Monday 18th April, Bank Holiday Monday: Taking it fairly easy today , every day is a work day but some are more work than others 😂 John spent a couple of hours burning all the rubbish, that is cardboard rubbish and tree clipping rubbish from a few weeks ago then he spent the rest of the time on and off finishing the coating on the fences in the paddock. I spent most of my time pottering in the garden doing things like weeding, sowing seeds and taking cuttings. My sister and brother in law came over and I went with them over to Dads grave to put some flowers on (he died two years ago today) but that was mostly all we have done. It has been a lovely sunny day again although slightly cooler and a bit more cloud today.
I picked some flowers this morning for the purpose of trying out some photography, I find it difficult to get good shots so I asked online and got a few tips.
Tuesday: The sun has disappeared today and it’s a tad colder but not too bad, no sign of rain yet though and everything is getting a bit dry 🙄 After a week of working outside, a holiday weekend of socialising (and some more work) I thought it was time to get some housework done 😏 I spent the morning hoovering, polishing, washing and wiping down, I have scratched that itch for a while 🤪 I have also spent some time recording a podcast ‘extra’ which is all about my journey into the flower side of things and how that is going, I was contacted by a listener and they asked for it specifically so I was happy to oblige 😁
It is our granddaughter’s birthday today, Mia is the grand old age of six, which feels pretty grown up to a five year old. It never ceases to make me chuckle how children can’t wait to be the next year older and adults are always yearning to be younger 😂
We had a conversation yesterday with my Sister and Brother in law, the topic was, if you could travel back in time, what time would you go to? I found this interesting because both the fellas decided that it would be good to go to the sixties, and the reason, because you could buy up lots of old run down properties come back to now and be rich 🙄 My sister and I on the other hand thought the post war years would be interesting, nothing to do with getting rich though 😂 more to do with observing how people lived and managed after the war, not only do different generations have a different take on things but it would seem different sexes as well 🤔
It’s raining which is great as the garden is dry, not so great is that I hung the washing out about half an hour ago 😬
Wednesday: I spent the morning cleaning out the Guinea pigs, quail, light Sussex and turkeys before going on to plant up mange tout. Ted the Turkey is a bit bothersome for his lady friend at this time of year and so we have had to separate them so she gets a break 🙄 The problem is he then started attacking the light Sussex cockerel through the fence 🙄 so had to beef up the fencing so he couldn’t get near and hope that works, turkeys, nope never again lol. It has been disastrous to be honest, the females get too much attention and can’t handle it, the males (Ted in the case) spends his whole time trying to find something or someone to mate with 😬 Everything else is doing fine and the quail have started laying in abundance which is good.
I thought I would tackle one thing at a time and so peas were on the agenda, I had some more sweet peas to plant up, some in the ground and some in pots with hazel sticks to climb up. Then the mangetout into one of the vegetable beds, they had to be covered with mesh straight away or the cats will get in and dig them up, anyone would think I lay on toilet areas especially for them. It’s not like they don’t have plenty of space to go and do their business elsewhere.
I did a bit of weeding in the front and then looked after the twins while Mia went for her birthday treat at a riding school. After they had gone it was hum drum things like get the dinner and do some shopping.
Thursday: Another lovely day and a tad warmer than the previous couple. After the usual morning jobs I got my bucket and snips and went out to cut some flowers and foliage. I made up three little jam jar posies to go out and also cut a couple of buckets to make some flower bunches up to put out tomorrow. Had a message to see if I could do a bunch of flowers today and luckily as I had just cut everything I can do that no problem.
I spent a couple of hours in the greenhouse pricking out seedlings before it got a bit hot in there and then checking on all the plants I have already planted up giving them some water if it looked like they needed it. We have had no April showers so far this year 😏 we really could do with one or two as everything is very dry. I think it has been like this a couple of years in a row now, very dry spring, John thinks we may have a drought this year 🤷♀️
Friday: I spent the morning in the greenhouse, no sun today so it wasn’t too hot to work in there. Plenty of pricking out and potting on plus moving some plants over to the poly tunnel as I am fast running out of space in the greenhouse. Just a couple more weeks and everything will be able to go outside and harden off or get planted up.
Then I spent the afternoon with Sam, Shelley and the kiddies at a local Bluebell Wood called Bradbury Clump, the carpet of Bluebells was amazing and the smell was delicious 😋 It was quite cold mind you but as long as you keep walking and it was ok, the children had a fab time running, climbing and playing.
Bluebell woods 🥰
When I got home I had two deliveries, one was florist buckets, I quickly worked out I needed more than one bucket 😂 so I ordered another five. The other was a plant delivery 🤪 a wholesale order of 84, yes 84 penstemon plug plants!
Saturday: More of the same as every other day lol, plenty to do in the greenhouse and in the garden, I wanted to get the dwarf beans planted up and they are now in situ. I had to get Biscuit in from the paddock and section her a small area off as she is lying down a lot which is a sign she is having too much grass. That means getting the electric fencing out and the tape, John put the tape away at the end of last year 🙄 and if you have ever tried to untangle that stuff you will know why I was 😡 if I get it in I do it properly so that it’s easy to use next time, not John he just gathered it up and dumped it 🙄 Once I had done that I wanted to get the front paddock cut before any rain (chance would be a fine thing) Last year we didn’t cut it and then struggled at the end of the year and had to put the horses on it. This year I want to cut a good inner circle of it and leave the outsides long for the orchids which will mean that we should be able to cut the long grass more easily at the end of the year. The problem is out mower does not like long grass 😂 but if it’s half on short grass then it copes more easily, that’s the plan any way.
Sunday: Busy day today, for me anyway, not so much for John. He has had a painful elbow for a few weeks but though I keep telling him to get it looked at he did nothing about it. This morning he could barely move his arm so he tried to call 111, long waiting time, called the minor injuries they don’t want to know because it’s been so long since it first happened, back on the phone to 111, long phone call and finally get an answer to call the surgery in the morning 😏 I fully support the NHS but talking to other people they say the same and that is, not sure what has happened to the service since covid, people are struggling to get phone appointments let alone face to face ones and don’t even get me started on the chemist in our area 😬 I am sure it will all sort itself out in time 🤷♀️
Anyhow, while John was laying on the sofa 🤪 I spent most of the day outside working on all aspects of the garden. Some watering as it’s bone dry 🙄 some planting up of tomatoes in the big tunnel and some flowers in the veg garden area. I also planted up 6 small shrubs which will eventually be used for cut foliage, they are now where the bed between the tunnels used to be, hopefully they will do well there. They will never get too big for the area because I will constantly be trimming them lol. Did I tell you I had decided to use the small tunnel for flowers 😊 well I have and I planted up some flower plants yesterday, more of the same will go outside it is just so that I can get some earlier blooms of a few things. Planted up a grapevine that I got from the sale area at a garden centre back in late winter, bargain as it has now come into leaf. I picked the first lot of asparagus for dinner tonight along with some spring greens, not sure what else I did but it was plenty up to mid afternoon when we decided to visit my Mum. I took her some flowers because I can 😁 and I made her pose for photos 😂 she tried to hide behind them. Beautiful aren’t they, the flowers and my Mum 🥰 Back home, cook the dinner then out to the greenhouse to water that after a day of sunshine. Another week done, I hope you have a great week and get to do at least one thing you love x
Monday 4th April 2022: Weeeee it’s Momday again and this week I am covid free 😁 It was raining this morning which is brilliant because we have not had any rain for ages and the water tanks are getting a bit dry. I think we have a good bit forecast on and off this week so it should replenish them nicely. Because it was raining I spent most of the day cleaning 🤪 Hoovering, moving furniture, dusting, stripping the beds and sorting through stuff to get everything put away in the right place. I finished that around 1pm and then thought I’d better start putting together a plan for this weeks flower club task, a pave, yes it was alien to me as well. I have spent a fair amount of time looking at designs so I have some idea of what I am doing, I identified the vessel I will be making it in and now I just have to wait and cut the foliage and flowers on Wednesday morning ready to go and do my thing on Wednesday evening. As always I don’t really know what or how and like last time I thought ‘maybe I won’t do it’ but then again I like a challenge so I am going to give it my best shot. I then had a phone call from Flowers from the Farm, or at least one of the ladies that run the organisation, we had a great chat on a few different subjects related to flower farming but the call was about the Flowers from the Farm big weekend 5th-7th August. Was I going to be putting on an event, probably not says I, only going into my first year and nothing to really show for it yet I would feel a bit out of my depth lol. She directed me to lots of information including a zoom meeting on the subject and different flowers farmers, the scale of their weekends which range from big to quite small, and the type of things they do. So I spent the next couple of hours watching, listening and learning about all kinds of events and potentially it may be something I will give some serious thought to. One lady did a small ticketed free event for just 10 people, a tour of her flowers, tea and cake, well I reckon I could probably manage that easy enough so watch this space. It is all to promote the British flower farming industry so keep an eye out for any you see advertised and go along 😁
Tuesday: A dry but very blowy day, not too bad temperature wise though. I got the usual jobs done before getting outside to get some bits done out there. I had intended to empty the rain butt by the greenhouse and stand it back upright again as it has gone lopsided and is no longer connected to the gutter 🙄 but it is full and so I didn’t want to waste the water in there, I will use it until it’s empty and then do the job. Next on to plant some ranunculus in the big tunnel, I want to get some flowers sooner rather than later from these and planting them under cover should do the trick, I can see my tunnel being a flower tunnel rather than a veg one soon 😂 Next job was to fill one of the raised beds with top soil and do some direct sowing. I felt the time is right and the farmer next door is sowing into the field as well so I am hoping we are correct. This will be a first sowing of pink love in a mist, some blue and mother of pearl poppies, bunny tail & foxtail grass, gypsophila, some calendula and some green amaranth. I then covered it with environmesh to stop it all getting dug up or eaten and weighted the mesh down as it is so windy today. I also moved a few things from the greenhouse outside to start hardening them off, sweet peas mainly. In the autumn I will be a lot quicker off the mark with autumn sown and planted things so that I have flowers earlier in the year to get going quickly. I think over the next few days I will be sowing veg seeds as well as planting out the peas, mangetout and this years broad beans, yep the season is under way 😁
Ready to get the first round of direct sowing done.Indents made with a cane ready to sow the tiny seeds which will hopefully blossom into magnificence 😁
Wednesday: Awful weather today 🤪 rainy, windy, moody dark skies, yuk. I had already decided I was not going to be doing much out there 😂 My focus first thing this morning was to get all my bits together and ready for flower club tonight, the practical task was a pave. I didn’t have a clue what that was when it was mentioned but I spent a good bit of time researching it and collating an idea. Thinking how it will go and how it actually goes is two different things I discovered 🙄 I wasn’t the only one at the club to say ‘it didn’t really turn out how I thought it would’ in fact the majority of members said the same. Still I learnt some good lessons not least the shape of your vessel is important for what to you are trying to achieve. Mine had sloped sides and therefore I could not get the tulip heads down low enough to create the idea of a flat surface, it’s a learning curve which is exactly what it is meant to be 😁
For the rest of the day I indulged myself in doing something with flowers, making flower crowns 🥰 The blossom on the trees at this time of year just lend themselves beautifully to flower crowns. I made two, the first was a big blousy crown and the second a more refined one. I found it really difficult to take a good photo of them mind you, I resorted to wearing one and taking a photo in the mirror which is not a terribly good look but without anyone else around to model it that’s the only option I had, maybe I will look out for a glass head/fish bowl or something😜 I did take some photos and put them on my flower page and they were well received, in fact I have been looking at costings to do flower crown workshops which I think would be fun. I am just trying to establish what materials work well for the environmentally friendly side of things. All natural, totally compostable is doable but not so robust, the next step is recyclable which is a good alternative and a little stronger. A lot of crowns will use the florist tape which is not environmentally friendly and the industry hasn’t quite got there with that one yet so I have ordered some washi tape to see if that works or not 🤷♀️ once I have these things in place I can advertise workshops. John has kindly said he I’ll make a top to cover his pool table and we can use that room 👏 brilliant.
