How A Little Garden Gnome Will Help Our Visiting Bees This Summer 🐝

Disclaimer:  I haven't been paid to promote or recommend any products, just wanted to share our latest little garden smile x

Hello Honeys,
How are you today?  It's still cold here but as we edge ever closer to spring (only a week to go! yaaaay!) the sun is trying her best to appear more often and we even have baby birds at the feeders in the garden 💖 

So,while it might not be warm enough to be out in the garden just yet, I'm already making plans for when it is, which will be very soon I hope 😊

How adorable is this little guy honeys?  He made me smile as soon as I saw him online, so of course I had to add him to our garden 💖

The only thing is though, I was so taken in by his adorable-ness (is that a word? 😊) that I really didn't pay all that much attention to the details on the website.  I know, I know.  All my own fault 😊

Had I not been too busy smiling and adding him to my cart,  I might have read the description on the page a little more closely.  This adorable little gnome (and he so is, I'm still smiling here) is actually listed as a "stone look bird bath" and it does state (as I saw when I went back to check) quite clearly his dimensions.

Given how inexpensive he was (he was around £5) I wasn't really expecting anything other than cute garden decor, but since it did say he was a bird bath I had assumed that maybe at least one of our little visiting sparrows might be able to have a splash about.  Even if his friends had to form an orderly queue 😃 

Sorry, I'm grinning again here honeys.  I now have rather a vivid mental image of a little queue of tiny birds, all waiting for their turn in the bird bath with a little towel draped over one wing... and maybe a tiny rubber duck... 😊 It really is fun to live in my head at times 😄 

Well, when he arrived, I was quite taken aback at how small he is and thought, well, he is still adorable, maybe I'll sit him by the lavender... and that's when the idea hit me honeys 💖

Do you remember the little hydration station I set up in the garden for our visiting bees and butterflies last year?

It was just a dish, shaped like a leaf, with some little pebbles placed in it for our tiny guests to stand on, so they don't get hurt or trapped in the water. 

Then all I had to do was to go out each day was to wash it, so it was always clean, and add a little water with a tiny sprinkle of sugar in it.  This would help if any tiny guests became overly tired and needed a little "pick-me-up."

It certainly seemed to work because I didn't have to rescue a single buzzy friend🐝 all summer 💖  In fact, I spent quite some time snapping away photos of our gorgeous garden guests as they visited our lavender, which seemed to be especially popular last year. 

Adding more lavender will be my first task in the garden this year honeys, in the hope we can attract more buzzy friends this summer 🐝💖

So, as I said dear ones, when I was thinking about what to do with this little guy and had initially thought he might look adorable peeping out from the lavender, a tiny light bulb moment happened 😊

The thought was that even if he's not big enough to be a bird bath (I'll keep looking for one of those) what if I added a little pebble "perch" for our bee friends?  Then the flower he's holding up could become a little hydration station for them, hidden amongst the lavender where they'd have access to some yummy sugar water if they needed it.

So, that's what I'm going to do.  The too-small-to-be-a-bird-bath gnome will instead become a just-perfect-buzzy-friend-hydration-station 💖 

It really is so important that we all try to help our bee friends honeys, they're vital to every part of our lives, these tiny, busy bees 💖🐝  

Till next time dear ones, have a wonderful weekend, hugs always x

Spring Is On Her Way...

Hello Honeys,
How are you today?  I'm in a very smiley mood 😊  As I write this, our furbaby Jade is cuddled up next to me on the sofa having a nap and our feathered guests are tweeting excitedly, and quite loudly, in the garden at the bird feeders💖

I've seen two baby sparrows so far this past few days, the peonies are beginning to push their way through the earth in their huge planter by the back door and, even though it's still far too cold to be outside for too long, spring is on her way at last.🌷🌼

Spring is my absolute favourite time of year dear ones.  I count down to it every year, much to the annoyance of everyone at work.  Understandable I suppose, given that I usually start around late October to early November every year and give them all weekly updates. 😊

I love watching the garden wake up from her (too) long winter nap, tiny, green shoots begin to appear on the rose bushes and lavender and yes, tiny, baby birds start to appear at the bird feeders on our little apple tree💖 

I've never been able to understand how it is that winter seems to feel as if it's never-ending and yet spring, and summer too, appear to fly past in a heartbeat.

Spring, technically, arrives in exactly two weeks, although someone really should have a word with Mother Nature because with such a relatively mild winter the garden, and all of our garden guests who visit, seem to be a wee bit confused. 

I can't wait to be surrounded by all of the sights, colours, scents and sounds of the garden during summer honeys.  I can't begin to describe how happy it makes me.  Take that arthritis! Happiness is better than any medication in the world. 😄

I'm already being woken up before 5 am by the chirping and cheeping in the back garden and I can't imagine a better start to the day. 💝

Work on our garden will start as soon as the weather will allow it.  We've had so, so much rain these past few months.  Our street was even flooded a fortnight ago.  None of that will matter though when I'm finally outside with my little trowel and watering can planting out some new lavender.

I've been promising myself all through this cold, windy, storm filled winter that it's the first thing I'll do in the garden this year.  The lavender we have by the back door was especially popular with our beautiful, buzzy guests.🐝  

They didn't even seem to mind my appearing with my camera and trying to snap photos of them.  This one is still my favourite.💖

I hope you're feeling as happy and as blessed as I am today honeys.  Are you looking froward to spring and summer as much as I am?

You don't need to have a garden to watch things grow, I remember only having a little window box full of daffodils and how much they made me smile.💖  You don't even need a window box.  If you have a window the sun shines through regularly, you can still have a mini garden in pretty pots 🌻🌼🌷

We all have so much to be grateful for.  I know that life can feel a little joyless at times, especially during long, dark winters, but there is always something beautiful somewhere.  Sometimes we just have to look for it is all.

Till next time dear ones, wishing you so many smiles that your face aches (in a good way!) and sending you mountains of hugs x

Simple Swaps For Sustainable Living: How To Use Less, Buy Less And Save More

Disclaimer:  I have not been paid to recommend or promote any products, I'm just sharing our travels on the road to living a more sustainable, less wasteful life x

Hi Honeys,
How are you today? It's been a quiet, calm day here, mostly trying to recover from the past two days spent mostly catching up with laundry.  I make it a rule to do at least one load of laundry each morning and that usually manages to stop it from becoming a pile I can lose our furbaby Jade in 😃 

As you might know honeys, I work retail over the weekend so always have a bit of catching up to do on a Monday and Tuesday but this past weekend was the end of the month, always a busy time in retail, and I was just so drained it took me longer than usual to catch up.

While Jade is having a nap next to me on the sofa, I thought we could chat about some simple little swaps we've been making, including the latest two which I could kick myself for not knowing about sooner! 

For quite a while now we've been trying to live a healthier, more sustainable life and while most of the changes we've made are small tweaks, replacing disposable things with reusable items instead for instance, it's been fun finding new, less wasteful ways to do the things that we do everyday.

Why not go grab a cuppa then honeys and meet me back here, after the page break (press the link) and I'll share what we've done so far and also those two latest tweaks I mentioned.  See you in a few minutes....