I am sorry to those who like to read the blog and keep up with what I am doing because I just haven’t written anything for a long while.
Some of that has to do with the long winter months and nothing much happening and some of it has to do with life in general.
I tried to write the blog a couple of times but I just couldn’t bring myself to publish the drafts I had lined up. I just find at the minute I have a lot in my head and I need to get it written down and offloaded now 🙄
As a family we have had a tragic loss of one member and a very serious accident of another that will take months/years to recover from so life has been turned upside down in many ways.
It has been a roller coaster of emotions for what seems like months now and on Thursday we had to call the vet and have our dog Mia put to sleep 😢 She has been ailing for a while but was still eating and drinking plus going out to the toilet, sleeping very long hours and slow in her movements. On that morning she couldn’t get her back legs to work, we tried standing her up but it was no use and so I called the vet. Not a nice decision to make but I also did not want her to have an undignified end, after years of loyalty she deserved to go peacefully and quickly. She is now buried near the paddock gateways with a small leaved lime tree planted on top 🥰
So that is what has been happening and what has made it difficult to concentrate on anything else at times.
All the while I have still been sowing, growing, planting, digging, weeding and clearing for flowers and this year I am happy to say I am growing veg again 😊 We have put in extra raised beds, some for extra flower growing and some for veg growing because I really wanted tasty fresh home grown produce again this year.
I have gone down the perennial veg route for some produce, I am already harvesting perpetual spinach leaves and I have perennial onions growing (Welsh onions) plus rainbow chard and the perennial broccoli has just started to sprout. I have runner beans in as well as peas, beetroot, rocket, swede, leeks, courgettes, pumpkins and squash. The tomatoes and cucumbers are growing well and I have basil and coriander growing in the tunnel too. I am very happy to be growing food again although it does keep me rather busy! I have already processed rhubarb for the pantry and rather than relying on the freezer I am trying to jar/can/preserve as much as possible.
Today I have made a jar of mint sauce which will keep well in the fridge for months, John doesn’t like it so I only need enough for me or any dinner visitors. I do want to make some mint jelly which I prefer but at the minute I can’t find my jelly bag (which happens every year) As always we have an abundance of fruit growing so I will be processing that over the next few months as well. My outlook on ‘being prepared’ has not changed it just got waylaid for a while but I am back in the mode and no doubt that will be a lot of what my blog will be about.
I spent a lot of time getting to grips with canning at the end of last year, I canned all sorts including meat dinners which we have been eating and we are still here so I am hooked on this food preserving method. It does alter the smell of food, not horrible or anything, just different and I am not sure I will can carrots again (me no likey 🤪) the texture and taste are too different but in an emergency situation I would still eat them. We have chicken for dinner today with chicken stock that I canned back in October, I am amazed at this method, it’s a game changer although I am still trying to get down to only one freezer 😂
I feel this blog episode is a bit incoherent but I have had people ask me where the blog is and so thought I’d better start up again. The blog was always just a way to write my daily story but it has become something that others like to read about so here I am back at it and hopefully I can keep up with it this time!
Everyday I have the best intention to go outside and get some work done but the truth is that often I go out for a while and get too cold so I abandon that. Occasionally we have had a day that is fabulous but it is still only early February and it is true to say I am a fair weather person 😂 I don’t like the cold, I don’t like the rain and I can’t tolerate it too hot, still I persist because I love what I do!
I did manage to get some bits done on Wednesday, planted up Ranuculas in the tunnel. I should have planted a whole lot more but I had a crop failure 😞 They were growing beautifully and I moved them into the greenhouse, put them up high because the first year a mouse ate the bulbs 🙄 then they got infested with bloody greenfly! I didn’t really check them regularly enough because I thought they would be safe it being late autumn/early winter, nope. On top of that we had the very cold snap and I forgot to fleece anything in the greenhouse and so that was the end of most of those 🤪 I did have 10 plants elsewhere that were neither attacked nor suffered from the cold so they are what I have now planted up and all I can say is fingers crossed. I also planted a few sweet pea plants that I had autumn sown, they are also in the tunnel just to get a few early flowers. They did really well in there last spring, too well really as they were like triffids hence why I have just planted about 5 this year (so far, I may be tempted to plant more 😂)
I also managed to get a bit done on one of the beds, this is one I like to call the wildlife bed but it has got rather out of control and by that I mean is had become swamped with couch grass and nettles 😬 It has a fabulous weeping birch in one corner which was given to us years ago in a pot, it outgrew someone’s small garden and we planted it into the ground. It is a graceful tree that throws dappled shade and the branches move effortlessly in the smallest of breezes plus it provides me with material for creating heart shaped memorial flowers and wreaths. Whatever I planted in their originally has long gone, I know I had specialised geraniums in there and a fair few unusual herbs but all that is left are loosestrife, aquilegia and wallflowers. I do have a ‘pond’ that is to say I have a large watertight tub that has served as a pond for a few years. I think it has quite a good little ecosystem going on in there, water forgetmenot is well established, duck weed and some water mint, no doubt if I dug around there would be life in there too, it serves a a drinking pool for the little birds and hopefully somewhere we still have a frog or two. I want to move the pond to underneath the tree so that I can utilise the rest of the bed properly. At the minute the plan is to dig up what I want to save, try to get out as much couch grass and nettle root as possible then cover half of it with membrane to kill or weaken any roots left. The other half I will also dig out what I want to keep but put down some cardboard and then a raised bed on top before replanting what I have saved, after going through the roots of those to get any weed roots out of course.
I was in the middle of all this when I heard the geese making a racket, I looked up across the paddock to see Mia (dog) ambling aimlessly across the paddock, I had to go and get her and actually carry her back. Having a blind, deaf dog was never something I had thought about and if you have an enclosed garden it’s fine but not when there are open fields nearby!
It is of course natural behaviour for a dog in decline to wander off and die somewhere, not something that is recognised by a lot of dog owners these days, I feel there is a complete lack of understanding of pets in general as they become ‘babies’. I am not knocking it but the further away from understanding the species and trying to project humanness on them the more problems we encounter (and bigger vet bills) Our other dog Patch was the underdog for a long time but he is now top dog, this is entirely because Mia has got old and infirm. He now sees her as a threat to the pack safety (even though it’s only those two) his natural instinct is to keep her away from food, oik her out of the best bed and drive her away if he could. All natural instincts that have their origins in the health and safety of a wolf pack. We would do well to remember that sometimes, we may have tamed them and bred them to be pets and house dogs but they still have a lot of those primal instincts. Luckily Mia has us to look out for her, to make sure she gets her food, a nice bed and doesn’t wander off, Patch might think he is top dog but we are firmly in charge lol.
