Monday 8th April 2024: It is still the Easter holidays for the children and Sam came over with the kids today. The farrier was due out and so she came over to get the horses in. She was worried about Biscuits feet as they didn’t look right and she has had laminitis in a previous life, we did get her penned in a quarter of the paddock on Friday as a precaution but the farrier said her feet are all good which is great news. She will stay restricted though as the grass is growing much quicker now and that’s not good for her. Jack had a bit of a bath but he really needs another he was filthy from the winter weather. Hopefully as the weather warms up they can both have a good wash and scrub up.
Charlie arrived with Oscar at lunchtime, the children played for a couple of hours and they were able to play in the garden for a change as it was dry and not too cold. They decided to pimp the pirate ship with chalks 😂 looks quite good I think 😊
After they left I got on with some work, weeding and gathering up rubbish to put in the skip, tidying stuff away and then dividing some plants up, potting them ready for sale once the roots have settled and begin to anchor.
Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 He was unwell today so he was very subdued even refusing to eat chocolate which is unheard of 😂
Wednesday: Sam had asked me to go with her to get all the passports renewed but before she came I managed to get a few bits of housework done. When she arrived we went off to the post office to get the passports done, the twins had not had passports before, Mia needed a new one and Sam had to renew hers in her married name. Given that the twins can be a bit of a handful at the best of times and that they were very likely to get bored standing there waiting I had agreed to go with her to help. She got the twins done first and as soon as they had both had their photos taken I took them into the cafe to get them some lunch while they did Mias passport. She then joined us and had lunch while Sam got hers done. They were actually all really well behaved, I confess it surprised even me 😂
Thursday: There is plenty of work to be done outside and it is taking up any available time I have, weeding today. Then unexpectedly Sam arrived with the children late afternoon, she had bought them over for a talking too 😂 their good behaviour did not last long and they had given her the run around. When mine were young I occasionally took them to my Mum for a talking to, Nanas are wise and hopefully grandchildren will listen to them 🤪 I think I got through to them, only time will tell and once they I had finished talking to them they went off to swimming lessons.
Friday: I can’t remember what I did the day but late afternoon my sister picked me up in her Morris 1000 ‘Daisy’ and we went off to a classic car event at a local gin distillery. Wood fired pizzas were available and we had a very pleasant evening with other classic car enthusiasts, the weather was great which made it all the better.
Saturday and Sunday: We had a very busy weekend, the weather was good, sunny, warm enough, no wind and no rain. I spent most of the two days gardening, weeding, seed sowing, dividing, potting on and some watering in the tunnels.
Meanwhile John was busy getting the Parthenon finished lol, it is now ready for soil, he has put damp course all around the bottom and cut the metal grid for the climbing plants. He has also moved all the IBC tanks and levelled off the driveway as parts of it were high. He has cut the lawn, dug out thistles from the front side paddock and dragged it. In-between all we have been doing all the other jobs housework, cooking, washing, shopping, feeding the birds, collecting the eggs, a hundred and one jobs that always need doing.
At some point this week I pulled a lot of rhubarb and took some down to the pub along with fresh flowers. Some of it I used to make some rhubarb and vanilla jam, which is delicious. I had other flowers cut ready for customers, some collected and some delivered but I can’t remember which day that was.
Buckets of flowers being cut at the minute, finally spring has sprung 🥰
Monday 26th February 2024: Not frosty this morning but we have a cold wind instead 🙄 It’s lunchtime and I am just sitting down writing this up while I wait for my beef broth to defrost and heat up in the pan. Apart from the usual jobs one of the first things I did this morning was go out and pot up some more rhubarb plants. I dug up a huge root last year and divided it, potting some of them up and the rest just got left. I put the potted pants up for sale and had such a response I thought I better pot up the rest. Luckily rhubarb root weathers the winter well and then spring into life again which is exactly what all these have done so I might as well sell them on rather than compost them.
Next I decided to clean the kitchen, I had to wait for a few people coming to collect things so I figured I could do that and keep an eye out for anyone arriving. It really needed doing, there were cobwebs and everything in the corners 😂 Once upon a time I would have done a full clean weekly but not any more, life is too short for that, instead I tend to tackle one room intensely and skim the rest. That way everything gets a good clean every now and then and I get to do other more pleasurable tasks 😊
Tuesday: Oscar day, we did venture out for a little walk in the afternoon as it was not raining and the sun was trying, the wind was cold though so it was a short round trip of the village lol.
Wednesday: Have I ever said that February is my least favourite month of the year, I probably have 😂 It’s just that you seem to be waiting an age for things to warm up a little, even though this winter has been fairly mild so far. It is the dull, grey that is depressing and this year has been one of the dullest with only 36hrs of sunshine recorded apparently, I mean come on that’s bloody stingy isn’t it Mother Nature 🙄
Meanwhile I occupy myself with preparations for Mothers Day and Easter and hopefully the not too far away spring temperatures. It is the time of year when I try to do a good bit of learning and I often discover things I want to have a go at doing.
It is Shelley’s birthday today and she booked herself the day off, we are pretty much a family of self employed so she is her own boss and gave herself permission to enjoy her birthday 😂 We went out for a lovely lunch and a wander round the local upmarket garden company. When John comes home we will pop round to hers for some birthday cake 🎂
When I returned home I found a lovely delivery of plants, always a great cheer up moment on a dull, wet, cold day. These are eryngium, two different types to the ones I already have, a lovely white one which will be amazing dried hopefully and a blue one with more star like qualities than the blue one I have already.
Thursday: You know some days you just want to scream lol, no wonder mental health and stress levels are off the scale these days. A morning of trying to get things sorted or waiting for updates is crucial but so much time wasted 🙄 Trying to track a shipment that the tracking app wants to link to an email address I don’t use and didn’t use when I purchased the goods. So now I can’t find out the tracking number and have no idea when it will be delivered or even if it will. I tried several ways of rectifying the problem to no avail so I have to just wait and see what happens, if anything, not great.
Next was trying to ring and get a prescription 😣 Every day I think the NHS systems are broken just a little bit more and it just borders on ridiculous at the minute. Once you actually get where you need to be the service is great but ffs getting there is painful. I have been with the same practice since I was 5 yrs old, in all those years I knew who my doctors was and what they looked like, every one of them. Covid comes along and everything changes (fair enough) but things have never gone back to how they were and are so much worse now. You can barely even speak to a human being, go round in circles and just get left in limbo. First they put up plastic shields to talk through and now they won’t even talk to you, you are at the mercy of an answer machine or an online system that does not function fully 😡 Even worse for those who are not digitally adept or the elderly. To add insult to injury they then send you a ‘rate your appointment’ message well I rate my appointment, great but I would rate the system to get there in the first place defunct! 0, nil, shite to be perfectly honest. They are pushing people towards private health care which is all well and good but the elderly or someone like me with a long term chronic illness has no hope of that so we are just hung out to die I reckon, and that is how I feel today, I just want to cry.
I had Oscar for a couple of hours while Charlie went to get something sorted out (another system that has gone awry 🙄) I waited for my deliveries, one said delivered ( the most important one) but it wasn’t and I was just about to message the sender when the van turned up with it, so the delivery driver obviously pre programmed delivery which is fine but stressed me out. The other deliveries turned up at various points in the day.
Once Charlie had collected Oscar I made some lunch and then went out to the flower room to have a couple of hours doing flowery things. When I am doing that I am not thinking of anything else which is nice and relaxing. I have orders coming in thick and fast for Mothers Day as well as other orders, it’s nice to be working with flowers again.
British grown, on the bulb, muscari, a first for us 🥰
Friday: It rained a lot last night and looks like it will be the wettest February on record as well as the dullest 😂 I have been busy doing flower things today, I have had a lot of work come in this week and that’s on top of Mothers Day orders lol, I am not complaining though as I love doing it. I will have to balance it a bit more carefully once I am working outside more too or there won’t be enough hours in the day I am sure of that 🤪
Saturday: More flipping rain and quite a bit of it, the temperature is cold, wind chill even colder. I want to get in the greenhouse but I need ungloved hands for the work I want to do and they just keep going blue 🙄 pretty please can we have some sunshine soon 🙏 The spring flowers I have growing need a bit of warmth to spur them along, I was hoping to have lots of tulips ready for Mothers Day but I think they will probably make an appearance the week after 🤪 This flower farming lark is unpredictable at the best of times especially if you are not using heat and purely relying on Mother Nature which is more sustainable. There is not a decent solar heater on the market yet so that is not even an option, if you use bubble wrap you run the risk of mildew with all this wet damp weather, it is a no win situation at the minute so we just keep holding on and hoping.
I spent a quick half an hour making sure I have enough stems ordered for Mothers Day, I will have some flowers I can cut but I need to supplement with flowers from other British growers at this time of year and that is a bit of a balancing act 😬
Sunday: We had some sunshine and it was most welcome 😊 It started of foggy and frosty but the sun was trying hard to break through and eventually did so we made the most of the day. John spent the day cleaning out chickens, cleaning the car and mowing the grass. I spent the day potting up dahlias that had started to grow, some peony plants, strawberry plant plus some eryngium that need to go in the ground but we have another frost forecast so I potted them for now. Sam arrived for a visit with the children and they had bought some seeds they wanted to grow, strawberries and tomatoes. So we went into the greenhouse and they had a lesson on seed sowing, if they make it home still in the compost in one piece I will be surprised 🤪 but it’s good they have an interest and they can watch them daily to see how they are doing. Once they had gone a barrowed some woodchip put on the paths in the garden then cut some fresh greens from the greenhouse for our dinner later.
All the dahlias are now in separate pots and languishing in the kitchen for the next few weeks until it is warm enough to put the into the tunnels.