A half flower crown using lilac foliage and Arabis flower and love in a mist foliage.This is a full crown using wild cherry blossom, Jerusalem cowslips, lilac foliage and some tiny dark red saxifrage.
Thursday: Still windy this morning though there is some sunshine about. Today I was hoping to make a cuppa, sit down and watch a video but I got the time muddled up so I just sat down with a cuppa instead. The video was live last night but I couldn’t watch it because I was at the flower club so I was hoping to watch it this morning but it won’t be available until after midnight tonight 🤷♀️ Flowers from the Farm had organised a live online charity event with Shane Connolly called Flowers for Ukraine with Shane Connolly. Too good an opportunity to be missed I signed up and made my donation, they sent the link but I knew I would have to wait and catch up later. I have seen the reviews on the group this morning and can’t wait to watch it but I will have to wait longer 😏 Shane Connolly is a florist of the highest calibre, he did the wedding flowers for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge so you can see it is a rare opportunity. They smashed their target amount and all the proceeds will go to help the people of Ukraine in one way or another. Not only are his credentials amazing (though that reason alone would be good enough) but wherever possible the company uses seasonal British flowers, are environmentally responsible and understand the relationship between plants, flowers and mental well-being, doesn’t get better than that I reckon 🥰 Roll on midnight 🤪
Blooming eck that is not very nice out there today, it’s not that it’s cold or wet, just the bloody wind, it feels like you are getting a constant battering, quite tiring really. Most of the morning I spent in the greenhouse planting up the ranunculus and potting on tomato plants, this year I have Roma, Tigerella, Alisa Craig and Indigo Rose. If I could only grow one I would choose the indigo varieties as they are delicious plus they have plenty of flesh so they are good for cooking as well as eating raw, they also come in cherry size and although I grew them last year I only have the larger ones this year. Hoping the wind dies back a bit soon, it is not easy trying to carry things around in this plus the empty pots I stacked neatly are beginning to blow all over the place 😜
I have been keeping an eye on the lilacs and I am hoping that over the next few days the buds will begin to burst open, I do have someone wanting a bouquet a week and I almost have some tulips that are ready, I think the combination will be lovely 😊 Hurry up and grow please 🤞
Friday: Golly gosh it’s 5.15pm and I just got the dinner prepped and on and finally sat down, now I feel tired 🥱 Busy day today, first up I got all the morning stuff done so that I could sit and watch this video link, oh my days that did not disappoint let me tell you. Inspirational is the only word I could use, British grown, seasonal flower arranging at its best and by one of the best, and I have to say, the nicest most genuine man. All done with reusable or compostable items even the funeral arrangement, not a single piece of floral foam in sight 😁 All the while raising money for Ukraine, a brilliant idea and thoroughly enjoyed by everyone who donated and watched. After watching and still buzzing I decided to go and cut a few bits and do a quick outdoor arrangement celebrating all that is spring around here. Then I thought I ought to get on with some real work 😂 I spent the rest of the day in the garden planting up some flowers and ornamental bits, the end of the bed that we reduced needed some filling. Then some salvia arrived for the cutting patch and then I mostly spent the rest of the time going through plants I had growing in pots overwinter ready to sell. Discarding anything that didn’t make it or take root, sorting out plants to go out for sale in the front, watering (it’s surprising how quickly things in pots dry out) watering in the tunnels and the greenhouse before have a quiet sit down to enjoy the peace of the afternoon 🥰
Saturday: Mixed bag of weather, a tad cold at times, a breeze, some sunshine but dry at least. Busy day, after the initial jobs we went to the farm next door to get some dog and cat food but also because they had a Easter event going on, pony rides, Easter egg trail, piglets to look at, Easter hats to make, coffee and doughnuts on sale (the most important bit 🤪) Once back home I got on with some pricking out in the greenhouse before some planting up of sweet peas, red cabbage and new potatoes. Dashing backwards and forwards to the egg shed for customers who were paying by card, this has been one of the best decisions we have made to be fair as less and less people carry loose change. John meanwhile has been making some supports to go over the raised beds for the cut flowers, not all the beds need them but things like cosmos, delphinium, lupin, chrysanthemums all get very tall and need support. The supports for these don’t need to be pretty they are purely functional and so are basically a wooden frame with legs that sits over the raised bed. Jute netting will be attached across the top for the plants to grow through. I went for jute as a more environmentally friendly option so I will see how it stands up to the job.
We have an earlier than usual finish today as we are off out to catch a steam train 🥰 fish and chip supper on board while we take a gentle journey through the countryside, perfect.
Fabulous evening and well worth checking out their time table if you are ever in the area. https://www.gwsr.com/
Sunday: I had high hopes of getting a fair bit done today but that didn’t pan out as planned lol. John cleaned out the hens frost thing while I sorted out eggs etc and then we went and got some shopping as we were out of everything. Back home to drop off the shopping and put it away the. A quick trip to the garden centre to pick up a particular plant I was after. When we got back Sam, Luke and the kiddies arrived, Mia and Lucie stayed with us while George went with Sam and Luke to the barbers to get haircuts. They came back and shortly after that my Mum popped in to drop of some plants she had for me, she left and Charlie turned up and then Shelley, Martin and the kids arrived as well. So we spent the afternoon in the garden with everybody not getting much else done but that’s ok nothing is urgent and it will all wait for another time 😁
I have been keeping a close eye on any flowers and foliage trying to work out exactly when I will have the first couple of bunches or bouquets ready and I think I am just about there 😁 My first lot of flowers will be going to a customer on Wednesday, exciting stuff, hopefully I will have enough to put some out for the Easter weekend as well fingers crossed. Eventually I will have so many flowers I probably won’t know what to do with them all 🤪
Monday 28th March 2022: I spent most of the day doing bits and pieces, pottering, call it what you will. I got a few plants in the ground in various places, watered some of the pots and watered the greenhouse but apart from that nothing major. There was plenty I could have got done but was a little tired by lunchtime, quick sit down and a rest then some more pottering, that’s my day, potty 🤪
Tuesday: I can’t even remember what I did for the first part of the morning 🤷♀️ but probably the usual jobs such as eggs, rubbish, washing up, social media posts lol. Mid morning I checked the post box and I had some plug plants delivered, some I had forgotten I ordered 🙄 One lesson I really have to learn is writing down the orders and keeping the book with me at all times so I can double check when I think ‘ooo look, I think I will order those’, doubling or tripling on flower orders is not a good thing 😂 These are chrysanthemums and I am aware I have others on order, they are perennial however and so I will have them year on year. I can propagate from them to increase stock and either use that stock or sell it on so it’s ok, that’s what I am telling myself anyhow 🤪 As soon as I unpacked them I made a coffee and went into the greenhouse to pot them up, they will stay in there until this cold snap moves on and then I will put them in the cold frames until the danger of frosts has passed when they will be planted out. These are early to mid season chrysanthemums, I also have some mid to late ones on order, most are spray chrysanthemums which will be fillers but some are single bloom and beautiful shapes and colours.
It is quite a bit colder today, the sun has gone and we have grey cloud and drizzle, by Thursday we will have minus temps overnight and even the threat of some snow 🙄 It’s the see saw season with swings of up 10 degrees in each direction at the moment.
Lunchtime some bare roots shrubs arrived so I soaked them in water for an hour before going outside to plant them up. There should have been five but in fact there were six 😁 I planted up four of them in various areas, one out in the front paddock where I have some other small shrubs trying to grow. Another on the edge of the orchard area, one near the pirate ship and one down in the difficult area of the bottom bed, should do ok there but veg don’t. The remaining two I potted up and put in the cold frame area where they will stay until they form some good roots and then will go out for sale. Then I decided to sow some runner beans and some dwarf French beans, these will be grown in the greenhouse for quite a while before they are ready to go out. After that a bit of pricking out, Ami Majus, which is a great filler flower a bit like cow parsley. I will direct sow some seeds for that as well but as always I like to hedge my bets and get some started under cover. I can definitely see me thinking about bigger under cover areas in the future, I am filling up every available space I have at the minute 😂
Wednesday: Very much colder today than last week, today I decided not to go outside and do any work, I stayed in the warm instead. I spent the best part of the morning baking cakes 🍰 two Madeira cakes, one chocolate and almond and one everyday fruit cake, I also made up some batches of Yorkshire pudding mix to freeze for the times when we don’t have many eggs. The reason I did that is because we have so many eggs that I really need to do some thing useful with them. I am trying as hard as I can to sell as many as I can but with all the pullets laying like crazy, we have a lot so might as well turn them into something for the freezer. Went outside early evening it is positively Baltic 🥶
Plenty of cakes for the freezer, got to use the glut of eggs we are getting.
Thursday: Today should have been the highlight of the year so far for me but it wasn’t, gutted does not come close. On Monday I tested positive for covid and today I was supposed to be going on the course day with Sarah Raven but am unable to go 😭🤬 Yeah, it sucks, worse there is no cancellation policy for covid, worse still they didn’t even acknowledge my email to say I couldn’t attend.
