Did I mention that I quite like a bit of gardening too?

Earlier this year I planted up these lovely old dishes with little viola plants.

The blue and white dish had been used for plants before, it belonged to my Mum and I think I remember her putting bulbs in it. The pink and white dish is an old casserole dish that was my Nan's. The lid was broken years ago and it has a couple of chips and a small crack so I didn't want to use it for food.

I put a layer of little stones and pebbles in the bottom to stop the plant roots sitting in water then added some ordinary potting compost. These pretty viola plants were on sale at our local DIY shop as they were getting a bit leggy. I just trimmed off the dead bits.

I was really pleased with how pretty they look and will definitely do something similar with them again next year.

(what can go wrong)

A word of warning though, if you go on holiday for 2 weeks, no one is watering your garden and it's not that rainy, then this happens:

The pink one is beyond hope but I've done some radical pruning/dead heading of the other one and have high hopes that it can be saved for a little while longer.

Julie