Half-hour wreath

I set myself a challenge today: to make a Christmas wreath in under half-an-hour, without wire, simply out of material I could find in the garden.

I've never tried this before, as I normally use florist's foam wreath bases. I knew that I also had to set myself a time limit for two reasons: the daylight would run out soon and I had limited time in which to get a photograph of the finished wreath without having to resort to flash, and also I love making wreaths and linger over a single one for at least an hour normally, in a completely obsessive way.

Next year I'd like to make wreaths to sell from the garden and to do this, I need to be able to make them pretty cheaply and quickly so I can sell them for a realistic price. I'm fed up with seeing over-priced, uncreative, chucked together wreaths on wires everywhere that cost £10+. I'd like to be able to offer a better, more reasonably priced and sustainable alternative for people locally.

My technique probably needs a bit of fine-tuning, but it is basically this: get two fresh, smallish willow whips that don't have very thick ends (I cut down some of this year's growth on our existing willow). Place them together, using the opposite ends, and twist around each other in a round to form a wreath base, tucking in the ends.

Then take your main foliage (I had leftover fir branches from trimming our Christmas tree) and work in between the willow in a clockwise direction until it's completely covered.

Add anything you can find to make points of interest and colour, tucking them in as you go along; I used some snow berries, young eucalyptus branches, a few sprigs of rosemary (for scent more than anything else) and some fir cones on branches.

The only cheating bit was recycling some apples that I had on a wreath last year (look in the January sales in places such as Hobbycraft as they're often half price then!). They had the added bonus of being on wires, so could be wrapped around the main wreath, holding at least some of it together.

The finished product is above, and although I think it could obviously be better, I think in the time allowed and with the restrictions I placed on myself, it's pretty good. It can't be too bad as it's now on my neighbour's door after she spotted it in the yard and said they were about to go and buy one.



Cold again (real feel -4) in the garden today, but Paul and I managed to shift some of the huge pile of soil conditioner that was left outside our gate by the council last week. This was a surprise as I didn't expect it, but, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, the timing could have been better as I'll never move it all this side of the New Year. I hope at least some of it will still be there then!

All the far flower borders got a good layer of this lovely stuff, as did the mint patch. I also weeded the strawberry patch and added some to that as well. This will improve the soil and hopefully keep those weeds down a bit too.

I also planted the dwarf iris bulbs near where the pond will be eventually as I was running out of time to get those in the ground and for once it wasn't frozen.

This will be the last post for a few weeks now as I'm taking a break over Christmas, so have a good holiday, and all the best for 2008.

Brussels are sprouting

It was just me working on the allotment this morning, so after collecting one trug full of manure, I decided that was much better as a two-person job and best left for another time. Slipping up and down the bank with a load of manure on a particularly frosty morning was probably not the most well-thought out plan.

I decided to do some general tidying up instead, cutting dead leaves off the brassicas, clearing the annuals out of the beds and sorting out the compost.

The brussel sprouts (above) are finally showing signs of being big enough to grace the Christmas dinner table; it was touch and go for a while there...


Paul turned up late morning full of cold, but stayed long enough for a chat and a cuppa. It was good to have some company, although I had plenty of feathered friends this morning, with thrushes, blackbirds, great tits, and even a spectacular view of the red kite soaring overhead against a blue sky.

They were all interested in the freshly turned ground that the council cleared for us out the front of the allotment, which means I've now got a much better idea of what we're dealing with in terms of the space.

A cold wind blows

I kept thinking the Wicked Witch of the West might blow in on today's blustery wind, which was biting cold and took the edge off what could have been a lovely bright winter's day. Still, the horses didn't seem to mind, galloping around the field at the back of the allotment after they'd realised I had yet again failed to come up with the goods (i.e. apples).

Paul gave up battling against the elements after about an hour or so, after clearing some of the wildflower meadow and moving the chicken shed up to the top corner with Alan.

I persevered for just a while longer, taking out the half a dozen dead willow whips that didn't take in the dome and replacing them with some new growth. Although there's no foliage left on the dome now (see below), it was still fairly sheltered compared to elsewhere on the allotment.


I just checked on Accuweather and it appears that, although it was a reasonable 7 degrees today, the wind chill made it feel more like -2. Sounds about right!