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.
Monday 12th February 2023: Wowzers I logged on to see a message from WordPress wishing me happy anniversary, 13 years I have been blogging, that’s some dedication isn’t it 😂
The sun has shone beautifully today and my first job was to walk up to the church and meet the lady in charge as I have a customer who wants pedestal flowers for a funeral next week. It was nippy on the fingers but a lovely walk there and back, even with the volume of traffic that has increased due to another local road being closed from today for repairs. I say repairs I am not sure they actually do very much 🙄 the pot holes are ridiculous around the area, some could be regarded as craters rather than holes and some are very dangerous indeed especially on the unlit roads. The council seem to be able to wriggle out of paying any compensation from what I have seen on social media so it is costing car owners a fortune.
Once I was back I set about the business of selling flowers, well gearing up for it anyway. I got my roadside sign out and cleaned it up ready for the year ahead and made some extra signs that can be added to it to say when I have flowers available. Then I made a notice for the egg shed so that people know exactly how to pay for their flowers and finally make sure the doorbell was working, it wasn’t 🤪 So here is where working by yourself gets annoying, once I prised the bell off the gatepost and took it in to find a new battery (turns out I didn’t need one as the bell works and just needed the battery clamped a little tighter) I took it back outside and re fitted it. So far so good but I needed to see if it works and I am too far from the house to hear the internal end of the bell. So I set my phone on voice memo, pressed record and went outside to ring the bell, came back in to listen to the recording to find out if it actually works. I am glad to say it does and so that saves me a lot more faffing around.
I made soup for lunch today and we have left over roast chicken for dinner tonight, there is enough for bubble and squeak for John and I will have mine with some mushrooms and pasta or rice, haven’t decided which yet.
In the afternoon I was in the flower room creating a heart memorial with flowers for a customer tomorrow. I love doing these, they are different and I usually know who they are for so each one is a little sad to make but an honour to be asked and made with love and respect.
I also made up a small bunch of flowers for someone having a tough time at the minute, they are purely from me to them to say, chin up, you will get through this. That’s the thing about flowers, they can say so many things, I love you, I’m sorry, I’m here for you, Happy birthday, Happy anniversary and so much more, only one other thing can do the same, Chocolate 🥰
I will have flowers for Valentine’s Day but I have not taken orders I mean how many significant others are that well organised 😂 This year at least I will be relying on those that are driving past, see the sign and think ‘you have saved my day’ and with the diverted traffic increase it might work well!
I did a small amount outside, just moving Ranuculas from the greenhouse to the poly tunnel, where the air flow will be better for them, before coming in for a sit down.
Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 We had a fun filled afternoon it being pancake day. It’s one of those traditions that everyone loves, my Mum always made us pancakes, I made our girls pancakes and now they make their children pancakes. This year it fell in the half term and so they all came over here for pancakes with Oscar which is lovely. It was carnage 😂 all kinds of goodies went on top of each pancake and Oscar although he is only 16 months put away three of three and wanted more! Once they were done the adults had a chance to have a more civilised feast of pancakes, fruits, crème fraise and a drizzle of melted chocolate 😊
Although I had already been busy all day long there was no time to rest as I had flowers to get sorted for tomorrow. Finally sat down around 9pm so that was a long day.
Wednesday: It is of course Valentines day ❤️ so I was up early getting the sign out and putting out some flowers I had made up last evening.
I spent a good chunk of time sorting out what was going to be for lunch and dinner tonight before going out into the greenhouse for a more gentle couple of hours. I have sown seeds, pricked out seedlings and divided up a large pot of chrysanthemums. I have a lot more chrysanthemums to divide yet and no idea where I will put them all. Some I will be selling as small plants but I will be keeping a lot for flowers later in the year. I have two reasons to try and sell a lot of plants this year, one is because I have a lot of material to divide and can’t possibly use it all and the other is because I have an awful lot of plant pots 🤪 Seriously I can’t believe how many there are out there, so if I can use a good lot to sell plants in then I will free up some space. I don’t think I have ever bought a new plant pot in my life, not empty ones anyway, there is always someone who asks if I want any and I never say no lol.
Thursday: I got a bit done first thing and then Mia, George and Lucie for a few hours while Sam was busy and Charlie came over with Oscar. After everyone had lunched we went out for a walk, it was a lovely afternoon, the sun was out and it felt pleasant. The ground in still a bit soggy underfoot in places and so directing George away from mud was a full time job 😂
Friday: Another nice enough day in the end, the sun came out again and so working outside was ok. I spent a couple of hours in the greenhouse first, dividing more chrysanthemums, I will have lot of good sized plants at this rate. Yesterday one of those cheap tunnels arrived because that’s where I want to put the chrysanthemums once they start to flower. At the minute they are in the small tunnel, they come out over summer and then go back in as the weather changes, mostly to save the flowers from the rain and cold. But it means I can’t use the tunnel for anything else and it is difficult to manoeuvre in there when I am cutting the stems and so I ordered this one. I put it together in the afternoon once I had put membrane down in the place I want it to go, turns out it was bigger than I had imagined, because of course I didn’t take much notice of the dimensions when I ordered it only that it was big enough 😂 It is actually really good value for money and fairly robust once everything is tightened up, though I am not sure it will stand up to high winds 🙄 so I may need to remove the cover once the flowers are done each winter 🤷♀️
Saturday: We did a few jobs around the place before going off to collect some very lovely flower buckets that someone was selling online. A florist that was retiring and moving away, she was lovely and full of support for British flowers, gave me lots of extras as well as lots of great flower arranging tips.
We just got back when Shelley arrived with Josh and Flo and the Charlie, Macca and Oscar arrived too. Shelley and family had been in London for the past few days having a lovely time being tourists and we heard all about their adventures. Meanwhile Charlie had come to fill up some bags with woodchip to take home and put on her garden.
After everyone had gone I spent some time doing the greenery for a pedestal arrangement that will be going on Monday, the flowers I will put in on Sunday ready to be delivered first the Monday morning.
In the evening My brother and his wife popped for a visit and a cuppa.
Sunday: It rained all night long, heavy at times, we had 4 inches of water in a bucket that was empty last evening. The paddocks were flooded, the hay barn was flooded, the lane was flooded, it was a terrific amount of water overnight. We went out to the lane first thing to see just how deep it was and if cars could pass, just about was the conclusion we came to along with our neighbour.
John and I then spent quite a few hours working on the front fence line, it was in a state of disrepair and falling over so we began taking it down, cutting back and raking out debris. By mid afternoon we had got it sorted and now all that is left to do is burn all the branches and rotten fencing. We then need to plant some saplings into any gaps, we left the stock fencing up as there are so many bits of tree and shrubs growing through it that it stays there by itself and looks ok as it is.
All the time we were working we were watching cars come down the lane towards the flooded area, some, especially smaller cars, turned around, some drove through cautiously and some absolute t**ts sped through with some speed (yep that is you in the DPD van too) Great fun for them not so much for us with land each side and definitely not so much for the poor jogger who got soaked by one idiot going through 😡 and got called, quite rightly, some choice names. I was secretly hoping that at least one that went through like an idiot would break down the other side so we could have a good laugh, wicked I know but would have been very satisfying 🤣
Even though we had all that rain, the weather was actually really nice during the day, spring is definitely on the way thank goodness. Blossom is beginning to burst out, daffodils, iris, crocus, snowdrops, hellebore are all adding to the pops of colour and all very welcome after the greyness of Winter.
Monday October 30th 2023: The sun is shining this morning so that a good cue to get some washing on the go. I expect everyone else is all of a fuddle over what time of day it is exactly 😂 I had plenty of things I need to get done today as I seem to have a full week already 🙄 Cue a mad dash to hoover and polish quickly, whip round the bathroom and kitchen, put on a second load of washing and hang the first load out, get something out of the freezer for dinner on the way back. John has delivered flowers this morning and I have someone coming late morning for dried flowers. I have done the eggs and put out social media posts so that everyone knows what I have available today.
I feel like I am in busy mode all of the time and never enough time to get it all done properly. The flower side of things is pretty full on with getting bulbs landed, lift dahlias, clearing beds, transplanting next springs plants, preparing for workshops, preparing for table sales, cutting for orders and getting those ready, sorting dried flowers using those to make lovely things for sale. Then there is the paperwork side of all of that plus Johns paperwork, household paperwork and bills, housework, cooking, cleaning, appointments, Nana daycare, Smallholding jobs, don’t forget to sleep and eat 😜 Next there will be Christmas shopping to think about and I still haven’t done the books for the accountant yet! Don’t get me wrong, I do sit down but I am usually exhausted by then 😂 I think I may need a personal assistant, cook, cleaner or gardener or someone who can do any of those, thinking about it I am worth my weight in gold aren’t I 🤪
I spent most of the day in the flower shed doing dried flowers up ready for the upcoming table top sale. I sorted through and threw anything out that wasn’t up to scratch.
Around 4 I thought I better check the torts because I had put them in the other week and then out again when it got mild. I figured it was now time for them to go away for winter permanently. I found Voldertort easily enough he was in the hut but Billy was more difficult to find. This was because he had dug himself into the ground 😂 and boy can they dig, the tell tale signs were a give away though, freshly dug dirt under a large tuft of grass. I had to get a trowel to dig away all the mud and carefully lift him out and then take him to his winter quarters.
I am still getting enquires for wreath workshops, I have 5 this year all fully booked bar an odd space, not sure if I put more dates on or not. I guess I need to decide exactly how busy I want to be and how tired lol.