I had someone coming to collect some flowers, some rhubarb roots to drop to a neighbour, cook the dinner then I am done for the day, but it was a good, productive and fairly warm day.
Dahlias in the kitchen for a few weeks, it is a steady 16c in there so perfect conditions for them 😊
Monday 26th June 2023: A new week and a fairly busy one too as far as flowers go. It is British Flowers Week and I have the intention of doing something for it but not sure what yet. I was up early to get a bit more watering done, I did have the irrigation hoses on in the front beds last night and just wanted to get the pots watered properly. Each year I think, it can’t be as hot and dry as last year can it? and the answer is yes, yes it can 😜 After doing the watering I had a shower and breakfast, did the eggs, put on a wash load and then went out to cut some more lavender. I also cut some fairy roses for drying, they dry beautifully and are always worth doing. The lavender I have plans for once that is dry but I have sold a few bunches too. Then it was onto social media updates as you have to keep those going constantly for the algorithms 😂 plus it’s good to update customers or potential customers as to what is going on or what is available. I had the undertaker to ring for the funeral flowers on Friday, I just needed to know what time they could be delivered, then answer a message from my doctors surgery who wanted a blood pressure reading. That was not great, it is on the high side (even though I feel better today than I have for ages lol) and I now have to do morning and evening readings for a week to see what it is doing over time or if it was because I have been up working since 5am 😜 After doing that I planted up two roses that we got for our anniversary, one is called rambling Ruby and the other is called, As Good as it Gets ( a compact floribunda) now both planted and watered in. Next a sit down to do a few modules of my online course, which is mostly just watching at the minute to be honest so it is not taxing my brain. Then onto making up the flowers to be delivered later today and google the address so I know where to deliver to. It is not even noon yet.
We have geese and we have approx 4 acres they can roam in and sit wherever they like in those 4 acres but guess where they have decided is best 🙄 Right outside the door of my flower workshop, yep let’s sit and crap here all day, not even to the left or the right of the door but right smack bang in front 🤦♀️
The ducks have also decided they would rather like to come in the front drive, climb up on the raised beds (flattening everything with their flat feet as they go) and lay eggs there instead of in their hut. John says the ducks are not laying many eggs, I say they are laying them somewhere else, he says no I don’t think so, I find a pile of eggs in my flower beds 🤔 At the minute they are confined to their run, which is a pretty big area but they are not free ranging all over the place and especially not on my flower beds 😜
Tuesday: The whole blood pressure thing is not great, I have to send in readings and they are still up this morning. This is likely to be related to my medication although I will be making adjustments to my diet 😂 On the whole I don’t eat or do things that are bad for my blood pressure, I don’t smoke, I rarely drink and I cook most thing from scratch so salt is limited. What I have been over the last couple of months is sedentary due to the shingles and I do eat more biscuits and chocolate than is necessary 😜 but not big quantities. I was actually feeling pretty good yesterday until I took the first reading 😂
This morning I have been doing lots of different things starting with giving the flower room a clean, tidy, sweep and wash the buckets plus hang any unused flowers up to dry. Then onto some weeding in the garden, the weather is ideal for me today but I am really hoping we get some rain again soon it is very dry.
Wednesday: I planned on doing one thing and then did something entirely different 😜 But first I cut some foliage for a funeral sheaf I am making for Friday, this requires strong foliage such as a tree branch and they need as much conditioning as possible to take up plenty of water and stay looking good. Charlotte came over with Oscar before going to baby group and also to collect some flowers ordered by her friend, she delivered them for me on her rounds. Then I had planned on doing some gardening but instead I did the rest of the online course and then went I to the flower hut to do some practice 😁
We had dinner in the evening and after I went outside to pick a bowlful of strawberries for dessert 🍓 yum. I then spent an hour in the flower hut making a fresh lavender wreath which will now hang to dry as it is.
Thursday: We had a bit of rain early this morning, not much but again it will freshen everything up in a way that watering can’t do. I had some more flowers to cut, the rest of them for the funeral sheaf I will make tonight and then some for other orders.
After that I decided I really ought to do some cleaning. Initially the girls came and do it for me, changing the bed sheets etc as well but eventually I was able to help and now I am able to do it on my own again yay 😜 I did a deep clean of the bathroom the other week and then with Shelley’s help the same in the living room as I was not able to move the sofas by myself but now I need to do the bedrooms. Move everything, dust, clean, hoover and put stuff away that has been sat around for far too long. Same with the spare room where everything gets dumped, everything is now lovely and I will wait for the sun to move round before cleaning the windows which also have not been touched for a good few months lol. I still have the office, boot room and the kitchen to tackle but that can wait for another day as my hand is smarting a little so best not push it too far.
Knowing my luck the minute I hang the sheets out on the line it will rain 😂
It didn’t rain and the sheets dried beautifully 😁 In the evening it was to make up the sheaf of flowers for tomorrows funeral. It is always delightful to do flowers for people to receive but there is something profoundly humbling to be asked to do flowers for someone’s final journey.
Friday: After breakfast the first job of the day was to cut flowers for a wholesale bucket customer this tomorrow and while I was doing that Charlie and Oscar arrived. They had walked over and Oscar had his breakfast here before they walked back home again before it rains. The forecast says rain, the rain radar says rain and it looks like it will rain but as yet nothing has fallen from the sky 🙄 I did the final touches to the sheaf before delivering it to the funeral director in Witney. The flowers I do are as always fully compostable except the little cellophane cover on the message card and that is only there in case it rains so as not to smudge the writing. Natural, sustainable, seasonal, compostable 🥰
Once back home I made a cuppa and sat down, I have just had another order come in and have had to delay until Monday or Tuesday (which is fine with the customer) as I have pretty much used or will have used most of what I have growing this weekend. The flowers are at a switch over stage, the early summer flowers are still blooming but desperately need some rain and the showy summer flowers are in bud but not quite out yet, they need some rain too!
I went back outside and got on with some cutting back and weeding, the lupins and delphinium have had their first flush and I can see new growth at the base, cutting them right back will hopefully produce a second flush in a couple of months time. Cutting back plants that are going over also means that you let more light into those that are yet to bloom or have got overshadowed by the stars of the show. I cut back the nepeta which gets unruly and the campanula which grows tall then flops everywhere, the tall daisy’s are getting a bit unruly too so they got thinned out. I have the biggest patch of echinops growing, once they start to colour up I will be cutting them and that plant will need dividing, I should get some good plant material to pot up from it, grow it on and either plant elsewhere next year or sell some or both.
Early afternoon I had a delivery and not one that I had ordered this time. This was a gift from friends who came to our anniversary party, it was afternoon tea from the Cornish company 🥰 freshly baked scones, Cornish jam and cream, tea grown in Cornwall and Cornish biscuits, delicious so thank you very much Sally and Ian x
As John was 60 this year he knows a lot of 60 year olds 😜 so we are off out to a 60th birthday party tonight , the theme is 1920’s or black and white, we opted for black and white 😂
Early evening and still no sign of the rain they have been forecasting all day 🤷♀️🙄😏 probably pour down just as we step out of the door later 😂
Saturday: Started with cutting this morning for orders tomorrow, put the watering on in the small tunnel for the cucumbers and tomatoes, then the twins came to stay for an hour while Sam took Mia to her riding lesson. Shelley and Flo popped in and Shelley helped with a bit of technology that had me flummoxed 😶 Customers arrived to collect their orders and then I pottered around doing I have no idea what for the afternoon. Meanwhile John has been busy digging up dock and a few bits of ragwort from the bigger paddock, he did the small one the other day, then dragged it and topped it and that is looking good.
Popped out for a few hours early evening to visit my sister and on our return found a card and some strawberries in the shed for the ‘hen humans’ how lovely was that. While getting the washing in I was thinking that the universe/cosmos must listen and for every Ying there is a Yang. Just lately I have felt that some humans have no thought for anyone but themselves 😏 couple that with the loss of hens, we started with 70 when we came back from holiday and are down to 25 and it can feel quite depressing at times and then out of the blue, a lovely gesture which restores my faith in my fellow humans 🥰 thank you 🙏
Sunday: A new day and a better frame of mind today, still no rain mind you 🙄 I had flowers to get ready for customer collection mid morning but then I pottered around doing the usual, watering, weeding and watching lol. Watching to see what is about to come out, I have plenty in bud at the minute they just need a burst of rain or sun or both to chivvy them along. Once the flowers were collected we went to get some food shopping, I keep telling John to go on his own as it is mostly stuff for him, I can mange with the garden and the freezers 😂
We went over to Shelley’s for a bite to eat mid afternoon then once back I got the hose connected to do some more watering. I then wandered round and did some cutting for drying, nice red colours today which will hopefully be nice for winter arrangements. John was going to put a lot more hooks up for me but he has been doing the paddocks and changing the broken pump on the water tanks so I guess they will have to wait.
Grown not flown, natural, seasonal, local flowers 🥰
Monday17th April 2023: I had one of those mornings where all the things that were bugging me just had to be done and there was no putting it off any longer. It’s not that I put them off just that other jobs jump the queue 😂 So this morning I hoovered the boot room and washed down all the side areas, it gets dusty and dirty with the cats and dogs in there but when it’s constantly raining there is no point even trying to clean it because it won’t stay like that for more than ten minutes. It probably still won’t stay very clean but I couldn’t put up with it any longer, then there was the fridge to clean out, things lurking in the back and half used things sitting on the shelves, all clean and tidy again. I managed to smash my favourite tea mug while I was wiping down the side ☹️ so I then had to hoover the kitchen floor which also needs a wash but as the wet just gets walked right in I only want to do it when we have a dry period 😜 I cleaned the bathroom and emptied the wash basket, I also need to wash a few extra things for our holiday, my hat for instance. There were things to put away in their right place things that just get put down somewhere and left for a few weeks 😬 I feel less stressed when these jobs have left my head because they are done ✔️
The weather is cloudy and not at all spring like but that suits me fine as long as it’s not raining though the air is damp with no sun shining through. I have a few flowers to do for customers this week, some today but mostly at the end of the week and then there are Friday flowers of course, they sell quickly most of the time and as the growth season gets under way there will be many more flowers and so many more to put out which will be fabulous.
