Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts

Tuesday, 27 May 2025

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 17th May 2025

May's photo an hour date was Saturday 17th. I had a day of peace and quiet (spring cleaning!) as Andrew and Lily headed out to Castle Combe Steam Rally, coming back home in the evening to watch the Eurovision Song Contest. 


Here's what the day looked like...




10 lovely others joined in:

Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on Instagram
Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on Instagram
Lucy joined in on Instagram Stories
Janet joined in on Instagram Stories
Jane joined in on Instagram Stories
Denise joined in on Instagram Stories
Amy joined in on Instagram Stories
Nicky joined in on Instagram Stories
Danielle from Underland to Wonderland joined in on Instagram Stories
Jennifer from Pastry and Purls joined in on Instagram Stories
And myself on Instagram and on this blog post :-) 



June's photo an hour date is Saturday 21st - see you there!
 
 

Tuesday, 25 June 2024

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 22nd June 2024

June's photo an hour date fell on Saturday 22nd - and it was a lovely sunny day! One of our local recycling centres recently opened a reuse shop and we had a shopping list of a comfy chair for Lily's bedroom and a bigger scooter for her so we explored there in the morning. We managed to find both items at a relatively good price! £15 for the chair and £3 for the scooter so that wasn't bad at all. In the afternoon we headed over to (what was) my Mum's house to do some sorting, clearing and tidying. And in the evening we visited my Dad in his nursing home and then headed home via some local share & reuse boxes. 


Here's what the day looked like...




10 lovely others joined in:

Valerie joined in on Instagram
Jennifer joined in on Instagram
Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on Instagram
Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on Instagram
Hannah joined in on Instagram Stories
Lucy joined in on Instagram Stories
Jane joined in on Instagram Stories
Rebecca joined in on Instagram Stories
Denise joined in on Instagram Stories
Danielle from Underland to Wonderland joined in on Instagram Stories
And myself on Instagram and on this blog post :-) 


July's photo an hour date is Saturday 20th - see you there!
 
 

Wednesday, 21 September 2022

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 17th September 2022

Saturday 17th was September's photo an hour day - a day of mostly tidying and housework here at the duckpond! 


Here's what the day looked like...


13 lovely others joined in: 

Sarah joined in on Instagram
Valerie joined in on Instagram
Josie joined in on Instagram
Nicky joined in on Instagram Stories
Jane joined in on Instagram Stories
Lucy joined in on Instagram Stories
Denise joined in on Instagram Stories
Rebecca joined in on Instagram Stories
Jennifer from Pastry and Purls joined in on Instagram
Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on Instagram
Christine from Christine Lucas joined in on Instagram
Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on Instagram
Sharon from Sunshine and Celandines joined in on Instagram
And myself on Instagram and on this blog post :-) 


October's photo an hour day is Saturday 22nd - see you there!
 
 

Tuesday, 21 June 2022

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 18th June 2022

Saturday 18th was the date chosen for June's photo an hour. It was a day of sunshine and showers which meant I was dodging the rain trying to stick some plants in the garden! The rest of the day was taken up with fairly mundane jobs such as putting the laundry away and tidying. 



Here's what the day looked like...



10 lovely others joined in:

Jennifer joined in on Instagram
Andrea joined in on Instagram 
Josie joined in on Instagram
Sarah joined in on Instagram
Naomi joined in on Instagram
Jane joined in on Instagram Stories
Denise joined in on Instagram Stories
Alex joined in on Instagram Stories
Christine from Christine Lucas joined in on Instagram
Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on Instagram
And myself on Instagram and on this blog post :-) 



July's photo an hour date is Satuday 23rd  - see you there!
 
 

Wednesday, 9 February 2022

A Photo Every Hour - August to December 2021

Even though life since my Dad's stoke last August has been incredibly busy, I still managed to take part in the monthly Photo an Hour challenge over on Instagram. 

So here's a round-up of the last few months of 2021...


August's photo an hour date was spent at home catching up on jobs in the house and garden. Andrew spent a good portion of the day cleaning his lorry ready for the Bath and West Show the following week, which of course he didn't get to go to due to my Dad's stroke. 



September's photo an hour date happened to fall on my Dad's 69th birthday! At that point he was still on an intensive care ward so he wasn't really aware of anything but the staff had decorated his bed with balloons and given him a card. We'd prepared a 'Happy Birthday' photo to stick on the whiteboard next to his hospital bed. 