Tuesday: Oscar day, he is a little under the weather plus his big teeth are coming through so he is not a very happy chappy today 😞 While he was sleeping I looked for recipes using up apples, I had lots of cooking apples this year plus I have quite a few eating apples from one tree that look great but the taste is not there so I will use those for cooking too. I could dehydrate some but in all honesty I still have some from the other year as we seem to have bountiful harvests each year at the minute. I also have a lot of eggs at the minute so I think it will be a batch bake of apple cakes for the freezer but I will do those tomorrow. Yesterday evening I put all the bits of veg I needed to use up into the slow cooker for some vegetable soup today and as there was a fair bit of kale it is a very apt colour for Halloween 😂 green and nutritious 🥰
None of us can have escaped what is happening in Gaza, daily news is wall to wall with the war 😞 I thought we were an intelligent, civilised species but the more I see, the further away from that thought I find myself. Despite the reasons there are so many innocent people on both sides caught up in the rage, each of the next generations will feel animosity towards each other and so it never ends.
Wednesday: I needed to use up some eggs as we have lots and I have apples that need using because they are eating apples we grew but they don’t have the best flavour for eating fresh. So baking was on the schedule this morning, apple cake and lots of it. Most will go I to the freezer and then be drizzled with icing when needed, could be flavoured icing such as blackberry or could be chopped nuts either would be lovely. I ran out of butter because John has eaten it, I try to stash some some he can’t find it and then when I need it for baking I have it but he has opened it 🙄 So I switched to using olive oil instead and that works just as well, I also needed to use up some Greek yoghurt and that went in too. Two of the cakes are lemon and orange flavour rather than apple but all or any of them will make great tea time eating or even pudding with some custard or cream 😋
We have storm Ciaran approaching and a weather warning has been issued for later this evening so it will be nice to have some comfort food to hunker down with. We are on the letter C already for named storms and it’s only November, last year 22/23 we only had two named storms in total.
My elbows hurt today, what is that all about, no idea but it is noticeable enough for me to mention it 😞
It is not usually my day but I am collecting Oscar from nursery today after lunch and will have him for the afternoon. The security these days is impressive but sad that it is necessary, I need to be pre authorised, have ID, and a password, good that the children are safe and a sign of the times I guess but I feel sad at the loss of a way of life fast disappearing. I suppose that’s how each generation feels and it will be no different for future generations.
Thursday: I had to be up at the hospital for a blood test this morning as part of the Molecular research programme. HLA-B27 is a protein that is found on white blood cells, these proteins help the immune system tell the difference between good or harmful cells. Autoimmune patients are often positive for these proteins which is why the body attacks itself and is closely related to the eye problems I have been having. So I wait to hear the results of this test, it won’t make much difference to me, I already have what I have but it will help research teams to understand the diseases better. I was watching a new clip about AI and I know everyone is wary and rightly so but AI is already helping to understand the inflammatory process and being used to find out more about what might help, even cure may eventually be found 🤷♀️
Sam took me up to the hospital and afterwards we met Shelley, Charlie and Oscar for some lunch, nice to do that every now and again.
Friday: I spent most of today getting things ready to take to the coffee morning tomorrow and also doing some tidying up in the flowers room. Sam came over in the afternoon to get the horses in ready for the farrier at 4pm. We did a bit of tidying up in the stable block too and got some old straw and paper feed bags burnt.
Saturday: Coffee morning sale, I loaded up the car and we got there for 9.30 am and set up the table. Not soo many people this year but the weather was t great so no surprise really but it was a lovely couple of hours all the same. I came back with a hime Bakewell tart, one of my faves but I never make it because John doesn’t like it. I have cut it up into pieces and frozen it for some delicious pudding options 😊 I also bought a pair of knitted fingerless gloves, great for the colder months when I am working outside.
Once that was finished and I packed everything up and back into the car it was straight off to my great nieces 1st birthday party. I realised when I got there I had drunk plenty of cups of tea but not had anything except a banana since first thing, the food table was laden with lots of sandwiches and cakes luckily as I was starving by that point.
In the evening we went over to see my brother and his wife, we needed a piece of stone for the wood burner to sit on and he had just the thing so we went over to collect it and have a cuppa while we were there.
Sunday: I spent the first couple of hours cutting flowers for orders next week, I had two large bunches for Monday and the request was red. Actually the request was for poppies but they don’t grow at this time of year. The reason we use poppies for Remembrance Sunday is because they sprung up everywhere in the Spring following the end of WWII. Poppies love disturbed earth and sadly there would have been plenty of that, it would have been ideal conditions for them. Poppy seeds can lay dormant for a long time before germinating which is why they sprung up everywhere and why we use them but they don’t flower in November.
Meanwhile John was busy tiling the wall where the wood burner will go, it’s just a small one and we won’t be using it much but it is handy to have in a power cut over winter. It was the last component we needed in case of power loss, we have battery operated lights, a camping stove and gas canisters, a fire pit if needs be and now we will have something to keep us warm too 🥰
We were going to go out and find a bonfire and fireworks for Guy Fawkes but in the end decided we couldn’t be bothered 😂
Monday 18th September 2023: This month seems to be rattling past 🙄 the weather is up and down but there is definitely an autumnal nip in the air in the mornings and evenings. Last night there was a big storm, I have to say apparently because I didn’t hear it 😂 John said it lit up the room and was really loud, I was busy sucking up 💤 flat out and didn’t hear anything except at me point heavy rain woke me but that’s it. I must have been tired after our long walk during the day.
It may seem early and I am not one for acknowledging the festive season until the beginning of December usually but I am starting to advertise wreath workshops lol. The spaces are already filling up and so if I can fill them well beforehand then I don’t need to think about that again until nearer the time.
Meanwhile there is still a lot of preparation for next spring to be done first as well as ongoing flowery and gardening stuff. I have been soaking the Ranuculas and anemone bulbs and will hopefully get those planted today along with some daffodil bulbs. I have hardly annual and biennial seedlings and plants to constantly pot on or plant out and perennials to divide to increase my flowers for next year. I try to keep the seasons extended for as long as possible which includes drying flowers and making lovely wreaths or things with those, all of this plus everything else in life keeps me pretty busy on a daily basis.
We have the new hens and we had 32 in, yesterday we got 31 eggs from them which is fabulous, we just need the customers to return to buying them now. To be fair they are going well but it needs to be a constant turnover and at least I have enough eggs now to do some baking, everything was going out to the shed before 😂
The sun is shining today despite the storm last night, John is mostly going to be at home for the next couple of weeks, having said that he has gone to do a small job this morning 🙄
So far I have had a very productive day, I have planted up some of the bulbs that needed doing, sown some seeds and started another dried flower wreath. John came home and we went out to get some evergreen shrubs from the wholesale place, I can only do this during weekdays as they are not open at the weekend so I have to wait for John to be available. I got a nice haul of rosemary, pittosporum, photinia euonymus, griselinia and some white astrantia that I have been trying to find all summer, I will definitely be going back there.
Then Charlie picked me up and we went over to Upton Smokery where once upon a time they had a fabulous bbq restaurant and is now a much bigger shop with all kinds of fabulous ingredients and fresh fruit/veg and is a much nicer shopping experience than the supermarkets 🥰 I bought some wild mushrooms some other veg, smoked chicken and other goodies.
Once back home I made some mushroom soup for later, put some fresh tomatoes, carrot, onion and celery in the slow cooker to make another batch of soup for another day and made an apple and sultana sponge pudding. We are feasting on natures bounty tonight and there is nothing more I like than using fresh home grown or locally grown ingredients.
Tuesday: A blustery, grey day today but I had Oscar and so didn’t have to go outside.
Once Charlie had finished work and collected Oscar I decided to brush Mia the dog. She has long hair and is short in the leg which is not ideal on a farm 🙄 she has been moulting a lot and so giving her a brush would help it on a bit, there are clumps of fur all over the place from her at the minute. She is not keen but I managed to get quite a lot of fur off her and the wind was blowing it away which is useful. Meanwhile John is trying to stack wood that he has been cutting and, this is hilarious, Patch is trying to hide behind Johns legs wherever he goes thinking any minute now it will be his turn 😂 I didn’t have my phone on me but it would have made a great photo, the thing with Patch is that he is short haired and tall so he doesn’t need de fuzzing at all, somehow he always manages to look clean and tidy 🤷♀️ I came in and hoovered the boot room which was full of clumps of hair and now I keep feeling that I have a hair in my mouth which is highly likely 😜
I got my dahlia order in, no good waiting until next year to do it otherwise the ones I want will be all gone, they will be delivered next year in Spring.