The day got worse as one of the Turkey ladies has died overnight so now Ted only has one lady friend. It is even colder today than yesterday and we have had quite a few snow flurries on and off through the day though none of it has settled so far. One good thing that happen though, the card reader arrived today so I can at least take card payments in the future plus get some QR codes up and running.
Going back to the covid, that is obviously why I felt quite tired last week, I also had a very sore throat (but didn’t know that was a symptom) I tested on Friday because of the way I felt but it was negative so I thought I just had a bug. Sunday evening I had a really bad headache that I still had on Monday morning so I thought I would test again. I checked the test after 10 mins, nothing, five minutes later it had a faint line 😳 Because I am on immune suppressants I have a specially issued PCR test that I then had to do and send off, that result came back positive as well on Tuesday morning 😩 However by Tuesday the illness seemed to have ‘broken’ and I had nothing but by this time the wheels had started in motion and so I was awaiting a phone call from the next stage of the chain. That was a call from a Dr from infection control 🤪 we had a discussion about when the illness started, what symptoms I had and how I was now feeling, the upshot was that he didn’t think I needed the anti viral medication that I could get to lessen the effect of the virus. I agreed with him, it seems that my immune system has done the job after all which is good news 😁 I need to watch out for the next couple of weeks apparently as breathing complications can appear well after the virus has gone 🤷♀️ Today I was amazed to find in the post box a replacement PCR test kit, I am impressed that the system they put in place works exactly as they say it will, good job, well done 👏
Friday: Still testing positive but all I have is a ‘fuzzy’ head and I often have that anyway 😂 I thought we might wake up to snow this morning, yesterday late afternoon and evening there were flurries of snow some of them pretty intense but they haven’t amounted to anything and the sun is shining beautifully this morning though it is still cold and frosty.
We had the final window fitted today so now they all match lol, before it was even in I was looking at decoration ideas. It is the spare room and was last done around 8 years ago, now a new smaller window has been fitted it will need some making good and so might as well be upgraded at the same time 😁 I love a project 🥰
I potted up some scented pelargonium that I had ordered. I am not a geranium type ordinarily but scented ones, yes please 😁 If you are ever planning a sensory garden then you have to include these, apple, lemon, mint, all the wonderful smells you can get with these little gems are amazing.
I have been watching Bridgerton 🥰 Shelley said to me ‘I can’t believe you haven’t seen it’ so I thought I would see what it was all about. Well I love it, it is multifaceted, relatable on so many levels and comparable even to modern society, social media in particular. It is refreshingly easy to watch, witty and the characters are likeable, beautiful and downright handsome. Scandal, love, unrequited love, deception, plus the costumes and sets are perfectly gorgeous, what more could you want ❤️ I think writer was particularly clever, a large family of boys and girls spanning a good few years in ages will give you reams of storylines for future series and I for one cannot wait for the next series 😁
Saturday: John spent the day taking down old fencing, mowing the lawn and getting a bit of shopping. I spent the morning in the greenhouse, moving things around, moving plants over to the poly tunnel, putting some things out into the cold frame, I actually don’t know exactly what but we did do some things 🤪
Sunday: Finally having negative tests mean I can go out, I know you can anyway these days but I wouldn’t because I didn’t feel it was very responsible so I stayed put. I wanted to go to the diy shop to get some particular flowers that the website said they had, they didn’t 😏 so we went to the garden centre to see if they had them, they didn’t and worse we thought we would get breakfast but they were not cooking 😏 called in to see my brother on the way back for a coffee and he said go to this other shop they have loads of bargains, they had sold out 😏 not a terribly productive morning on the plant buying front 😂 Called in to see Mum and Ken to wish her a belated happy birthday and then back home. I did pick up some half price lily bulbs so I planted those when I got back, I also spent a good couple of hours in the greenhouse pricking out tomato seedlings (pretty big seedlings 🙄) and potting them up. I potted on some crazy daisies, Californian poppies and some China asters. Meanwhile John cleaned out the hens at the front and the back.
I took my very first card payment now we have a card machine 😁 hopefully that will be a useful addition, since covid people don’t carry much cash anymore. I need to set up the QR codes for another easy way to pay.
Monday 28th February 2022: There was a beautiful pink glow in the sky this morning before it turned to drizzle.
To say I felt sick yesterday when Putin started talking about Nuclear alert was an understatement and I am sure that the vast majority of you felt the same. How is it in this day and age that someone with such power can (or even want to) play such stupid games 🤷♀️ A world where everyone lives in harmony is clearly not possible sadly, the events are unbelievable and the pathetic rhetoric he spouts is also unbelievable, he has lost touch with reality, if he really ever had a hold of it. Because of all that is going on my thoughts are dragged straight back to self sufficiency mode. Not just on a personal level but a National one, the reliance on other countries for vast amounts of supply be it energy, metals, wood or food etc is, in my humble opinion, a big mistake. We have seen how quickly things can change and if the last few years have taught us anything at all it should be that relying on others for our needs can at times see us limping along in survival mode rather than thriving 😏
I spent the morning in relative bliss in the greenhouse potting on plants that I started off at the end of last year. There are good signs of growth and so while we are in the calm before the storm period I decided to pot things on and feed anything that looked like it was in need. Most of these plants will go out for sale at the front but some of them will be used for the cut flower beds or to fill up any empty areas in my flower beds.
Rain stopped play outside in the afternoon.
Tuesday: Is it just me or has everyone got a morbid interest of turning the news on whenever possible? I like information and if I see something written or heard something I like to check it out from as many sources as I can. Nothing I have heard that has come from Russian propaganda has any merit whatsoever as far as I can tell. Things like the Nazi reference to Ukraine, does he have a point I think so off I go to check it out from the most reliable, independent source I can find, I have checked out many things and they have all been twisted to suit Putins purpose, so I conclude that the man is mad, I suspect most other people think so too and who knows where this will end. I am willing Ukraine to somehow beat off the might of the Russian army, their bravery is incredible.
I did a bit in the greenhouse, sowed a couple more seeds but that was about it really, I went to town in the afternoon with a Shelley for a mooch round the charity shops and a hot chocolate (weather is miserable). It was me doing the animals in the afternoon and while I was doing the rounds I realised that the fox had tried to get in the goose hut. One one of the roof rails is rotten and the ply underneath joins right at that point, I think the fox has got up there and tried to scrabble the rotten wood out of the way to gain access. What made me think this is that some things that were on the roof were down on the floor and they were not there yesterday evening. John had to go up and put an extra piece of ply on top of the roof as a temporary measure to make sure I don’t lose any of my lovely gooses 😁
Wednesday: More of the same weather wise though it is supposed to improve later in the week. For now it is grey, damp and drizzly so not much going on outside. I did sow some mangetout seeds (1st sowing) in the greenhouse, I think trying to sow direct would be a waste of time, there are the mice that pinch them or the weather that rots them so starting them off inside is a safer option.
I have been putting the final touches to my very first competition entry at the flower club tonight 😝 I really have no idea if I fulfilled the brief, in fact there wasn’t one really, look it up on the internet, well that produced thousands of different interpretations 😂 so I have done my best with what I had and what I wanted to achieve. I was surprised how nervous I am at submitting it later, but I am also excited to see what everyone else has done to get some ideas for another time and we have a demonstration which will be lovely. A pot et fleur is what was asked for and hopefully that’s what I have produced 🤷♀️ next time it’s a pave so I’d better get researching that next 😋
Thursday: I am bouncing around this morning with the biggest grin on my face because I only went and came in second in the ‘pot et fleur’ competition 😁 I was genuinely amazed and even more amazing is that the demonstrator who was booked was the independent judge and did the critique said that it was a difficult choice between the first and second place, whaaaaat 😁😁😁 seriously I can’t tell you how chuffed I am that I got it right. The demonstration itself was really inspiring it was titled ‘be kind to the earth’ and the arrangements were all made using compostable or recyclable holders so right up my street and she even made a heart similar to the ones I made with the weeping birch, obviously hers were amazing but it gives me something to work towards next year so watch this space lol.
My entry which I was totally amazed to find got second place 😁
Not much on the agenda this morning and I had a hospital appointment in the afternoon. The trip to and from the hospital took longer than the actual appointment 🙄 still it was nice to see a consultant face to face again, last time I saw anyone it was 2019 😮 All is well though so that is a good thing.
Friday: Not a bad day, a tad cold this morning but no rain and the sun made an appearance this afternoon. I did some baking this morning, just an oat and seed bar for me to snack on and a date and walnut cake for John to snack on lol. In the afternoon I went into the greenhouse and potted up some dahlias that had arrived, these were from Sarah Raven and are the William Morris collection 😁 there were supposed to be four tubers in there but I found five yay. I also sowed quite few annual seeds, amaranth (green giant) China Aster, phlox (crème brûlée) calendula (orange flash) some sunflowers, teddy bear, a multi stem and some large sunflowers, I also sowed some foxglove seeds, I think that was it but could have been a few more things 🤔 After that I made a cup of tea and sat out the front in the sunshine for a little while that was until,I spotted lots of sycamore seedlings sprouting so I did some weeding. Back inside to get the dinner sorted and then out to feed the poultry and collect the eggs. Back in to get the dinner in the oven and while it was cooking I had a live workshop to attend online. After we had eaten I had another live workshop to attend online and finally that was the end of the day and I could spend the rest of the evening relaxing (actually I was playing wordless unlimited 😝)
Saturday: I planted up plenty of gladioli bulbs today although not all of them, I will be successionally planting these so as to stagger the time that they come into bloom, I don’t want them all blooming at the same time. This will be the same for most of the annuals, the seeds will have a gap of at least two weeks between sowings so that I get a continuous flush of flowers rather than all at once (that’s the plan anyhow) I also potted on some tomato seedlings that I have been growing indoors, they are doing well and just needed to go into bigger pots to bring them on more. I sowed some more zinnia seeds and some sweet peas called ‘sublime scent’ 🥰 After doing that I went and helped John who had been giving the birds a good clean out, he did the ducks, the new point of lay at the front and the hens at the back. I went and did the birds in the stable block, we deep litter those so it was a case of raking it over, adding new sawdust and redoing the laying boxes and areas. I also added some sunflower hearts, seaweed and diatomaceous Earth to their food bowls. The new hens have begun to lay 😁 it won’t be long before we are getting lots of pullet eggs every day. Early evening I went over to Sam’s to babysit while he and Luke went out for the night.