John bought home a second hand commercial freestanding sink and drainer which we had found locally, we got it all cleaned up (it wasn’t too bad just some grease on a couple of the legs) and go that in the flower hut. They have a deeper sink so much better for getting the buckets in, it is difficult in a shallow sink to get the taller buckets in and get the tap over the top. It will only be used to fill the buckets and give them a swill so didn’t need to be anything too fancy. Flowers being picked up this evening and then I have an online meeting later tonight.
Tuesday: I keep thinking it’s Wednesday 🤷♀️ I have flowers to do for Thursday and thought I better get cutting ready for conditioning then realised it’s only Tuesday 🙄 The morning started badly with me waking up with pink eye and then later dropping a box of eggs as I was taking them out to the shed 😝 Maybe I should just sit quietly today 😂 I know I won’t though as the sun is trying to make an appearance, it still feels a tad cold out but it’s only 9am so if it stays out it will warm up to a beautiful spring day hopefully.
It is three years today that Dad passed away, where does the time go and how come it goes by faster the older you get 🤔
I spent a large part of the day weeding, Shelley called in and also got stuck in helping me with the never ending weed harvest 😂 I know you can eat a lot of them and I have made food from them before now but mostly they feed other animals or get composted. I also took some cuttings from a sedum and dug up some campanula seedlings and potted those up, getting free plants for another day is money saving and satisfying.
Wednesday: It is Mia’s birthday today, a whole seven years old, oh to be seven again lol. We will be popping over to see her later after she finishes school.
I am hoping it will be dry enough to get the towels washed and on the line today 🤞🙄 They are just finishing the cycle as I type, I have a hearty beef stew in the slow cooker along with a multitude of yummy veg so once the towels are out I am free to get on with the rest of my day. I will be lifting and cutting flowers today ready for Friday flowers plus a few other orders I have tomorrow and Friday. Once the season is underway I hopefully will have flowers available all week long but at this time of year I concentrate them to the end of the week. This way I don’t end up with flowers I haven’t sold and therefore money wasted.
I got another brew on the go yesterday, comfrey tea 😁 comfrey grows like mad here and so best to make good use of it by steeping it in water for a few weeks. It makes a stinking tea but it is great plant food so worth the effort, sustainable, natural plant food 🥰 Fill a bucket with the leaves, cover with water, cover the bucket (because of the smell) and leave for three weeks then use it at a 10:1 ratio the 10 being water. It has a high nutrient content due to the deep tap root being able to access deeper soils, high in potassium and nitrogen, it can be used as a spray (foliar) feed or watered onto the soil promoting good strong growth and good fruiting/flowering.
Having sung Biscuits praises saying she doesn’t try and get out (famous last words) she has got out three days running the little s**t 😂 The electric tape is up and clicking away so I know it’s on, I think she is literally climbing through the post and rail fencing 🙄 So plan b is put into action 😝 She is fenced off inside the smallest paddock we have so I lure Jack across with the showing of tasty hay and shut the gates at either side of the paddock. I undo the electric fenced off area and let them both roam the small paddock, the hopeful outcome will be that Jack helps to graze it right off and then he will go into the paddock next door while Biscuit stays in the eaten off one. Every now and then we will have to put Jack in there to help keep the grass down as it is growing well now. This is the plan, plans do not always go how they should, watch this space 👀 by the time I finish sorting this out it is lunchtime.
Over to see Mia after school to celebrate her birthday with her. I left the water on in the tunnel while I was away and this year I and using the timer on my watch to remind me to turn the water off again, so far that is working well though I did have to re set it twice while we were out as I had only set it for an hour.
Thursday: A sunny day with a stiff breeze making it feel cooler. I had a busy morning doing flowers, I have some orders going to customers today, some tomorrow and then the Friday flowers and jam jars. It is surprising how long it takes to do them all, it’s after 1pm and I have only just finished having been doing them all morning. Normally I would do them this evening but I have some deliveries to make after the twins have gone home and then it’s pool night for John so I have to squeeze it in-between the two 😝
Friday: Up before the alarm this morning to get things done, flowers needed to go out early for customers coming first thing, the bunches needed wrapping and the jam jar flower needed tying loosely. I was hoping to get it done before the alarm went off and John got up but he decided to get up early too 😝 He had to stand and eat his toast as I had commandeered the kitchen table, once the flower hut is ready this will no longer be a problem. I had early customers coming for eggs and honey to so I had to make sure all those were ready and out in the shed. My day is going to be like that today, I have an appointment at 9 Shelley is coming over around 10.30 to walk through things that she will be looking after while we are away, I have customers coming to collect flowers at other times of the day and I have someone coming to collect lambing equipment I sold online.
The weather was lovely yesterday and today it’s not! Colder and wet again urrgghh there is just no consistency to the weather patterns at the minute. On the sunny days you think ‘ooo Spring has sprung’ and then back to ‘oh it’s winter again’ 😂 it does not make life easy for growing things either, the fluctuation in temperatures in the greenhouse and poly tunnels confuse the plants and seedlings and things growing outside are trying but progress is slooooow. Hey Ho no two years are ever the same so at least we are used to ‘winging it’ 😜 All we can do is try our best.
Saturday: Foggy and cold start to the day, it took a good few hours for the sun to burn it off but when it finally did it was not a bad day though it ended with rain and was cold again. First thing this morning we went to town as I needed a good rain coat for our holiday ✔️ then stop to get some shopping ✔️ once home I needed to pick rhubarb and then take that along with flowers down to the pub ✔️ once back I spent an hour or so in the greenhouse potting on plants and then I had the twins for a few hours while Sam and Luke took Mia out for her birthday treat. They were very good and I had them picking all the dandelion heads off the lawn and feeding them to the torts. Then George helped me to dig up dandelions in the pathways, I think he thoroughly enjoyed that especially the great big ones. I seem to have an awful lot of them this year they were growing everywhere and in order to knock them back a bit I needed to dig them up. Not all of them obviously, I have left some smaller ones and I didn’t dig any out of the lawn they can stay and just be mown every now and then. They got hungry and we went inside for lunch and stayed in for the next hour as the sun went in and it got cold outside again. Once they had been collected I was straight back out on the dandelion mission while John cut the lawn. As I said in the beginning the temps dropped and the rain came 🙄 Joping for a half decent day tomorrow 😬
Sunday: It was, for the most part, a decent day 😁 the weather conditions were just about right for me and so I spent most of the time in the greenhouse potting on or pricking out seedlings. John was busy having a bonfire at the back and tidying up. Sam came over with the children, a friend and the friends daughter who goes to riding lessons with Mia. They spent some time grooming the horses then saddled them up for rides around the paddock, everyone, horses and children were very well behaved except Lucie who by all accounts played in the horses water bucket 😂 and then had to strip off because she was soaking wet, you gotta love a spirited carefree child 🥰
We went round to Mums later in the afternoon and we were there when the national test alarm sounded on our phones. Mums went off and then around 30 seconds later mine went off, apparently lots of people didn’t get it at all so it’s lucky it was a test signal and not the real thing 😝 We had a discussion about what exactly the alarm might sound for, we don’t have tsunami, we have fires but nowhere near the scale of some countries, I suppose flash flooding might trigger it but I am guessing the flood would be quicker than the alarm 🤷♀️ chemical leaks or explosions might well be on the list but they would be localised as would many threat to life situations such as a gunman on the loose. We concluded that a meteor strike or nuclear attack were what it is intended for 🤔 Which begs the questions, do they know something?
Monday 3rd April 2023: It’s early and there was a frost but it feels like a typical spring day today, the sun is shining and melting off the frost pretty quickly. I am not sure it will be very warm but it’s not raining 😁 we have now had a couple of days without rain thank goodness as it was getting beyond funny. So it looks like I will be able to get outside and do something useful in the garden, no idea what yet as I haven’t gathered my thoughts entirely. It is also the Easter holidays for the children and a short week as we head towards the Easter weekend 🐰
I quickly whizzed round with the hoover and polish, cleaning is one of the tricky to find moments here 😂 When it’s raining there is no point because animals and humans just track muddy wet feet in and all efforts then become a waste of time. When it’s a fine day I just want to get outside and get on, but I do it for my own sanity, it is nice to have somewhere clean and fresh to come into when you have been busy outside all day. I am waiting for the days when I can get the windows thrown open and blankets and cushion covers out on the line to dry but there is no enough heat in the sun to do the job just yet.
It’s 3pm and I have spent most of the day outside in the garden, weeding and digging up perennial weeds especially stingers. I know they are great for wildlife but for the children not so much, you can guarantee if they trip over it’s always into stingers. I also spent a bit of time putting down weed membrane on the tricky area, I was unable to decide what to do for the best because there are things growing that that I want to keep but other things are failing and the weeds are rampant. So I dug up the bits I am keeping, cut back all the suckers from the apricot tree and covered over with weed membrane. It will probably stay for the rest of the year even though there is asparagus under there, it was usually a bit spindly anyway. Then Charlie and Oscar came so I stopped for a cuppa with them before sweeping off winter debris from the decking and sweeping out cobwebs from the pirate ship. I tried to start the lawn mower but it’s the new one and I haven’t used it before John usually does it so I have no idea how it starts 😂 The grandchildren are having an Easter egg hunt on Friday so I thought I would tidy up the areas that they will probably be looking around plus the jobs needed doing anyway. Inside for a quick sit down before going back out to get more work done.