We had a planned power cut on Thursday, apparently this is to repair the network so that we have less power cuts going forward. Hopefully that is the case because we have an average of about five outages every winter, some longer than others. No idea why but hopefully they know and that’s what they are upgrading. Not that I am bothered because I am always prepared lol, we would light the fire, get the kettle boiling on top of it and heat up some pre prepared meal of one sort or another. I also have battery powered lights so that we are not sat in the dark and solar charged battery bank to charge phones and a solar powered radio if needed, that’s what being a prepper is all about, the ‘what if’ moments in life 😂
Friday the wind was biting, I managed a little while outside before I decided enough was enough 😂 I found other jobs to do such as check over my dahlia tubers and ask AI for a planting plan 🙄 I really need to get better at record keeping but at the moment it’s all in my head, I am not a spreadsheet person 🤪
I also had a meet up with a fellow flower farmer that I had only spoken to online before now, we are both subscribers of the same club and she lives down in Somerset but was coming Oxfordshire way to pick something up. I said call in for a coffee if you are going past, so she did 😊
The end of the week and the weekend weather was all pretty much the same, grey, dank and dull. It’s a cold and depressing time of year which might be helped with a hint of sunshine but that seems to have disappeared for the time being. John did a few bits outside over the weekend, I did not 😂 I go out there but the ground is wet, it’s not time to get any seed sowing done and so it is not even worth trying to start anything. The difference a little sun would make is colossal, we are geographically challenged here in the UK as far as weather is concerned 🤪 The worst thing is looking at the forecast it is not goi g to change much for the next week either 🙄
All I can do is wait it out and find other jobs to keep me busy for now. We have a busy couple of weekends coming up as two of our daughters are moving house at almost the same time with just a week inbetween, plenty of hefting furniture around and cleaning to do I expect.
I am lighting the fire earlier and earlier each day since we had the monitor for the electric 😬 In one way it’s good because you can see where you ought to be making savings and using less energy, on the other hand you see the amount go up and up and that is quite stressful. Everyone says just turn it off but it’s a good exercise in wastefulness so for the time being until I have learnt what I need to I will leave it on.
It is not even 9am yet and I have been very busy, I have just sat down to type up this as I am waiting for the kitchen floor to dry after mopping it.
Already this morning I have had a shower, put two loads of washing on, cleaned and hoovered the bathroom, hoovered and polished the rest of the house and mopped the floor. It wasn’t an in-depth clean purely surface but if the weather is as good today as it was yesterday I want to get outside and get some jobs done. I don’t want that little niggling feeling at the back of my head that says I have other jobs to be doing! I want the head freedom to just do what I need to in the garden.
We have had a good week and a great weekend in terms of the weather and getting some more work done. There is always work to be done here but some jobs are more urgent than others and getting in front of myself with the weeds and extra growing space before the seed sowing commences is high on the list.
With the rest of life it has been a pretty normal week with not a lot going on but if I am honest I live and breathe gardening so that suits me fine 😂
In the front beds I have been cutting back dead foliage, pruning the roses, weeding, mulching because once that is done it can just be left to do it’s thing. I do have a few bits I want to dig up and divide but the soil is too wet at the minute, I don’t want to be standing on it and compacting it, hopefully another dry day or two and I can get started.
John has been busy putting together another two of the raised beds we bought, they are metal sections with a million (or so it seems) screws and bolts, he then fills them two thirds of the way up with partially broken down clippings from the compost heap. Then a layer of cardboard goes on top of that before a layer of compost/topsoil mix which will be what I plant into. There is good depth to these which is something we lack at ground level so it is always the best way to grow anything here.
I have some seeds on the window sill in the kitchen, snaps and sweet peas, both are germinating and growing well, I am determined to be on form and on time with sowing and planting this year, we will see how that goes 🙄 I also aim to grow a lot more veg again this year having not done so last year, I missed not having much, it is part of the reason we have allocated more growing space. The flowers were taking over but this year the small tunnel will once again be for tomatoes and cucumbers and one or two of the new beds will be for other veg, not masses but enough for us.
A short catch up this week as I am sure the floor is dry now, the next lot of washing will be finished and I am hungry and need some toast 😊
The weather, as always is the hot topic of the day, week, month but I count my blessings that we did not have the 100 mile an hour winds like they did in Ireland and Scotland.
Three storms in the last week alone does not bode well at all, they are getting more and more fierce each year 🙄 Fifteen years ago when we first came here we probably saw 1 or 2 storms over winter, now it is 5 or 6 and they are no longer confined to the colder months. I noticed a few years back how the runner beans would be savaged by strong winds every year and these days I have to think where I plant or grow everything just in case.
The wildfires, catastrophic flooding, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, wind, rain and sun are all increasing in intensity and I really don’t think we can peddle fast enough to keep up with controlling it all. I really believe that we do not know enough to say it is entirely what we (humans) have done to the planet or if there is something much bigger than our understanding going on. Undoubtedly we have made it much worse if the latter is the case, and if it is the first option then we have well and truly screwed ourselves to the point of no return.
Despite the weather we have been able to get a bit done outside, we have built a new compost bin that will hopefully break material down faster and heat up enough to kill off any weed seeds. We dug up a huge shrub and transplanted it (fingers crossed it survives) and then cleared the area to put down two more raised beds to grow either flowers or veg in. We have also cleared another area for a bigger raised bed that we bought as a kit, it is metal and took forever to put together! Mostly because John would not listen to me reading the instructions, how hard can it be he said 🙄 Well after putting some sections of it together then having to take them apart because some of it was upside down I’d say it was pretty tricky unless you did read them 😂 Never mind we have four left to do and at least we will know what we are doing with those and they may not take over two hours each time 🤪
There are not many seeds you can sow at this time of year but sweet peas and snap dragon are two that you can and so I have those all sorted and on the windowsill indoors. I transplanted some autumn sown snaps into the polytunnel and I planted up chrysanthemums that I split and potted up last year into the tunnel as well. I really would love a much bigger tunnel but I am listening to my head not my heart, it would be a lot of extra work that I don’t really need and a big cost so that plan is staying shelved (for the time being)
We had a smart meter fitted at the beginning of the week 🙄 not by choice I will add but apparently ours is so old that they are switching off the frequency ours uses in June and so it needed doing. We got a lovely little monitor with it that tells you exactly how much electric you have used 😳 I will be honest watching it obsessively made me panic in the first instance and depressed thereafter 😂 However it has also made me much more aware of where savings can be made, the first one was Johns lunch 🤪 He comes in and always makes cheese on toast under the grill, not any more, you can make a cheese sandwich instead I told him, no power required for that 😂 Already we are much better at switching off lights as we leave a room and we only turn things on when we need too. I am also desperately trying to sort out our other freezer as it is almost empty but not quite and there is no room in the one we will keep at the minute, I feel a batch cook or some canning is going on the todo list. We have electric heating so of course that makes me sweat (£££😬) but I also attached thermal linings to all the curtains at the beginning of winter and we have the log burner and plenty of wood so we are lighting that around 4 every afternoon. Although I do think about how I use energy when I am cooking, it has made me try to be even more savvy, the slow cooker will be used much more and if I do need to use the oven I will have to be organised enough to use it fully to batch cook something that can be reheated quickly another time or to batch bake plenty of cakes and puddings.
