Plant suggestions for a partly shaded rockery

We have had some nice weather so far over the bank holiday weekend ... interspersed with some nasty, we mustn't grumble ... it's far better than it being all nasty!

I put myself to work by making a small rockery out of this previously miserable area near the entrance to my greenhouse. 

We had quite a bit of rockery stone lying in a heap in the front driveway when we moved in. Some of it was frost shattered and was used in hardcore for the steps going down to the raised veg beds. I selected the best bits and arranged them as attractively as I could and also enriched the soil with what I had left over of a bulk bag of compost (that went into the raised vegetable beds to enrich them a while ago).

It's a small area so I need plants that won't swamp it. They need to be slow growing or easy to keep in check with trimming or pulling it up. It only gets half a day's sun tucked away in that corner so I'm thinking about what to plant in the little nooks and crannies.

Here's my preliminary list of non-invasive plants that I've used previously in part-shade:

• Saxifraga x urbium (common name London Pride), I'll see if I can get some of the variegated variety as a preference
• Ajuga reptans (smaller green leaved variety)
• Red stonecrop (already got some of that I can transplant)
• Pulmonaria (common name Lungwort), I really love the blue and white varieties, particularly those with spotty leaves!
• Lamium Beacon Silver - there's some down the road next to the river dog walk which has escaped from someone's garden. I can take some free cuttings when the weather warms up a bit.

Any other suggestions from my fellow gardeners would be most welcome!

EDIT on 4 April 2016
There was an article in Saturday's paper featuring plants that will thrive in shade so I clipped it out. I was pleased to note that some of those in my list above made it into an expert's top picks! In addition, I've added the following to my list of possibilities:

• Epimedium x versicolor "Sulphureum "(barrenwort) has lovely light yellow flowers and bronze foliage in autumn
• Omphalodes cappadocica (navelwort) lots of bright blue forget-menot flowers. I'm sure this is in a garden of one of my friend's in the village so will be nagging him to give me a little of his! 
• Dicentra "Stuart Boothman" (bleeding heart) finely cut greygreen leaves and pink flowers; apparently "Bacchanal" is another variety with deep red flowers
• Siberian bugloss Brunnera "Jack Frost" has made it into my list, it might be a bit big for this area but I love it so much, I used to grow it many years ago. I'll give it a try and maybe transplant it if it outgrows its welcome here.

New CAL Stylecraft Frida's Flowers

I've decided to take part in another Crochet-a-long. This time it's Jane Crawfoot's Frida's Flowers using Stylecraft's Classique Cotton yarn. I've never made a cotton blanket before so I'm really looking forward to it.

It doesn't start for a few days yet but I've already purchased my yarn pack from the Wool Zone in Oakham. There's a nice project bag that's been designed for people to get on with making in the meantime but I've been wanting to have a go at a ropey rainbow basket designed by Little Bee on her brilliant blog. I used two strands  of double knitting cotton from my stash to make the bottom which is a plain colour but for the sides, I bought extra balls of all the most rainbowy colours from the Frida's Flowers yarn pack. 

When I was photographing the finished basket containing the yarn for the blanket along with these daffodils, I felt so much in the Easter spirit, I opened a pack of mini-eggs to celebrate (no you can't have any!)

This is the 6mm sisal rope I used as the basket's base. Amazing how a little bit of simple crochet transforms it! Sisal is a bit scratchy to work with, if I had to do it again, I'd find something a bit softer like nylon or maybe hemp? Perhaps someone who's worked with hemp before can let me know if it's less scratchy. 

The design uses far more yarn than I would've thought, I've gone through 40-odd grams of all these colours. It's so nice to work with, I can't wait to get on with the CAL, in the meantime, there's always another bag of mini eggs!

. Happy Easter everyone! 

How to grow an apple tree from a pip

These apples were picked in the autumn of 2015 just before my Dad's apple tree was cut down. I won't go into all the reasons why the tree had to go, they're complicated and very good ones.

As we ate them, I saved some of the pips intending to grow a replacement tree for my own garden that has the same genetic material as my Dad's tree (I'm not in a hurry and getting fruit out of it isn't really the point of the exercise for me).

I read somewhere that apple pips need cold to break dormancy; the cold makes the seeds think that they've had winter without actually planting them outdoors. Last November, I put some pips in a small tupperware container with some damp kitchen roll and then placed it in the bottom of the fridge (furthest point away from the freezer section). Eight to ten weeks should be long enough, every couple of weeks I checked they were still damp.