At 3.30 I looked after Josh and Flo for a couple of hours then while John was feeding the animals and the dinner was cooking I cut the lawn. A good full day today I reckon, its nearly 7pm so dinner, wash up and sit down for what will be left of the evening, pooped.
Tuesday: I went to bed earlier than usual last night as I was so tired lol. This morning it’s a frosty start again but the sun is shining so hopefully another lovely day ahead and I can get a fair bit done outside. I have been holding off planting some things up but I think now is a good time to get them into the ground the trouble is there is always so many other things to do as well.
This morning I signed up to be part of a study group for Cambridge university, it’s a trial being funded by Lupus UK. The study is focused on mental health in long term illness and there are four groups and each will be doing something different, the forth is a control group that won’t be doing anything. I won’t know which group I am in until May but it will be interesting to take part and to see the results at the end. I think that most of the time you are just trying to get by and so are not aware of your mental health it’s just part and parcel of your life and your illness (even if you are stable) it’s not until you fill in a questionnaire and you analyse thoughts that you realise that things could be better 🤷♀️ On the whole I think I have a positive mental attitude but there are times and areas when that dips and during a flare it can dip pretty low but luckily I have not had one for a couple of years now (touch wood 🪵)
I spent the morning sorting out plants that had been potted up over winter, some went out for sale, some that never made it went to the compost heap and the rest I tidied up and are nicely stored in the cold frames. That meant plenty of empty pots and trays to be tidied away and sweeping up to do. I just finished when Shelley came with Josh and Flo quickly followed by Sam, Mia, George and Lucie, Charlie and Oscar arrived a little later. The weather was lovely enough to sit outside in the garden and the children had picnic lunch on a blanket. While the children were busy playing Shelley and I got the netting onto the top of the fruit cage and secured that in place, that’s another job done. I am hoping to keep the birds out entirely this year, I can never see where they get in but hopefully this year they can’t and I will have a good haul of raspberries, blackcurrants and strawberries 😋 Lucie was asking me where the strawberries and tomatoes are, I explained that I had to grow them first and it was too early yet 😂 I do love it that their memories will be of eating tomatoes and soft fruit from Nanas garden 🥰 We also saw a herd of large deer in the field next door, they are getting quite frequent as they were there yesterday as well.
Wednesday: I have showered, breakfasted, hung out the washing, put the eggs out, done the washing up, fed the dogs and cats and watered in the greenhouse all before 9am. I am now waiting for it to warm up just a little before going out to pick rhubarb and cut flowers now that there are some ready to cut 😁
I have been thinking about the subtle changes in the flowers and foliage as we move from week to week. I used to think only in seasons, seed sowing season, growing season, harvesting season and resting season which of course all roughly follow Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Since closely watching flowers on a daily basis though I came to realise that there are micro seasons too, they are very subtle changes but they are definitely there. I think I have mentioned it causally before but the more I watch the more I learn, there is a slow decline of early spring bulbs but at the same time slowly growing late spring bulbs and flowers are getting under way, the same can be said for early flowering foliage. I have recently read a book that confirms my observations and the lady that wrote it notes that she can identify three sections within each season. The ancient Japanese apparently identified 72 micro seasons in a year so I really must up my game and watch more lol.
I had a busy morning cutting flowers, prepping them for conditioning and then picking rhubarb, doesn’t sound a lot but it was a good couple of hours in all. Then Charlie arrived at lunchtime with Oscar and I looked after him for a few hours while Charlie went for an appointment. Nursery rhymes, naps (for Oscar not me) and feeding time all went smoothly, once Charlie had picked Oscar back up it was time to sort out the flowers. Making up bouquets and market bunches plus jam jar flowers also takes longer than it sounds but it is never boring 🥰 the smells are amazing and the result of what I have put together at the end are beautiful 🤩 A quick sit down and something to eat before going off to this months flower club meeting.
Flower club was fab, I had no idea what we were going to make the title was ‘tripods and test tubes’ 🤷♀️ It was somewhat laborious winding string around canes and test tubes but I think the outcome was great and in my head I was already up scaling it 😂 big rustic branches and tubular vases would would a treat for an occasion I think.
Thursday: Friday flowers are going out a day early this week so I was up early with plenty of jobs to do before getting the flowers out at 8am. I was on a multitasking mission which included getting something out for dinner, using the chop saw to cut wood for arrangement orders, drilling a piece of wood for the Easter tree and getting that set up, making up more jam jar flowers as they sold out quickly, cutting foliage for the arrangements I need to make, nailing the hazel whips to the wood and sorting out the dishes to be filled with moss for the arrangement, meeting customers and handing over their flower orders as well as all the usual jobs. Never a dull moment round here and no two days are ever the same.
I spent a couple off hours in the afternoon putting the foliage in the arrangements that are being collected on Saturday, I can’t do it tomorrow as we have a busy day. The twins arrived for their Thursday session while Mia went swimming, I get them their tea while they are here but George is a bit under the weather and not eating much unless it’s custard or yoghurt 😂
Good Friday: It’s a bank holiday today and we had a day of family fun. After getting the morning jobs done the grandchildren arrived for an Easter egg hunt in the garden which was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone. The weather was beautiful, blue skies and sunshine, I doubt it would have been as much fun in the rain! We sat in the garden for a good couple of hours eating hot cross buns and Easter cakes that Charlie made. After everyone left I added the flowers to the arrangements that had been ordered for tomorrow, a quick sit down before getting the afternoon jobs done and the off out for another family party. A farm outbuilding had been transformed into an exceptionally great pub called The Jolly Welshman for my niece’s partner it is his 30th birthday this week, bbq, beer on tap, bar snacks, optics and great furnishing they pulled off an epic feat there. We didn’t stay too late and we’re home by 10pm as the dogs needed letting out but we had a brilliant day.
Oscars first Easter 🐣 Inside The Jolly Welshman which was a farm building transformed! A rare picture of John 😂The Jolly Welshman himself, happy 30th birthday Alex 🎂
Saturday: Up and about quite early, it was frosty but again the sun is shining, oh and last night the moon was amazing, full, low and yellowy/orange and it could still be seen first thing this morning too. John did the animals and went off to get feed, I got the eggs sorted and did the last bits to the arrangements that were being picked up this morning. These gave me sleepless nights thinking about how best to do them and I don’t think I will be doing any more 😂 but I enjoyed the challenge and learnt along the way so that’s a win.
The various stages of the arrangements for collection today.
Once collected we went out to a local landscaping centre to look for some plants, didn’t have much luck and only found one that I wanted so we then drove to a garden centre. I found a couple more of the specifics I was looking for but still not all of them, I lost a few over winter and am trying to replace them but it’s proving difficult so maybe I will have to do without them for now. My runner beans were old seed and they are not amounting to anything, I considered buying plants but when I looked at the state of them for the price I decided to buy new seed instead 😜 Half of the plant trays had damping off problems so it didn’t look good for the rest of them in the tray 🙄 I looked at grafted tomato plants too but figured I will wait to see if my seeds sprout and if not there are usually plenty for sale locally. I just feel that germination is really slow this year, not sure why, maybe I say that every year then end up with too many plants 😂
I spent a bit of time in the garden, John fix the cracked fitting on the outside water pipe, we had to turn it back off in the week when we discovered it was leaking but we are all good now. I watered the ranunculus and anemone in the poly tunnel, the anemone are producing well and the ranunculus should start soon. I have plenty of tulips coming to the fore now lol probably too many but that’s better than not enough. Other plants are just starting to put on tiny growth and I am still waiting to see if some have made it or not. One or two of the dahlias are sprouting, they will stay in the greenhouse until the risk of frost has passed and then go out. Some are still in the ground and I won’t know if they have made it for a few weeks yet.
Sunday: Busy, busy, busy day, I have spent most of the day in the garden planting up everything that can be planted, some in the poly tunnel and some in the garden. If we are going to have rain I might as well make the most of the dry day today and the watering in by Mother Nature tomorrow. It was supposed to be sunny and blue skies but that didn’t appear luckily for me 😁 it meant it was a perfect day to be dong whatever needed doing and that included lots of weeding. I did spend an hour or so helping John, he was setting up the water tanks ready to catch the rain that is coming and needed me to help get the tanks up on the stands (easier said than done 😜) I also hoovered out the boot and the back seat of the car to remove the hay from last week 😝 I sowed some runner bean seeds, the ones that I had saved from a couple of years ago failed miserably so fresh seed was needed. I will try harder to save seed this year and make sure I use it the following year instead of leaving it. A few of the seeds I sowed last week are starting g to appear, the dwarf bean, broad bean and peas have tiny shoots in the greenhouse. Indoors the courgettes are beginning to sprout but no sign of the tomatoes yet 🙄 We are away for a week at the end of the month and I need to make sure that everything is under control before I go which is another reason to get as much in the ground as possible. Shelley is very capable at maintaining it all but not so confident with growing and transplanting not on this scale anyhow. Most veg plants won’t go in until I get back and I certainly won’t direct sow anything until I return. After 30 odd years of gardening I can tell the difference between a weed seed and a useful seed but it’s not fair to put that pressure on someone else!
John cut the front paddock with the ride on mower, too short of course 🙄 I did tell him to set the blades high but there is none so deaf as those that don’t want to hear 😬
Monday 27th March 2023: Gosh the month is rattling along isn’t it 🙄 This morning the weather looks promising 🙄 dry and I can see the sun though it is a tad cold at 8am mind you the clocks went forward so it will feel like 7am until we adjust and so will the temps lol. Hopefully it will stay dry we could do with a break from the dank outlook so it feels a bit more like spring.