Wednesday: Windy (very) rainy and altogether horrible, trees down in various places and I don’t think it is going to improve much more. Off to deliver an order first thing, then pop into costa on the way back, Johns treat, I understood why on the way home, can you just do me a couple of invoices when we get back’ 🙄
I am on a downer today with technology, it’s all very well ramping it up but when the systems don’t work correctly or you do everything it asks for and then find you didn’t need to do it after all because the bod on the gate says, oh yeah your name is on the list just go in, it’s bloody annoying. It is more annoying when I have to do all of Johns online stuff because he can’t (or won’t) and then there are crossed wires when logging in because it is all from the same iPad 🤪 and the algorithms don’t like that, one of us must be an imposter 😣 Then there is our upcoming holiday where everything is done online beforehand, check in, booking activities, booking bloody dinner, all the joy has been taken out of a holiday by this point and what about those who are not so tech savvy. We are all being herded into a technological cell, one that we will not be able to escape from before long, rate your delivery, rate our customer service, rate our rate app 🤦♀️ Collect points for shopping, collect beans for coffee, all very well if when you get there you can actually connect to the internet or the app is working correctly, it’s like a giant dysfunctional toy asking you to play but the parts don’t all clunk into place. I admit we have come a long way, I am the age that was there at the birth of the World Wide Web, dial up was slow and painful and very frustrating. It has all moved very fast but I am not sure the systems are up to it and I am not sure a lot of humans are either 😂
I spent the best part of the day in the small tunnel, I have some bulbs planted in there and I planted up the anemone as well. Next job was to clear the cucumber and tomatoes harvesting everything that was any good while I was clearing. I have a lot of tiny toms and will make more soup with those, a lot of green toms that hopefully will ripen, a lot of toms went to the torts as well as a hidden away cucumber that was huge, I also bought the last of the cucumbers indoors. Once that was done it was time to bring in the chrysanthemums, they now go into the small tunnel to flower and they are in there so that the weather does not spoil the flowers. I got soaked just getting those inside and had to come in and change my top putting the one I was wearing into the dryer for 10 mins. Some of chrysanthemum plants have got huge nearly 5ft tall, I really need to have a good research on how best to grow them because they need some hefty staking the way I am doing it. I think I should have split them in the spring but of course I couldn’t, my plan is to cut right down the stems that are flowering and see how they recover, it might be a good plan, it might not 🤷♀️ I do have some in the big tunnel too but they have also got big and the staking is not great meaning they flop over and then begin to grow bent which is not much good for a vase 🙄
It has been hammering down for most of the afternoon but I thought I would be safe in the tunnel and I was until I needed to go and get scissors, string etc 😂 Never mind it’s a good job done now and I can have a cup of tea.
Thursday: Up, jobs done, out to get blood tests by 9am, John had to have some as well so I had booked us both in at the same time, I also got my flu jab. Then it was on to Witney to get some bits for holiday, nothing exciting really, tights, socks and a 2024 diary. We saw Gerald from Jeremy Clarksons programme, he was leaning against the wall out side WHSmith, I gave him the thumbs up and he laughed 😂 We bumped into Sam and Charlie while we were there too lol. Next it was off somewhere else to get some new trainers and a new top I rather liked while I was at it. Back home and back to getting some work done, John has been doing an excellent job of clearing all the old wood we had lying around in a heap, I have no idea where it all comes from sometimes. We now have a pile of logs from the ash tree that had to come down, a pile of kindling from the hazels we cut back last year, a pile of pallet wood ready to make boxes for jam jars and the rest which was mostly old fencing etc has been burnt, looking good.
Sometime in the afternoon I finished a dried flower wreath that I started yesterday and then I started another one and eventually finished it halfway through the evening. A full round wreath takes a long time to do and a lot of materials, no wonder they are expensive to buy, the largest one I have done I definitely wouldn’t sell for less than it’s worth, soo much work and my back was aching after doing them because you can’t really sit down to do it otherwise you can’t see it properly.
Friday: The weather seems to be developing a pattern, nice in the morning then rain in the afternoon (usually around school run time as always 🙄) This morning I got some social media sorted and then some flower cutting and then onto a bit of gardening, potting up, dividing, propagating. Now is a good time to divide or propagate and I have this great gadget that I was given for my birthday.
It is inside my back door so if I take a cutting I can just pop it in here and wait for the roots to develop as they have in the bottom left tube, simples 😊 once the roots are good I take it out and pot it up carefully as those roots will be fragile, voila a new plant 🥰
Sam came late morning and we went off out to get some lunch leaving John working here, I did offer for him to join us but he declined (garden centre 😜) I did bring him back a slice of Victoria sponge though.
The rain started while we were on the way home and pretty much stopped and started all afternoon making it difficult to get anything half decent done outside. I did manage to plant up a few things and dig up some plants that were in the wrong place and pot them up for re positioning in Spring. I have a lot of this kind of work to do, re position plants and propagate lots of the plants that do well as cut flowers. I went to the wholesale nursery the other day and bought some evergreen shrubs, rosemary, you can never have enough of that and my big one split and died a couple of years ago so time for some new ones. Pittosporum, I lost both of mine in the cold last Winter, this is a much bigger shrub and along with a couple of photinia red Robin, Portuguese laurel, parvifolia and euonymus (which by the way I have no idea where I am going to put 🤪) I also have other evergreens in pots that all need to go into the ground 😣 I have tried buying the small plants and waiting for them to grow and now I am going for the bigger ones instead, the problem with that is our ground or rather lack of soil depth. I am sure I will work something out, we did discuss moving the fence between the garden and the paddock and pinching around 10ft x 50ft which would be a lot of space but then I thought about deer, rabbits, horses etc. At the minute the deer and rabbits cannot get in although the horse regularly leans over and nibbles on anything nearby. The reason for this way of thinking was that the fence needs replacing but there are self growing hazels and sycamore growing through it, take the fence out dig out anything that should not be there and move the fence a little. Sounds easy but it is still a fair amount of work and then the new fence would need to be animal proof, ducks, geese, chickens, deer, rabbits, horses and dogs would all be in there given half the chance 🙄 I might have to think about a plan B 🤔
And if anyone reading this locally is cutting back evergreens near the end of November I am more than happy to come and collect from you, I can use it for wreath work and it saves it from going into your green waste bin. I often wonder if people realise just how useful their cuttings would be, there is plenty to be foraged but there are also plenty of out of control shrubs in gardens 😂 and I am always looking when I am out wondering if the owners even know how useful the shrubs are 😜
Saturday: I spent the morning doing a dried flower arrangement while listening to John trying to start the ride on mower. Eventually I went out to try and help, well actually first off I told him to move it out into the sunshine in case it was just damp. When that didn’t work I went out to help him try and work out what was wrong. He had reversed it about a foot and it had cut out so we were thinking it was an air lock in the fuel line. John I did the first pipe and the fuel was getting to there (and by the way we had checked fuel levels, battery was fine as it was turning over well and all the fuses) The question was ‘is there a safety mechanism we had forgotten about?) I called the mower man and he said most likely an air lock further down the fuel line and did we have any easy start we could use. The answer to that was no and that’s because John would always refuse to use it even though my dad had said many, many times to him, you need some easy start 😂 Off he went to get some 😜 he came back we unbolted everything to get to the end of the fuel line, sprayed some easy start, started it up and voila it worked 😊 I have no idea what easy start actually is or what it does but from now on we will make sure we always have some 🤪
I then cut the front paddock, the side walkway and the back walk way and not sure what John did because I couldn’t see but it was something useful I am sure. To be fair he has been really busy this week and so much has gone done and tided so it’s looking much more loved than it has done.
Late afternoon I did some gardening as the weather was lovely, the sun was out but not too hot, I was weeding and planting and it was very enjoyable.
Sunday: If ever there was a full days work it was today, I feel like I have got lots done despite being a bit indecisive to start with. First I watered the small tunnel which had the chrysanthemums in and then onto planting up almost 600 bulbs! It sounds impressive but bulb planting for cutting is not quite the same as for garden display. The bulbs are planted very close together in tubs or pots and that’s because what I am after is stem length and flower not a pretty looking area. I have planted tulips and narcissi, all the tubs then need covering with wire so that a) the squirrel doesn’t plant nuts in there and b) so the cats don’t think I have made them some swanky toilet area. After a brief trip out to get some lunch I got straight back on with gardening, planting up carnations and sweet Williams into the spare area in the small tunnel. These are all flowers I am hoping will be ready as early as possible next spring along with some ammi Majus I planted the other day and some daucus (wild carrot) which I had grown from seed and now needed planting out. Then I went onto the delphinium bed, removed the netting that it grows through, cut them back, top dressed with some blood fish and bone, put some more wood chip on top, replaced the netting and stakes (oh also planted another one in the space I had obviously lost one over winter) and whoop that’s another bed sorted ready for next year. Next weed the small area next to it that does not have anything growing there except weeds, it is about half a metre by 1200 and is between the delphinium bed and another raised box that has a mock orange growing in it. I weeded the area and then put down weed membrane and pegged it down, that is another tiny bit under control plus it means I have a place that I can get from one path to the other without treading on the flower beds. By this time my shoulder was stinging, I have no idea what that is but I have had it for a very long time and once it starts I know it’s time to stop work 🤪 I feel as though I have accomplished a good amount today though and as a bonus I split a delphinium plant, planted one and then potted up three other small plants, always handy to have spare plants 🥰
This is how close the bulbs get planted when growing for cutting, they don’t need an air flow around them because they get cut as soon as they are ready and the bulbs won’t be any good for next year. Many people compost the bulbs but I don’t, in a couple of years they will recover enough to flower so mine will go in the raised beds in the front and if I get tulips that’s a result and if I don’t well I will wait. Believe it or not almost 600 spring bulbs are in these few containers.
We had a chap come from Wales today to catch some rabbits, he has been coming for a few years now (although not last year) he usually comes with a friend but today bought his son to teach him and get him off the computer, his words not mine lol. Many people would not agree with it but it is free meat and yes they do eat it, curried mostly I gather from our previous conversations. It is living off the land and not out of the supermarket, which to me is the best way, and great to teach the next generation because you never know when you might need to catch your own food in my opinion. We don’t eat rabbit but that’s only because John doesn’t like it, if we didn’t have anything else then we definitely would.
