Tadelakt Is the Key to a Warm, Organic Bathroom Aesthetic

Anthropologie

Header image: An illustration of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft approaching the International Space Station for docking. Image credit: NASA

If you're one of the many people who use the start of a new year to take on a house-wide clean out, you may be wondering which categories you should think about tackling first.

I have no idea what has caused this ‘flame’ in the garden, but perhaps it really does symbolise the heart of it. I was not aware of the flame while I was working in the garden today, removing and cleaning the bricks from the low retaining wall at the back of one of the bold borders, and it only became evident when I looked at the photos later. Looking at the wider picture, when there was about a third of the wall left to remove and clean, you can see that there is a glass sculpture in the border but, at the time the picture was taken, the sun (and it was a sunny day) was behind me and to my right, so it wasn’t shining through the glass. Curiously, as I perched on my makeshift stool, chipping away at the bricks with my lump hammer and chisel, I found myself thinking of earlier civilisations, chipping away with bones and stones to make their artefacts – so could I perhaps have been joined by ghosts from the distant past, huddled round their fire for warmth…?

The Birds and The Bees (and Bunnies...) My backyard seems to be the perfect place to raise a brood of bunnies! Baby bunny takeover

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If you’ve been scrolling through your TikTok feed, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over charmingly layered decor styles, you’re not alone.

As 2024 gets underway, we’ve taken inspiration from Janus, the god of beginnings, transitions and time, who looks both forwards and back. Our gardens have all featured in our pages in the past, but we revisit them here and take a closer look at how they’ve developed over time, and how they’re changing now their owners have new challenges to contend with.

Max Kim-Bee

Adam Albright

In terms of a review of the year as a whole, there is not a lot to say, with it being more a case of consolidation than of change, building on subtle changes made the year before, like moving snowdrops to the woodland, thinning the apple trees to introduce more light to the woodland edge border below, and extending the blue & white borders. Even the current project, despite the organised mayhem it has generated, will only bring about a subtle change to the garden. Within the garden as a whole, mixed weather patterns created uncertainty in flowering times but there were negligible losses from the previous cold winter and no problems with waterlogging during the last few rainy and unsettled months.

With very best wishes and thanks to all my blogging friends for your continued friendship, wishing you health, happiness, joy and good gardening in 2024.