I picked rhubarb this morning to put out for sale, I love rhubarb season it the first of the home grown crops to become available in any quantity. I then thought the best place to be working this morning in on the front beds as the sun has come out. So I spent some time weeding and also sorting out the supports for the taller plants such as delphiniums, lupin and chrysanthemums. I soon realised I am going to need to start wearing a hat and sunscreen 🙄 that would be way too early for most people but I can already feel the effects of the sun on my head 😒 I have two small problem areas as it is at the minute and if I don’t cover up chances are I will lose the hair and have even more bald spots than I already have. All winter long I mostly forget that I have an issue with the sun 😂 I eagerly await some real sunshine and then can’t spend very long in it without cover 😂 such is life, there are worse things but it’s a real pain sometimes (well a lot of the time really) I retreated indoors to dig out hats have a cuppa and skim through my new reading material before heading back outside suited and booted.
It’s a fine day and it’s best to make the most of it so I have been outside the whole time until mid afternoon. I have weeded, planted up raspberry canes, cut down the pussy willow next to the house and bundled that up for later use, weeded some more (quite a lot more 😝) and cut back suckers from trees. The area with the apricot and cherry tree is a tricky area, the apricot tree sends suckers out all over the place, the comfrey has taken hold as have the stingers and every other weed mentionable. I have the thornless blackberry growing there and some asparagus but I think I have decided to dig up what I want to keep and try to suppress everything else under membrane for the remainder of the year and see if I can regain some control. I have no idea what else I can do with it otherwise, nature is reclaiming it 😂
The temptation is strong to just keep going but I am of an age when I recognise that I need to stop and rest, if I kept going it would be half hearted so better to re charge and do the job properly and besides I need a Nana nap 😂
Tuesday: A totally different day today, raining, grey, dank. I whizzed round and did some polishing, hoovering and tidying away before Charlie came and we went to Witney with Oscar for a quick look round and a coffee. I needed some black shoes for my upcoming holiday, I have to admit defeat to high heels 😂 and go for lower shoes with comfort these days. The problem is the choice is awful, I am pretty sure shoe manufacturers could do a whole lot better than either shoes that feel like planks of wood to wear or glorified slippers 😝 it seems not. Charlie stayed for a while to feed Oscar when we got back and then went home. I had been fighting off a headache all morning but it got worse in the afternoon so I had a lay down and fell asleep, that still didn’t cure it even with paracetamol although it was a little better. I didn’t get anything else done other than make the dinner.
Wednesday: Grey and dank again today, good job I made the most of Mondays weather. My headache has gone thank goodness, it means I can focus on the day ahead. The farrier is coming this morning and so is a delivery of flowers. I had a quick look round the garden this morning the bridal crown are almost ready to start cutting and the tulips just need to put some stem length on and then they should be good to cut. I have a couple of ranunculus flowers emerging 😁 and the snakehead are doing daintily well, I am hoping to get time to practise some vase arrangements this week at some point. On Monday while I was weeding I took a quite a few rooted pieces of Nepeta and popped those into a jar of water. Nepeta (cat mint) was one of the surprises in the cutting garden, it’s abundant once it gets going, cut and come again, it has lovely textured foliage and a glaucous leaf plus it can get quite tall making it one of the best fillers for bouquets and bunches in my opinion, there is the tiny pretty blue flower of course which add to its usefulness and on the nature side of things the bees absolutely love it, win, win.
The farrier came and Biscuit has laminitis ☹️ she has not had it since we have had her though she has had it in a previous life. Gutted that we have blotted our score card, she seems ok with it though, the way she ran around the paddock you would never know 😂 That then meant a scort round to dig out all the fencing stakes, tape and electric and rig up an electrified pen which she will probably remain in for the whole spring and summer 🙄 As we had finished the last of the big hay bales during the cold snap we had to get some more in. Sam took Johns car and went to get a couple of small bales, we now have a car covered in hay 😝
I had a few deliveries due today which all came at various times, I then went out to do a bit of tidying up and burn some rubbish before coming in to make a cup of tea, just about to sit down when another delivery arrived. Shelley called in and so did Charlie with Oscar.
It’s 7.30pm and the rain is ridiculous, it has been raining on and off all day and now belting it down. We lose signal on the tv when it’s really bad, I think the satellite has been there so long it is breaking down. The only reason we have a freesat box is so that John can record programmes as he refuses to pay 😝 it is becoming obsolete technology and I would get rid and pay but 🤷♀️
I have a zoom meeting tonight on pruning 😁 always up for learning whatever I don’t already know.
Thursday: Another dull, grey day with the threat of rain 🙄 Getting bored of it now, fat or famine as always! I have a funeral to attend later this afternoon but the rest of the day is mine to decide what to do, governed by the weather of course. We just need some drier, warmer days to pick up our spirits here which are ebbing to be honest.
I managed to miss the showers walking to and from the church but it did rain a fair amount in between. Does anyone else feel that everything is on hold? I just can’t move things forward with the garden at all and there does not look like much let up over the next few days in fact tomorrow looks horrendous 😝
Friday: No change in the awful weather and it’s playing havoc with growing seedlings. I have some in the greenhouse that came through lovey and then pfft, one colder night and they keeled over. This morning after doing Friday flowers I went into the greenhouse to see how things are going. Some successes, some failures but all very slow. I sowed a tray of cucumber, peppers and tomato but I have bought the tray indoors to get going, I am tempted to plug the propagators in just to get it all going but as I have no idea how the weather is going to go long term I am not sure if that is a good idea or not. The problem is with heat I can get good plants under way but when they get to a size that they should be transplanted it could still be cold and then where do I move them to 🤷♀️ I have a feeling with all this rain that the outdoor flowers are just all going to come at once so I end up with a glut rather than a slow succession, it seems like a no win situation at the minute.
Tulips are just beginning to flower outside and next year I think I will try growing some in the tunnel, the risk there is mice eating the bulbs, it’s a never ending guessing game 😂
I cut my contorted hazel branch ready for the Easter tree, it needs to dry out a little before I decorate it and get it on display, it has some wonderful lichen on it though which adds to its charm.
Just gone 1pm and ffs it’s hammering down 🙄 I need to walk down to the pub to take some flowers and told them I am waiting for a dry spot 😂 might be a while. I shut the door on the flower shed initially because of the rain then I re opened it and now the rain is blowing in that direction I imagine they will be soaked. Oh our green and pleasant land is green for a reason I know but seriously we have not had much let up for four days now.
Saturday: Well that was a different start to the day, it’s 1st April so All fools day but this was no joke. The whole (pretty much) of the next town along woke up to no water (the irony is not lost on me after all this rain) the messages started first with Charlie asking if we had water, we did and I told her to come over and get some if she needed it. Next I messaged on the family page to say the same as many have young children and babies plus everyone needs their morning brew right 😂 Then the phone calls and messages started for John, being a plumber he was the first port of call for some but there was nothing he could do 🤷♀️ It is Mums birthday 🥳 today but she was over at 7.30 to fill up some containers 😂 The social media is going mad with all the questions to which the reply from any utility as always is ‘we are investigating’ 😝 Normally it’s us with either no water, no electric or no internet so it’s nice to offer help to others for a change. What worries me is that people have no idea how to cope in these situations 🤷♀️ I have a back up plan for most things here, battery powered lights, a store of bottle water (enough to get us through a couple of days) and solar powered battery charging pack 🙄 though the lack of sun might be the downfall there. I also have water cleansing tablets just in case the water is off for a long time (admittedly that would be some kind of disaster situation) and stores of food that is rotated for an emergency situation. If needs be we could dig a compost loo and rig up an outdoor shower (warmer months only 😝) As I type at 9 am it is apparently all kicking off down at the supermarket over the bottled water! It pays to be a bit of a prepper I can tell you, who knows what is around the next corner.
On the upside it’s nearly 4pm and we have had no rain today yet, dare not speak too soon mind you as the sky looks iffy. We have had a rare day off today, still the usual jobs have to be done of course, feeding, egg collecting but other than that nothing else here on the farm. We have been to town as I needed to get some new black trousers for my holiday, coffee and cake out and then round to Mums to say happy birthday and have more cake 😁 There were plenty of family coming and going so we stayed a longer than planned but it’s nice to have time off.
Sunday: Another dry but cold day though the sun came out in the afternoon there was still a chill in the air. Plenty of jobs done in the morning including some seed sowing and rhubarb picking, John cleaned out the birds and his van 🙄 Then we went out for lunch at our local pub, delicious food at the Rose and Crown, after that it was round to Shelley and Martins to wish him happy birthday and have tea and cake 😁 Back home in time to do the animals and clock off for the day.
Monday 20th June 2022: New week, new energy and hopefully better internet connection 😂 It is sunny this morning but not as hot as it was at the end of last week, a comfortable summers day. That means I can get on and I have a lot to do as always, last night I was trying to get to sleep but the list of things I wanted to get done were running through my head for ages. This morning I thought I had better get on and get some of them ticked off the list so first up was getting the eggs sorted and out for sale, then onto getting the washing done and hung out to dry. Once they were sorted I went out and cut flowers for a bouquet I have to do for tonight plus a couple of extra cuttings for putting out for sale. Sometimes you pick a combination and think ‘wow’ that is stunning, well I think so any way, they are calendula (a rusty orange, can’t remember the name but need to look it up) and ami Majus in flower, just beautiful and I added some mint for contrast. Next it was on to pick mangetout, strawberries, raspberries and redcurrants plus some tea leaves for drying. I hadn’t finished there because after that I harvested a good lot of lavender which was bundled up and put out for sale and then I cut two big bundles of flower heads for drying, the first was love is a mist and the second poppy. I am aiming to dry as many flowers as I can this year to extend the range of material I have available. With that in mind I have been reading up and researching the different ways of drying and preserving flowers, there are a few different techniques and I am going to give them all a go to find out which are the most successful.