Monday 17th July 2023: Monday again already 🙄 I have been out already this morning and cut flowers for tomorrows orders, hoovered the house and now having tea and toast before I go out and check on my seeds and do any other jobs I spot that need doing, it won’t be hard to spot them 😜
Once of the biggest disappointments for me this year was not being able to get many seeds sown, flower or veg. This is the time I should be harvesting plenty of produce, so much that I never know what to do with it all! This year that is not happening but I have managed to get a tiny yield even despite this and I still have plenty in the freezer which is lucky. This morning I have picked a few broad beans and some dwarf French beans plus a fair few berries 😁 The berries have been cooked down and some have been allocated to a crumble for John later the rest will be compote for my yoghurt 🥰 The beans have been blanched and frozen and the cucumbers will be used up or given to the family for them to use. One of the things that crossed my mind today was more perennial veg, you can get perennial onions, kale, asparagus, artichoke, chard will grow happily for a couple of years before needing to be redone (if it doesn’t seed itself everywhere) fruit bushes are perennial as are fruit trees. It is definitely worth thinking about if you are short on time, have mobility issues or for when life restricts your growing ambitions.
Merge harvests today but still 100 times better than anything you can buy 🥰
I looked after Oscar for the afternoon so playing and blowing raspberries was the agenda until nap time. John came home early and made two people in the house napping 😴
Watching the news and the breakthrough in dementia medication which is great news. The bit that is worrying me is the dementia test, I can’t count backwards taking seven away each time when I am fully compos mentis so I said to John, make sure you tell them that if I ever have to go 😂 Seriously I have many strengths, numbers is not one of them especially odd numbers and taking away 🙄 words, yes, numbers, nope 😜
Tuesday: First job make up the flowers orders going out later. John always asks me ‘what are your plans’ when he is home, I don’t make plans because you never know what will come up and interrupt those plans. I usually do what I did today and think, that needs doing, I could do that, and then I have to do something different. I had a couple of notifications come through about van and car break ins in the immediate area 🙄 I had said previously to John that I need to cut the apple tree back because I can’t see down the driveway when people arrive, so that became a more important job to address today. It means I have a clear line of sight and can see what is going on, that may be customers arriving, deliveries or just randoms mooching around 😜
A bit of gardening for the rest of the day , so much that needs cutting back at the minute to encourage more flowers.
I have so many orders to get through tomorrow, Thursday and Friday and then a last minute order for flowers first thing tomorrow morning. By this time it is raining quite well and so an hour before dark I was out in the rain cutting flowers and getting soaked 😂 Back inside and change out of my wet clothes and into my pjs and a cup of tea before bedtime.
Wednesday: Up and out to cut flowers again this morning and then get the orders ready for customer pick up. Out mid morning to deliver an order then back to get the rest of the orders done. Customers arrived to collect various orders and then I had a two hour sit down around 1pm before cracking on again. More flower cutting in the evening plus watering the poly tunnels and finally sit down around 8.30pm. I have flowers to cut tomorrow morning and then orders to make up for afternoon collections so another busy day and I have had to say that I have no more availability because I literally do not have enough time to do any more😜
Thursday: Up and out to cut lots of flowers this morning, practically everything I have growing at the minute for the last orders this week. I will be having the weekend off from flowers 😂 Once they were cut it was time to make the first lot of todays orders that are being collected later on today. A short rest, then the twins and then I will will making up the last of this weeks flowers ready for collection tomorrow. I have a Oscar from early in the morning so I need to be done and ready.
I have been trying to think if I have actually left the farm at all this week, apart from a delivery of flowers (straight there and back) I think the answer is no not since last Sunday 🙄
Thursday evening was the time I needed to make up the last three bouquets for this week, I have Oscar from 7am tomorrow so won’t be able to do it then and they are being collected at lunchtime.
Friday: Looking after Oscar all morning until early afternoon, he was a good boy and we played and sang and he napped and fed, all good. In the afternoon I gave myself some time off, I needed it after that week which was fabulous but full on.
Saturday: Back to the rain and I hope it’s not too much today as one of my customers is getting married so I will keep my fingers crossed for them 🤞 I needed to tidy up the flower hut because a week long of arranging had left a bit of a mess to clear away plus I have left over flowers to deal with. They are now hanging up to dry for a different use later in the year. I had oak blocks to mark up ready for drilling as I will be doing lots more of these ready for selling as soon as I can get them done.
If you take time to really look and listen all around you there is another level of activity going on while we are all getting on with our lives. Yesterday I was stood by the back door and saw a leaf cutter bee with a piece of leaf, it disappeared next to the shed and when I looked there was a bamboo cane which is holding up some netting, I guess it went in there to make its little nest to lay an egg. It was a tiny thing but lovely to witness, this morning I saw and heard a fight going on 🙄 Again I was in the kitchen and heard birds making a right racket, normally it’s because the cats are around and we have blackbirds nesting close by as well as wrens. I looked out of the door and saw a sparrow hawk on the ground under the hazel trees trying to get the fledgling blackbirds 🥲 So I opened the door and stepped out, off flew the sparrow hawk closely followed by Daddy blackbird in pursuit, he was brave. I couldn’t see any sign of fledgling bodies so hopefully I foiled the plot.
It is not exactly an inspiring day today, rain, colder than average for the time of year and not at all like July. Saying that, John and I both agreed we would rather have this than be frying in the temps they have in Europe at the minute. I typed a whole paragraph early in the week on my thoughts about what is happening in the world climate at the minute, I read it back and thought, that’s a bit heavy and deleted it but I do think it needs addressing or I need to say it, one or the other. The problem is that a large percentage of the population think that it is geeky or whacky (just like they did with the then Prince Charles) It isn’t, it is far sighted that’s what it is, it’s being able to look further ahead and see what is coming and not burying your head in the sand, not living for today without thinking about the tomorrow. We are in for some difficult years ahead with the climate and it is happening faster than anyone expected. How do we deal with it? I don’t have any answers but we do need to start thinking about it PDQ. One question I posed to John before bedtime was, how do we prepare for living with extreme heat? What practical things can we do to make sure our house stays as cool as possible ? To be fair our place stays fairly cool, we have plenty of insulation and we have UV glass in the windows (more for the Lupus but coming in useful now) What else can we do? Maybe shutters on the windows 🤷♀️ The next topic was about water supply, all very accessible while things are running normally however I see problems in the years ahead so we should think about how we prepare for that. We already catch a lot of water and we have tanks to install which will catch more but that only works if it rains. What about drought, that will cause big problems for everyone eventually. We need to make sure that anything we are growing holds onto as much moisture as possible for as long as possible, mulching is the answer to that. We will need to change what we grow to eat, we are all going to be eating differently because some things we are used to eating just won’t grow in extreme heat, although we will be able to grow more exotic things probably. We were talking about exploring options for a bore hole. It is crazy to think that most villages and towns would have had plenty of wells and they have mostly all be filled in over the years. And then on the flip side what about flash flooding and deluges of rain, we have had it all thrown at us over the last few years 😂 we need to prepare for every eventually. I do think that where we live at the minute we are in a good position to cope with volumes of water unlike the folk at the bottom of the hill. So if you are looking to move in the near future I would suggest you get up as high as possible lol, high temperatures are going to cause a multitude of problems and rising water levels is one of them. None of this is fantasy, we are seeing the effects globally every day, it makes the headlines and yet it is not a topic of serious discussion for most people 🙄 You only have to look at the graphs since the Industrial Revolution to see what we have done to the world, that and applying harmful chemicals to every aspect of our lives 😏 We are furiously trying to either backpedal or outrun the consequences but we are not going to be able to so we need a plan. Governments and politicians are too busy trying to outdo each other with their manifesto’s, they are only declarations of intention it doesn’t mean they will get them done 🤔 Those that are not fighting with words are fighting with real ammunition 😡 humans seem hell bent on destroying each other or the planet one way or another, intelligent life, pull the other one!
Do I feel better for getting that of my chest, not really it just opens up hundreds of other lines of thought 😜 But if it gets one person thinking about what lies ahead and how to deal with it then I will be happy enough x
Sunday: Yesterday late afternoon we went over to see the twins, it is their 4th birthday today but they are going on holiday so we went to see them beforehand. We bought back Josh and Flo with us to stay overnight as Shelley and Martin were off to a wedding reception that evening, the weather hasn’t been a great July for weddings and that one was no exception 😕
I had decided to mainly have the day off today, apart from looking after the children until they were collected I had no other plans. I did water the small tunnel though, the cucumbers and tomatoes are growing well in there and I am already harvesting plenty of cucumbers. We did pop out to a local plant nursery as there are still one or two things I am looking for, I didn’t find them but I did get a couple of other plants 😬 We had a roast at Shelley’s mid afternoon and then back home for the rest of the day. The weather was mainly dry and I should have done some work but I was tired and decided to recharge instead.