In January, I took the container out of the fridge. There were no sign of life at that point, they looked just the same as when I put them in. Ever hopeful, I loosened the tupperware lid and popped them in the greeenhouse. At this time of the year, I am heating my greenhouse but only just enough to keep the frost off the tender cuttings that I took at the back end of summer.  So, it's a bit warmer in there than the fridge during the day; I was hopeful the modest rise in temperature would make the pips think about growing.

A couple of weeks after I moved them, I was rewarded by two of them sprouting roots. A very exciting time! I carefully potted them into individual 3inch plastic pots with multipurpose compost, covering them with no more than 3-5mm of compost gently pressed down.

And now, today, here is the first seedling to germinate in my new greenhouse. When I saw it, I had an odd mixture of emotions, I'm really sad that the tree in Dad's garden had to go but it's touching and poignant that this little seedling is continuing the life of a tree that has been gone for months. It's a little piece of continuity and so I've decided to be happy about it. If you cut a tree down, I believe you should always plant at least one more; the other rootlet is also pushing it's way through. Two more pips have sprouted roots so they've been put into compost as well.

I've got another later batch of pips in the fridge now which are around halfway through their dormancy period. This time, I'm going to try to get them to germinate on a window sill to see if it can be done.  I may well become overrun with apples trees ...!

I remember as a child getting a lemon pip and a peachstone to germinate in my Dad's greenhouse, we even got a couple of small lemons out of it. I was far too young for gin and tonics back then, unfortunately! I can't quite remember what happened to the peach tree, I'll have to ask my sister.

What plants have you grown from pips/self-collected seeds?

Do your cockles measure up?

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, how did we end up eating cockles on Hunstanton promenade on a cold, windy day in February?

In the run up to Christmas, we kind of went into hibernation concerning working on the house renovations. Last summer and autumn was all about the vegetable garden and the greenhouse. This week we have started gearing up to do some more work getting our house the way we want it. Our goals for the Spring are to finish the dining room and sort out the old bathroom and adjacent room which we call the skullery,

Here's MTM measuring the fireplace hole in order to install a new electric fire.

As part of the work we want to do in the skullery, we came across the Rustic Warehouse in West Lynn in Norfolk. They manufacture units for Belfast sinks, we wanted to see what one looks like so today we headed out to their retail shop.

The Rustic Warehouse does exactly what it says on the tin, it's a completely authentic local business without any of the national chain razzmatazz and market-speak mumbo jumbo. You meet the owner and his adorable staffy, Murdoch, in their showroom which is more of a stockpile of wonderfulness than a retail experience. My kind of business!

Whilst I fed Murdoch treats, MTM explained what we needed, the owner is going to talk to the workshop guys to see what's coming through production-wise that might meet our needs and there'll be a phone call next week about delivery times.

The thing about West Lynn is that it"s quite close to the coast, only 33 mins to Hunstanton according to the Sat Nav. I can never resist a visit to the seaside if it's close, we had Missy with us so we decided to extend the trip by half an hour and go check out the beach and give us all a bit of a treat.

Boy o boy, the wind was so cold, it made our eyes water and my ears were raw after only a few minutes! We stopped long enough to have our cockles. We then went on an ice cream hunt. You can't go to the seaside and not have an ice cream even if it is bleedin' freezing ...  sadly, we had to abandon this idea as many places were shut for the close season.

The sun came out as if to mock our no ice cream status, I'm just grateful the cockle stall was open!

How do you like the seaside in winter? 

Grow your own yarn!

Grow your own yarn ... as an addict to all things crochet and knitting, I really like the sound of that! I've joined Ravelry group Project Apocalypse started by fellow blogger Sheila   I gather that we're all getting ready for the apocalypse with the idea that when it arrives, no-one will be making yarn, if we do it ourselves, we'll be the best dressed survivors.

The manifesto of Project Apolocalyse kicks off with "You have what you stand up in and what’s around you. You can use fibres that you can find, gather, grow, harvest, brush or shear yourself."

Sheila is a multi-talented lady, she came to my attention as a yarn spinner which is when I started following her blog, over at Stitchin' Bints, but she does lots of other things too, just take a look at her profile! Cartoonist, software engineer, knitter, cider drinker, plays in a band ... the list goes on. If I do manage to grow some usable fibres, in order to turn them into yarn I'm going to have to learn how to spin it ... (I've got a book...!) it's rather handy that the leader of the group is an expert.

Sheila has already tried some nettles and I gather she's planning to cultivate some cotton this year. I'm going to try to grow some flax to make my own linen yarn. So what are you waiting for? Sign up for Project Apocalypse ... I'm going to be ordering my seeds soon, what will you be growing, gathering, brushing or shearing to turn into yarn?