My Back Garden.

We have just bought stuff for my back garden.

We have bought three stepping stones for a pound each with a dragonfly, a ladybird and a butterfly on them and we have bought a butterfly on a stand which hold tea lights and some blue gems. We have been trying the butterfly out at night so you can see the effect. We have also bought an ornamental coloured rock with a fly on a spring on it.

We got the blue gems because we are trying to make a pond but the dogs keep drinking all the water. When Tessa was ill she could only drink water out of the pond because that was all she could find so we think that is why they keep doing it. The gems are a good substitute for water as they shimmer in the light and look like water, in fact they are better than water as they are a really dark blue. The pond consists of a Buddha looking at the pond which is surrounded by grey slate and over which a peony plant hangs.

Some of the things in our garden we got for free like the things hanging off our tree. When you get helium-filled balloons for things like birthdays or Valentine's Day there are little weights hanging on the end of them which you can keep. As a result we have a heart, a star, a teddy and a sun hanging from our tree.

We got the rhubarb plant from Fiona as a present for my Dad for fixing her washing machine.

My Dad put a plank of wood between the garage and the shed to stop the guinea pigs escaping which you can step over and which Scampy hurdles in the morning on cat patrol.

We did have some wind chimes but the neighbour asked us to take them down. Well, he didn't exactly ask us to take them down but he said to my Mum "Don't those windchimes get on your nerves, Bev?" so my Mum later took them down.

We have some CDs hanging on our shed and fence. We got the idea from an art centre in Knaresborough. You drill some holes in the CDs and string them together with paper clips. The CDs sparkle in the sunshine and cast moving circles of light round the garden. My Mum once asked my Dad to take them down as they looked too alternative but she later relented.

We found a good tree stump once on a country walk and took it home. We put it in the garden and later put some moss on it which established. We then put two fairies on it and a fairy behind it on a stick so we have fairies at the bottom of the garden. We also put a rabbit next to it.

We have a silver birch tree which my Mum got free as a free offer from the Sunday Times as sapling and which is now a large tree. We also have loads of hanging baskets with nasturtium seeds in them as they are the best plant, grow on any soil and spread quickly and are cheap. We have lots of blue bells each year and so does everyone else because this land used to be woodland. That may be why we also have some bracken, which starts off as tiny curled up buds and unfurls it three days until it is nearly as tall as me. You can almost see it move.

We have got a flowery parasol in our table and which once blew into our garden and we never did find out where that came from.

We have got an exotic plant at the bottom of the garden which we do not know the name of but which I once took a bite out off when I was little and my Mum had to ring NHS Direct to see if it would poison me. She eventually got through to the botanics department of an obscure university which identified the plant but said that it probably wouldn't do me any harm.

We also have a planter by the back door step which now holds nasturtium seeds but which used to hold Summer Night Scented Stock grown from seed when I was a baby. My Mum says that she used to sit outside on the back door step having a cig in the summer evenings when she had just got me and my brother to bed after the day was done. She says the smell of Summer Night Scented Stock brings back happy memories.