Mia, the dog, is still going bless her but she spends most of her time sleeping and only getting out of her bed to eat, drink or go to the loo, she is frail and every morning I expect to find her passed over but to date she is still with us.
The weather has warmed a little but it’s still only around 3/4c most days, sometimes with a heavy fog, plenty of conspiracy theories online about this 🙄
We have managed to do a bit outside although there comes a point when fingers and toes are protesting a lot and that’s the time for me to come inside and do something else. I try to wait for it to warm up enough in the morning but it’s not really getting anywhere near the nice 12/14c we had between Christmas and new year, can’t expect much else really in mid winter 🥶
The work we have been concentrating on is where we took the old fence down after putting up the new one. Over time there have been hazel and sycamore saplings that have self set and they need to come out plus clear any weeds/debris and get the area clear to start again. We have decided that some new compost bins will be good down there as well as extending all the existing beds down to the old fence line. We are building the compost bins out of old pallets and these will be lined so that the material can heat up well and hopefully destroy and weed seeds. Home made compost is fantastic stuff if you can avoid spreading weed seeds everywhere and you do this by making sure that the material gets enough heat to kill off anything lurking in there and rot everything down really well. Turning the compost is key because not only do you make sure you incorporate everything but it also helps to reignite those warmer temperatures that you need.
There are a couple of things in pots that I have been wanting to get in the ground for a few years. One is a fig that has been in a pot for about 4 years and we actually do have enough space to get it in the ground I just was never sure where I wanted it, now it is in the ground I might get a good crop of figs next year 🥰 The other shrub I have planted is next to the decking and is for floristry, it is a eucalyptus parvifolia. It will give me two things, some dappled shade on the decking area which gets full sun in the late afternoon and evenings and cutting material for bouquets and arrangements. Eucalyptus is a winter foliage and used during the winter months, we stop using it around May and start again in October/November.
We have had a few fox visits this week, I spotted it this morning and it’s a big healthy specimen 😬 John saw it yesterday right outside the back door when he went out there. We have had to start keeping the door closed and not let Mia have free range and I think that because if that Patch is staying in more and so there are no dogs out there to ward it off.
The reason we have had to keep Mia in is because she can no longer see or hear anything so when she goes outside she can’t find her way back on her own. I explained this to John and said if she is out with you then you need to watch her at all times 🙄 This did not happen on Friday and consequently when he went back outside he couldn’t find her. Luckily Sam and Shelley were here and so a search party was sent out and she was found just over our boundary in the field of the farm behind us. But she is also getting pretty infirm especially after walking all that way and they had to get a wheelbarrow to bring her back. She wanders aimlessly but can’t find her way back so she has to be constantly watched.
We are people who when the time is right will have her put to sleep but at the minute she is eating, drinking and isn’t incontinent, she enjoys sleeping most of the day and that’s not a bad life for an old dog, I am hoping she just goes to sleep quietly and gently here, in the meantime we just have to make sure she doesn’t wander off!
I have been organising the greenhouse ready for the big seed sowing race in March. There are only a few things you can sow now, broad beans (not decided if I want to grow these yet or not) Sweet peas (I have the seed soaking and chitting as I type) Onion seeds and I am growing perennial onions this year so as not to take up too much room and I have also sown some verbena seeds for cut flowers. Apart from that I am just waiting and watching the weather, it’s good that we had some freezing weather as that triggers many plants including the tulip bulbs into growth and I have 600 of those planted 😂
I bought a job lot of beer traps to try and tackle the slugs this year, hopefully as we have had the cold they won’t be as prolific but if we have another cool wet spring they will be back. I did a bit of research on which slugs are the good guys this week because not all of them are pests. Some only eat decaying material and some eat other slugs so we want to keep those if possible which is why it’s not a good idea to use slug pellets, killing all of them is counterproductive. Cellar slugs which are the bigger greeny coloured ones are good and leopard slugs are also useful. Neither of these pose a threat to my plants and so they can stay, the rest need to be knocked back in numbers so I will be giving them beer to drink and that’s not a bad way to go is it 🤪
Getting as much preparation done in the garden at this time of year will make the rest of the year much easier to manage but there are jobs that need to wait until the time is right. I don’t cut back any dead foliage until the weather has warmed up a good bit, the beneficial insects need somewhere to overwinter and the birds need the seed heads and the coverage if it’s cold. As much as I would love to start clearing it all I know that the whole garden will reap the rewards if I leave everything alone until those mentioned can survive sufficiently.
That’s a bit of an understatement! It has been freezing this week, not by some standards around the world but definitely by ours. The thermometer in my greenhouse registered -5 on the coldest night which means it was at least -8 outside and that didn’t really let up during the day either. Needless to say I think I have lost my Runuculas which is a pain in the proverbial, each year I try with them and each year something destroys them. The first year it was mice, the second year it was slugs and this year it’s the cold. I can get another batch in but they will flower much later now. I thought I had nailed it this year as I got them in on time, they grew nicely, I moved them into the greenhouse, put them up high out of the way of mice but crucially forgot to cover them 😣 I was so annoyed with myself but I have to move on, no point dwelling on it so I will put it down to experience and maybe try again next year or maybe not 🤷♀️
We got off to such a good start in the week between Christmas and new year, the fence went up well and we were able to get some of the old fence line tided but that all stopped when the cold snap came and so no more progress on that as yet. John has been out every day trying to burn under the stump of the huge willow that came down. As there was not much else to be done at least that was one warm job but it has taken days and days and it’s not burnt away enough to be able to pull the stump free yet.