One of the plants I keep thinking about getting is a smoke bush or continue, I think it would be a useful addition and I wonder how well the ‘smoke’ would dry but I have no idea. If anyone has a bush they wouldn’t mind me snipping a few bits off to test I would be grateful 😁
In the evening Dave bought round a delivery of honey for the egg shed, I can hardly call it that now as the lack of eggs is fairly evident 🙄 We find eaten eggs around the place, that is either birds, the dogs or the hens themselves. The problem once hens get to a certain age is they develop bad habits like eating their own eggs, the months of lockdown don’t help as that is often when they begin with these habits which is why the industry turns them over quite quickly, approximately 2 years and then they are changed. Some of our hens are getting on for 3 or 4 and no longer productive but happily living out their days, as long as the fox doesn’t get them of course 🦊
Monday 26th June 2023: A new week and a fairly busy one too as far as flowers go. It is British Flowers Week and I have the intention of doing something for it but not sure what yet. I was up early to get a bit more watering done, I did have the irrigation hoses on in the front beds last night and just wanted to get the pots watered properly. Each year I think, it can’t be as hot and dry as last year can it? and the answer is yes, yes it can 😜 After doing the watering I had a shower and breakfast, did the eggs, put on a wash load and then went out to cut some more lavender. I also cut some fairy roses for drying, they dry beautifully and are always worth doing. The lavender I have plans for once that is dry but I have sold a few bunches too. Then it was onto social media updates as you have to keep those going constantly for the algorithms 😂 plus it’s good to update customers or potential customers as to what is going on or what is available. I had the undertaker to ring for the funeral flowers on Friday, I just needed to know what time they could be delivered, then answer a message from my doctors surgery who wanted a blood pressure reading. That was not great, it is on the high side (even though I feel better today than I have for ages lol) and I now have to do morning and evening readings for a week to see what it is doing over time or if it was because I have been up working since 5am 😜 After doing that I planted up two roses that we got for our anniversary, one is called rambling Ruby and the other is called, As Good as it Gets ( a compact floribunda) now both planted and watered in. Next a sit down to do a few modules of my online course, which is mostly just watching at the minute to be honest so it is not taxing my brain. Then onto making up the flowers to be delivered later today and google the address so I know where to deliver to. It is not even noon yet.
We have geese and we have approx 4 acres they can roam in and sit wherever they like in those 4 acres but guess where they have decided is best 🙄 Right outside the door of my flower workshop, yep let’s sit and crap here all day, not even to the left or the right of the door but right smack bang in front 🤦♀️
The ducks have also decided they would rather like to come in the front drive, climb up on the raised beds (flattening everything with their flat feet as they go) and lay eggs there instead of in their hut. John says the ducks are not laying many eggs, I say they are laying them somewhere else, he says no I don’t think so, I find a pile of eggs in my flower beds 🤔 At the minute they are confined to their run, which is a pretty big area but they are not free ranging all over the place and especially not on my flower beds 😜
Tuesday: The whole blood pressure thing is not great, I have to send in readings and they are still up this morning. This is likely to be related to my medication although I will be making adjustments to my diet 😂 On the whole I don’t eat or do things that are bad for my blood pressure, I don’t smoke, I rarely drink and I cook most thing from scratch so salt is limited. What I have been over the last couple of months is sedentary due to the shingles and I do eat more biscuits and chocolate than is necessary 😜 but not big quantities. I was actually feeling pretty good yesterday until I took the first reading 😂
This morning I have been doing lots of different things starting with giving the flower room a clean, tidy, sweep and wash the buckets plus hang any unused flowers up to dry. Then onto some weeding in the garden, the weather is ideal for me today but I am really hoping we get some rain again soon it is very dry.
Wednesday: I planned on doing one thing and then did something entirely different 😜 But first I cut some foliage for a funeral sheaf I am making for Friday, this requires strong foliage such as a tree branch and they need as much conditioning as possible to take up plenty of water and stay looking good. Charlotte came over with Oscar before going to baby group and also to collect some flowers ordered by her friend, she delivered them for me on her rounds. Then I had planned on doing some gardening but instead I did the rest of the online course and then went I to the flower hut to do some practice 😁
We had dinner in the evening and after I went outside to pick a bowlful of strawberries for dessert 🍓 yum. I then spent an hour in the flower hut making a fresh lavender wreath which will now hang to dry as it is.
Thursday: We had a bit of rain early this morning, not much but again it will freshen everything up in a way that watering can’t do. I had some more flowers to cut, the rest of them for the funeral sheaf I will make tonight and then some for other orders.
After that I decided I really ought to do some cleaning. Initially the girls came and do it for me, changing the bed sheets etc as well but eventually I was able to help and now I am able to do it on my own again yay 😜 I did a deep clean of the bathroom the other week and then with Shelley’s help the same in the living room as I was not able to move the sofas by myself but now I need to do the bedrooms. Move everything, dust, clean, hoover and put stuff away that has been sat around for far too long. Same with the spare room where everything gets dumped, everything is now lovely and I will wait for the sun to move round before cleaning the windows which also have not been touched for a good few months lol. I still have the office, boot room and the kitchen to tackle but that can wait for another day as my hand is smarting a little so best not push it too far.
Knowing my luck the minute I hang the sheets out on the line it will rain 😂
It didn’t rain and the sheets dried beautifully 😁 In the evening it was to make up the sheaf of flowers for tomorrows funeral. It is always delightful to do flowers for people to receive but there is something profoundly humbling to be asked to do flowers for someone’s final journey.
Friday: After breakfast the first job of the day was to cut flowers for a wholesale bucket customer this tomorrow and while I was doing that Charlie and Oscar arrived. They had walked over and Oscar had his breakfast here before they walked back home again before it rains. The forecast says rain, the rain radar says rain and it looks like it will rain but as yet nothing has fallen from the sky 🙄 I did the final touches to the sheaf before delivering it to the funeral director in Witney. The flowers I do are as always fully compostable except the little cellophane cover on the message card and that is only there in case it rains so as not to smudge the writing. Natural, sustainable, seasonal, compostable 🥰
Once back home I made a cuppa and sat down, I have just had another order come in and have had to delay until Monday or Tuesday (which is fine with the customer) as I have pretty much used or will have used most of what I have growing this weekend. The flowers are at a switch over stage, the early summer flowers are still blooming but desperately need some rain and the showy summer flowers are in bud but not quite out yet, they need some rain too!
I went back outside and got on with some cutting back and weeding, the lupins and delphinium have had their first flush and I can see new growth at the base, cutting them right back will hopefully produce a second flush in a couple of months time. Cutting back plants that are going over also means that you let more light into those that are yet to bloom or have got overshadowed by the stars of the show. I cut back the nepeta which gets unruly and the campanula which grows tall then flops everywhere, the tall daisy’s are getting a bit unruly too so they got thinned out. I have the biggest patch of echinops growing, once they start to colour up I will be cutting them and that plant will need dividing, I should get some good plant material to pot up from it, grow it on and either plant elsewhere next year or sell some or both.
Early afternoon I had a delivery and not one that I had ordered this time. This was a gift from friends who came to our anniversary party, it was afternoon tea from the Cornish company 🥰 freshly baked scones, Cornish jam and cream, tea grown in Cornwall and Cornish biscuits, delicious so thank you very much Sally and Ian x
As John was 60 this year he knows a lot of 60 year olds 😜 so we are off out to a 60th birthday party tonight , the theme is 1920’s or black and white, we opted for black and white 😂
Early evening and still no sign of the rain they have been forecasting all day 🤷♀️🙄😏 probably pour down just as we step out of the door later 😂
Saturday: Started with cutting this morning for orders tomorrow, put the watering on in the small tunnel for the cucumbers and tomatoes, then the twins came to stay for an hour while Sam took Mia to her riding lesson. Shelley and Flo popped in and Shelley helped with a bit of technology that had me flummoxed 😶 Customers arrived to collect their orders and then I pottered around doing I have no idea what for the afternoon. Meanwhile John has been busy digging up dock and a few bits of ragwort from the bigger paddock, he did the small one the other day, then dragged it and topped it and that is looking good.
Popped out for a few hours early evening to visit my sister and on our return found a card and some strawberries in the shed for the ‘hen humans’ how lovely was that. While getting the washing in I was thinking that the universe/cosmos must listen and for every Ying there is a Yang. Just lately I have felt that some humans have no thought for anyone but themselves 😏 couple that with the loss of hens, we started with 70 when we came back from holiday and are down to 25 and it can feel quite depressing at times and then out of the blue, a lovely gesture which restores my faith in my fellow humans 🥰 thank you 🙏
Sunday: A new day and a better frame of mind today, still no rain mind you 🙄 I had flowers to get ready for customer collection mid morning but then I pottered around doing the usual, watering, weeding and watching lol. Watching to see what is about to come out, I have plenty in bud at the minute they just need a burst of rain or sun or both to chivvy them along. Once the flowers were collected we went to get some food shopping, I keep telling John to go on his own as it is mostly stuff for him, I can mange with the garden and the freezers 😂
We went over to Shelley’s for a bite to eat mid afternoon then once back I got the hose connected to do some more watering. I then wandered round and did some cutting for drying, nice red colours today which will hopefully be nice for winter arrangements. John was going to put a lot more hooks up for me but he has been doing the paddocks and changing the broken pump on the water tanks so I guess they will have to wait.
Grown not flown, natural, seasonal, local flowers 🥰
Monday 19th June 2023: After the bit of rain last night everything is nice and fresh this morning and it’s not so hot that it all just evaporates. My first garden job was to cut some of the taller stems that I will need later in the week, the reason is that we are expecting much more rain tomorrow and I don’t want them bashed down by any heavy rain. These are flowers that are perfect for cutting now with just a few buds open, the rest will continue to open in time for making up the bouquets. I am cutting flowers daily and not always for orders but because in order to keep them coming they need cutting otherwise if they go to seed they will stop producing and I don’t want that. It is one of the reason that a cutting garden is not filled with flowers as people expect, quite the opposite as they have been cut for using one way or another, fresh or for drying.
At lunchtime I had some customers arrive to talk about wedding flowers for the end of the year, a small wedding which I can easily do 😁 The afternoon was overcast enough to get some cutting back and tidying up done.
