Studio Of Mosaic Art

Thought I had better do a plug for this on my own Blog, seeing I am running this one as well.
I am doing a blog for my mosaics teacher Bruce Long. He is an extremely busy man and also is not really into computers, so I have put this together for him. There is not much there at the moment but I am hoping to bet more going soon. You can see more of my work under Artist and student work and also under events there is an article that I just did on the Dalek that Bruce and his team put together.
Hope you enjoy.

The Studio Of Mosaic Art

Plant diary

This blog was meant to be a journal on what I do in the garden but I love posting pictures too much. So it's time to get it back on track.
Mulched the lemon tree today and fed both the lemon and back veggie patch.

House Moving Chaos!

A couple of weeks back we had our little house leveled. Living at the bottom of a hill is a little problematic in that all the water ends up doing through our place to get to the road.
We have had trouble with movement for over a year now, so we had the guy come in and check the house, it was soaking wet under there. Not good at all
So we had it moved. None of the tiles in the kitchen cracked either! (That was one of my biggest concerns.) And now Winnie is digging deep drainage on the hill side of the house to stop it from happening again too quickly.

Latest Mosaics Project.

I have been working on this on and off for the last few months, as time allows.
I have had two old cement plinths in my garden for years. They come from the farm where I grew up and are possibly older than I am. On was broken in half, the other intact and I had plans to mosaic them for a long time now and finally I am getting them done.

I cleaned both of them up with the high pressure water sprayer we have and I glued together the broken one with tile glue.
These things were turned out from molds on mass and are about as square as a dogs hind leg, so I have had to fiddle around with the design quite a bit.
I wanted something that was art deco in look, using very few colours and a simple design. I sketched out some ideas but putting the design together has been a very organic proses. Basically I have been making it up as I went along. 
I used mainly floor tiles for this and they are an absolute pain to cut, so I have to thank Bruce, my teacher, for doing the cutting for me. Also Lynda for getting the idea juices flowing for the side designs.
Anyway this is where I am up to now.

 

I still have to place the side pattern on one and then finish the line work. The filling in will be done in the same white that I have at the top.

New Strawberry Bed And Another Currant Bush

So we finally got stuck into fixing up the bed along the back fence, it's always been a bit of a mess and I only just planted my two currant bushes there last year.

Garden supervisor in place. Construction can begin.

Getting started.

The construction site.

All strawberries moved and new white currant planted. Pipes in place to hold bird netting.

 

We are trying an experiment and are growing some strawberries in a gutter and some in a PVC pipe to see how they go.

I also mulched with pine needles. They say the strawberries and currants love the acidity of the needles. The companion plant I have in here so fare is, borage, it is meant to make the strawberries taste better.

I am still deciding whether to plant blueberries and gooseberries. If I do, it will be a project for next year, I think I have enough to be going on with this coming summer.

The rain is still really good at the moment, but we could do without the really windy weather. Luckily we have not had any major damage and everything seems to be holding up well.

The Lemon Tree.

So we had a spot all picked out for the lemon tree. It was going to be out the back door and up against the back fence. Not a bad spot, plenty of light and not too much wind, but when we started to prepare the bed we discovered a problem with the area.
Our neighbors run a drainage pipe from one of their gutters along the other side of the fence and it stops around where the lemon tree was to be planted. When we planted another currant bush not far from where the lemon tree was to go we struck water about a foot down.
This will not be a problem for the currants, as they are in raised beds and it will actually give them an advantage in summer. But the lemon's root system would not be high enough out of the water and it would have drowned in winter.
This was where it was meant to go.

We will put veggies in here instead for this summer.
I was at a bit of a loss as to where we would plant our tree now. Winnie was the one to come up with the new site. 
I have a rose bed on the other side of the house and he said we could plant the tree in the middle of this. When we looked at it yesterday we found it was even more sheltered than the old spot. It was a very windy day and the middle of the bed was really calm compared to the rest of the garden.
It is guarded by trees on two sides and the house on one. The roses should protect the trunk of the tree from the westerly sun too.

So, plans have changed, but at least we will still have our little lemon tree.