Sunday: Not a bad day today although the sunshine was a bit deceiving, it looked a lot warmer than it actually was. We were up quite late for us as the babysitting was an early morning finish 🥱 but we soon got on with a few things. John did some tidying and burnt some rubbish meanwhile I prepped the dinner for later today and this time it was Sam, Luke and the kids coming for roast. I can’t think what else we did today but we were constantly on the go so must have got quite a bit done.
I need to wander across the paddock tomorrow sometime and see if the wild garlic is growing yet, I have seen other posts where people have handfuls, maybe mine will get to that stage one day 🙄
I hope you have a great week, the news on the world stage at the minute is not so good and every time I watch the news I feel heartbroken for Ukraine. All the more reason to really enjoy the little things in life, the Robin singing it’s heart out on the branch of a tree, that lonesome sunbeam that has found a chink in the clouds, the sound of normal everyday life going on around us, don’t take anything for granted, look, listen, love x x
Monday 21st February 2022: We have had three storms in five days and it’s not done yet, Dudley, Eunice, Franklin and next will be coming Gladys 🙄😩 The first was bad, the second was worse, the third was as bad as the second and goodness knows what the forth has in store for us, all the while each gust will be loosening tree roots and the dry winter we had just came to an abrupt end 😝 As I always say, you have to watch for February, it’s a bitch that bites you on the backside!
We managed to get the new lawn area down before the storms hit, it makes the garden look a lot bigger but I now have to decided where to put the herbs I dug up.
This is where I had the herb bed but we have done away with it and made a bigger lawn area, less weeding for me more play area for the children. Luckily we have had plenty of rain to water the new turf in 😂
There is absolutely no let up in the constant gusting of wind 😏 It’s like a headache you can’t get rid of. John has gone to work this morning but he did the rounds before he left and one of the geese has laid an egg 😁 hopefully that will be the first of many. I would really like to be getting on outside but there is no chance of that at the minute so yesterday I bought more plants and bulbs instead 😝 We have the point of lay hens arriving this afternoon, they were supposed to come Friday but storm Eunice was a bit fierce for driving in and so it was decided that Monday would be better 🙄 Meanwhile I spent the morning indoors and paid the balance of our holiday later this year, it was one that was booked pre pandemic and so we never got there. One of the stops (the main reason we booked it) is in St Petersburg, Russia, so we may not get there again this year, who knows how that is all going to pan out at the minute. It is all pretty gloomy on the news front, the weather is awful, really should just hibernate I reckon.
I decided to pop out to the greenhouse and pot up the bulbs I bought to bring them on a little and also sowed a few seeds, bells of Ireland and lemon mint both which are good fillers for bouquets. The wind is insane and we have lost yet more roof panels from the Guinea pig cage, we bought two more on Saturday to replace the ones that had already come off and smashed but we haven’t been able to fix them yet as the wind has not relented. I did say to John we need to rethink the roof but he decided to just replace what is there, well now I think we really do need to re design it because that’s just ridiculous. I personally think we will have to drop the roof to inside the walls, it just gets the brunt of the strong winds and doesn’t survive, no point flogging a dead horse as they say. The fences out there are also wobbling like crazy, I think we are going to have a good bit of extra work to do once the winds finally cease. To be honest we need what I have always said we needed and that is an extra hedge down the side of the garden area, I wanted to double fence it years ago (because the horses would eat the hedge otherwise) and put a hedge inbetween, but my thoughts always land on deaf ears, time to shout louder I think as this kind of weather is only going to get worse in my humble opinion. Hedges are the natural windbreaks that help to slow the speed and reduce damage, it’s why I am always amazed that people are so keen to rip them out 🤷♀️
We took delivery of 40 point of lay hens today, they will begin laying in a couple of weeks time and so should have plenty of eggs going into spring. The price of feed is going up massively, the feed supplier isn’t even passing the whole increase on as he is too embarrassed but we have done the figures and will be running a deficit if we don’t put our eggs up by 20p a box. To be honest we should do it every time there is a feed price increase but we don’t and now find we are caught on the hop. Half the problem is the cost of everything is going up and the other half of the problem is the bigger companies squeeze out the smaller producers, so use them or lose them is my advice to anyone who has local producers near them. I know so many people who are thinking of giving up altogether because it’s just not cost effective to carry on 😣
The septic tank lorry arrived, I had spoken to the office but they never got back to me with an appointment so I wasn’t expecting him but that’s fine we were here and it needed emptying so it’s all good.
Tuesday: Not any old Tuesday 22/2/22 it will be all the 2s at 22:22 tonight lol. I got up wandered into the kitchen looked out the window and saw the horses in the front paddock 🙄 threw on my clothes quickly and went out to get them back into the side paddock. We had let them in there before Christmas to eat the grass off but they were inside an electric fence to stop them eating the hedgerow and my fruit trees. During the storms the side fence had rocked loose and a gateway had come down, I had said to John we need to sort that out, he said it will wait to the weekend so we hashed it back up. I was cross with myself really because I should have pushed John into getting it sorted there and then, I knew what the outcome would be and I was right. The horses will not miss any opportunity to be somewhere they are not supposed to be, luckily they didn’t touch the fruit trees or I would have been so much more annoyed. As it was I jarred my back again trying to move the slip rails to get them out of the field, not the best of moods this morning. I don’t feel the best either and took a covid test just to make sure it is not that (negative thank goodness) So with the niggling pain in my back returned (it was just easing right off) and a heady sinus thing going on, I am rather grumpy and tired today. The winds have eased off but it is still pretty windy out there, it was still this morning but picked up again now. The momentum and enthusiasm I had for everything Spring will bring, has for the moment disappeared, it doesn’t help with the very depressing problems on the Ukrainian border, worrying and unsettling times. I don’t think half the population even realise what it will mean if there is a full escalation of the situation, a Third World War is not something that is comprehensible in this day and age but it could have far reaching consequences for those that are ‘fighting fit’ it doesn’t bear thinking about to be honest.
Sam and Shelley came over with the children and we spent some time in the front paddock playing in the sun was still pretty blustery mind you lol.
John went out to look at a job and when he came back he said the horses had bust into the front paddock again 🙄 So I went out and got them some hay and took them to the far paddock and shut them in while we repaired the fence a little bit better than we had before though it still needs doing properly. It is solid for the time being but once they broke through they will keep going at it so it needs fortifying 😂
Charlotte came round to discuss her venture into growing veg 🥰 She is buying a tiny greenhouse and using some space here, it will be good to pass on as much knowledge as I can.
Wednesday: John has gone to work this morning but before he went he did the animals, the back lot anyway and which left me to do the animals in the orchard and the new hens, just to check on them and make sure everything’s got water and feed et cetera et cetera so that’s what I did. Once I’d finished making sure everything was fed and watered I thought, well I will pick up some of the debris from the storm namely the roof panels that came off of the guinea pig run, two had to come off and then some more came off and smashed all over the ground. Picked it all up and put it in a pile, bent down to pick the whole lot up and 🤬 buggered my back, just when it was getting so much better 😢 I limped inside shouting ‘ooo’ ‘arghh’ and the occasional swear word and am now stuck on the sofa, I wanted to get soo much done today 🤦♀️ I have taken some painkillers and having a coffee hoping it wears off, I could cry, in fact I feel like crying right at this minute.
It would be fair to say I did bugger all today except nurse a bad back, hobble about, get an ice pack on it, get a hot water bottle on it (at different times 😝) lie down, sit down, sit up, walk around, wince a lot and resign myself to being incapable, all of which is pretty annoying as there was a fair bit to do and the weather wasn’t too bad. Tomorrows weather is looking a bit more wintery so I will have missed the opportunity 😏
Thursday: Didn’t do much apart from the usual today as I went with Sam, Shelley and the children to soft play. Well I obviously didn’t go on the soft play but I sat and drank coffee while the kids played, then we all went back to Shelleys u til mid afternoon.
Friday: A busy, busy day today. I have plants arriving left right and centre and so I spent the morning planting them up in the cut flower bed area. Roses, sweet Williams, sea holly and Veronica all went in. Plus I planted some of the herbs I dug up at the end of last year. Then John came home and we went out for lunch, well that was the plan except the cafe was on a restricted menu so it was a sandwich and cake. Back home and we got on with tidying and sorting lots of areas in the garden ready for the season ahead. I planted up a task for the flower club I go to, a ‘pot au fleur‘ I have had to Google it and interpret it to fit with what I want to do. I don’t have house plants so don’t want to buy them just to do this arrangement so I have gone with an outdoor style one lol. John cut the grass this afternoon including the new turf, conveniently I get emails telling me what to look for in order to decide when to cut it, it’s ready and it’s dry enough today so that can be ticked off the list for a couple of weeks.
Drying tulip petals 😁
Ooops sorry busy weekend almost forgot about the blog 🤪 Saturday and Sunday: Busy out in the garden as the weather was lovely for the time of year. John has been busy putting an extra row of slabs next to the cold frames so that I have somewhere to put more plants that I am bringing on. Meanwhile I have had plants arriving eeek so I am E been busy planting g them up, generally speaking plants will arrive at the optimum time for planting unless they are plug plants. I have been sowing more seeds, sweet peas as a mouse ate most of the first lot 🙄 I have been out to the garden centre today with Charlotte, she wants to grow a lot more of her own this year and so we went to get seed potato’s and onion sets plus seeds for micro veg and other salads etc. I also cooked a roast today for Shelley, Martin and the kids this time.
Beautiful kale from the garden for dinner today 😁
That’s pretty much it for the week, things are looking awful in Europe, trying not to dwell on it too much but it does need thinking about from time to time, unbelievable in this day and age 😢 Have a good week and hopefully the situation will have improved by next week though I am not holding my breath x
Tuesday 8th February 2022: Yes Tuesday 🤬 I have completely lost the draft I started yesterday 🤷♀️ I am having a mare with technology at the minute, slow to load everything although my provider says all lines in are working correctly. I began to think I had been hacked so changed all my passwords including the one for this blog (I had a spike in stats which seemed sus) and now everything is up s**t creek without a paddle as they say. I have done all the things they suggest plus updated all the security ware and the first thing I find when I log on this site is a missing draft and weirdly some of the posts have had dates changed, I bloody hate technology sometimes. It took me all afternoon to update every install and I haven’t really got very far forward, still having issues 😫 If by some miracle I find the missing draft I will continue with it below.