October's photo an hour date saw us visiting the brain injury rehab unit which my Dad had just moved to. In the evening we also went swimming at our local private hire pool. 



November's photo an hour date fell on one of the few carnival processions which took place in 2021. This time down in Honiton, Devon. We went down to watch the parade and collected some tasty chips on the way home. 



December's photo an hour date fell on the Saturday closest to my birthday. We'd packed a picnic and went on a birthday day trip to the seaside at Weymouth. We walked on the beach, had hot chocolate, saw Christmas lights and ate chips from one of our favourite fish & chip restaurants. 





And if you need a handy picture of 2022's dates, here you go :-) 

 

Thursday, 22 July 2021

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 17th July 2021

Well, that was a hot one wasn't it!? Too hot to do much outside, instead we did some things inside the house and had an early dinner so we could do a bit of gardening in the evening whilst it cooled down. 


Here's what the day looked like...



6 lovely others joined in:

Susie from Second Hand Susie on Instagram
Jennifer from Pastry and Purls on Instagram
Christine from Christine Lucas on Instagram
Hazel from World of Joy on Instagram (who takes the prize for the best 'photo an hour' news ever) 
And myself on Instagram and this blog post :-) 

August's photo an hour date is Saturday 21st - see you there! 
 
 

Thursday, 1 July 2021

June at the Duckpond

Many many years ago I used to do a "weekend at the duckpond" round-up on Mondays. I think Jane from Is That You Darling (who was one of the first bloggers I followed) used to do a 'Mondaying' post and I liked the idea of that so did my own version. 

There's absolutely no way I can keep up with doing a weekly round-up nowdays (to be honest, I'm not sure how I managed to keep it up all those years ago) but I might attempt a sort of monthly round-up instead. Sometimes I feel like there's things I'm quite happy writing about, you know, books I've read, places we've been, good recipes, etc but none of them really are quite "big" enough to warrant a blog post all to themself. So I suppose a monthly post is a way of collecting up all those little things that make life interesting but aren't really significant in any way. Well whatever, let's see how many months I keep it up for. 


So yep, how was our June?



  • Photo an hour took place on Saturday 12th - we spent most of the day doing a bit of gardening and a bit of sewing before collecting our supermarket order in the evening. There's a round-up here - http://duck-in-a-dress.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-photo-every-hour-saturday-12th-june.html - and July's date is Saturday 17th. Feel free to join in if you fancy :-)
  • We had a lovely swim in Mendip Farm Pool, a privately-owned pool local to us that lets households or bubbles rent the pool all to themselves for an hour. Going swimming is something I miss about the pre-COVID life; I used to swim lengths while Lily was having her swimming lessons and also do aqua aerobics. I mean, I miss it but I don't miss it enough to willingly swim with 20 or so other people (all maskless) in a poorly vetilated room. 
  • We bought a load of cheap plants from a couple of garden centres and B&Q back at the end of April and they all seem to be growing quite well.



  • It's been a strange month of two halves - sunny at the beginning with the paddling pool out and ice lollies in the garden. Wet at the end with temperatures getting cold again. I imagine the mixture of hot and wet weather had helped the plants! 
  • It's been very strange without Glastonbury for the second year in a row. I usually work in Pilton village and get a staff pass to enter. Children of staff are also allowed in free of charge (up to the age of 12) and when Lily was born I thought it'll be great that she'll grow up going to the festival each year. As it is, she's only been to 3 so far - 2016 at 4 months old, 2017 at almost 1 and half years and 2019 at almost 3 and half. 2018 was a fallow year and obviously we all know what's happened to this year and the last. If we assume it does go ahead next year, she'll be 6 and half and halfway to the age where she's not allowed in with me. 
  • Andrew's had his second COVID jab, my second one is in a week. He's had AZ and me being a few years younger (under 40) had Pfizer. Between both our families we've had a mixture of the two and Andrew refers to the ones of us who've had Pfizer as "the chosen ones"...
  • Some bits of sewing I've completed over the last few weeks - a skirt for me, a tshirt for Lily and Paw Patrol-themed dress for Lily. Don't look too closely at the seams but they're wearable and she seems to like them :-)



