Dawn Isaac

Planting a tin bath herb garden

2013-05-13T15:19:00Z

I'm a big fan of galvanised tin baths. Not obviously, as baths. That would be silly. Next thing you know I'd be recommending you use pipe cleaners to clean pipes. But no, as a large ice-filled drinks cooler at a 1920s themed speakeasy party, or as a garden planter, they are perfect. In fact I've used mine for both (not simultaneously you understand).

I picked up the bath for about £30 at an antique shop, but you can also find them online. Although not cheap, they are pretty good value when you compare them to similarly large containers.

Downsizing sheds

2013-05-04T14:40:00Z

I have decided something about sheds; it's always good to get the smallest one you can.

I mean, don't get me wrong, you need one big enough for the things you have to store otherwise you've just put up a wooden box in the garden, and that would be silly.

Garden mirrors and Ground Force

2013-04-15T16:14:00Z

I've just done something a little bit Ground Force. Thankfully it didn't involve painting trellis a frightening shade of lavender, installing a water feature or forgetting to don a bra. Instead I put up a mirror.

Snow painting

2013-03-24T14:01:00Z

It's spring, which of course means daffodils, lambs, crocus and... snow.

Yes, I know. Ridiculous, isn't it?

Goat willow, iris pots and anarchy

2013-03-04T14:46:00Z

Spring isn't here yet. I just wanted to make that clear. It won't in fact be here until two minutes past eleven on Wednesday 20th March.

If you hadn't guessed, I'm a bit of a pedant about this whole spring business.

Snow lanterns, ski jackets and thermal wellies

2013-01-18T17:27:00Z

I'm not good with the cold. Yesterday I was wearing thermal-lined wellie boots and an electric blue ski jacket. This is worrying, not just from a fashion standpoint, but also because I was only in the kitchen.

Kids' Garden Christmas Gifts: Rounders, Egglings and carrots called Coriander

2012-12-10T19:52:00Z

Yesterday the children and I planted nine crocus rings in the lawn. I was feeling smugly pleased with myself until I remembered it's mid December and I'd planned to have these in the ground two months ago.

Artificial grass, TOWIE tans and never saying never

2012-12-01T17:43:00Z

In my book fakes aren’t necessarily a bad thing. I’m not averse to the odd spray tan (provided the needle doesn’t tip towards the TOWIE end of the scale), my hair is quite used to a helping hand in the colour department and I think I can confidently say the orange handbag I bought in that Chinese market is not a genuine ‘Birkin’ (the fact it began shedding its skin in the manner of a snake on a growth spurt should have been a giveaway).

Glue sticks, autumn leaves and centaur hooves

2012-11-06T16:27:00Z

As a woman with a weakness for double-sided sticky tape, I can tell you with some authority that craft materials get very pricey. It’s all well and good the children recycling the living daylights out of old cereal boxes and toilet roll inners but the glue sticks they use to join this detritus together are getting so expensive I feel sure they’re made from the ground hooves of centaurs.

Oh and don’t try to tell me you can buy cheap, own brand versions, I need something that can stick surface A to surface B not something that will simply dampen and darken a surface whilst endowing it with the adhesive properties of a light drizzle. Thankfully, we’re in what some people call ‘autumn’ but which I call ‘free stuff falling from trees’. Yes, that’s right. Look around. We’re surrounded by multi-coloured craft materials in abundant supplies.

Loire Valley gardens, pot snails and giant moles

2012-10-02T11:49:00Z

"Christian! NON!"

Yorkshire runs, Harlow Carr and lattes

2012-09-18T14:10:00Z

I have started running. Well, I say running, but what I have actually started could best me described as 'ralking' - more walking than running. On day one I was almost mown down by a car as I couldn't hear it's engine over the noise of my wheezing. Admittedly, after a week I have almost graduated to 'wunning' but it's a slow progress and highlights what I have come to admit to myself - I'm a Southern wuss.

Crank calls, TV shows and mud pies

2012-08-01T09:47:00Z

"Hello? Is that Dawn Isaac?"

Seed bombs, margarine tubs and wafer thin mints

2012-07-04T12:43:00Z

NGS open garden: the kids' version

2012-06-12T13:42:00Z

So we survived our first NGS opening relatively unscathed.

In all honesty I would have liked more visitors, but considering we were all wrapped up in jumpers and one person was designated the role of “holding onto the gazebo so it doesn’t actually fly off’, we probably did OK.

Over-sized sunhats, cake and catching the light

2012-06-02T22:17:00Z

It’s been nearly eight years since I dragged my husband and baby daughter away from the dubious delights of Shepherd’s Bush into what we might loosely call "The Country”. (I like to pretend it’s properly "The Country" but we’re only two miles from a Waitrose and two minutes from the A1 so let's face it, we’re hardly talking rural isolation.)

Why? Because I wanted a bigger garden (and there was that drugs incident which I won’t go into here…)