The evening was again spent getting watering done, the bit we had the other day was good enough to freshen up but not much else, we need some prolonged rain that will soak right into the ground. I was right last year when I said we need to catch as much as possible going forward, two years running now we have had prolonged, hot weather with no rain. It doesn’t help that our pump burnt out on the water tanks at the weekend and as yet John has not replaced it, I am sure he will if I keep in moaning enough 😜 I cut yet more flowers this evening after watering the beds they were growing in, flowers are coming thick and fast and I keep cutting them. I also walk around thinking, I need to change this or that, there will be plenty to do come autumn. Having done a full year and a bit I can now see what I did right and what I did wrong, I also know which flowers I like and what is not worth growing. The annuals were pretty much a no go this year due to me being ill and I have found I can do without most of them, yes they are lovely but there are other flowers that are just as good and perennial, saving me lots of time and worry.
Tuesday: I can’t function today, I tried but I cannot. Almost 8 weeks since the shingles broke out and I am still getting pain on one side of the wrist, hand and fingers. The skin is healing and the new skin is tender, the stinging feeling never goes away, never dulls even with painkillers, consequently it is very tiring, on the up side my eye seems to have got better by itself 🤷♀️ I would just like a day when I wake up in the morning and feel full of beans and ready to get going, not too much to ask is it?
We have had two daytime fox attacks today and lost around 10 birds, I heard the first commotion around lunchtime, went out and there were hens upon the egg shed, up on the fence and all making a racket. I walked round the front paddock to check it over but couldn’t see anything. An hour later another commotion and a similar scenario, we are down to 30 hens, half of those don’t lay anymore either so we will be very short on eggs and resigned to the fact that we are coming to the end of our egg selling days. Yes I know people love our eggs but we do not love the constant battle that it takes to provide them ☹️
No watering tonight as we had a good load this morning and I am glad of the rest.
Wednesday: Solstice. A better day functioning 😁 so I got on with lots of flowery things, I know I should have done cleaning but hey that can wait 😜 I started my online course and did two modules and then John came home at lunchtime. After a cuppa and a quick sit down we went out to try and find something I wanted to do flower things in, couldn’t find what I was looking for but I found a few plants instead 😂
Back home and after another sit down, John did some weeding in the driveway. I keep telling him he is wasting his time as he is doing it by hand, by the time he finishes one bit the last bit will have grown again but it falls on deaf ears 🤷♀️ He did stop to make me some wooden boxes to fit jam jars in, I was trying to find plastic wallpaper paste troughs earlier but can’t find any so wood will do, actually they are probably much nicer. Dinner eaten then back out to get some watering in the tunnels done, do the horses water and that basically is the end of the longest day. There was no spectacular sunset, indeed no sunset at all otherwise I would have taken a photo.
Thursday: Mostly I have been doing flowery things 😂 well there is something new 😜 Cutting a bucketful first thing this morning and then to the online course which is soooo good I keep doing module after module. I did take a few break to go and cut some drying material after every three or four modules because I needed to move around a bit.
I spent the evening making up two living vase bouquets for delivery first thing in the morning, plus flowers for Friday.
Friday: After delivery the flowers this morning we set off for a day out to Stratford on Avon, Shakespeare country. When Sam and Luke got married last year they gave us and Luke’s parents the gift of Afternoon tea and a river cruise which was lovely of them. We booked it a couple of months ago and today was the day that we got to go and enjoy the gift. We met Luke’s parents there and enjoyed a delicious afternoon tea at The Arden Hotel, the service was impeccable, the sandwiches, cakes and scones were delicious and the surroundings had a relaxed elegance. The day was very relaxed as it often is when you are next to or on the river I think, the only downfall was the volume of traffic on the journey home 😜 The weather was perfect for me to be able to wander round, overcast but warm
Saturday: I had an early night last night so that I could get up early and do some watering this morning. Pyjama gardening early in the morning is one of my favourite activities lol. Again it was overcast and so I was able to spend quite a few hours getting some gardening done including weeding, planting and harvesting berries and lavender. I was also able to wear a short sleeved t shirt which is rare for me in the summer.
1st of the lavender harvestJuicy redcurrants full of lycopene and so good for you
I had a phone call mid morning and unbelievably I have an order for flowers from Aberdeen 😂 to be delivered locally obviously but how amazing is that.
After bundling up lavender to hang for drying and de stalking red currants it was time for a quick sit down before having a shower and getting ready to go out again. The girls are taking us out for our 40th wedding anniversary which is tomorrow.
Forty years! Where has that gone 🤷♀️ we met on a blind date at the Masons Arms in Brize Norton, we got engaged on my 18th birthday party which was at Bradwell Grove (when it was still a hospital) social hall, we had our hen and stag do in the Rose and Crown in Shilton and then we got married in the Holy Rood Church at Shilton. We haven’t traveled far have we 😂 not in terms of miles anyway.
The life road we have navigated has been scenic, lots of hills climbed and plenty of freewheeling downhill, we have hit plenty of pot holes and bumps on the road. The travellers we have met along the road have been many, some travelling with us and some travelling in the opposite direction but all have enriched our life journey in one way or another. At times we barely had enough fuel to keep going or the means of buying the fuel and at other times we have had enough to propel us many more miles than we ever thought we could get. We have taken turns in navigating, when one is tired or just can’t, the other takes over. We are as different as chalk and cheese and you would think that could never work but actually it works very well, I would say we are both different pieces of the same jigsaw 😂 We have accumulated some fantastic passengers on our journey, our three amazing and beautiful daughters, they invited their own passengers along, three fabulous husbands and six adorable children between them so far. Would I do anything differently, of course I would, maybe some of the turns we took were wrong turns, maybe some of the ones we didn’t take, we should have 🤷♀️ but I wouldn’t change who I was travelling with, on the whole considering we have travelled all that way without a map I think we are doing ok 🥰
STOP PRESS: We thought we were going out for a meal with the family, turns out they had organised a surprise party 🎉 It really was a surprise I can tell you 😂 Friends and family were waiting to greet us, a table laden with food, old photos, cake, music and a bar, what a lovely afternoon we had (once I got over the shock) We had lots of lovely cards and presents which was very kind of people, just a lovely thing to do and I can’t believe nobody gave the secret away.
Us as fresh faced teenagers 😂 our life map is now recorded in wrinkles 😜
Sunday: Another scorcher of a day ahead, at 8am this morning when I was putting out the eggs it was already very warm, normally at that time of the morning it is a pleasant temperature still but not today.
Today is actually our anniversary day but we dont have anything planned so the usual jobs got done first thing. I then had flowers to cut for a delivery tomorrow and John has been digging out docks from the paddocks. Biscuit broke out of her paddock the other day but as there is not a lot of grass around due to lack of rain we have left her in with Jack. That meant John could then top and drag the small paddock while she is not in there, meanwhile I gave the kitchen a bit of a clean. My hand is just about at the stage where I can manage most things now, though I still can’t make a fist at least the pain has gone and I am just left with an constant uncomfortable tingling which will hopefully go soon. Our plan was to get done in the morning and then nothing for the rest of the afternoon but stay in the cool of the house and hope that some rain comes our way 🙄 We also have cake to eat 😂 so invited anyone who wants some over for a cuppa.
Monday 5th June 2023: We have had wall,to wall blue sky over the weekend but today it was overcast, great for me because it means I can get on 😁 I had plenty flowers to cut this morning for quite a few orders tomorrow and Wednesday so that was the first job after the usual morning jobs.
Bucketfuls of flowers ready for making up bunches, bouquets and jam jar flowers for orders tomorrow.
Once I had done that I sat with a cuppa to practice making an animated motion post lol, I know, I had no idea what this was either but when I looked it up I thought it looked easy enough so I gave it a go.
Not a masterpiece but not bad for a first effort, hopefully you can play it 🤷♀️
Then as it was still overcast I thought I should work in the poly tunnel so I soaked the soil, dug in some blood, fish and bone and then planted up chrysanthemums and zinnia. The zinnia LOVE the heat so provided they get enough water they will be fine, the chrysanthemums not so much but I am trying out different planting places on things to see what happens. I tried delphinium in the tunnel to see if they would flower earlier than the outside ones, initially they started to flower but the cold early on in the year took them even though I tried to keep the flowers out of any draught. The plants were still fine themselves and continued to grow flowering at the same time as the outdoor plants so those will go back outside at the end of the year. No point pampering something that is going to do what it wants when it wants 😂
Inside them for some lunch and then back out to cut some flowers and foliage for something I want to have a go at, something different from my usual style. If it works out see picture below, if not it won’t be there 😜 Once those were cut and conditioning nicely it was time for a sit down for an hour.
The scent of this was amazing!
Tuesday: It is positively not June weather today 🥶 I give up wondering what our weather is doing it has a mind of its own, flaming June, more like flaming cold. I think I rather over did the weeding and planting the last couple of days as my hand was pinging away last night, it is a little better this morning but I was up later than usual at 7.15! I had plenty to do this morning as well so I more or less got straight on with making up flower orders that were being collected later today, I also have an order for tomorrow which I have already made up. Then I spent a little time doing something for myself, practising different flowers like the picture above. I confess I did it then had to take it apart and redo it before I was happy enough with it but it turned out nicely in the end I think.