  • My favourite theatre company decided they were going to close. Which is incredibly sad but also understandable (the guy who founded it was 70 last year and decided to step down as artistic director earlier this year). This article in the Guardian is really good - https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/jun/16/running-away-with-the-circus-thrills-shocks-genius-kneehigh - and sums up the company I think. 
  • Good TV we watched recently - Feel Good on Netflix and Bristol Old Vic's 'Touching the Void' theatre show (they streamed it both as a live performance and also on demand). Andrew's watching The Big Bang Theory from the start - the characters in it are very much like some people he works with! I'm also watching the Great British Sewing Bee on iPlayer; I'm only up to week 4 so far although I already know who won from Twitter. 
  • We managed to see the partial eclipse the other week using Andrew's welding mask. Amazingly the clouds actually parted long enough to get a good shot!


  • We have several tickets for shows in the autumn which were rearranged from 2020 but I also booked tickets for a new show - Wise Children's 'Wuthering Heights' at the Bristol Old Vic in October. It did feel a bit weird booking them but they're obviously not going to run the show if it's not safe so either it'll be okay to attend or the show will be postponed. 
  • We're looking forward to our summer holiday to Scotland and hoping it doesn't get cancelled and it's okay to go! Our holiday style is 'road trip', 'car picnics' and 'sightseeing by driving' so we're not really planning on mixing with other people anyway. 


  • Back in January I decided to listen to every song on my 'liked songs' playlist on Spotify. You know how you add a whole album when actually it's only one or two songs you like? And then never get round to removing the ones you don't like? Yep, well I thought if I listened to every single song then I can remove all the ones I didn't need. There's almost 2200 songs on my 'liked songs' list and I'm up to 'R' at the moment. The idea is that when I've done the whole list then every time I press 'shuffle' I will only ever get good songs I enjoy. 
  • And lastly, Lily took part in her very first exam - LAMDA Solo Introductory Stage 1 - where she had to recite a poem, talk about how to play a game and talk about her favourite toy (a dinosaur, obvs). She came out of the exam saying it was lovely! 


How was your June?

 

Tuesday, 15 June 2021

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 12th June 2021

Saturday 12th was the photo an hour day for June - it was hot! We spent some of it in the garden and some of it in the house and in the evening, we collected our supermarket order (possibly the highlight of the day...).


Here's what the day looked like...





This month, 10 lovely people joined in:

Hazel from World of Joy on Instagram
Jennifer on Instagram
Jennifer from Pastry and Purls on Instagram
Josie on Instagram
Christine from Christine Lucas on Instagram
And myself on Instagram and this blog post :-) 

July's photo an hour date is Saturday 17th - see you there! 

 

Tuesday, 25 May 2021

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 22nd May 2021

Saturday 22nd May was the date chosen for May's photo an hour challenge. The forecast for where we live was originally rainy but it ended up being a nice day! We spent most of the day in the garden doing weeding, planting and shed-building before watching Eurovision in the evening with our bingo sheets and popcorn. 


Here's what the day looked like...



This month, 7 lovely people joined in:

Susie from Second Hand Susie on Instagram
Hazel from World of Joy on Instagram
Josie on Instagram
Christine from Christine Lucas on Instagram
Jennifer from Pastry and Purls on Instagram
And myself on Instagram and this blog post :-) 


June's photo an hour date is Saturday 12th - see you there!

 

Tuesday, 20 April 2021

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 17th April 2021

Last Saturday, the 17th was the date set for April's photo an hour. It was a lovely sunny day and we spent most of it in the garden, with the radio on for a bit at 3pm to listen to the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral. 


Here's what the day looked like...




This month, 7 lovely people joined in:

Christine from Christine Lucas on Instagram
Josie on Instagram
Hazel from World of Joy on Instagram
And myself on Instagram and this blog post :-) 


May's Photo an Hour date is Saturday 22nd - see you there!
 
 

Wednesday, 31 March 2021

A Photo Every Hour - 2020

Well this was a weird year wasn't it? I'm guessing it didn't really go as planned for anyone. But there were still things to take pictures of, even if the majority of them were at home. 


18th January 2020 - Lily had asked for a birthday day trip to see some dinosaurs so we went out to the Dinosaur Museum in Dorchester. We started off with breakfast at a garden centre on the way, had tea and cake for lunch and finished with a stroll on the beach and fish & chips at the seaside. 