I am always reluctant to go outside when it’s cold unless I have a job I can get my teeth into, one that is going to keep me warm while I do it. As everything was frozen solid that was not much of an option and so I have mostly spent my time inside doing the usual household chores. I did do a bit of batch baking and we now have four lovely fruit cake in the freezer for another day. I also had a go at making crumpets, just because I wanted to see how easy they were to do. The mix was easy enough and the end result was edible (with a few air holes too) but the cooking process was a bit hit and miss. If I had the heat up high, I got great air holes but the bottom would burn, if I didn’t have it high enough there were very few air holes and they took ages to cook through. The jury is out on these, yes they were ok but they were a faff to cook and I am not sure it was worth the time spent. The flat bread I decided to have a go at later in the week though, they were definitely worth it and something I would do again. What I was trying to do was see if I could cook them on the top of the wood burner but I think the combination of the cast iron casing and the heavy bottom fry pan meant that the heat did not transfer quick enough to cook them well. So I changed to the hob and they were perfect, especially as we ate them warm with some butter that melted deliciously when it made contact with the flat bread. It is something I would think about doing with the children outside on the fire pit at some point. Got to teach the younger generation that simple food is good food and easy with it.
I have been watching the whole Bovear debacle closely and we had to go to the supermarket to get things like cat food at the weekend. It is very evident that consumers are boycotting products they believe have come from cattle that have been fed with Bovear, if you have no idea what I am talking about then I would Google it, just make sure you look at both sides of the argument. Personally I have moved away from buying any of the products and I have considered ‘the science is good’ argument BUT it’s about choice. I choose not to buy food that didn’t need messing with in the first place, if companies are so concerned about the amount of methane released by cattle then ration the product to reduce the amount we need. Of course they are not going to do that because that would dent the profits and so instead they decided to meddle with the food. What they didn’t bank on was the backlash from consumers, and yes I will admit that there is a lot of misinformation out there but I also have got to the age in life where I don’t trust them to tell us the truth anyway 🙄 follow the money, it’s always all about the profits. Stick with the smaller producers, the small farms, the small businesses because the only profits they are trying to make are for a decent living for themselves and their families and not for the shareholders and the big bonus bosses.
Hopefully from today we are going to see a thaw and the temperatures go up a little to around 8c, that is perfect for the time of year I reckon. I am glad that the freeze will have triggered some natural pest control and definitely of those pesky slugs that invaded us last year but I don’t want it to go on too long because I have work to do 😂
I have spent this morning hoovering, cleaning and clearing out some of my cupboards, if I wonder why it is there then it probably needs to go, if I haven’t used it for a year, then it probably needs to go and I did managed to clear a couple of bags of ‘stuff’. Why we have so much stuff is beyond me, we have come from cavemen who spent all their time, hunting, cooking and keeping warm to people who have accumulated ‘stuff’ to fill our caves because we have too much time on our hands 😂
I still have my primal instincts as a hunter gatherer though, that’s why I love to grow and store produce, then cook with it. I have a lovely beef stew on the go for dinner tonight, we get our beef from a fabulous lady called Emma who is so proud of her cows and the quality of the beef they produce and rightly so. Grass fed cattle, grazing naturally on the water meadows makes for great tasting beef 🥰
Not much else to report this week, we have been busy in the evenings binge watching various tv series, with the wood burner going to keep us toasty warm, but that’s what winter is for isn’t it?
I totally lost my way when it came to the blog during the last year, I started writing a piece so many times that I have a plethora of drafts I now need to delete!
What was wrong? Writers block, lack of confidence, nothing to say? A combination of those and more I suppose but I really lost my way.
It is not that we didn’t do anything at all it’s just that I couldn’t work out what I was trying to say or how I was trying to say it, had I over complicated my thoughts? I think I did and so I decided to go back to basics, after all it’s the advice I give the girls when they have a problem. Think back to the beginning of the problem (and this works for all issues) try and strip back the layers until you can see a clear way forward and begin from there.
How does that work in reality? Well if you take a food problem, one that is causing you discomfort or manifesting in other issues such as skin irruptions then strip your diet right back to basics. Literally whole foods in their simplest form and eat nothing more than that, you should be able to work out which food group (if any at that stage) is the issue. You gradually add in other foods one by one until you understand how they are affecting you and hopefully you eventually work out what the problem is.
If a pet has a behavioural issue then think of the pet as its ancestral relative (wolf in the case of dogs) think about natural, wild behaviour. Is the behaviour a natural instinct that the pet is displaying? If it is then the problem doesn’t lie with the pet but the way you are expecting the pet to live and basically the problem is us, or more to the point our lack of understanding. And then there is the food we feed pets today, back to example 1 👆
Financial problems, granted they are not so easy to fix but is it a case of making the same mistakes over and over again resulting in the same problems over and over again? Take an honest look at things, this is stripping back all the excuses we give ourselves, and see where the cycle can be broken.
Issues are complex but trying to strip them back will help to see a clearer way forward with most things.
What does this have to do with my blog? Well despite the detailed musings I have just written I realised that I started the blog as a recording of my day to day life and somewhere along the way I managed to complicate things and I need to go back to basics.
I would be writing about a topic and would realise that the topic was huge and too big to get my thoughts down in a way that was coherent and was anybody bothered anyway? That then gave me a crisis of confidence and so I would abandon the piece I was writing.
So back to basics it is, possibly with a little extra thrown in now and again because I can’t help myself 🤪
And so I begin with Happy New Year to you all and I hope you had a great festive season.
I had a very busy year last year in fact when I look back at photographs I can’t help but feel blessed. We had some fabulous family times and the flower side of things was incredible.
It is a new year but there is not a stop to one year and start another, it continuous and so my preparations for this year began way back in the summer.
Over the holiday we have been putting up a new fence, the old one was dilapidated and needed to come down before the horses could just wander into the garden of their own accord. We have taken that opportunity to increase the growing area slightly, I have a few events already booked for this year that will need a lot of flowers and I don’t need any other reason than that to grow more. I also want to get back to growing a lot more veg than I did last year so I need space for that too.
The weather was pleasant when we started the new fence and we managed to finish it before the cold and the snow came, however it has been frozen for the last few days and so work on taking the old one down and clearing the ground has stopped for now.
In one of the named storms we had a huge 40/50 year old willow come down 😔 John has been busy cutting it up into logs but the stump, although partially ripped out of the ground, was going to be a beast to deal with. With a bit of lateral thinking he has been burning it from underneath, there was a huge cavity and some of the tree was rotten, it has been a great way to keep warm out there on the freezing cold days.