We have been losing the odd hen every day to the fox, they will be feeding cubs and so more likely to come out in the daytime to find food. I heard someone not far from us lost around 60 in one go when the fox dug in 😏 At the minute we are unable to get new hens there is an all round shortage of point of lay hens, we have customers waiting and we will need some to replace the ones taken but not until September we are told 🙄 We may end up cutting our egg selling days shorter than we thought if we lose many more, we are at the point where we are not too worried about replacing them and continuing with egg sales anyway, this might force our hand. With the cost of feeding, watering, housing (and egg box costs even though we get returns we still have to buy more) the hens we just about break even, if you add in our time we definitely don’t so basically we (and by that I mean John 😂) is working for free and let’s face it who is really prepared to do that 🤔
Once all flowers had been collected it was time for a sit down but first dig something out of the freezer for dinner tonight. If anyone has a foolproof way of organising a chest freezer please tell me 😂 I know I had some lime and chilli chicken in there somewhere but I cannot find it 🤷♀️ The task was even more difficult than usual because my hand is not good with temperature extremes hence why I am still not doing the washing up. There must be a skill to it somewhere, bear in mind that often I have small packets of various bits and pieces that I have saved or picked and frozen for later use so not bags and boxes at all. I did find that using sacks in the bottom worked well, one with frozen fruit one with veg and one with meat but that does not cover a plethora of other oddities like frozen herbs (tiny portions) fruit cubes, passata, hazelnuts, cheese, eggs and even chocolate I think 😂 Knowing what I have in there is not the problem but finding it definitely is 😜
Wednesday: Johns 60th birthday, initially he was going to go to work but I said I don’t know why you don’t have the day off so he did. He did the morning jobs then had a shower and changed into his best clothes, meanwhile I still had work to do and he ended up following me around wondering what to do 😂 I was waiting for a delivery at lunchtime and once that arrived we took flowers down to the pub and had lunch while we were there. Back home just in time for a free delivery of woodchip, love free woodchip 🥰 I am on a database for anyone doing tree work in the area, they get in touch and ask if I want it once it’s chipped, then they deliver it. This was all willow and poplar so great stuff, he asked if I wanted laurel and holly, not chipped I said but if you cut it off whole I will definitely have it especially nearer wreath making time lol. It’s been a good day as Shelley took some flowers to her friend who was working, the manager saw them and asked where they were from, he then contacted me and wants weekly flowers plus extras now and again plus interested in me doing activities with the residents from time to time, brilliant 😁 Various family came and went over the course of the afternoon and evening and John has some rather nice events to look forward to including an F1 hospitality day and Dr Who escape room experience 😂 the second will push him outside of his usual boundaries 😜
I have had to put the sprinkler on the garden this evening, it is so dry the ground is starting to crack up and we have temps of 26c coming at the weekend apparently. It might bring thunderstorms and rain with it but you can bet your bottom dollar if we need it we won’t get it!
Thursday: I have a few orders this weekend as well as Friday flowers so I needed to get flowers and other material cut first thing. Once that was done I really needed to tidy up the flower room a little, some flowers I haven’t use or have gone past their best either get composted or the petals removed for drying. Some I had already decided to hang up to dry I just needed to get and do it so those jobs are all done and I am ready for the next lot. I need to be cutting every other day now to keep the flowers producing and if they are not being used fresh they get dried. Charlie came over with instructions and some of Oscars things as he is staying over tonight (not sure how that is going to go 😂) Shelley is having him this afternoon then bringing him after tea and Charlie and Macca are going to a wedding. I have the twins first though so I will quite possibly be knackered by bedtime 😜
It is all very well having an irrigation system set up but we really really need some rain, there is nothing quite like rain to saturate the ground and give things some oomph again. I am at the point where the things that survive stay and the things that don’t do not get replaced as I think this is the way things are going to stay, possibly (probably) even get worse 🙄 We can only do what we can and there is no point fighting against it we have to work round it but watching the news and the pollution in the USA from wildfires in Canada ought to make us take better notice of what is ahead. And just as I type scientist’s have confirmed that ‘el Nino’ has begun 😏
Friday: Oscar was a superb guest and I even got smiles in the morning, he was up at 5ish had pre breakfast, played, pooped and then went back to sleep at 7.30 for another 45 mins. That gave me just enough time to dash out and water the front and put the eggs out. Once he was awake again I put him in the pushchair and we went out to the paddock to do the horses water, take the rubbish down to the bins and feed the torts. A not of playtime and then Charlie and Macca came to collect him, he had been fine but on seeing them he suddenly realised they hadn’t been here and burst into tears 🥰 Sam and the twins came mid morning for an hour or so and then once they had gone I had to get on with making up some flower bunches to put into the flower shed for Friday flowers.
In the evening we went to get a bit of shopping and on our return a wild duck and lots of ducklings were in the driveway. Last year a duck, and I assume it is the same duck, walked all the way along our lane and down the hill to the local pond with her ducklings, it’s over a mile and she was escorted by a local lady for some of the way. This year after she left our drive she decided to go across the fields, I hope she made it. The evening wasn’t over and I had to make up a tribute heart for a customer collecting in the morning, a bit of watering and finally it was bedtime.
Saturday: Up at 5am and outside to get some watering on and cut some flowers for more orders and market bunches. The next job was to make up 20 jam jars for an order to deliver this afternoon and then a flower arrangement for the local church. It was very hot today and I was hoping for a decent thunder storm and some good rain but what we got was plenty of noise and a wetting. Everything is seriously dry, I put in soaker hoses for irrigation but didn’t bank in no rain for weeks and then temps of 30c in early June 🙄 Being on clay the water gets sucked up so quickly even on raised beds that it barely helps the plants when it is so hot and dry. Once the jam jars were delivered we had a couple of hours rest before getting on with other jobs. Back into the flower room to make up bunches of flowers and jam jars to put out for sale and also prep flowers for drying. All the while I have had the sprinkler on and moving it round every hour or so, I can’t rely on waiting for rain or I will have no flowers left.
Heart tribute flowers for a grave Jam jars boxed and ready to deliver
It seems after talking to a few people that we missed the downpour that was happening all around 😂 literally we had a wetting that was it, no downpour that would soak the ground, barely enough to make any difference whatsoever 🙄
Sunday: Up early and gardening in my pjs 😁 watering, some cutting back and some weeding before it gets too hot. I have come to the conclusion we are in totally the wrong location to try growing anything 😂 no wonder it is always a battle 😜 The rain moves round us, the sun beats down on us, the clay and brash soak up all moisture it’s surprising I can grow anything really!
Once we had dropped off the flowers to the church we went to a nursery to look for some specific plants. I found a few but there were still some eluding me so we set off for a garden centre. We got a bit lost in the country lanes but it was a nice morning and eventually ended up where we wanted to be. As we pulled up I spotted my brothers truck and found him his wife and my mum having breakfast lol. We ordered coffee and cake as we were five mins too late for the breakfast menu. I still couldn’t find the plants I was looking for, salvia amistad seems to have dropped off the face of the garden centres this year 🤷♀️ I lost mine in the winter wet and cold, I had some on order but the order was cancelled and despite looking I have not been able to locate any as yet. I also wanted some white astrantia which is proving to be difficult to find in stock anywhere. Nevertheless I did come back with a few plants so I satisfied my wants for now 😜
It was hot in the afternoon so we stayed inside and relaxed, it is Sunday after all. I spent my time watching the live rain radar and was thrilled when I realised we were actually going to getting some rain, we also got thunder and lightning galore, love a good storm and the smell is fabulous. A strange thing happened when it started thundering though, John started sneezing, loads, I mean 20/30 sneezes so I looked it up and it is a thing, who knew 🤷♀️ it is called thunderstorm asthma, you learn something new every day. I am hoping we get a fair bit more rain as I need those tanks to fill up but I will take what we have had so far, it will energise the plants at least. I think we are a very long way short of restoring ground water levels though but I am happy for now.
I am still having a little trouble with my hand but no where near as much as I have had. I still don’t have full grip and I still can’t tolerate temperature extremes and using it for any length of time starts it jangling but hopefully day by day it gets back to normal.
Monday 13th March: Eeeek it’s a big week this week with Mothers Day on Sunday, by the time I publish this I will have worked with 4/500 stems of various flowers and foliage 😲 and who knew I would absolutely love every single minute of it 🥰 My own flowers are slowly emerging so I still can’t use those but what I will be using are 100% British grown flowers and foliage and not a single stem imported. This is massively important to me, there are lists with wonderfully tempting flowers of all kinds on them, am I tempted, of course I am, would I do it, not a chance. I have been happily connected with British growers and sellers for a year now and each and every one of them is passionate about British grown flowers, sustainability, nature friendly gardening/farming and packaging materials, I have found my tribe 🙌
Why is it so important to me? Well just like food production I think it’s important to know what you are eating, where it comes from and how it was grown/reared and the more I learn the more I know it’s the right way for me. If I can convince a few others along the way then that is a great thing, the more of us on the same road the better off the planet will be.
It is a windy morning this morning, have I ever told you I hate the wind 😂 (many times) it is just that everything clanks and groans around here when it is so windy. My ultimate fear is the roof blowing off, sheets of tin flying around is not something I want to see, they are secure but Mother Nature is fierce as we all know and she can do whatever she wants if she sets her mind to it. It’s not that bad out there but a fear is a fear and not easily shrugged off 🙄 I have a plethora of jobs to chose from this morning, the cleaning needs doing, the bed needs stripping which means plenty of washing (too windy to get it on the line though) the hens at the back need cleaning out and so do the ducks. All the while the week ahead is buzzing round in my head, jobs to do in the flower garden, Mother’s Day flower payment links to go out, Friday flowers, Flos birthday, flower seeds to order, veg seeds I haven’t got yet that I need to order, what to get for dinner later. Another cup of tea before I begin I think lol.