Did a bit in the greenhouse first thing then Sam arrived with the twins, the farrier who was due at 12 was now coming at 10.30. We got sorted, got the horses in, filled up a hay net and a sack for the filled for when they went back out. Lucy and George helped (I say that loosely 😆) as helpful as two and a half year old can be at any rate 😁 The rest of the day was spent trying to sort the internet out, Shelley and Flo popped in for a cuppa in the afternoon.
Wednesday: I figured out why the draft is lost, because I didn’t save it before exiting doh, but all the other things still stand. I was still trying to sort it all at 9.20 last night and today it is still dropping in and out 🤪 No idea why or how to resolve it to be honest and losing the will to live trying.
No idea what I wrote on Monday and can’t remember what I actually did now either, some clearing up in the front beds I think, can’t remember what else I wrote but never mind.
I had a good day today in the garden, John was here for a while this morning, he did the rounds and then went out to finish getting the compost heap sorted. I know it seems like it’s taking ages but it had to be moved from one place to another and then again because there is not enough room to do it all in one hit. Plus he decided that he may as well riddle it after all so that takes time, he has now put all the available compost into the raised beds on the cut flower area though we still need to fill some more. I decided on four beds that way I can do four successional sowings and when one is finished in turn I can clear them. Meanwhile I sorted out plants that have been sitting all winter and are now starting to wake up, potting some on and putting some out for sale. After I finished that we stood and had a good look at the cutting patch to try and finalise where everything would be going, I think I finally have a plan. Not before time as a few things really need to go in soon so that they can start producing lovely blooms 😁 At this point, which was still only around 10am, John went off to work and I set about weeding some of the other beds. I was out there until 2pm happily weeding on my hands and knees. One of the beds is a difficult one, it has more asparagus in there and normally it is too wet to get on it and weed it, then the asparagus grows and that snaps pretty easily if you try to weed in and around it so I am pretty chuffed and more than a little amazed that I have done it already at the beginning of Feb 🙄 It has been such a dry winter that working on the soil is easy for a change. I came in and got some lunch, sat down for a rest and John came home, lol why is it always when I have just sat down 🤷♀️
I have a couple of deliveries coming this week, some more pallet collars to make raised beds and a peat free compost delivery. I should have some bare root roses arriving any day as well as more seeds 🤣 I think I need much more space than I have for these flowers, it’s becoming an obsession!
Note to self: don’t forget to save draft 🤪
Saturday: Yep I have lost some days but for no other reason that I haven’t written anything 🙄 Thursday John was home some of the day and so we worked outside as the weather was fair but that’s as much as I can remember, except that I went for my 4th vaccination and it stung this time so I came home had a cuppa and a rest lol. Friday, I did the morning rounds and pottered in the greenhouse a while then I had a compost delivery mid morning. An hour or so later Sam came over with the twins and Shelley came with Florence. I had a delivery of bare root roses in the afternoon. Back to Saturday, the wind is back and it’s cold but not freezing just feels cold and I had trouble getting warm today. Up early, because I was going out with my sister to a vintage fair in Cheltenham. I quickly planted some hellebore that arrived before I went, I wanted to get them in because it is going to rain pretty much all day tomorrow. Once I came back early afternoon, had a cuppa and a sit down, I went out to the greenhouse (not windy in there) I have been soaking some ranunculus bulbs for a day or so and now they are nice and plump I wanted to get them in pots to start them off. They will go into the cutting garden eventually (once the frosts have passed) but if I can get them ahead that’s good. I also potted up my dahlia tubers to wake them up as well, one of them has a tiny green shoot so now is a good time. The plan is to get them going and then take cutting from them before I transplant them into the garden and cutting patch. I also sowed some sweet rocket (1st sowing) Meanwhile John has also been busy today, some of the time in the garden area doing bits and pieces for me and then some other jobs on top (he told me but I have already forgotten what 😝) I haven’t put the bare root roses in yet, I am trying to decide where is going to be best to plant them 🤷♀️
I had a little play with some flowers and foliage from the garden, not a lot to work with at the minute but I enjoyed myself, I said to John I can’t wait to have loads of flowers to make big bunches with 🥰
Note to self: don’t forget to grow veg this year as well 🤣
It is just a couple of weeks now before seed sowing can start in earnest, I cannot wait lol, looking forward to the warmer, longer days.
Sunday: The weather started off ok, dry and mild but rapidly declined to bring rain for most of the day. Beforehand however we did manage to get a few things sorted, John did the animals and then a bit of tidying up in the garden, he also cleared the gully across the driveway so that any heavy rain can run away nicely. I sorted out a bit for roast dinner later and then went out to plant some bulbs that arrived yesterday and the rose bushes that arrived the day before. I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to plant these because I need to get to them but I didn’t want them so close to a patch way that up I had to brush past them, they ended up within the veg area because that is full sun which they love and not going to be difficult to get to. Then we went off to get a bit of shopping, not much just the basics, we still have plenty in the freezers to live off yet 🙄 Popped into see Mum and Ken for a coffee before returning home, we met Shelley at Mums and she came back with us to get some eggs and stopped for a cuppa and then Sam, Luke and the children turned up for an hour or two. Once they had all left I prepped the rest of the dinner and then sat down for a couple of hours. Charlie and Macca are coming to eat with us later so we will have seen almost everyone today 😂
We are, like everyone else, watching the tensions on the Russian/Ukrainian border with extreme interest, hoping that it is all some puffed up, macho nonsense. I find it difficult to believe in this day and age that one country can think it can just invade another, seems we haven’t come very far in the last 70/80 years, in fact I would go as far to say the world is dumbing down in my not very expert opinion 😏
When I went to the supermarket this morning there were rows and rows of beautiful imported flower bouquets in the front of the shop for easy access. Inside the shop behind a stack of boxes (I kid you not) we’re a few bunches of British grown tulips and daffodils, I should have complained to management really but the shop was rammed and the staff had enough to do without me adding to their problems but I may send an email.
Monday 24th January 2022: Milder than it has been, dry and the ground is not frozen yay that means I can get outside and get something done. First though I had to get the animals all sorted as John has gone to work for a couple of hours but will be back mid morning. As soon as I could I went outside to get the job done that I had gone to sleep thinking about, sad I know 😂 The job in question was cutting back the lilacs in the veg garden. Quite a few years ago we thinned out the lilacs at the front and heeled in some whips, they were supposed to be dug up at a later point. That was probably something like seven years ago so you can guess how big they have got. They are at the end of the bed where I will be growing the cut flowers and so I cut them down by half in order to get the maximum sunshine but still provide a wind barrier, I also hope I will get some good lilac flowers from them although possibly not this year. I dug up a fair few whips to pot up and there was just one big root I couldn’t budge. John came home at that point and we went off to the diy shop to get some paint for the roadside advertising boards. I want to paint them the same colour (or near enough) to the logo background and try to pull everything together a bit better. Once back home John had to go off to the bank to shut down an account we haven’t used for around ten years but still had a small amount of money left in it. I sorted out what would be for dinner this evening and then got the smallest board in to give it a clean up and repair some little parts that had got damaged in the wind. I realised I needed to re do the blackboard paint so called John who was on his way back, he turned around and went to get the paint from the diy shop, bad management from me there but at least I can get the boards sorted. While John was out doing the afternoon rounds I painted the smallest of the boards with new blackboard paint and once it has had a makeover it will look splendid. John also went out and dug up that last root for me 😁 tomorrow we will go out there and put everything through the chipper, tidy up and that bed will be ready when I am for planting up.
Last night while checking my emails I looked at a particular website and decided I might like to go on one of the courses they were offering. I talked it over with John because it’s not cheap lol, but I am so excited to have booked a cut flower day course with Sarah Raven 🥰 She is the guru of cut flowers in the UK and I can’t wait to go and do that, yep it’s fair to say I am ‘cock a hoop’ about that.
At times I think to myself ‘whoa, what are you doing’ and then other times I am full steam ahead with ideas and plans, the one thing I keep telling myself is to just roll with it and enjoy everything, I mean what could be better than growing flowers all summer long. The one thing I did think was that at least picking flowers is an early morning job 😁
The poultry are obviously all still shut away and it would seem that it’s particularly bad this year 🙄 On the one hand it is easy for us to do them every day and they are not all over the place laying but on the other hand I kind of wonder what is the point of having them if they can’t get outside for four months of the year and so far that’s two years in a row we have had to lock them down 😔
Tuesday: oooosh been very busy this morning, after getting the morning jobs done including the animals, I got straight onto painting the primer on the advertising board for the front of the drive. I figured if I did that quickly it would be drying while I went about the rest of the day’s business. Today on the agenda was chipping up all the prunings from the lilacs and the apple trees I pruned the other week. That took around three hours and all the mulch went back onto the ground under the lilacs and around the lavender. John meanwhile was working on the area that will now be grass, it was the herb bed and I have dug everything out and potted up or replanted elsewhere. The sides of the bed need removing and all the soil needs moving so it is level with the pathway (although the path will also be grassed) He has been doing a fabulous job, riddling all the soil as he goes and putting on the rhubarb bed which really needed a top up. Around 11 John went out to look at a couple of jobs and an hour later returned, I had some soup in a mug outside, I didn’t want to stop and sit down otherwise I wouldn’t get going again. John got himself some lunch and then came back outside where we worked until mid afternoon, should sleep well tonight 🤪
In between everything else I was also painting and re writing the advertising chalkboard for the flowers.
Wednesday: Another busy day today, mild again which meant plenty of time outside to get stuff done. John carried on with the removing all the soil from the area we are putting down to lawn and while he was doing that I potted up all the lilac whips I dug up yesterday and I also planted 100 allium bulbs of various types. Some will go out for sale and some will be for the cutting garden. We then moved onto a different area, the brassica cage has been there for about four years I think, it is time to use it for something else before I end up with club root 🙄 I took off all the environmesh and hatched a plan 🤪 the plan involved re using items we already had to create a sweet pea growing area, I have some metal grid sheets that are pretty big and so I wanted one of those attached to the framework of the brassica cage and a narrow raised bed at the bottom for the sweet peas. It should be pretty successful 🤞 and a dedicated area for the sweet peas which have deep roots. I have now almost cleared the area where the rest of the cut flowers will be going and just need to make a plan of what is going where. I will get some pictures once it’s cleared properly and ready to go.
In between all this I was repainting and re writing the advertising chalkboard for the eggs, the boards are all having an overhaul and a refresh, I didn’t get before and after pics of the first board but I have of this second one.
I have also been trying to make hearts from the weeping birch branches, every year in winter it sheds lots of branches, they are very long and wispy, ideal for making things with.
