Inside the Elephant Box - Part 1

There are two layers in my elephant box!

The box was given to my mother and grandmother by friends whose Victorian grandmother had been quite a collector...

As many of you guessed, it contains a lot of sewing equipment (no buttons, Betty, so you can read on!), including this quirky little pin cushion designed like a domino.

The domino pin cusion was in a compartment on the left, and, lifting the little lid above it, I found this leather needle case, the large 'needle' and the two amber rods... even after years of treating this box as my 'rainy day' box, to share with my grandmother, I really don't know everything that's in it!

Juanita makes a key point- not only is the box's inlay ivory, but the needle case seems to have snake skin on it and the 'needle' is almost certainly tortoise shell. My mother taught me to be horrified by the killing, but to respect these antique artefacts - I wonder what the rest of you think?

Just to add to my ethical issues over the ancient massacres of endangered animals, here is a collection of carved ivory bangles my mother bought in charity shops and (one of) my grandmother's crocodile-skin handbags. My mother bought the ivory bracelets because she couldn't bear to see something which represented so much life and work (obviously mainly on the part of the elephant) being sold as if it were plastic. She never wore them.  My grandmother bought the handbag because that was just what you did in those days... what do we do with it all now, I wonder?

24 hours of flowers

We've had 24 hours of flowers here, outdoors...
and in...Yesterday afternoon Son 2 fulfilled his desire to get to grips with my sewing machine - I decided that he was safe to continue my bunting if supervised...He was great - on the technical stuff, as well as the sewing...We got the flags finished this morning!Meanwhile, Son 1 was down at our local lake, fishing with his friend Maxime. They never actually catch anything edible, but it's a great hobby! We took a break from the sewing to go and visit, and to collect more river pebbles...

The leaves are coming out on the trees.The trees reflect beautifully in the clay-pit lake, and the wildflowers are all around.

I'm not a flower expert, but I'll name the ones I think I recognise! I can only name them in English, not in French, though. Can you spot the periwinkles, creeping over the opposite bank of the stream?The streams and rivers are deep at the moment, with strong currents, so we keep Raja out of them.
Although she still finds plenty of water on the meadows!Son 1 was with me and the dog by this point, and we spotted stitchwort.And the little wild geranium, cranesbill (I know most of my flowers from the Flower Fairies - I can still quote parts of the cranesbill poem).Son 1 went off with Raja, and so missed the star of our walk, spotted by Son 2:Back at home, and wishing this blog had smellivision (for old fans of Blue Peter and Simon Groom), our ornamental olive is flowering and perfuming the whole area around the front door. It's the most restful scent...In the evening, Son 1 got interested in the sewing project, although he doesn't sew himself.He also resisted the general hilarity this morning, and declined to be photographed as a 'flower child'. He kindly volunteered Chanel as a 'flower cat', as you see.

We'll hopefully finish the bunting today, and we'll take some photos of its 'launch' in our home!

One more recipient is needed for my Pay it Forward - click here if you want some goodies from me and the chance to take part yourself! My goodies are light and easily postable, so any blogger, anywhere, any country, is welcome to join in. If you've just popped in for a visit for the first time, still go ahead - I love to meet new people!

Hen and Chicks

This may sound like another Easter post, but in fact it's a bit of gardening nostalgia.

When I was a very little girl......my grandparents had a house built against the cliff at Brixham, Devon. Sal's husband knows the area well - he was born in Brixham!Not actually this cliff - this is one 'round the corner' from the town!One day my grandma was showing me round her rock garden (cliffs, rocks - the rock garden was big and thriving!). She showed me a fantastic little plant which she called 'Hen and Chicks'.

'This one's the Mummy hen,' she told me, 'and she's got her little chicks all around her.'I was enthralled! She showed me how you could separate the babies, and take them with a few of their roots to another crack in the rocks. Just pop a few into a crack one year, and the next year you will have a new colony of hens and their tiny chicks.Ever since I have had gardens of my own I've been buying sempervivums (this is their Latin name) or Houseleeks (another traditional British name). Of course, once you have a few, you can begin to spread them around. Here they are in Ben's ancient work boots.The pot on the left is a well-established one, but the one on the right was only planted yesterday, with some plants I bought at Floralys this year and plenty of little 'chicks' from my existing 'hens'.My intention is to make a varied set of pots which can go up on our window ledge whenever there's nothing currently flowering for display there.You'll note that they have to be surrounded by gravel when they're in pots. They love sandy, gravelly, well-drained soil, and they don't do well if their leaves rest on damp soil. As you can see from the rockery pictures, they survive best without much soil at all! Houseleeks grow on walls and roofs, too, in almost soil-free surroundings.The flowers are not exactly elegant. At this time of year I havn't got any photos of them, but you can see the stalk from one of last year's here. I bought a cheap little sempervivum in a pot once and the young woman selling it to me said nervously, 'Do you know what the flowers look like?' I admitted that I did, and she said that she'd been really shocked when the one she'd bought began to flower. Let's just say that they're quite robust.I can't really tell you why these are still my favourite garden plants. Childhood delight in a mother plant and her babies must be part of it.

The ability to grow in unusual circumstances also greatly appeals to me - these ones have been almost smothered by lavender at the edge of a path, but when I moved the lavender aside, they're still there...I'm also very fond of 'clump-forming' plants - texture is important to me and I love the little 'cushions' made by hardy Alpines - saxifrages and sedums as well as sempervivums.

And they provide easy to care for, all year round interest - of course the name 'sempervivum' means 'always alive', and they are always there, looking chirpy and healthy, all year.

I wonder what you think of these lovely little plants?