Garden and Soap

Hi!
Might as well start with garden..

We weeded the blueberry patch and the garden path.
By the time we get woodchips we’ll have lots of places to spread it around to!

Check it out! Potatoes making an appearance!

I went into the garden today between soap batches and they’ve grown a bit more which is encouraging!

The zukes getting some sun
And the rhubarb exploding in size

The pear tree had lots of blossoms. Happily I’ve noticed little swellings of pears starting to grow… luckily because the wind has been diabolical today so hopefully what is there now will hang on tight.

I am looking forward to a new batch of spiced pear paste!

(These are all just snaps on my tablet btw)(So lazy)

I had to re weed this patch… and finally planted out the strawberries that the possum ate. One or two might cark it but most look ok.

More often than not, I come back from a day working at Judes with plants! What a dream job hey?
My lavender died so I am replacing it with Chamomile that I was given.
Fingers crossed I can keep it going. Putting this one in the pot otherwise it would probably get run over by the oregano haha

The poor sage is hanging on by its cuticles still…

In the hot house the apple cucumbers popped up really quickly. The Lebanese cukes are still… resting.

No sign of the butternut pumpkins or luffa either…
But I did prune two of my tomatoes.

(Basil from seed doing fine too)
Of course, laterals went into water to wait for some roots to grow

Still staring at tomato flowers…

Snowball bush about to puff out into flower

And the cherry blossom is gorgeous.

So… soap
My market went pretty well… I failed to take a camera!! A friend sent me snaps which I haven’t downloaded yet.
But I’ve been trying to stock up the last few days as what I make now is the last of the saleable stuff for before Christmas.

This one smells amazing…(sandalwood and vanilla) but discolours.
I was keeping that in mind and the final rich warm colours are quite lovely.

I poured some more Christmas Tree embeds. Two of which I used today.

Some plain soaps for another project which I started today…

Lovely warm colours too.

Cutting them up takes longer than you might think!!
Luckily Jeff has us listening to some Terry Pratchett audio books (at the moment we are well into ‘I Shall Wear Midnight’) so I was entertained whilst working

I had to do this soap in three parts (not including the coloured chunks part) today, so I am very keen to see the results of the cut!

And lastly, but the one I am most chuffed about, started as seeing something on pinterest that I couldn’t find again for love nor money, so had to just try it and see!
It was also done in two stages.
Above is the snap of the first pour (using dividers to separate the three colours)
The leftover mixtures to both stages I made into the ‘Kaleidosoaps’

I was aiming for terraced houses with snow on their rooves and a kind of snowy sky…
I was delighted with my first attempt, and indeed I have people saying they want to buy them already! And since I cut them a bit chunky and only have ten… I will need to have another soap day ASAP!
(PS I had to hand indent doors and windows on both sides of soaps haha… again… audio book!)

xx