15th February 2020 - A day of sorting and tidying (a lot of that went on in 2020!). 



21st March 2020 - A weird day from what I remember, although the lockdown restrictions hadn't started officially it felt like should be staying at home already. Lily watched some online lessons and did lots of playing. 



18th April 2020 - The first photo an hour day officially in lockdown. I made a sling for Lily's toy baby, scanned some old family photos and finished off the last of my Easter chocolate. 



16th May 2020 - I jumped on the 'baking bread' bandwagon and had a go at doing our own (which we still do now when needed). We also repotted some of our plants and seedlings before having dinner in the garden as it was such a lovely sunny day. 



13th June 2020 - More tidying up and playing and in the evening we watched a streaming of some carnival footage from years ago that I'd transferred and sent to a local website. 



18th July 2020 - The most exciting thing that happened that day was the arrival of some dinosaur fabric to make a dress for Lily! A lot of my photos seem to feature rather boring things like washing up or tidying, sorry. 



22nd August 2020 - The start of being able to harvest our vegetables from the veg patch. I scanned some old school photos and put them onto a Facebook group (I'd promised to do that after going to a reunion in 2019) and in the evening we had some home-grown potatoes with our dinner. 



19th September 2020 - This day was mostly spent tidying up the garden and harvesting lots of things from the veggie patch. 





31st October 2020 - Photo an hour fell on Halloween last year and we dressed up and took cake round to my parents house for a mini Halloween party. Lily had great fun doing a spooky chocolate hunt and we had fish & chips for dinner whilst watching the "next slide please" COVID briefing that evening. 



21st November 2020 - Back in lockdown and we started the day with Lily doing an online science lesson. I did a bit of sewing in the afternoon, finishing off a tshirt and dress that I'd started earlier in the week. In the evening we watched the Glastonbury Carnival virtual procession (all the carnivals having been cancelled back in March). 



12th December 2020 - And I didn't realise it at the time, but we ended the year with a photo an hour in the same place as where we started back in January! With a day trip to the south coast, ending up in Weymouth, this time to celebrate my birthday (which was the next day). We had ice cream, fancy hot chocolate and fish & chips by the seaside before venturing into one of the few shops we'd been in all year (armed with a long list of bits for Christmas). 



I'll round up the first few months of 2021 in a few days and then I'll be up to date!

 



Monday, 23 June 2014

This Weekend at the Duckpond

We have mostly been...
 
 
Racking - our brains for answers to the questions at a quiz night on Friday evening. Between me and Andrew and his mum and dad, we came a fairly middling 7th out of 13th teams. Not too shabby, methinks.
 
Quiz Night
 
 
 
 
Baking - a chocolate and orange cake. It's called Jaffa Drizzle Loaf and the recipe is over on BBC Good Food's website. No reason really (do you need a reason to bake cake!?) - perhaps just the fact it was the weekend :-)
 
Jaffa Drizzle Cake
 
 
 
 
Enjoying - a spot of lunch at Farringtons Farm Shop and an ice cream for afterwards with (see the next one...)
 
Lunch at Farringtons Farm Shop
 
 
 
 
Meeting - the fabulous Katie and her lovely other half Tom for lunch. Katie blogs over at Hook Line and Sink Her and if you don't already follow her, you really should - she's very funny and always makes me smile (and she's just as cool in real life too). When Katie mentioned they were having a little trip over towards Bath, I suggested meeting up for a cuppa which turned into a lovely lunchtime get-together at Farringtons.
Thanks Katie (and Tom) for the company!
 
Meeting Katie and Tom at Farringtons Farm Shop
Full credit goes to Katie for taking the picture, thanks Katie!
 
 
 
 
Exhibiting - Andrew's lorry at our local heritage railway station's annual Midsummer event. They certainly picked a good weekend for it!
 
Scammell at Midsomer Norton Station
 
 
 
 
Participating - in Jane's (from over at Is That You Darling) photo an hour challenge for June. This month we all snapped a Sunday - pictures will be up tomorrow.
 
 
 
Discovering - the first few almost-ripe strawberries in our garden.
 
Strawberries


 
 
What did you get up to at the weekend?
Hope you all had a chance to enjoy the stunning weather!

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