If the internet connection is playing ball you might even get photos this week 🤪
Freshly harvested lavender and some of the redcurrants 🥰
I still have plenty of jobs to do, it’s continuous at the minute but I want to get some more seeds sown before it’s too late both flowers and veg and I have plants that still need to go into the ground 🙄
Just one of the flower combos I cut this morning and arranged this afternoon.
I got the dinner prepped and ready to go later, I have someone coming to collect some plants, someone coming to get a chicken dispatched, someone coming to pick up a bouquet, watering in the tunnels to do and more picking of flowers for drying later if I have time.
The last for the plants found me eventually, the chicken sadly died during the day and the flowers were collected. Just about time to cut some more flowers for drying while the dinner is cooking, quick sit down after eating and then I will go out and water.
Tuesday: Summer Solstice. Another fine and sunny day 😏 that means only half a day outside for me before I came in from the sunshine but I did get a good bit done. First up was cutting for a bouquet tomorrow then some picking, mostly fruit today including a good haul of redcurrants. Sam and the twins came in the afternoon and I sat in the shade while they played with water and had ice lollies. After dinner I went with some friends to a local wood to celebrate the summer solstice with some singing and dancing, making the most of the longest day and connecting with Mother Nature 🥰
Wednesday: Up early to make up a bouquet for collection first thing this morning and then cut some flowers for a bouquet delivery tonight. I harvested some more lavender for drying and I intend to make some lavender bags. I bought muslin bags and I used the flower pounding method to decorate them, entirely environmentally friendly and when they no longer have any scent they can be composted without any problem. I also gathered some rose petals and put those in the drying bag and hung it out on the oak tree, it takes a lot of petals to make a small amount but they would only end up in the compost so might as well make good use of them. I have made a video of the flower pounding technique but I am not sure if it uploaded to the page or got lost in the web so,where because as yet it has not appeared 😂
I sat down for lunch and had just finished when the doorbell rang, I went out and a lovely couple were enquiring about the name Friesland, they were Dutch of course and we had a laugh about the fact that they were not the first ones to stop in and ask and I doubt they will be the last. I really must try to find out what the connection is but I have a feeling it goes a very long way back. We are not in ‘danelaw’ territory as such but I know that around the late 800’s the Danes pushed further during various attacks and some then settled in Dorset so my best guess is that maybe it is named after a settler or settlers from that period 🤷♀️ I have had various contact from people over the years but if anyone can throw extra light on my theory or indeed blow it out of the water then please do get in touch I would be very interested to hear anything.
I spent an hour or so in the evening weeding and then doing a corsage workshop which produced some lovely work and in different styles. The sunset was amazing so it’s worth coming just to see that 😁
Thursday: I was up early because I wanted to get some serious weeding and cutting back done and I wasn’t sure if the sun would come out today or not. As it was it was mainly overcast all morning which meant I could get a lot done, it also meant I completely knackered myself out by 11.30am 😂 that was a fair stint though with a 5.30am start. I weeded the front three beds plus cut back anything that was going over or getting too thuggish. Then out to the veg garden to get the tulip bed cleared, I slowly went from bed to bed weeding, clearing and cutting anything that was no longer looking good or had finished producing a crop. I harvested new potatoes for dinner this evening as well as mangetout and broad beans, then strawberries, raspberries and red currants, plenty for eating later. By this point even though it was still overcast I really had to come in and take a proper break otherwise I will not be much good for anything later on 🙄 So many jobs both outside and indoors, I guess some will just have to wait. There are heavy downpours forecast today, I hope we get a bit of it but not too much, it certainly feels very close sometimes and then it seems to clear.
I was sitting on the bench having a coffee looking at the garden when it suddenly dawned on me that I have reached the point when I can safely say ‘I have a food forest’ 😁 after working towards it for a few years now it is beginning to come of age, it looks fabulous.
Had a sleep at lunchtime so that I had enough energy to carry on in the afternoon and evening, it’s pretty relentless right at this moment and I hardly have time to do anything else.
Friday: Oh my days I am exhausted today lol, another early start to cut loads of flowers for orders today and tomorrow. I had an enquiry come in for 3 x bouquets the first week of July, quite pleased because she had asked a local florist for British flowers and they said they couldn’t do it so she told them she would look elsewhere then and got in touch with me 😁 I had an extremely busy morning bombing around trying to get everything done including hoovering and polishing the house, picking veg and fruit, watering the tunnels, still no sign of this rain that we had been warned about 🤷♀️ A hundred and one jobs later and Sam arrived with the twins, we went into town, I took Lucie to the park while George went to the barbers and then we all went to the cafe for lunch. Back home and Charlie came to meet Sam and they went off to look at wedding dresses for Sam. By the time they came back I was frazzled 😂 the twins wore me out but my day hadn’t finished yet. Time to get dinner sorted and while it was cooking water the front beds because still no sign of any rain and things are looking pretty dry, I need flowers 😆 Then once dinner was eaten, out to do a good bit of weeding while John cut some more of the front paddock with the limp along lawn mower 😝 Indoors, wash up, write a shopping list for the morning which John will have to do because I have flowers to arrange and the spare room to clean as Josh, Flo and Mia are coming to stay. Finally sit down at 9.30pm and try not to fall asleep 😴
A charming hand held posy for a customer today 🥰
Saturday: Up early to get as much done as possible, still no rain as yet 🙄 One of the main things I wanted to get done was to plant some plants that had been sat a while waiting to go in. Dahlias that I grew from cuttings and some twizzled penstemon, can’t wait to see what they look like, also some knautia. I still have chrysanthemums to plant up but I want to get those inside, they are a late variety which will flower right up to Christmas and hopefully beyond if grown under cover. Meanwhile John went off early to get feed before yet another price rise of 90p a bag, corn has also gone up massively. When he came back he cut some more of the paddock while waiting for a customer to come and collect new hens. By this time I was inside making up two bouquets going out to orders today and some jam jars with the stems I didn’t use in the bouquets. Then John went off to get some shopping while I changed the beds and got ready for the grandchildren to come and stay, just about managed a cup of coffee and a pastry before they arrived. The rest of the day was given over to entertaining and feeding them 🥰 It is actually our 39th wedding anniversary today 😲 whaaat, where did all those years go 😂 I told John I am expecting rubies next year 😝
Back to the feed costs and it is becoming unsustainable to keep poultry for selling the eggs. We did some calculations and we make about £34 a week and that doesn’t include our time, if we factored that in we are definitely running at a loss. The other side of that is that hens are becoming harder to get hold of, October is the earliest our supplier can get some more, normally he is turning over 3,000 birds every 6/8 weeks. Not sure what the outcome of all this is going to be over the whole country 🤷♀️
A busy and tiring day, fish and chip supper, bathtime for the kiddies and I have no idea what time they will eventually go to sleep 🛌
Sunday: Kids finally went to sleep around 10pm and were up at 6am 😂 we had pancakes then they went with Grampy to do the feed rounds, played outside for a while, indoors for a snack and a drink, back outside to play in the paddock and see the horses, back in for a drink and a snack, I think they enjoyed themselves. Certainly tired themselves out judging by the photos of them sleeping in the afternoon once they had gone home 🥰 John and I then shot off to get some bits from the DIY shop and had a timely return, couldn’t have timed it any better if we tried because just as we turned into the driveway the fox was creeping across it and heading towards the front hens 🤬 that was about 4pm. It was definitely the youngster again, luckily John has trained the hens to go back in when he takes the corn feed to them. We are going out for Sunday lunch at 5pm so he rounded them up and got them in, can’t afford to lose any more 😳
I didn’t get anything done other than the above today and that was tiring enough but it was lovely and the children behaved themselves so well. I know they are my grandchildren but I was impressed with their manners, thanking my sister for bringing the fish and chips and asking to get down from the table each time they had finished eating, no prompting required, well done parents 😁
In the week ahead I have flowers to do every day except Friday 😲 amazing and very grateful for the support of customers especially as it’s only my first year. I can already see what mistakes I have made, what has gone well, what I would grow again and what I won’t be or what I will grow differently. I am loving it and wish I had done it years ago, next year will be bigger, more organised and I will have a better understanding of what I will have available and when. The combinations of flowers is unlimited it’s only my time and my purse that prevents me planting up the whole five acres 😂 but who knows 😝
Thanks for reading, have a great week, hopefully we will get a tad more rain 🤞
Well hello everyone 😁 we are back from our holibobs which was a mixed bag of weather and destinations, the one consistent thing was the excellent food and service. The holiday started well enough two days at sea and then an announcement about very windy weather meaning we were unable to dock at two of our stops 🙄 Another two days at sea 😬 We finally arrived at Stockholm and it was raining, cold hard rain 😏 After that the weather settled to mild and sunny for the other stops until we reached Oslo when it was ridiculously hot 🥵 We have seen some great places and learnt a lot of history, my favourite place had to be Sweden 🥰 In Lithuania we had a fabulous opportunity to go to a Smallholding with the tour guide that lives there, self sufficient, living the good life and sharing it with us. Fab trip with nettle tea, homemade cheese and honey on offer, it was right up my street but all the others really enjoyed themselves as well. One thing that was evident throughout the Baltic countries was the negative impact Russia has had on each country over time and you can clearly see why they don’t want them back. Historic architecture destroyed and replaced with grey, drab, concrete slab buildings, seems like nothing has changed with their mindset for centuries 😢
Once back home it was a marathon of washing and weeding, I literally did not stop except to sleep for the first two days! Shelley did an excellent job of keeping everything going while we were gone but I knew it would be the weeds that got the better of her, they are insane and with rain and sun alternating it’s not surprising 😂 Two more days of constant weeding and we are now at Sunday evening with plenty more to do over the next few weeks, never ending.