Much better 😁
We popped out to get a bit of shopping once we had eaten dinner, figured it would be quiet in the evening. We got back just in time for a zoom meeting I almost forgot about 🙄 it was a cut flower meeting, very interesting and nice to see others who are doing the same thing.
Thursday: Making the most of John being at home because today is the last day for a while. So after the morning rounds John got straight on outside finishing the sweet pea box and I got on with chalking up the egg board for the roadside, looks pretty good and should just give a nudge reminder to anyone passing that we still sell eggs. Once I had finished I went out to help John, I lined the box, moved a few barrowfulls of dead and decaying leaves (I need to burn these as they are from the pear tree that has scab) Then once John had finished I laid weed membrane down over the rest of the plot to stall the weeds until I can get on it. We measured the plot and overall size is 12ft wide by 30ft long with some small areas already planted with the lilacs and lavender but the rest is ready to plan. It then started to rain 🌧 oh rain stops play says John, nope rain just means play outside stops but plenty to be done inside 🤪 So for the second time in as many weeks John got the hoover out 😝 that is worthy of writing as it doesn’t happen very often, not at home anyway, I am reliably informed by customers that he hoovers in their houses! Hoovering, tidying, wipe round done and time for a sit down, we have the twins later so need a rest in between. I have had to order a new vacuum cleaner, we have two, one is for the boot room and used to do the Rayburn, it’s gets that stale smell so it is the ‘outside hoover’ it has given up the ghost so the ‘indoor’ one moves to outdoor and the new one will be for inside.
I am feeling like my head is fit to burst with everything at the minute especially social media lol. But it’s an extremely useful platform both for getting information out and for receiving information. I just think that at the moment I have too many social media plates in the air 😂 online courses, zoom meetings, online workshops, relevant groups for flowers, Smallholding, self sufficiency, veg growing, gardening in general, personal, then there are the farm pages to run on Facebook, and Instagram and the blog and podcast, I think I need a PA 🤪 Still it keeps me busy right 😝. That and preparing the garden for spring, all of it not just the flower patch, growing seeds, potting up plants and planting bulbs not too mention keeping up with the weeds once they start in earnest.
In the past I have tried to find and trial other more environmentally friendly weed suppressants but I have resorted to the landscape membrane. I tried jute which was ok but only lasted the year which would make it pretty expensive, the cardboard method works really well and is cheap but to cover the area that I need to cover takes a LOT of cardboard so I can only use what I have. The biodegradable membrane is great (expensive) but not permeable and very flimsy so at the moment for large areas it is the landscape membrane I am afraid. Two reasons why this is the best option for me, one, the area is pretty extensive and there is a lot to do. I need to be able to be in control of what gets done and when, which leads me to the second reason and that is the Lupus. I have no idea how the year ahead will go regards the illness, if I am lucky and can keep on an even keel without flares, it will be smooth sailing. If it doesn’t go well I can be incapacitated for weeks sometimes months and then things will get very out of hand, it will stress me out massively and stress is something I need to avoid at all costs because it is a trigger. Sometimes you just have to do what is best for you and your health even if it goes against your ethics which in this case it does but I do need to balance one against the other and until they come up with something amazingly good that’s what I will be using. The good thing is that I use it over and over again but it does shred at the edges if the wind gets at it which is not great, if anyone has any tips on how to stop that I would be interested.
Friday: A frosty morning again but hopefully the sun will thaw everything quite quickly. John has gone off to work today but he did the animals before leaving so I got on with a few household chores. I am hoping to get outside once it warms up a little bit.
Last night I drew out the cutting patch to scale and am giving the layout lots of thought, I think that is the right approach because if I rush in with deciding where things will go chances are I will have forgotten something and have got change it all. The annual flowers are easy enough but the perennial flowers all have different needs and once they are in I don’t want to find I have got it wrong.
Update on the soil blocks and the grow lights: The soil blocks are definitely a winner, I need to get the level of moisture right next time when I use the block because if you have the soil too loose they can crumble a little when the edges dry out but I think that is more user error than design fault. So far I still think they are a brilliant concept, pricking out is a thing of the past with these as exact seedling has its own little bit of soil which you just transplant into the next size block, it’s genius really 🥰 As for the grow lights they have pros and cons, I bought a set with a clip that clip to a table or bench and four arms that have the lights in, the lights are red or blue or a mix of both. The pros are that they do work well, when I change the light colour, the leaf colour of the seedlings change as well. The seedlings also respond to the lights but you do need the lights directly over the seedlings, no point trying to squeeze an extra tray at the end of the light range because the seedlings just lean in that direction. I bought them because the lisianthus are difficult to germinate and grow and I wanted to give them all the help I could. I have seen set ups with trays and trays of seedlings on shelving each with lights attached to the under side of the shelf above. My thoughts are that although we are impatient to get growing, and so use these false environments, nature really does know best and waiting for the light levels to increase is probably better, you will end up with stronger seedlings. I wonder with big set ups, where are they moving all theses seedlings onto once they get big enough to transplant, another set up? You certainly couldn’t move them to outside, not in the UK at any rate, considering we are still weeks away from the last frost date that would be too risky. I imagine people must have a second stage set up that is perhaps under heated cover 🤷♀️ I am not sure, maybe I will research it to find out. Overall both the seed blocks and the grow lights are good but for the lights I personally wouldn’t go to a bigger scale not unless I had a good second stage set up to move them too.
John came home mid morning which I wasn’t expecting. I had decided to give the office/craft room a bit of a tidy up but as soon as I finished that I went outside with John to get some work done on the garden. The compost heap needed turning and the compost that was ready needed distributing. I decided that the beds in the big tunnel could do with topping up so that’s where the compost went. I moved two smaller beds that were temporary and put in some pallet collars to make two bigger beds which John also filled. I gave the tunnel a tidy up, put some membrane over the beds. That is the tunnel ready for the season apart from a good wash which needs to wait until the damp weather is finished otherwise the green algae will just come back. I don’t think I have ever had the tunnel ready for action this early in the year. John then carried on with turning this years heap, the more you turn it the quicker it breaks down but it’s hefty work. I tidied up some broken pots and bits ready to go into the skip and then I too sorted the compost bins at the other side of the garden. In the beginning we only had one compost area but I wasted a lot of time talking it all to the other end of the garden each time that I decided to have extra bins within the garden area. I have two big square ones and two darlek type, I emptied out the darleks and put all of that on top of the material in the square ones. Again the more weight on top the quicker it will break down, I quite expected to see some wildlife in there but nope not today. By 1pm it was getting colder and we had both worked pretty hard so it was inside for some soup and a sit down. The soup is from the soup bags I made up at the end of last year, very handy to pop them in the slow cooker with a stock cube in the morning, turn onto high and its ready to blitz and eat at lunchtime. It’s also great because there are veg in there that John wouldn’t normally eat but once blitzed he has no idea 😁
It occurred to me while I was in the poly tunnel that I could offer advice to anyone who is torn between a poly tunnel and a greenhouse. If you can only have one I would say go for a tunnel, they have different uses but a tunnel can be used similar to the greenhouse plus so much more and always go for the biggest one you can afford or site, whichever that is. If it is a greenhouse you really want above all else then by all means get the best you can afford but unless you want it for aesthetics don’t spend the extra on a posh one. It doesn’t work any different and doesn’t make you a better grower, there are better ways to spend the extra money on a greenhouse, such as ventilation, shading, decent staging, irrigation systems, electrics and decent propagators. Also a green house that is well put up will stand the test of time, doesn’t matter how good it looks if the wind rocks it will soon start to leak or worse the glass will crack. Our first poly tunnel has been up for around 10 years and the covering is still fully intact and functional, a lot of that is down to where it is sited, it doesn’t get battered by the wind, which improves the life span. In the tunnels I opted for an overhead irrigation system, which I don’t use, the reason being that too much water is wasted when it is watered from the top. You water areas that don’t need it such as the pathways, watering at soil level is far more cost effective and it is directed straight to the roots of the plants which is where it is needed most.
Another online flower workshop tonight, I am learning lots and loving it 😊
Saturday: Windy lol, that’s today, but mild enough and the sun peeks out now and again. After the usual jobs John asked what needed doing and so I gave him a verbal list, he chose the duck pen 😝 great because that was the dirtiest, muckiest job and I didn’t really want to do it 😂 We had to let the ducks out for a while in order to get it done, John shovelled out dirty, wet, smelly mud and shoved up plenty of duck poop, he then power washed the whole pen. Meanwhile I did the horses water and let them into the front side paddock, they now have three paddocks to roam over. Onto topping up straw in the hens laying areas and then to top up straw in the goose hut, I also found some site fencing (that plastic green stuff) and put that up all along the side of the little paddock that the geese are in. About four years ago Mum, Ken and I planted 950 daffodil bulbs, the first and second year they came up lovely, the third year we had to keep the geese in there due to bird flu and although the daffs came up they were short because the geese trampled all along there hampering growth. The same was likely to happen this year except that I have now fenced it off and hopefully I will get nice tall flowers 🤞 Once I finished that I made the decision to move the ducks back to their original housing, we were going to wait and get the hut moved and a new floor down but the hens in the stable could really do with some fresh air and so they will now move into the pen John has just cleaned out and the ducks will go back to their own home. One of the ducks is not looking very strong so I have ,over her to a stable on her own with food and water to see if she gets any better, she was quite light in weight and muddy I am not sure what has happened to her but if I can try and get her better then I will. I then went on to do some bits in the garden, I cut back all the autumn raspberry canes, potted a few up that I pulled up I also repaired and secured the posts that the canes get tied to as some of them were broken and wobbly. By that time it was lunchtime so I came in for some soup and a cuppa, John also came in for something eat. We had planned on a quick sit down and then carry on but Sam arrived with the children for a couple of hours.
I did another online masterclass about peonies in the afternoon, these type of classes are very good because they are specific and include information about using them as cut flowers rather than just in the garden borders. I have another three classes I think over the next week or so, I am really enjoying them and although I am not a novice gardener I am learning new things all the time 😁
This is the cut flower area it is approx 30 x 12ft 😮 the lilacs I cut back are at the far end and there are some lavenders in there already. The box on the right hand side are for the sweet peas and I need to decide how best to use the rest of the area, not that I am short of plants and seeds to go in there lol.