Yesterday we actually did nothing but the basics, the snow was still on the ground, it was cold and not pleasant working conditions so we stayed in and watched everything we wanted to catch up on. Did I feel guilty about not doing anything? Yes is the answer, to begin with I couldn’t settle but eventually gave in, not a bad thing to do because today I am eager to get on and accomplish something useful.
I had a plan but once I looked out at the weather this morning I realised I need to shift my focus slightly. So rather than digging up a few things I want to reposition, I will focus on working in the greenhouse and tunnels. I have some autumn grown plants that are overwintering well in the greenhouse but some are flagging and need attention, possibly a bit of bottom heat. At one time I didn’t want to use excess energy to grow plants but I end up losing too much so what is worse, a small amount of energy or wastage of time and resources 🤷♀️ I stripped back my thoughts and repetitive patterns and will go in a different direction. Of course it could fail again and then I will have three lots of waste but I have to try 🙄
We got some new laying hens last autumn, yes I know I said I wasn’t going to 🤪 but I had a long think about it and it had got to the stage where we didn’t have any eggs to use because I was putting them all out for customers and what was the point of that. So a new batch arrived and they have started laying well and I can bake whenever I want to now. We still have the same old situations where we either have lots of eggs or everyone comes at the same time and we don’t have enough but that is not something I can control so I am no longer worrying about it, it is what it is.
The geese, or one of the geese, has continued spasmodically laying throughout the winter, that plus plenty of other signs, rings my climate change warning bell. The climate is as unpredictable these days as the goose laying her eggs, we just have to work with whatever comes our way. I don’t think the powers that be will ever sort it out, there are a lot of meetings, conferences and innovative ideas but I am not sure they solve anything because it always comes down to the money. How much they want to spend, how much they can spend and how much somebody somewhere can make seem to be the driving forces behind never achieving the goals. Maybe they need to strip it all back to basics and start again 😬 That will not happen because for every person that wants to heal the world there is another that wants to profit from it and the money (greed) usually wins.
The ducks are getting old and are basically living out their retirement in the best ducky style. They don’t lay anymore but they do spend their whole day wandering around the place eating grubs and slugs with a few naps in between.
The cats are still busy catching plenty of mice, luckily they are not big on catching birds 😊 they also spend a lot of time sleeping but only after a busy night. Diesel is getting old, (he is 16 now) at one point I thought that he wouldn’t see winter out but he seems to have got a second wind and is back on form again.
Patch, the dog, is still daft as a brush and a constant companion when John is working outside. Mia on the other hand is showing signs of deterioration, we noticed back in the summer that she was stone deaf and now it is apparent that her eyesight is very poor. She is still eating and drinking normally but she stumbles a fair bit and bumps into things, we have to keep a close eye on her so she does not wander off and can’t find her way back. Her genetics are not great, something I didn’t realise until after we got her and I did a bit of research on the breed, specifically the merle gene.
The horses are still going strong, getting older every year just like the rest of us but they are healthy and happy and living their best life really with no expectations from them apart from mowing the paddocks 😂
It is a quiet time of year but I will try and do a quick round up on Mondays of what I have been up to and what I have planned. That was the aim of the original blog, a diarised snapshot of life on the Smallholding with one or two bigger issues thrown in because they affect life in general.
September 2024: It has been ages since I last blogged and I am really sorry, I started so many drafts only to get caught up in life in general that they never made to publishing 🤪
It has been a busy few months, on the flower side of things business has been brisk, different to last year but a definite increase in orders. I have still done bunches and bouquets as usual but also DIY buckets, bespoke flower arrangements for customers as well as regular customer orders. Just when I think I will have a quiet week orders come in and I am off again. I have done more funeral flowers and memorial flowers and workshops too.
I had my roadside flower stand pinched, the whole thing which was about 5ft tall by 4ft square and pretty heavy. It would have taken two people to lift it and a lorry or a van to take it away. Thieving b**tards that think it’s ok to rob people. I was totally gutted the morning I went out and found it missing, deflated and despondent is not overstating how I felt. But every cloud has a silver lining they say and this has in a roundabout way done me a favour 😂 I made a reel for Instagram about my stolen flower shed complete with ‘detective’ music and the reel went viral! That kept me busy I can tell you, almost 10,000 views in the first 24hrs and weeks later it is still going and up to 700,000, yup 👍 Why is that a good thing? Well it has raised my Instagram profile and as the reel is being watched by 100’s of people a day, some of them are then following me. What good is that if they are not customers I hear you ask 👂 it’s good because it means all my other reels are getting some traction and potentially being put in front of viewers who are more local, in fact I had a new customer who said ‘oh I saw you on Instagram’ and basically the more views and follows you have the more the algorithms put your reels in front of those with an interest. Besides all that it is fun to watch the numbers though I don’t take it to seriously.
Life has been busy too, school holidays mean grandchildren visits and I have had a few of those, I still have Oscar every Tuesday and we even managed to get away for a weeks holiday to tick some things off my bucket list. It was my 60th birthday at the end of July, we had a spa day and meals out and then we went away on a road trip.
We travelled to Bakewell to have Bakewell tart on our way to our first destination which was York, it has been on my radar for a good few years and I finally got there. We spent two days there doing some fabulous tourist things including a visit to Betty’s and the Jorvik centre (both are an absolute must) before setting off again for Edinburgh, with a detour to see Lindisfarne on the way. The main reason for the trip was in Edinburgh and that was an evening at the Royal Military Tattoo 🥰 We had a pre show hospitality package and did the whisky experience before hand and now I have a new appreciation for whisky 🥃 We met one of the riflemen from the United States Navy Ceremonial Guard who was on his first ever trip outside of the USA, he was only young and what a first trip that must have been 😊 Plenty to do in Edinburgh and we packed as much in as possible before moving on to our next destination. Lake Windamere in Cumbria, we stayed at a very nice hotel on the shores of the lake and had a relaxing first evening before a trip we had booked for the next day. A Beatrix Potter tour, we couldn’t come here without visiting her house and garden and it was a real delight. We had a fabulous tour guide who took us to some real hidden gems in the area as well as imparting so much local knowledge it was mind boggling. Beatrix Potter was a visionary and understood her legacy long before anyone else did I think, incredible lady. Time to head back home with a detour to Stafford castle on the way where just by chance they had a Viking re-enactment day, well that just topped off what had already been an amazing bucket list ticking holiday.