One thing Shelley wasn’t sure about were the mangetout (or were they sweet peas) so she didn’t touch them. They were mangetout and there were loads so I set about picking them, some had gone from being nice flat pods to developing tiny peas but in order to keep them coming they need to be picked regularly. What do you do with lots and lots of gone passed their best mangetout, you make soup of course. So today I have made a batch of pea pod and potato soup, modifying it with mangetout pods and some other extras as I always do. I have told John he will have to eat it as I am not wasting food, this year of all years when the prices are rising constantly. My inspiration for self sufficiency was reinvigorated by the trip in Lithuania, they basically live on what they grow, they had five healthy children and were all full of energy. The whole trip made me realise, as if I didn’t already know, that we don’t eat healthily here in the UK, even when we think we do, we fall a very long way short of good simple, nutritious food and yet again the supermarkets are a fraction of the size of ours with far less convenience food on sale.
Monday 13th June 2022: John went to work today that’s the first time we have not spent a day together for four weeks and I think we are both relieved 😂 Since we got back we have mostly been playing catch up with things, we let the hens out to free range again and promptly lost 3 to a fox 🙄 so today they are in until later in the day, these attacks appeared to have been around mid afternoon. I don’t really know what we are going to do because to keep on fighting against it is becoming hard work, it’s constant and I think there is definitely more than one including a family which must be living close by. I am thinking the time will soon come when we give up the ghost and call it a day on having lots of hens keeping just a small flock that can be safely kept 🤷♀️ The main thing I have been doing today is picking which is a whole nicer topic 😁 Mangetout, broad beans, carrot thinnings and self set potatoes are on the menu with chicken tonight as well as strawberries, raspberries and red currants. Red currants are the jewel of mid summer, delightful shiny red globes of goodness 🥰 I think I will make a compote to have with Greek yoghurt and keep some for breakfast maybe with mini pancakes and yoghurt. I picked quite a lot of red currants so I will freeze some and use them for jams or jellies when I have enough or just add them to pies and crumbles. Red currant jelly is a great thing to have to hand as it can be used in gravies and stews for flavour or basted on meat for a sweet sticky coating, I am sure there are a hundred and one other things you can use them for as well. I know the obvious one is summer pudding but although I like almost everything, summer pudding is one of the few things I really do not like, the fact that it is cold is one thing and the texture is the other, not for me thank you very much lol. The weather is perfect for me today, warm but overcast which means I can move around easily and not worry about dashing for shade in the middle of the day.
Popped over to take Mum some rhubarb late afternoon when we got back I got the dinner on and then spent the evening watering pots and anything in the tunnels and greenhouse plus a freshen up for the veg and plant beds. Out into the paddocks to clean out the horse water buckets and let biscuit into the bigger area before finally coming inside at 9.30pm 💤
Tuesday: Sunshine right from the beginning this morning so a hot day ahead and you know what that means for me 🤪 I don’t have flowers to cut this morning and I did the watering last night so it is less of a ‘rush around’ morning and more of a gentle amble about. I had put the washing on last night so hung that out early, got the eggs sorted and put out for sale, messaged the lawn mower man to get that fixed and serviced, invoiced one of Johns customers, had two cups of tea, a banana and then made a yoghurt smoothie all before 8am. The yoghurt smoothie was supposed to be yoghurt with fruit compote. I made the compote yesterday from the fruit I picked and then last night I made some yoghurt. A few years ago I bought one of those easy yoghurt makers and use the sachets for Greek yoghurt because making it yourself involves something like three strainings for Greek yoghurt texture and flavour, this method is much quicker. Or it would be if it had set 😂 I think (well I know now) that the water was too warm and so the yoghurt did not set to the thick consistency I would expect, it was still runny. I had been looking forward to that combination for breakfast but not to be deterred I put some of each in the blender and had a yoghurt smoothie for breakfast instead 🥰
Next job on the list was working out what to make with some pork I got out of the freezer last night. I really need to start using up as much as possible from the freezers before I start loading it with this years pickings 🙄
Out for the afternoon to Shelley’s which was lovely as we picked Flo up from school went back got my nail varnish taken off had a general chat looked at the garden they are just redoing (a mammoth job) and then picked up Josh from school before being dropped off at home 😁
Had a rest before starting the dinner, John had pork casserole and I had pork and peas fried rice so that used up the pork nicely. I had to wait until around 8pm for it to cool down enough to get some watering done 😏 but I need to keep on top of it for the next couple of days as the temps climb. I dug around in the freezer for tomorrows dinner and also found some cherries and strawberries so I will use those to make a couple of crumbles I think and maybe some more compote 😁 They were labelled up for jam but John has gone off jam on toast for breakfast lately preferring scrambled egg which is much better for him 😝 I shall be up very early tomorrow morning to get some flowers cut for a bouquet, get as much done as possible before it gets too hot out there 🥵
Friday: I missed a couple of days days writing but as it was hot I spent most of the time inside 😝 Early yesterday morning as I took the eggs out to the shed and just as John was going up the back to let out the hens I spotted the fox running down the side of the hedge in next doors paddocks 😏 I shouted fox and luckily John heard me and so they didn’t get let out. Yesterday evening Charlie came over with Macca (he played pool) and she went for a wander up the back, when she came in she said she had seen the fox in our little paddock (as well as a large hedgehog 🥰) at the back and so had called the dogs up to see if off. This morning I had just finished cutting flowers and picking broad beans and mangetout when I heard the fox bark up in the little paddock at the back so I took the dogs up there and there was definitely something the other side of the wall judging by the way the dogs were bouncing up and down the boundary and the way a magpie was screeching away. It is a serious problem at the minute and I don’t expect it to get any better, the only thing we can do is be more vigilant and pro active in scaring it or them off. With that in mind I dug out a small solar powered radio and sat that on the fence at the back where it will be on all day hopefully making the fox think there is someone around 🤞 If it doesn’t work I can see our hen numbers going down and down and this time we will be throwing in the towel I reckon 😢
On a happier note I have been busy cutting flowers for orders 🥰 There is a great range available at the minute and I am beginning to see what is worth growing and what is not, I am also working out what other flowers would be great to grow and in what quantities. My mistakes are also becoming apparent now, mostly not staking properly to get maximum stem length or growing too close together which means plants are fighting to space, it’s all a learning curve. I had more plants arrive while I was away which Shelley potted on and then some more arrived yesterday which I need to get in the ground. The problem at the minute for me is the sun, I quickly run out of shade at this time of the year when it’s hot and although I would love to be out there working it is better for my overall health if I avoid it. The flowers love the sun though so I cant grow in the shade which would be the ideal option 😂 It will soon be time for the ‘big guns’ to start blooming, dahlias mainly and who can resist those 😍 I have, I think, made good plans for a continual flower supply right through to November, December, January but only time will tell, I have also been drying some flowers, not many but I will keep doing them and hopefully will have some great material to use if and when I need it. Flower petals have also been drying nicely though you do need a massive amount of those to do any thing on a sellable scale.
We have been eating broad beans and mangetout with all our meals as they are in plentiful supply right now as well as red currants which reminds me I need to pick more of those tonight when it’s cooler (maybe in the dark 😆)
I was up early today to beat the heat and get flowers cut, a couple of ordered bouquets and some wedding jam jars which I am really excited to do. Initially I was asked for green and white and I explained that I couldn’t guarantee a colour so if they definitely wanted that then they might like to try elsewhere. The customer then came back and asked how it all worked and I explained that it would be flowers that were available at the time of cutting to which she replied ‘oh that’s fine, whatever is available then’ great to have customers that understand. As it is I am happy to say that I did indeed have plenty of white and green and so am able to fulfil the original brief. I really had no idea of what would be ready this year, next year I will have a better idea of what is likely to be ready and when 😁
With it being so hot at the minute I have the windows and the curtains closed all day to keep the house cool which it does I am pleased to say. Then overnight I open the windows to let the cooler midnight air in but leave the curtains/blinds shut to keep the bugs out 😝
The rest of today I will be doing mostly not a lot especially outside at any rate and there is only so much I can be doing indoors. Better to use the time reading up, researching, catching up with all subjects that are remotely interesting, to me at any rate, such as gardening, flower arranging, recipes, the walking dead 🤣 yep I am a mixed bag of a personality but it keeps things interesting 🧐
It was an all or nothing day today as predicted, nothing for most of the day as it was too hot for me to get outside and I really couldn’t be bothered to do much except read etc indoors. Then mid evening it was full on getting the flowers and jam jars ready for tomorrow morning plus the two other bouquets ordered. It’s now 10pm and I am sat outside where it is soooo much cooler than it has been and much cooler than indoors. John has gone to bed already because if he has told me once that he is shattered he has told me at least a hundred times 😂 Hopefully we will get the predicted rain showers tomorrow 😁
Saturday: What a drop in temperature 😂 the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction it’s unbelievable, the hottest day of the year so far yesterday and today it’s very much colder and wet, wet, wet. I for one am glad of the rain it replenishes the water tanks and means I don’t spend hours watering the garden. With the amount we have had today I won’t have to water it for a good couple of weeks I would say.
I was up early and outside getting some weeding done before the rain came, also a bit of cutting back and seed collecting. The cerinthe needed some attention and some of it is already producing seeds so it was time to collect. Part of the sustainability angle is to collect the seed from the plants to use in autumn sowings or next spring, it will save you a good deal of money, I will also sell some of them on if I can collect enough. Once I had done that and watered the poly tunnels it was time to deliver flowers, some were collected yesterday evening which left two lots to deliver. One lot of jam jar posies for a wedding and one bouquet to a different customer. I was really chuffed with the jam jars they looked amazing and the smell was divine from the lemon verbena which I included.
