semo, kaj hodiaŭ ni havis visitanton al ili!

I feel incredibly blessed to think that these nasturtiums i grew from seed have flowered and are now considered worthy of a visit from a bumblebee!

This little visitor spent about ten minutes buzzing round all our flowers this morning, taking a little bit of pollen from each one. Yum yum, isn't that delicious?! Don't you just want to go and make some lovely honey from all that yummy pollen?! :) :) Next time we buy some honey i'll like to think that we might have contributed to it with our flowers! :)

Here are two of the better pictures that i managed to take before i got too scared about annoying the bee!

Isn't nature adorable?!

Look at all these flowers appearing! Last week there were only two; now there are seven or eight, and i can see lots of new buds too!

I never thought i was much of a flower person; i didn't really see much point in flowers, but these are so pretty, and make me feel happy! They come in different colours too:

You can also eat them, apparently.

I just came home and noticed this on the balcony:

I have not really been looking after the plants terribly well, so this was very unexpected! It's amazing what a little bit of sunshine can do! For reference, here is the story so far with this nasturtium plant …

Even more unexpectedly, even the Aster plant has produced some buds and looks about to burst into bloom, even though the leaves look almost dead:

Amazing! :)

The C# course was very good today; i learned how to produce and consume web services, and we did a bit of ASP.NET this afternoon. I am reluctantly quite impressed how you can code C# into a button on a web form, and i like how you can cache data into a DataSet and synchronise it with the database later. Much as i hate to acknowledge it, Microsoft do sometimes have a few good ideas! I got a certificate for being on the course, signed by Bill Gates!

I had a lovely evening with Nye last night, and it was great to be able to leave at 08:45 and just have a short tube journey to get to the course. Aster13 is on a train right now, coming to stay for the weekend. Yayness! :)

Oh, i've just remembered i forgot all about Bloglines this week! That's going to take a while to catch up …

I am so pleased with the way the plants are coming along, especially when i look back of pictures to see how they have grown. Sadly, i don't think they will flower this year, but hopefully they will survive the Winter and produce really lovely flowers next year.

My mum sent me the seeds through the post. This is how they began:

The Nasturtiums grew the quickest and needed re-potting. They looked quite yellow at the time:

But look at them now!

The Petunias could not be saved. I nearly threw away the Asters and Marigolds too, but since i had two small pots spare, i thought i'd give them a try. This was precisely one month ago:

I'm glad i gave them a chance!!

I've never much luck growing flowers from seed before. Some credit must go to our neighbour who looked after them for two weeks whilst we were away in Hungary. I'm really delighted with how nicely these plants are turning out! :D

I was delighted this morning when i went to look at the plants to discover them not dying but actually reviving themselves rather nicely!

We had a set of Nasturtiums, Petunias, Marigolds and Asters, to grow from seed. The Nasturtiums are doing the best, thriving in their big pot. The Petunias died out altogether and i had to throw them away. But i decided to re-pot the Marigolds and Asters into some spare little pots, and i'm feeling glad that i did:

Doing alright! :)

In other news, we had a fire drill this morning. The fire wardens were well aware of it, and well prepared in advance, but i felt really nervous this morning. It has been my first drill since becoming a fire warden. I had to put on the ridiculous bright yellow jacket, pick up a clipboard and a torch and usher everyone out, checking all the rooms were empty before leaving too. Everyone was impressed that i first went to a colleague who often needs a wheelchair, to ask whether it would be too painful to walk down the stairs. If that colleague was in too much pain today the two of us would have stayed in the stairwell, between two sets of fire doors where we should be safe if there was a real fire. As it was, my colleague was able to walk today, but seemed very touched that i thought to ask. Heheh, well like i said, we'd planned it all out beforehand! ;)

Update: having just read a previous entry i'm not sure whether those are Petunias or Marigolds, the small shoots. In my other entry i said that the Marigolds died, not the Petunias. Can anyone tell what they are just by looking at the shoots?!

I have had a really wonderful day. Didn't do much, didn't even get dressed until 1pm! Just spent the day relaxing and taking things easy. A large proportion of it was spent fiddling with the new computer, but that is all good fun – especially when it works! :)

I watched the last Heaven and Earth this morning … was really quite upset that it's over. I always enjoyed the show. I do hope it comes back again. Must remember to email the BBC and tell them how much i'll miss it. I baked some cookies to take to work tomorrow, and made a lovely dinner of cheese strata, which turned out very well, with green beans and gravy! Oh, and i watched Billy Elliot this evening – i love that film. I should really get to see the theatre production of it someday.

Here is something brilliant: a very good WordPress Flickr plugin. It enables a Flickr widget in the sidebar, a page for Flickr integration (see here) and, most usefully, a Photos tab, enabling me to quickly insert Flickr photos into posts. It uses the Flickr API. I wanted to upload a new picture of the nasturtiums, so here's an opportunity to try it out.

So first the nasturtiums looked like this (back left):

They quickly grew way too big for the little seed tray, so i transferred them to a big pot:

One week later, they are looking ever so much happier:

Hooray! :)

Whilst i've got the camera out …

This is our attempt thus far to decorate our balcony. The Leucothoe Scarletta which i bought yesterday and haven't had time to kill yet, the Nasturtiums which look as if they are desperately trying to stay alive (hopefully a big pot and a sunny balcony will help) and the strawberry plants which have survived the frost of winter and are growing quite quickly now! :)

I am not a natural born gardener. It would be nice if i were, but unfortunately it just doesn't come instinctively to me. I generally rely on the supposition that the plants have a will to live whether i help them or not, and unfortunately it's not usually the case.

Anyway, i used my £10 gift voucher at the gardening centre to get some compost and a small evergreen shrub with beautiful leaves which start green and slowly turn red for winter, and produces white flowers in May. It is called a Leucothoe Scarletta. I think it looks really pretty. I just hope it doesn't die. I already realised that i could have killed it by putting it in the new compost, because it doesn't like Lime. So i'll just keep it in the pot it's in for now. It looks nice on our balcony.

I have re-planted the Nasturtiums, Asters and Petunias (the Marigolds died) and hope that something comes of those. We want to get some tulips but they don't come until Spring. I'd rather get some that are already growing, rather than plant bulbs now. I find it easier to take care of something that is already there than to produce something from bulb or seed.