Over the last couple of weeks it has been time to harvest fruit too, apples, plums, blackberries, elderberries it has kept me busy I can tell you. I am trying to rely less on the freezer now and do more drying and preserving. I still have my prepper head on and there a has been a global internet outage over the summer, it affected many things and I honestly don’t think it will be the last one nor the biggest, I think there is the likelihood of more and bigger in the future. So that is just one reason I prefer to be prepared for all eventualities, I just hope more people start to see exactly what could happen and think about how they would cope. If anything affected the logistics systems for deliveries then 3 days and the supermarket will be empty so it’s worth having some back up stores. Buy what you use and use what you buy, rotate it then it’s never wasted.
We have suffered plenty of daytime fox attacks, even Ted the Turkey has become a victim 😔 We are down to less than twenty hens which is not much good because I never have any eggs for cooking and baking. We did say we would not bother getting anymore but we do need eggs for ourselves so we have decided to get a few new ones in to keep ourselves and the customers going. The ducks are not being replaced though so once they stop laying there will be no more duck eggs.
There has been, as always, plenty of work to be done outside on the Smallholding, hedges, paddock, fencing, weeding, mowing, strimming, you name it and it needs doing. Yesterday I sowed a couple of rows of carrots to hopefully have some for Christmas and I have harvested a few runner beans this week but the veg are sadly lacking this year. So I am going to do something about that and one way to have veg but not have to work too hard at it is perennial veg. Welsh onions, perpetual spinach, garlic chives, perennial kale will give me useful veg that just keep appearing (hopefully) along with plenty of herbs that I already have growing that way I can concentrate on a few other things such as carrots and beans etc. I keep hearing there will be shortages this year due to flooding or lack of sunshine so I am not waiting to find out I can’t buy any lol.
The weather: because I always mention the weather 😂 jeez this spring and summer have been all over the place 🤪 Cold wet spring, cold wet summer, occasional sunshine, it has been nothing if not challenging for growing stuff let me tell you. Slugfest arrived and never left, the blighters have been eating everything more especially all the young tender shoots of annuals 🙄 add that to a total lack of sunshine and warmth and it has not been a great year for anything that needs the sun. Still you get dealt the cards and you play with what you have, on the flip side it has been a summer I could tolerate and move around in easily 😬 It just is what it is and you have to go with it, luckily as I always hedge my bets I have had plenty of flowers that have made through and so although there is an impact I can side step it and go forward most weeks.
The flowers will still be blooming for a few weeks although the season is moving to slow down now but I have workshops ahead of me including Christmas ones and I still have plenty of preserving and processing to do so I will still be busy.
Right this minute I have some mango chutney cooking down (a bit of an indulgence that one) But over the past few weeks I have been making jams and chutneys, canning apple and plum sauce, freezing apples, blackberries, elderberries and plums, dehydrating herbs and vegetables, making and freezing crumbles and stews and I have my Christmas mincemeat made already. Apple cider vinegar is on the go and something new this year is honey fermented elderberries, should be great to stave off any winter bugs lurking.
Oh and it will soon be time to start collecting walnuts and hazelnuts, if I can beat the squirrels. This year I am also going to collect conkers and make some washing soap with them, we will see how that turns out 🤷♀️
There you go, that’s pretty much up to date. I will try to blog a bit more regularly but once you get out of the habit it’s difficult to get back in to it 😂
Monday 24th June 2024: It seems like the months are whizzing past lol. Sorry about the lack of blogging I have either been too busy or too tired to keep up with it.
Summer has finally arrived after all the rubbish weather and this week we have wall to wall sunshine which means of course that I cannot get outside for the best part of the day! There never seems to be a good balance but I am getting up very early and getting work done, by 9am I have usually done 4 hours already. It is a beautiful part of the day, cool and quiet, very good for mindfulness.
The flower sales are going well and the flowers are now a little more abundant than they were in the dull, wet spring 🙄 But the slugs, oh my days, they have been rampant and munching on everything and anything 😂 It is quite disheartening at times but try as I might I lose something to those slimy jaws every day.
This weekend coming I have the busiest weekend I have ever had flower wise, I totalled up the stems I will need and it is around 650 which for me is a lot. I have two private workshops, flowers for a private event and orders so I will be busy and I need to get my head in order so that I have everything I need for when I need it and do not miss anything out.
I have more or less finished planting everything out now, the only things left are back up plants for any failures. One big fail I had were the snapdragons, on one side of the tunnel they got rust and all had to come up, strangely though the ones on the other side are fine 🤷♀️ I will definitely look for rust resistant seed next time.
I have spent a lovely hour or so every evening picking raspberries, there are a lot on there this year. There are two reasons for that, the first and the most stupid error I made was thinking that they were autumn raspberries and so cut them down each year as you should for that variety. I didn’t have time last year and so they got left and voila an abundance of raspberries, they were summer fruiting ones all along 🤪 second reason is that we put new netting on the cage so no holes means no birds getting in and stealing them. It is raspberry everything at the minute, crumbles, sponge puddings, yoghurt topping and then some for freezing too. The redcurrants are abundant again and I always use them mixed in with other fruit for puddings, the blackcurrants are just ripening and the gooseberries too. We will have a good amount of fruit this year as the top fruits are also looking good including the apricot tree 🥰 I just need to get back to growing a good amount of veg, we have tomatoes, cucumber and courgettes growing plus a few runner bean plants but that is it this year which is not ideal. There are however some good little farm shops around selling veg and we have a lamb coming for the freezer from a small local farm 😊
I have emptied and defrosted one of the freezers and then started filling it back up so that I can defrost the other freezer. I am trying to either use up what I have or at least know what is in there so that I can plan meals around the contents.
I still prepare for emergencies and as the government suggested a couple of months back (although not many people seem to have heard about it) that everyone should have three days of food, water and supplies for emergencies I wonder what they know that we don’t? Sadly with the state of the world today we have never been closer to disaster in my lifetime than we are now, wars, invasions, climate catastrophes, being prepared is just common sense really, we saw what happened in the pandemic so it pays to be mindful that anything is possible! Personally I like more than a weeks supply and mostly dried or tinned because if the electric goes down then the freezers are fine for a few days but after that everything spoils. Obviously I would use up the perishables first but if the emergency went on longer then we are on to dried and tinned goods lol. If you are interested in the concept then there are some very good you tubers (UK based) doing some excellent round ups of what you would need. The government list is a little basic and not very inspiring or nutritious, you can definitely do better than that with a bit of imagination. Only store what you would use and the key is to use what you store so that you keep it rotating, especially anything with a shorter shelf life.