I cleaned, hoovered, polished most of the rooms, changed the bed sheets and put the washing on and by early afternoon sat down for lunch. Charlie came over with Oscar and I looked after him while Charlie went and did her weekly shop. It didn’t go too well, he went to sleep but woke up 10/15 minutes later and I could not pacify him at all 😂 luckily Charlie was not away too long. You think as a seasoned parent you will be able to deal with most things as a grandparent but if you don’t have the milk on tap you are onto a loser 😝
Tuesday: A better day weatherwise though still not that warm and intermittent rain so unless it warms up as the day goes on I am not planning on going outside much. I did check the seedlings and plants in the greenhouse though and things are coming on nicely although we have temps dropping to around -5 again tonight 😏 hopefully that will be it for a while. We need some sunshine/warmth after the rain to get everything growing and the tree leaves sprouting, the buds are there but they are holding off for the time being.
The sun came out and there was a job I needed to do that was in the small tunnel so I figured today was a good day to do that and besides I wanted to get it done so that the tunnel was good to go when the time came. I could have waited for John to do it but to be honest he has a lot of projects on the go already plus the day job so I put my entry level carpentry skills into action. We have wood lying around so I measured what needed, gathered up the wood, got it all sawn to length and put it altogether 😁 I am suitably impressed with myself I can tell you.
Find some suitable wood, screws, saw, tape measure and cordless screwdriver……..…….and build this 😁 the extra box I needed to finish down one side of the small tunnel 🥰
I just need to line it and fill it with compost, the seep has been cut to size and in the first photo you can see the piece of hose that links the two seep hoses together. I will now be able to attach a water hose to the end and leave it to water itself for an hour or two while I get on with other jobs 😁 ✔️
One of my main aims this year is to get the seep hoses in place beforehand, usually I am trying to lay them when everything has started to grow 😝
Wednesday: We had a frost this morning so it was quite cold over night but not the -5 they predicted I don’t think, the reason I say that is because the puddles were not frozen at 7.30 this morning so it can’t have gone down that low 🤷♀️ The temperatures are already up and I think it will be quite a nice day all in all. It is Florence’s 5th birthday today, oh to be five again 🥰 When I was five I was living in Swinbrook and being put on the school bus each morning to go to school in Burford, I can’t imagine that happens much these days 😬
Preparations begin for the Mothers Day flowers, first thing this morning was bucket washing. Buckets for conditioning the flowers need to be scrupulously clean, bacteria in the water is the main cause of premature decay in cut flowers, they are scrubbed with washing up liquid and warm water then thoroughly rinsed and dried ready to go. There will be wrapping to prepare and sundries such as string, raffia and tape to check (just in case I don’t have enough) All the wrapping I use is compostable, even the cellophane is plant based and the sellotape is plastic free 😁
John is at home today working on the flower workshop, I am not really sure what else to call it, I already have the small flower shed in the driveway and studio seems a bit presumptuous so if anyone has an idea please put it in the comments.
I spent most of the first half of the morning sorting out wrapping for the flowers, if I can pre do as much as possible it will save time when I start making up the bouquets. I also had vases to wrap and they are also done and ready to go. Next it was time to go outside and start cutting foliage, the pussy willow is amazing and it has sprouted up everywhere in the ménage 😂 I am thinking I might use this space for growing foliage, seems like a good use as it no longer gets used for the horses. I also cut some of the remaining stems from the willow trees, the stems have now turned a lovely orange colour, I already had some vibrant green stems of a dog wood and I added to that some lilac stems that are still in bud. Then it started to rain and it was quite cold with it so I abandoned that for the time being, tomorrow I will cut some more of anything useful I can find 😁
Went round to see Florence for her birthday 🥳 and eat cake 🎂🥰
Thursday: Drizzle first thing this morning but it feels warmer than of late, we could do with some sunshine though, it would help all the growth along now we have had some rain. It is flower delivery day today and boy have I got a lot of British grown flowers coming 😂 I have also been cutting whatever I have here that is ready. This morning I have cut hellebore and a few anemone, some honey berry that is just beginning to flower and some trailing ivy. I have got lots of flowers to make up in various forms for Mothers Day, bouquets, bunches and grave flowers and can’t wait until the flowers arrive, I have gone over and over the number I will need but as it is the first year I am panicking that I haven’t ordered enough 🙄 Once they are here and I can see exactly what I have I can then allocate some to Friday flowers and for other orders I have that are not Mothers Day related. I will have help tomorrow afternoon and evening, Charlie has offered to give me a hand which is great otherwise I think I would be working into the small hours 😂 I am loving it though and already thinking about things I can do for Mothers Day next year!
Once the flowers arrive they will all need sorting and conditioning, some need different kinds of treatment but basically they all need to sit in water in a cool dark place to take up as much moisture as the stems can hold. The hellebore I cut this morning all have a tiny 1mm line scored right down the stems and are immersed up to the flowers so that they can uptake as much as possible, the anemone just stand in water so you can see that some are more high maintenance than others.
As it often does, everything happened at once, I had a phonecall from Johns business insurance that I was in the middle of payingwhen the first delivery of flowers arrived quickly followed by the second delivery. I needed to get them all in water asap, they smelt amazing and the colours of the tulips were fabulous.
This gorgeous lot will all be turned into Mothers Day bouquets and bunches 🥰
Sam arrived straight from school with the children ready for Mia’s swimming lesson. They came bursting in and were all excited about having a bath a Nana’s, the reason Sam had said they would be having a bath is because they had been playing in the mud at Nursery and were mud splattered everywhere 😂 Time is tight on a Thursday for Sam so factoring in a bath when they get home from swimming is pushing it a bit, a bath at Nana’s was the solution. The question I asked them first is ‘did you have fun playing in the mud’ happy faces and shouts of yes was all the confirmation needed 🥰 I have never known children so happy to be having a bath, Mia on the other hand was mighty upset because she had to go swimming and would have preferred to stay and have a bath with them lol. I bathed them, washed their muddy hair and faces, and got their dinner, at least once they got home they would be ready to go to bed.
Friday: It’s Friday 😁 not any old Friday and definitely Friday flowers day but this time it’s all mothers day flowers. It will be a busy day and I am nervously excited about doing them all 🥰
Blimey 5pm and just finished, that was back breaking work lol, to be fair I did look after Oscar for a couple of hours while Charlie did the wrapping 😝 but still it was a full day of prepping, bunching, wrapping and tidying up. I think I need a nap!
I did manage to get Friday flowers out too which was a bonus. I made up five bunches and they would t all fit in one buckets and touch the water so I put them into two buckets. When I went out later someone had bought a bunch but then put the other bunch into the second bucket and took the bucket as well! I wouldn’t mind but I was really stretched for buckets with all the bunches and bouquets I had made up, I can only assume they used it so the car didn’t get wet and are planning on returning it 🙏
Saturday: I was awake early so got up made a cuppa and went back to bed to listen to a podcast. The electric went off at around 6am but luckily came back on five minutes later, I decided I may as well get up and have breakfast. I have a busy day of flower collections today but I do want to get other jobs done as well. I have asked John to reconnect the mains outside now that we have a mild period of weather coming up, it is so mild this morning I stood outside in my pjs and drank my tea 😁 First though he has gone to the builders merchant to get so bits for the workshop, I asked him ‘while you are there can you buy me some more buckets please’ 😂 builders buckets will have to do for now.
I had a delivery of dahlia tubers arrive yesterday, I have lost most of mine this year because of the cold weather, hopefully the ones in the front beds will have survived.
Oooosh it’s nearly 4.30pm I am on nearly 12,000 steps and my back is aching but Mothers Day flowers are done, collected and I am pooped. I spent half the time weeding in the garden and the other half with customers collecting flowers, it’s been amazing and I have loved every minute of it. Shelley came over with Josh and Flo mid afternoon and we dug up carrots, the kids washed them and then they took them home ready for roast dinner tomorrow, luckily we are invited 🥰 I also sold all the Friday flower bunches from the shed as well as a jam jar, there still some narcissi and daffs left but that is it 😁
On a sadder note the female Turkey, Tedalena, died yesterday ☹️ and now Ted is alone again, to be honest she wasn’t in the greatest shape when she came to us and that was more to do with her breeding than anything so I am surprised she lasted this long, the avian lockdown has not helped matters either.
Sunday: We spent the first part of the morning working outside, I have been weeding and moving pots of plants around, monitoring the seeds I have growing in the greenhouse, watering if necessary. Big Billy the tort has woken up and is moving around, he is still in the greenhouse until he acclimatises and then will go out, Voldertort is not mobile yet. It’s Mothers Day and Charlie and Macca came over with Oscar mid morning for a while, then we nipped off to the garden centre and when we got back Sam, Luke and the children arrived. Once they left we went round to see my Mum and then onto Shelley’s for a roast dinner 😁 Busy day but really lovely.
Lots of plants and trees are just beginning to spring into life which is fabulous, a bit behind this year I think but they will catch up easily enough. I spend a lot of my time looking and wondering exactly where I am going to be planting all the seedlings once they are big enough and trying to weed and tidy areas ready for when that time comes, but there is always so much to do 😝
Well that was the week that was all about Mothers Day flowers, it has been an epic week, I have loved it even though it was pretty full on, I will now spam the blog with pictures 😂
And the good thing is I am already getting repeat business 🥰 so something is right x
frieslandfarm (flowers) 