The weed membrane is to slow down and weed growth until I can get it sorted. This bed has always been a bit of a problem bed, rouge raspberry runners, comfrey and bindweed all have their roots in here, I may have to look at a few raised beds for some of it until they have all died off which could be a year or two 😏 The list of plants and seeds I have is pretty extensive from the favourites like roses, dahlias and peonies to cornflowers, poppies and snapdragons. The beauty of the mix I have is that the bouquets will not be like the ones from the shops, they need to use flowers that will transport well, I can use whatever I want and whatever is looking good at the time of picking.
Sunday: John did a bit outside in the morning and I was indoors making hearts from twigs. Just before lunch I decided I needed a trip to the garden centre to see what is actually out now, of course that result in some spenditure 😂 I said to John, I am investing for this time next year and to my surprise he said ‘good idea’ well then there was no holding me back 😝 I bought some beautiful hellebores, nerine and anemones, I am determined to have naturally blooming flowers this time next year! We were speaking to someone we know who works at the centre and he said that I was onto a good thing, growing and selling flowers and plants, because importing them is about to get a lot harder than it was due to brexit, I hadn’t realised that when I decided to do it but it’s an added bonus I guess. We stopped at the garage on the way back because I wanted to get a cheap bunch of flowers 😮 to give something a try. I was pretty pleased with the result proving that you can even make these look like they are bespoke 😁
Garage flowers and some twigs can still make an artistic display 😁
Have a great week, we are one more week nearer to spring 😁
Monday 17th January 2022: Old twelvey, 12th night (pre Georgian calender) Wassail day 😁
Another cold and frosty morning and I was on the morning duties as John went off to work. After doing that (a little late as I spent an hour on FaceTime with my brother in Aus) I got on with making an apple cake for the Wassail tonight. I had a few paperwork things to sort out and then goodness knows what else I did but it must have been something 🤷♀️ John came home mid afternoon, the dentist had called and had a cancellation and so he was off to have his tooth out 🙄 I will be honest the timing was not the best, I had plans for him to help me with a couple of things for the wassail but he was incapacitated. So I got everything sorted and changed anything I couldn’t do on my own and it was all fine in the end. We had a fire pit, we made a lot of noise, we chanted, we poured cider on the apple tree roots and we put cider soaked toast on the tree, all under the Wolf Moon and we had a lovely time 🥰
I had a notification today that the blog had reached 10,000 all time views, whoop that’s amazing 🤩
I remembered what it was I did in the afternoon, I cut back (pollarded) the willows at the front of the drive. I now have a large bundle of willow whips and I want to use them for something, I would like a willow sculpture of some kind and I watched a few videos to see what I thought I might be able to tackle, maybe a small wigwam on the grass verge in the driveway 🤷♀️ I would quite like to do a big one but not sure where I would do that without the risk of it being eaten by the horses or the geese.
Tuesday: It was a very cold, clear night again last night and everywhere is white and frosty this morning. I don’t feel the best today and have been struggling a little bit more each day, my joints on my fingers have swollen and hurt, so much so that I have had to take my rings off 🙄 I can feel twinges in my teeth at times and I feel generally ‘meh‘. Hopefully it will be a passing thing, I feel quite emotional with it today as well which is not ideal, doing the animals is going to be a struggle and then I think I will do nothing for the day except rest, sometimes you just have to recognise your limitations and today is one of those days. When I mentioned to John about how I think I will struggle with the water buckets, his answer was to use another bucket with a little bit in and go back and forth, thanks for that, I define will not be making you any dinner today 🤪I have taken a covid test to rule that out and it’s negative.
Well the morning rounds, as I suspected, were difficult, not least because it is frozen solid out there and even the stable tap is frozen. I will have to go back out and try again later as I don’t have the energy to haul water from inside the house. Most of them have buckets I can just break the ice on, some are tiny water holder so hopefully the sun will thaw those quickly but in the stable although the water buckets are not frozen, they are half empty and I can’t fill them from the frozen tap so again I will wait until later and hope the tap thaws quickly. It feels depressing at the minute, mostly because I don’t feel fit and able but also because the egg customers have dropped massively 🤷♀️ We have the usual core of customers that always come but that’s it and we are hardly selling any eggs. I definitely wonder if it is really worth any of it to be honest, it is a fair amount of work for next to no return 😏
Yesterday (Sat) I thought I hadn’t written a single thing all week and so I started a new page only to find this one on the draft section 😂 I think I am losing the plot.
It is now Saturday afternoon, this is the point when I realised I haven’t written anything all week long 😝 (Or at least hadn’t remembered writing anything 😂) Today has not been that productive either, not outside at any rate. I had a hair appointment first thing and then went called round to see Mum and Ken for a cuppa. Mum sorted through her lace and ribbon stash and I came away with a good deal of lace and ribbon in lots of colours, they will be for the tied bouquets and posies. The aim is to use paper and trimmings that are either up-cycled, recycled or at the very least recyclable, as with the veg and fruit garden, there will be no pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertilisers used, so when you sink your nose into a bunch of my blooms you can be sure that it is perfectly safe to inhale that aroma 😁 I have been thinking about flower bunches that have meaning, purpose or just say what you want to convey, to be honest I have done a lot of thinking and none of it can be tried until I have flowers growing 😂 so I just have to keep thinking at the minute.
Sunday: Milder today but we were up later than usual as well, once up and about John did the animals while I sorted out a few things indoors and then outside to get on. I spent a couple of hours potting some things up, a couple of shrubs that, as we about to have a fairly dry period, will be ok to pot on and leave. I sorted out a few plants that I have growing ready to go out the front but it’s all still a little early and a little bit slow. I spent a while taking some photos of various pots I have for sale and I also picked a few bits for the vase. There is not much about at the minute, not bright and pretty colours anyway but there are some lovely structural and architectural bits to be found and some winter honeysuckle which smells delightful.
I have got a new logo for the flower side of business, I am rather pleased with it, simple but effective I think.
New logo
Some more seeds are starting to grow 😁 zinnias and some lupin are all beginning to sprout, it’s all very exciting. I have spent a good few hours this week learning new things, soaking up all sorts of information and ideas and watching a couple of seminars. I feel really excited about the months ahead with this project, I can let my creative side loose for a change.
Zinnia seedlings appearing. Pots of English Bluebells going out for sale 🥰No flowers to be had yet but plenty of lovely foliage around.
Monday: Grey, dull but mild enough for Winter. John still has his tooth problem and it has got worse not better but he went to the dentist this afternoon and they have given him stronger antibiotics. Because he is not sleeping well he was late up this morning and late going to work, he had a little job to do and went off to do that which meant I was doing the morning rounds. Once those were done I was determined to get these sweet peas sown and so once I had put some washing on I went out to the greenhouse. I sowed 100 sweet pea seeds, some Ammi majus (bishops flower) some cleome seeds and I took a chance with some indigo rose tomato seeds. The last three of these are now in a windowsill propagator on the kitchen sill and the sweet peas are in the greenhouse, fingers crossed for some germination. I had planned to carry on and get some more done outside on the garden itself but by the time I had done those my feet were freezing so I came inside to thaw them out. It started raining so that put paid to that and then John came home and spent the rest of the day on the sofa, I figured I might as well get some indoor work done and so I cleaned the bedroom, bathroom and living room. Hopefully this next lot of antibiotics will start to work fairly quickly and life can resume to normal and I don’t have to work round John at home.
Tuesday: John still has toothache this morning 🙄 but he has gone to work and hoping that the new antibiotics start to kick in at some point today. I did the morning rounds which at this time of year and we the birds in lockdown takes about 50 mins to an hour and then I can get on with other jobs. I went into the greenhouse and used my new gadget, a soil block, how have I managed without this for so long 🤷♀️ I can make soil blocks for seedlings in next to no time and can fit 80 blocks for seeds in the size of my hand 😮 it’s a game changer, save on compost and space 😁 I sowed antirrhinum (snap dragon) seeds and another Hardy annual though the name escapes me at the moment. After that I pruned my wisteria and climbing rose out the front and then onto a bed at the back where I cut down the Himalayan honeysuckle, winter pruned an apple and pear tree, lifted the canopy on the mulberry tree and then winter pruned another apple and pear tree further up in the veg garden. A winter prune is just taking a third off each branch, the younger trees I have left the middle stem unpruned as I want them to get a bit taller even though they are dwarf varieties. There is a lot of work to do but it is still quite wet and so I am choosing jobs that don’t require walking on the soil, I don’t want to crush the structure of the soil at this time of year.
At lunchtime Shelley picked me up and we collected Flo from school and went for lunch 🥰 a nice couple of hours out and although I didn’t purchase any plants I did by some reduced christmas baubles for next year 😂
Soil blockers by Ladbrooke a great gadget that saves on compost and space. The small one makes 20 blocks and fits in my hand, the bigger one makes four but has the small square that clips into it and perfectly leaves a space the size of the smaller soil block to pop the seedling straight into, no pricking out 😁
Wednesday: There is such a difference between the temperature yesterday and then today 🙄 Yesterday I went to put the eggs out in just a long sleeved T-shirt and my gillet, today it is very much colder and frosty even though the sun is out it is not burning the frost away as yet. I did the morning rounds and was hoping that by mid morning it would have warmed up a bit but that didn’t happen and so I did some more research and learning for the cut flowers. There is always much to learn even when you think you know a lot already 😂 this morning I was watching videos on plant support and how to make your own. Bought ones are expensive and when you need a lot of them it can be very costly so I am looking for different ways to achieve different types of support. Last year I used hazel whips, they work pretty well when they are bent over but they need to be quite long and very flexible, they work ok for things like delphinium and lupin but I want something a little more robust for the dahlias and rudbeckia. Then I need different support for sunflowers and different again for things like cosmos, John is going to be making a lot though he does not know it yet 🤪 He has different antibiotics now as the first lot were not doing much and the pain has subsided though not gone entirely just yet but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
As the sun was shining I went out in the front area and did a bit of weeding and cutting back for an hour or so. John came home just after lunch and later in the afternoon we went out and did a few jobs, burn some rubbish, hang a gate, alter a gate that had dropped and covered up one of the beds in the veg garden with weed membrane. We had a look and a discussion about the duck area which needs modifying and by that time it was getting dark so John did the afternoon rounds while I came in and got the dinner sorted.
I am trying to decide what to do with the bed I covered, I plan to put the cut flowers there but there but it has always been a problem area. It has bindweed in it, raspberries canes that I can’t get rid of and comfrey that has sprouted everywhere plus a row of lilacs that are creeping further and further into the bed. For the time being I have covered it to stop anything growing, it is about 10ft wide by 25ft long so it’s a good size area. In order to get something growing there this year I think I will have to leave the membrane down and put some raised beds on top, the decision is what to use without it costing a fortune 🤷♀️
Thursday: I did the morning rounds and then Sam picked me up to look after the twins all day at theirs while she went to work with Luke, once they were all home I went with Sam and Mia to watch Mia in her swimming lesson which was lovely to be able to do. Consequently I didn’t do anything at the farm and John went home in time to do the evening rounds.