Tuesday: Oscar day: It will be a long day today as the sun is out and it’s hot meaning I can’t really go outside so everything will be indoor activities. He doesn’t understand why we can’t go out and play in the garden which makes me sad and frustrated at the same time. Actually I do get a little emotional at this time of year when everyone wants to be out doing stuff in the sun and I can’t join in. My nephew is getting married this week, we had an invitation and of course I would love to be there but it is in Greece 😬 I know I would just about die in that kind of heat so won’t be going which makes me sad. It is not just being outside because you could probably organise some shade but just travelling to and from places is difficult, no transport is ever set up with shady areas 😂 even in a car is horrible unless the windows in the back are blacked out and there is air con, two of the things that were a must have when we got our new car.
I tend to just not go to events if I think they are likely to be out in the open, which is most of them, including pub gardens, you can’t really carry an umbrella big enough to stop UVs bouncing around.
We booked a holiday in the med last year in October thinking that would be ok, nope they had a heat wave and I am still suffering the consequences of getting stuck waiting for the tourist bus in Barcelona with not a single piece of shade in sight.
We need more shady areas, I think I need to start a campaign lol. Joking aside though, there are so many problems that do not have a simple solution when it comes to Lupus and the sun.
Wednesday: Up early to get the cutting for the weekend started, 3 hrs of cutting, then watering the tunnels. I do those in the morning to try and limit slug activity but there is still evidence of them having had a party every night. I need to get all the outside jobs done and dusted before it gets too hot for me, that includes any animal feeding, the eggs into the shed, the rubbish out to the bins, the horses water etc etc. Today that took me up to around 11am, then I had a couple of deliveries, one of them was some very tall stem flowers from another grower which then need to be stripped and conditioned. Lunch and a sit down for an hour or so before I get some inside jobs done and then have a sit down before getting dinner and starting the evening work. More watering outside, to be honest this is the first lot I have done outside and the heat has dried the ground a fair bit so everything needs a pick me up. Another delivery mid evening of some locally reared lamb for the freezer, sort that out and then round to Mums to cut some flowers from her garden that she said I could have, I took some lambs liver round for Ken as a barter swap 😊 Mum has the most amazing hydrangea growing in the front garden that has probably around 70/80 heads on it each year. It obviously loves the position it is planted in and you can bet if I wanted to grow one that well it just wouldn’t happen 🤪 Back home to get the flowers into the dark and some good depth of water so that they don’t flop. Outside to turn of the watering and by this time I am literally falling asleep on my feet so it’s a good job it’s nearly time for bed.
The temperature is supposed to drop around 5 degrees tomorrow which will be a welcome relief from the hot and humid few days we have had, as always the weather has jumped from cold and wet straight into blazing hot 🥵
Wednesday/Thursday: I mostly spent my days gardening or cutting flowers ready for the weekend. I am cutting everyday at the moment so I get up pretty early to get started. On Thursday evening I sorted out all the flowers and foliage I had cut into all the different things I needed them for. Bouquet orders, bunch orders, arrangement order which consisted of five large arrangements of flowers, eleven lots of flowers for the workshops also fro me to demo and then flowers for Friday flowers.
Friday: Up early again to get some watering done and wrap the flowers ready to go out on the roadside stand.
Feeling happy that everything was in hand I took the flowers out to the stand only to find it had been stolen! It is not a small stand, it’s 5ft tall and heavy, they took the one bucket that was still in there and discarded the clip board with the QR code on. I actually couldn’t believe someone had nicked it, wtaf.
I was pretty upset because they had not only taken something that was essential to roadside sales but also stolen a fair bit of my enthusiasm for the day. I am just trying to make an honest (and modest) living and some low life thinks it’s perfectly ok to take it away for themselves. I can only think that as it was a converted chicken house, that’s what they wanted it for but do me a favour and buy your own you tight, lazy, good for nothing gits. People like that have no idea of the impact stealing stuff has on the owner, they probably don’t care either and I just hope that Karma really has it in for them one way or another 😡
For an hour or so it really threw me and I couldn’t focus on the work I really needed to get done for the day but I had to get the jobs done because I had customers relying on me. Eventually after so coffee and toast I put that behind me and cracked on with arranging flowers and getting the flower room ready for the weekend workshops. By 9pm I physically could not do any more, my back ached, my feet ached and I figured it was best to stop, get a good nights sleep and start again in the morning.
If you ever wonder why flowers cost what they do then here is a run down to your order.
Sow the seeds or plant the bulbs and plants (that you ordered months ago in preparation)
Nurture those seeds/bulbs with water, feed and protection from the weather
Plant the plants when big enough and continue nurturing
Put staking in place so they grow nice and straight for cutting, continue to nurture, weed and watch the pests eat your precious plants 🤪
Weeks but mostly months later cut the stems at the exact right time of opening.
Strip the stems, condition the flowers so that they are at their best
Arrange the flowers into whatever has been ordered, wrap and wait for collection or deliver.
Sweep, wipe and clean the workspace, deposit the debris on the compost heap.
Wash out the buckets thoroughly ready for the next cutting.
And of course that is only part of the story because in there is a wealth of knowledge that took plenty of studying, lots of planning and lots of heavy, continuous work just to get to the very first point. This is true no matter the size of the patch you are growing in, it is never just cutting some flowers and presenting them, that’s just how easy we make it look 😂
Saturday: Up early to get the room tidied from arranging all the flowers the night before, get the room straight so that people arriving for the workshop have no idea what a muddle it was in just an hour before they arrived. John went off to deliver a regular flower order, I don’t have time to do it today but he is used to delivering for me 😊 An emergency dash to another grower because the delphiniums I had were shedding petals everywhere (that’s a story for another day and I can chalk that up to experience 🙄) Teach the workshop, enjoy chatting all things flowers with some lovely ladies, clear everything up have a quick lunch break then organise exactly how I am going to transport five vases of tall flowers to a customer on a very hot afternoon 🤪 deliver the order successfully and then off round to Shelley and Martins for a BBQ.
A workshop with friends is a fabulous way to celebrate 🥰
Sunday: Up early again to water and organise everything for todays workshop, more chatting with more lovely ladies about flowers 😊 Tidy up and clear away, have some lunch and then deliver a big celebration bouquet in the afternoon. I made this up at some point during Friday or Saturday but I can’t remember when!
At this point I should go in and tidy up the workshop but I have done enough this weekend and it can wait until tomorrow.
Tuesday 28th May 2024: I am totally out of whack with the blogging, apologies for that.
