The great outdoors and a few more garden flowers

Good morning to you all, can I first start by apologising for my lack of blog activity this week, we have had internet issues and limited connectivity and e.mail and as a result my visits have been somewhat hampered. Hopefully all will be sorted within the next few days and normal service resumed.

It's time for our new challenge at Allsorts where Tracy has chosen the theme of  The Great Outdoors. Our sponsor is Scrappers Delight and Sizzix.

No secret I enjoy making scenes, especially with Pan Pastels so am in my element with this theme and have two shares. The one at the top had a rather large masked sun and a background created with Pan Pastels and a piece of torn paper to create the hills. I then stamped the bunnies which come from two different Chocolate Baroque stamp sets and Penny Black birdies which I stamped three times and extended the wires with a fine line pen. I added a few stamped CB leaves and coloured them with Spectrum Pencils.

For this one I used a mixture of Sheena, Clarity and Art Impression stamps, stamping the all with black archival and the adding colour with a mixture of Pan Pastels and Spectrum pencils. I'm not actually over happy with the colours, the green is a tad too bright I feel and did intend making another but time got the better of me.

I hope you will join in this weeks challenge and do have a look at the inspiration from my teamies.

And as this weeks theme it all about the Great Outdoors it seemed only appropriate that I share a few more photos of the gardens as everything looks so lovely at the moment, amazing given how cold it's been this last week.

We bought this digitalis from a specialist garden center in Suffolk, such an unusual colour

A bit of allsorts in this bed including some very early cornflowers and Sweet Williams which always remind me of my Granny's garden which was full of traditional cottage garden flowers

I love Phenstemons, these came fro the same Suffolk garden center as the Digitalis above, you don't seem to see them that often but I do hope they make a comeback into the cottage garden

OK, that's about it for now, hopefully the Albertine Roses over the pergola's will be in bloom very shortly and I will share some photos. One of the ladies who visited my last garden photos said the gardens must keep me very busy..............so I had better say it's hubby they keep busy at weekends. I used to love gardening but now am unable to do the bending and the best I can offer by way of help is an hour or two on the tractor cutting the grass - but I do enjoy that, especially on a sunny day, usually followed by a few Wagtails who seem to love hopping around on the freshly cut lawns. 

Happy weekend.