Friday: I had high hopes for today but they went south 🤪 We started off early, John went to get feed and I did the morning rounds, it was freezing this morning 🥶 Once I had finished and John was back we went to town as I had to have my routine blood tests first thing. A quick coffee and a bite to eat for breakfast and then back home. There was not a lot of heat in the sun today and so the frost and frozen ground never really thawed, bang goes my plans of working on any open ground. I also had a little wobble today, I felt really tired and a little unwell mid morning so I had to have a lie down 🙄 I recovered after a short while and went out to collect some seeds from the snap dragons and put in some plant supports for the plants like delphinium, lupin and achillea. Then I had to have another lie down 🤷♀️ I was just completely zapped of any energy. By mid afternoon I felt a lot better but carried on resting, Mum called in and we had a cup of tea and chatted about what we had been doing in the week and gardening of course 😁 Hopefully it won’t be so cold all day tomorrow.
I ordered a grow light which arrived today, I thought I would give them a go and see how well they work. Because we have low light levels at this time of year, seedlings benefit from extra light but it needs to be the right kind of light, a light bulb won’t do the job you need a full spectrum light with red and blue light as well. Early seedlings can get leggy without good light and they tend to lean in the direction of the light meaning you constantly have to turn them to promote strength in the stem, a grow light should eliminate that, that’s the hope anyway.
Saturday: Really cold and frosty again with no sun appearing for the best part of the day in fact heavy fog came down. No point planning any outside work today just as well really as I spent more than three hours trying to sort out an app that just kept crashing. In the end, after exhausting all possibilities and communicating with the tech team, I abandoned the app, their loss (well mine as well because I really liked it 😏)
Sunday: A different day altogether 😁 much milder, sunshine and no rain. That meant that we could get some work done outside, John did the morning rounds while I sorted the eggs and indoor stuff and then it was outside to get on. John spent the morning cleaning and hoovering the car and van 🙄 not really the jobs I had in mind but they needed doing so I guess it’s all relevant. Meanwhile I spent the morning right at the front of the driveway where I have a beautiful contorted hazel tree. This will throw up straight stems and a try to revert so in order to keep it contorted the straight stems need cutting off right down at the bottom. This is the best time of year to get that done, before things get manic and I completely forget to do it. I shovelled up leaves from the driveway and cut back encroaching ivy which was trying to grow across the drive and generally had a good tidy up at the entrance, not too tidy just yet but tidy enough. I now have a bundle of hazel whips to decided what to do with and I was going to do the willow but the secateurs are not up to doing the thicker stems so that can wait for another day.
I also sorted out some seeds that I collected the day before, snapdragon and love in a mist, I have put them into little envelopes and put some out for sale. There are probably thousands of snap dragon seeds, I am not sure what I will do with the rest of them yet, I might sow some to bring on as plants for sale 🤷♀️
This afternoon we are off out for dinner, it is a surprise 30th birthday lunch for Macca and just for once I actually had enough time to put something nice on rather than slinging on clean jeans and a top which is what normally happens, so it is a rare occasion, if you see me out wearing a dress you will know why 😂 Of course as soon as we are back it will be work clothes back on to do the afternoon rounds 🤪
I hope you have all had a lovely festive time and I wish you a very happy 2022. We still have Covid (who would have thought it 🙄) but we are getting to grips with living with it on a daily basis, let’s hope this year coming is a little more like life used to be 😁
We have wined and dined, loved and laughed, rested and recuperated, felt grateful for what we have, watched endless Christmas tv and generally had a fabulous time. All the while of course, we have had to continue doing the daily routines with animal feeding and care no matter what day it was but that is ok it’s what we signed up for.
I have also spent some considerable time thinking about how we move forward with the Smallholding this coming year. I had mused over cut flowers and that is still very much part of the plan I just need to put it into practice now. As well as the usual bunches of flowers I saw a lovely jam jar posy while I was researching and thought ‘oooo yes, I like those’ they very much they fit in with the ethos here, the jam jars can be returned time and time again for refilling, they are small enough to fit on any table or surface if you don’t have a large enough area for a full vase of flowers and all kinds of up-cycled embellishments can be used including the customers own if they want a particular ribbon used, yep I really like this idea, ‘Flowers @ Friesland Farm’ is in its newborn phase 🥰 Locally grown, no pesticides or artificial fertilisers used, minimal miles, grown with love and pride, doesn’t get better than that does it 😁 Add to that the plants I divide or grown from seed to sell at the gate and the direction for the year is looking good, just got to hope the weather is kind 😜
Betwixtmas: 😂 We we’re not idle (not all the time anyway) over the holidays, the chickens and ducks keep on laying, the horses need checking over, the other non laying lot still need feeding and watering as do the dogs and cats as well as ourselves. We have been busy most days with cleaning out and cleaning up, the huts that the birds were moved out of when the avian flu came have now been cleaned and power washed. The hard standing has been cleared of leaves and debris and power washed, the leaves all over the driveway have been raked and piled under the trees and we have been moving woodchip onto the paths in the garden. We also moved plenty of barrowfuls to the orchard where the ground deteriorated very quickly once the rain came. When the weather permitted we worked on the veg garden to get ahead ready for spring, putting home made compost on the beds, harvesting leeks, carrots and beetroots, we still have kale and cabbages in the ground, the broad beans are growing nicely as are the garlic and onions. Flower bulbs are beginning to appear which is always a lovely sign that the wheel keeps on turning. There were also plenty of times when we sat and watched a film or saw family and ate up all the festive food 🥰 No matter how hard I try not to have too much food in, there always seems to be too much, none of it is wasted though. John had bubble and squeak on Boxing Day and I have three more portions frozen as well as cooked veg which will make soup at some point. I have some cake from an unexpected visit that I also froze because we have Christmas cake and Christmas pudding to eat up first and of course plenty of chocolate to get through 🤪
Once all the festive food is used up I have set myself a bit of a challenge (in fact I have started it even though we still have stuff left) I am not doing ‘veganuary’ but I am intending to make vegetables as much, if not the biggest, part of our meals. Sounds easy right but I also want to use seasonal and mostly what I have grown myself, this is a lot easier said than done. I searched for some inspirational recipes online but most of them overlook the seasonal and there are plenty of ingredients that have come from far flung corners of the world which I want to avoid. So you see keeping it interesting is a challenge. I will be using store cupboard goods that I have already such as rice and pasta (though I could make my own pasta if I run out) As it is winter then soup is the easiest go to lunch, packed with home grown veg, very nutritious and healthy which is what is needed after the indulgences lately.
The first recipe was lovely and lacto-vegetarian (it seems there are different versions of vegetarianism) John did not eat this 😂 but I fried off some butternut squash (cubed) along with some garlic and some dried sage in olive oil. Fry just enough to get them coated and then add a splash of water to flash cook until the squash is soft, then add chopped mushrooms until it all caramelises, add to cooked pasta and I crumbled blue cheese on top though you could use whatever cheese you like such as Parmesan. Twas delicious I have to say and what’s more it felt like comfort food which is all the more important during the winter months. I also got some vegetable soup going in the slow cooker, turnip, butternut squash, carrots and onions from the garden, I added celery (which I had bought for Christmas) some mushrooms and some peas, veg stock, bouillon powder and pepper. Cooked it down for a good few hours until everything was soft then turned it off overnight, blitzed it and reheated in a pan for lunch the next day, delish and I felt I had already had my five for the day 😁 Let’s hope I can keep up the momentum 😝
Butternut squash quickly fried in olive oil with garlic and sage, add water to flash cook, once soft add mushrooms and cook, add to cooked pasta and crumble cheese of your choice on top 🥰
New Year’s Eve went without a bang this year in fact we went to bed at 11.30 lol, well it arrives wether you wait up to see it or not doesn’t it and I think it was pretty muted everywhere this year. New Year’s Day we started off well, John started to build a plant table for me, for the plants I will have for sale this year coming and I sorted out all the pots of English Bluebells which will be the first plants to go out, and then it started to rain quite heavily 🙄 So we came in for coffee and waited for the rain to stop, it didn’t, so we took down the Christmas decorations and hoovered and polished instead 😝 Years ago I would have cooked a roast dinner on NYD but ever since the kids were late teens and too hungover the next day, I haven’t bothered. The place looks bare with the docs down and I can’t remember what went where beforehand 🤷♀️ but it’s a job done and quite literally ‘dusted’ 😝 sorry, not sorry.
I have been through all my seeds to see what I needed to get, turns out I have rather a lot of them and don’t need much else at all. For the few seeds I did want, we popped to the garden centre to get them there, I also picked up some first early seed potatoes. I am good to go now and as always I am chomping at the bit but I also know it doesn’t pay to get started too early. Our weather at the minute is ridiculously warm, 17c which is insane for Winter but I am also aware that it can take a real plummet at any point and if I have over sown I will be struggling for space so it’s best to hold fire and wait a while. There are a few things I can get started, some extra broad beans, there is still time to sow those and on the flower front, sweet peas can still be started off now.
Sunday: The weather was kinder today up until just after lunch, we got busy, John finished the plant table while I sorted out more plants to put out for sale. Once that was sorted and John cleared up the wet leaves on the drive he came to help me on the bed that was the herb bed and needs clearing. It has taken quite a while, many of the bigger herbs such as fennel and lovage had very big strong roots and I needed to wait for the ground to be soft enough to dig them up. There were a few other things to salvage, ice plants which I have potted up and will move to the tortoise run for them to feed on, a blackcurrant sage which I wanted to get out in good condition, that has now been replanted elsewhere and also a large patch of aster which has now been dug up and divided into many plants 😁 On the whole the area is now ready to clear ready to put grass down. The project after that which is also rattling round in my head at the same time is the cut flower patch, forming a plan on what to put in and how many of each plant. John and I also talked about putting the patch in the front paddock but we decided that for this year it will be better in the veg garden and we will work towards moving it next year. The idea being that it gets sun all day, it can be seen and even accessed on a pick your own basis if needs be plus it will look lovely but I need to see how well this year does before investing in fencing etc.
Have a great week, still one more bank holiday to go 😁
frieslandfarm (flowers) 