Yesterday was a bank holiday but we mostly spent the weekend working outside trying to bring some order to the driveway. It is, or was shingle, but the weeds have taken hold and I am very loathe to spray it so it has to be done by hand 🤪 and it’s a big area 🙄 by the time you finish the last bit the weeds are back in the first bit again 😂
I had Mia, Lucie and George late afternoon Sunday and overnight until lunchtime on the Monday. They were really good and George was keen to be helping Grampy with all the jobs. I said to Sam he is a grafter when it comes to working, they came in when it started raining but George kept an eye on the weather and told Grampy when it had finished raining that they could get back outside to work again 🤣 The girls meanwhile had no intention of helping Grampy weeding so they did some arts and crafts plus help me cut some flowers in the morning and I gave them a little lesson in how to do a hand tied bunch 🥰
We went out to get something to eat on Monday afternoon after they had gone home and then called in to see Shelley on the way back before finally getting home and doing nothing for the rest of the evening.
Tuesday is Oscar day 🥰 so I have not got much done today, Oscar also refused to give in to tiredness and I finally managed to get him to have a nap at 3pm. What is it with kids and sleep, I would be more than happy if someone said to me go and have a nap in the middle of the day 😁
I can’t even think of all the things I haven’t told you in the blogs I forgot to do but one of the best things was the arrival of the Floret seeds from the USA. First time they have been on sale in the UK and I was determined to get some, they arrived a couple of days later and I already have them sown and cannot wait for them to come up. I only sowed a few of each just in case it all goes wrong, the seed is fresh and so it will last until next year but I suspect I am not alone in wanting to get some growing this year.
I have discovered a series called homestead rescue, it is American and their homesteads are not like most of our Smallholdings in the UK but it is a fascinating series. Firstly most of them are very remote, totally off grid and have predators that are a threat to human life as well as animal whereas our predators only threaten our livestock. They tend to have a lot more acres and the terrain or weather is often hostile in one way or another and I don’t just mean a lot of rain or high winds 🙄 Harsh living is what I would call it and although I love the thought of the challenge, having to be totally self reliant and self sufficient, in reality I would not like to live permanently like that unless there was no other choice. What I love about it is the ideas the rescuers come up with to overcome a problem such as the greenhouse built into the side of the mountain to get a more even temperature year round and protect crops from the weather. It would seem though that they can pretty much build whatever they need to without the local planning on their case which must make the challenges a bit easier than they are here 🤪 Mind you, if you are 42 miles from the nearest town and all the way up a mountain I don’t suppose anyone is ever going to see what you have built 😂 I tried to find a definite answer to see how far the most remote house is from a town in the UK and the furthest I could find was about 15 miles so we are not even in the same league lol.
Wednesday: The weather is up and down at the minute from blue sky and sun one minute to a cloudy downpour the next minute 🙄 still not complaining as I don’t need to water outside yet.
My day has been pretty changeable just like the weather, planting out one minute, cutting flowers the next lol. One job I did was move every single plant in the greenhouse in turn to check for slugs, counted and removed approx 10. It is officially the worst year for slugs ever I reckon and the damage is so frustrating, I have lost no end of plants to those gastropod jaws 🤪 Top tip is to grow the plants on until they are bigger and stronger because the slugs love the new fleshy growth, I will take my own advice next year and not be too hasty. Obviously I am making a mental note of which plants the slugs do not touch and of course this time next year I will remember the mental note I made 🤔 best I write it down 😬 If the winters are warmer and wetter going forward we will have to find a way of either dealing with them or living with them. Not all slugs are bad of course, some slugs eat other slugs 😊 I need an identification chart in the greenhouse to see which is which otherwise I am disposing of the allies as well and the villains 😂
Growth in the garden is beginning to speed up and I am hoping that is one way of overcoming slug damage, leaving the plants to slug it out (pun intended) and it is then a case of survival of the fittest 🤷♀️
Thursday: I went to Millets farm with Shelley, Charlie and the kiddies, spent most of the day looking at animal as and eating 😬 It was a chilly start but once the sun came out in the afternoon it was boiling, it’s a no win situation at the minute 😂
Friday: I really needed to get some work done as there are just not enough hours in the day at the minute. Paperwork, housework, gardening, farm work, it’s pretty full on.
Saturday: John had to go and do a job first thing and I got flowers ready for delivery. We went off to deliver them then collect my Mum and went for a drive out to support my sister in law on her launch day. She has a bay in an emporium and it was a lovely drive out there, a great vibe with music and a bar, some fabulous furniture and other things to look at but it was pretty chilly until the sun came out late afternoon and then it was boiling (can you see a pattern here)
Sunday: Work, work, work, a different start to the day as the sky was blue from the minute we got up.
We have lots of big weeding to do, John was on the strimmer, me on the scthye, then mowing and hand weeding and we haven’t really made a dent in it all 🙄
There is watering to do in the greenhouse and tunnels daily at the minute and plenty of flowers to continuously cut. On Friday afternoon I got John to convert an old chicken hut into a roadside flower hut. That is working well as I have sold a few bunches, it’s better by the road as nobody really reads the sign saying flowers up the driveway lol. It’s a good job I have lots of flowers because I have lots of them going out and lots of activity coming up when I will need them. I have a few regular subscriptions now as well as other orders, two private workshops booked for later in June as well as the monthly one and I am now on the church flowers rota so I will being doing those plus church flowers for the open gardens day in the village this weekend coming, plus getting flowers ready each day to go out to the stand. Hopefully John will be home quite a bit this week and I can set him to work on some areas that really need doing. Although I don’t like to cut back the wild areas too much, the reason is that we have finally reached a pretty good biodiversity balance in the garden and the proof of that is in the lack of pests (apart from slugs that’s is) I thought last year was a fluke but it seems that it may have been the real deal as so far this year all is looking fairly pest free (probably shouldn’t speak too soon 🤪) It can be tempting to just think about getting weedkiller and using that but for me the wildlife is more important than what other people think and it is paying off in many ways. Most weeds are useful food for something and so only those that strangle everything (bindweed) or perennial weeds in the beds get pulled. Nettles are a great wildlife food and there are plenty of areas we let them grow but we do pull them from around the garden area otherwise they just take over.
It is British Flowers Week next week so I will be busy promoting that and then on Saturday I have a few people coming for a coffee morning to see what I do and how I do it, hence the need to get lots of outside work done 😂
I could do with a cleaner, cook and odd job man then I could just do the garden 🤪
frieslandfarm (flowers) 