little green fingers

How to set up an outdoor cinema

I've solved it! Yes, the answer to "how do you get the children away from the screen and into the garden?" is....

...take the screen with you.

So, OK, this might not be 'gardening' per se but setting up a garden cinema is the perfect way to get the family outside.  Best of all, it is far less expensive than you might suppose (less than £350 all in) and relatively simple to do.  Here's how.

First, you will need a projector and it's worth getting something pretty good. Having read countless online discussions on this subject (yes, that really is how I've spent my evenings) I picked the Optoma HD65 - it's simple to use, good quality and gets enthusiastic reviews.  One of these things costs over £500 new but they often come up second-hand on eBay which is where I found mine for the much more reasonable sum of £250.

 
The other main item you need is a screen which you can construct, start to finish, in a couple of hours.  I made ours from blackout blind material.  You can buy this from Dunelm Mill for £4.99 a metre and it's the smoother, almost rubbery side you will need to project onto.

I used six metres, sewing together two three metre sections on the machine and then hemming the sides for a bit of extra neatness.  The material doesn't fray so you don't even need to finish the edges.

The next step is to attach the screen to  a length of wood.  You can buy something for a couple of pounds that will do the job - like this - and then use either tacks or a staple gun to attached the material along the top edge. You can do the same to the bottom edge of the screen with another length of timber.

I wanted to be able to put up or remove the screen with as little fuss as possible, so I attached three hooks (like these)  to the top edge (easily done by drilling through the material into the wood to make pilot holes and then screwing them in by hand).  These were then mirrored by three vine eyes I had screwed into the wall where the screen would hang. Once the top edge was hooked onto the wall, I rolled the excess material around the bottom length of timber until the screen was taut. Then, when you want to pack it away, just unhook it and roll the whole screen up.

         




You can play the movies off your laptop. We have a MacBook so just needed to buy a mini DVI to HDMI adaptor and an HDMI lead - you can find these on eBay for less than £5 each.

You will also need some speakers.  I fully expected to make a major investment here, but actually we used some JLB computer speakers which cost less than £30 and they worked perfectly.

Finally, remember to house the projector and laptop somewhere dry as you will be watching movies at prime 'dew-falling' time - we simply put ours in an open fronted wooden box but you could easily construct something from old bricks or blocks and pieces of wood.

And that really is it.

We had our inaugural screening on Friday night - Moulin Rouge with a glass of champagne and a couple of camping chairs. However, the kids have plans of their own and apparently there will be a Scooby Doo triple bill playing sometime soon.

 

[If you want more information and ideas, check out http://backyardtheater.com/]

June blues, head jumping and self seeders

There are some months in which the days pass in a blur of joy and excitement.  I think we can safely say June was not that kind of a month for me.

Not to say that there were moments of blur, but mostly this was of the stress-flavoured, brain-aching variety. 

As a result I have been neglectful - of my children, my blog and, inevitably, my garden. Sadly, this is often the fate of a family garden.  As much as you may wish to be out there beautifying your patch, there is always something more pressing (often a child's hands, either side of your head, as they scream in your face "but you promised we could make cakes/get out the paddling pool/jump up and down on your head until you surrender!" - delete as appropriate).

I suppose there are different ways of coping with this lack of garden time.  Some go for minimalism with a lawn and almost nothing else.  Others decide to plant the sort of indestructible, low maintenance shrubs beloved of supermarket car parks. I have gone a different route.  I've delegated the planting to the plants.

Yes, walking around this week I have realised that there are huge number of plants that I have never placed - they simply arrived there one day. And to me this is the perfect way to plant a family garden. The plants are free and plentiful which means that you don't need to wince every time they get hit by a ball or tramped through by the kids.  They've already told you they suit the site and soil because they've chosen to grow there and, because they put down roots directly into the soil, you've no need to worry about settling or watering them in after planting.

So I thought I would share with you some of my favourite self seeders:

Digitalis purpurea (Foxglove) - yes, OK, so there's the whole 'isn't it poisonous?' thing but as this should really only be an issue if my children sit down to foxglove sandwiches I've decided this is an acceptable risk (although as Archie decided this week to snack on cat food, I might need to reassess)

Verbena bonariensis - a floating haze of purple that works just as well at the front as it does at the rear of a bed.     

Alchemilla mollis (Lady's mantle) - frothy yellow/green flowers and a magical way of holding water on its leaves (self sows best into a gravel garden)

Euphorbia characias 'Wulfenii' - this has milky white sap which is a skin irritant but I blithely ignore this fact because it also happens to be one of my favourte plants and I have to say the 'plants or children' question is vaguely reminiscent of the 'Daddy or chips' debate.

Viola labradorica 'Purpurea' (Dog Violet) - tiny blue flowers and sultry purple foliage in the spring.  Also, makes very useful groundcover for a shady border.

Centaurea cyanus (Cornflower) - looks great alongside other wildflowers but equally good in a blue border.

Nigella damascena (Love-in-a-mist) - wins the prize for weirdest looking seed-pods but also lovely cornflower-esque blooms in early summer.

Hesperis matronalis - supposedly this phlox-like flower also comes in purples and pinks but I only seem to get the white version.  Not that I'm complaining - it flowers for weeks and sets seed in a relatively contained way.

Aquilegia vulgaris - on the self-seeding front it border on the over-prolific, but there is nothing lovelier than a sea of aquilegia seedlings with their distinctive leaves - plus they provide a range of blue and pink blooms throughout spring which also work brilliantly as cut flowers.

Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) - at least I think this is what I have (it's really very inconsiderate of plants to arrive in the garden without labelling themselves)

Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium) - This is supposed to be on the 'highly invasive' side but personally I have found it spreads in a terribly polite manner and its daisy like flowers are very popular with the "we like flowers to look like flowers' brigade (AKA the kids).

Papaver somniferum - these are as often catagorised as weeds as much as wildflowers but the children love them (let's not get into that whole poisoning the kids argument again right now) so we shake seedheads all over their gardens.

 

Having just reread this list I realise my garden looks like it was designed by Lucrezia Borgia.