Finished mask, Damsels

The Beast mask is now finished:

I've also had some time off from the garden to take some photos, I find reflections fascinating in any form, combine them with creepy-crawlies and I'm hooked!

I was pleased with both these, the mask is a useful skill to have learnt, the photo worked quite well, a bit more reflection with a bit less leaf would have been better, but they're not well trained!

40!

At last, another new thing!  We (L&A’s old school) have our Musical-over-a-weekend coming up at the end of June, Beauty and the Beast. Laura showed me how to make the mask. I've only ever used papier mache  before. The making process is on 60pix

A lad to admire

thrive is a charity aiming to help in the rehabilitation of all sorts of people through gardening, so two of my loves. The lad featured in the link is one of the reasons I might be tempted to miss going to work if I weren't so busy. He's totally unstoppable, and an example to many. Go Tom (but a bit carefully)!

Surrey Sculpture Park.

I've been lazy about my blog, too many distractions since my studies finished. I've been trying to get the garden back into shape, with some success and much hard work from Nick too. Roger's tied up with his OU workload.
I had a day off today, L&A took me to the Surrey sculpturepark for a late Birthday outing. I'm glad we waited, it was a beautiful sunny day, the shade from the jungly setting most welcome.
There are 700 or so, mostly for sale, a mixture of very traditional, very experimental and weird, and many beautiful ones that I'd like to have in my garden.
Here are some of our favourites.

Garden, for later, little friends.

My fruit cage, tidied up for the summer season, several failures last year, the raspberries and purple beans were best, caulis & cabbages a total failure.

 White currant flowers, with little greenfly-eater. Spiders always welcome in the garden, not so good indoors.

 Red currants waiting for a roast or fruity punch, bigger & fatter than the black ones this year.

We've had an invasion of these little fellows this year, wonderful iridescence. I hope I don't discover they eat all my best plants ( one year I thought caddis larvae were amazing, until they ate every single tadpole!)

Raspberries Caged!

When it snowed, I removed the roof of my fruit cage, I finally had time to replace it today as my course is sadly just about finished. It was good to get out & feel the sun beavering away making vitamin D! I learnt why raspberries are kept in cages, nothing to do with birds, they're making a bid to take over the world. At least twice as many canes as last year, several nearly two metres away. Even the gooseberries have been invaded. It's good to see so many flowers on the various currents, and new sprouts on my pea and bean seedlings. Watch what happens, I might even try cucumbers again. Everything is later this year because of my studies.

Helped!

I got back to my car at the end of the day yesterday, found a large slice of metal  in my tyre, feeling a bit girly, I went back to the studio to see who was around. Thanks Paul for volunteering so quickly! I sent him back in when the muscle stuff was done as a tea-shirt isn't very rainproof. On letting down the jack, it was obvious the spare was also flat as a pitta. Several trails round the Uni, I stumbled by chance on Mark-the-technician, another big smile "Oh yes, if you can get it down the the workshop, we have a compressor" Disaster averted & supper not too late! Thanks both of you.