In the afternoon Sam came over for a few hours with Mia, George & Lucie, but apart from their visit we didn’t do much else except the usual jobs. Popped out in the evening for our Saturday night fish and chip supper with my sister and brother in law.
We have been having a proper fox problem though and this afternoon John caught the fox chasing my geese. It seems like the same one I saw the other morning, a youngster I think which means it’s no match for full grown adult geese but still it’s a problem as it is stealing hens on a daily basis, we have lost around six since we came home 😏
Just sat typing this up at 10pm when I heard the cat bowl by the back door rattle, thinking it might be the fox I opened the top half of the stable door quickly to surprise it, the cat was sat meowing while a hedgehog was helping itself to cat biscuits 😂
Sunday: Fathers Day, we were up and about fairly early, John went to do the morning rounds and I cut some flowers then Charlie came round to cook her dad some breakfast 🥰 After that we went over to Dads grave where we met the others and I put the flowers I had cut in a jam jar. My brother from Australia and his family came, this is the first time he has been able to visit the grave and see where Dad is laid to rest. I gave them all a family history tour around the graveyard as lots of family members are buried there including Nan and Gramp and Great Grampy Charlie. On to the garden centre, not to but plants but for tea and cake with Shelley, Martin and the kiddies as well as my brother and his family. Back home and Sam and the kiddies arrived with a card and chocolate for John, all about the Daddies today 😁
One annoying thing that has happened twice today is that a bird keeps getting in the egg shed and pecking at the eggs in the egg boxes 😠 twice I have had to clear up in there. One of the problems is that the door doesn’t get closed properly when customers have finished, also though the catch does work it’s not really strong enough and bounces back open. I imagine it’s a magpie as we have a few of them around at the minute and they are pretty resourceful and good at repetitive behaviour.
I am having real trouble with the internet today, well since Friday actually, this happens quite a lot at the weekend and I have a theory that it is to do with that massive cock up of our telephone lines a couple of years ago. Every time it happens I check to see if there is a fault but it always comes back clear from BT but there is definitely a problem somewhere I just can’t figure out where, either that or our router is on its way out 🤷♀️ answers on a postcard please. I have tried and failed multiple times (+10) to upload photos for this blog, it’s just not happening so I am sorry about the lack of them 😏
Have a great week and thank you for reading, take time to enjoy everything, even the little things 😁
Monday 16th May 2022: Unlike a usual Sunday evening, I didn’t sit down, instead I made cakes 🙄 simple 2lb loaf cakes, four lemon and two chocolate. The chocolate ones were made with oil instead of butter because I ran out of that. I definitely managed to use up a few eggs though and as it stands I will have 9 cakes in the freezer for future use 😂 Always handy when we don’t have any eggs in the winter, if we still have loads of eggs when I get back from holiday I shall start among other things, not sure what yet but I will find some recipes I am sure, and I will also start freezing them, might as well. John was also busy out strimming until it started to rain, hopefully we will continue to get some showers over the next couple of days, we really need to replenish the water table.
Actual Monday 😁 I spent nearly all of the morning sorting out clothes ready for packing, all of mine anyway, still have Johns to do yet. He was supposed to be just popping out to replace a set of taps, by 1pm he had not returned, I phoned him and he had had multiple phone calls from customers for various small jobs so had decided to get them done. That’s all well and good but I was waiting to go into town and pick up a few last things for our holiday. Eventually he returned and off we went. Went we got back we had a quick rest before cracking on with some jobs in the evening, mine mostly involved cleaning the washing machine and hoovering the boot room😝 nothing very interesting today.
Tuesday: Started off well with getting some things done in the garden areas, putting up some trellis for a couple of climbers that will ramble over the dog kennels. They have dual purpose, cover the shape you looking kennel structure and provide some lovely foliage for flowers next year 😁 Meanwhile John was fixing wood to the bottom of the gates to stop the bloody geese getting through, they have been ducking under and coming into the front area and then round to the lawn if the gate is open. I then went on to do a bit of weeding and planting the squash plants that had been growing, I also planted up a couple of cucumbers outside and some tomato plants, might as well get them in if I have got them. The reason being that the Bank of England is predicting apocalyptic food prices by the end of the year and inflation at 10%, grow everything you can and make sure you use everything you grow. With doom and gloom on the horizon I thought I would try and experiment, freezing eggs in a muffin tin. You crack them open into the tin, pop the yolk with a cocktail stick, cover and freeze, then once frozen take them out of the tin and freeze in freezer bags. I think this will work fine for any eggs you want to use in baking once they are defrosted they should be like any other egg you have just cracked. Not sure about poached and fried but I can’t see why they would be much different and certainly will be fine for scrambled. Come autumn when the hens are all moulting the egg number reduced drastically and this way I should always have plenty.
Freezing eggs for the inevitable shortage in autumn
Sam came over with the twins late morning and then Shelley and Florence, we spent a pleasant enough hour in the garden although first George got stung by stinging nettles and then Lucie 🙄 They had both finished crying and we were chatting again when Sam looked across to the house with a look of concern and said ‘what’s that’ I stood up to look and immediately shouted to everyone to get in the house. I then shouted to John to get the dogs in now, every one did exactly as they were told which was great. The reason was a swarm, thousands of bees had decided that somewhere nearby they were going to settle, they were not high up either but low down at face level which is why I thought it was better to get in out of the way. They settled in the cider apple tree next to the house and I phoned around to get someone to come and collect them. Dave, one of the bee keepers who we sold honey for last year came over, he got his bee suit on and collected them up, much to the delight of the children, it was exciting for them. He waited a fair time to gather them all up but there were a lot he couldn’t get to go in the box and so he left with the ones he had which must have been thousands, it was a big swarm apparently. The rest were still flying around and clustered on the tree for a while but we went out to get some shopping and when we came back they had dispersed. Early evening I went out to water the poly tunnel and as I got near to the small one I could hear exactly where they had gone 😂 hundreds of them in my tunnel. Hopefully Dave is coming back late evening with some pheromone to gather them up.
The swarm settled pretty quickly fairly low down in a tree right next to the house.
Dave came back with a box that previously had a swarm in and some syrup in the hopes they would go in but they were quite docile but this point and reluctant to move, he gently brushed some of them in and is leaving the box overnight to see if more can be encouraged to go in. I need to water the tunnel 😂 so I am waiting until almost dark before going out to do it, don’t want to make them angry 🐝
Wednesday: I was up early this morning 5am, I needed to get quite a lot of flowers cut for orders today and I didn’t want to be disturbing those bees in the tunnel 😂 They were still mostly all sleeping 💤 I went about my business in relative safety 🙄 actually they are apparently not hostile when they are swarming as they have nothing to protect, no hive, no honey and no eggs, that’s reassuring but still when there are thousands of them it’s a bit scary. The ones that have been left behind number around 200 which is a tiny fraction of the amount of bees in a hive, still it’s a lot of bees in my poly tunnel 😂 I got all the cutting done ended up with wet feet and arms as the dew was pretty heavy after the rain yesterday. Then I went on to getting some weeding done in one of the front beds, I wanted to get them out before we go away or they would be triffids by the time I get back. I got stung on the arms and feet by long stinging nettles, I had changed my shoes for flip flops, what the heck was I even thinking 🧐 numpty. After doing that job it was round to the veg garden, which is rapidly becoming a flower garden 😝 to plant up, you guessed it, flowers. Grasses this time actually, specific types that are great for flower bouquets, they add movement and sparkle. Then I planted up some scented pelargoniums, not my usual thing but the foliage smells amazing and again good for flower posies.
Back indoors and I got the eggs from the freezer, they took a little bit of persuading to leave the tin, bang, bang, bang, but eventually I got them out and popped them into a bag and returned them to the freezer for use later in the year. Back outside to potter a little bit more and to observe the bees, I am quite fascinated by them to be honest, their behaviour patterns under the circumstances are interesting, they clump together quite a bit and appear dozy. Here is what I have learnt, if they don’t go to the box Dave bought, they will die, they need to feed and they are not getting any instruction from the rest of the hive so they don’t really know what to do without all the others 😢 As I said before they are a tiny fraction of the hive, a couple of hundred out of a swarm of 40/50,000 so are dispensable as far as the hive health goes. But they are bees and we need bees so trying to gather up stragglers is a good idea. Those that don’t go to the box will definitely die, this is ok though because they then become part of the food chain for other insects and small mammals such as beetles and mice, it’s just sad. Some of the younger ones could gather pollen and go to a different hive and because they are young and have the pollen they would probably be accepted, old bees or bees with no pollen will not 😏 Nature is both amazing and cruel at the same time isn’t it.
Indoors early afternoon to make up the flower orders and then a sit down before going out late afternoon to deliver flowers and eggs today 😁 Then I have a flower bouquet collection late afternoon.
It’s definitely swarm weather, the chap that collected our bees has collected another three swarms today! He came back to get any of the bees that had gone into the box by dusk, sadly the rest that are clustering in the polytunnel in various places will now die off and be part of the food chain. A queen bee can lay up to a thousand eggs a day apparently so they will soon replenish and he also said ‘our swarm’ is now in a hive and working really hard, yay go bees 🐝
More rain this evening, I for one am not complaining, we really needed the ground water levels to get back up to decent levels 🌧
Massive thunder storms with lightning and heavy bursts of rain.
Thursday: I spent the morning getting my hair done while John was busy at home sorting and tidying his van.
When we returned home we watched the lunchtime news and I can’t help but comment on a couple of things. First is the fact that potentially there will be food shortages due to goods not being able to be shipped from Ukraine. It is a fertile and abundant country but don’t you think it is a bit ridiculous to rely so heavily on one country to provide vast quantities for the rest of the world. Obviously Ukraine needs all the support we can give it in anyway we can but if it teaches us one thing it should be to look at worse case scenarios and see how resilient we are going forward.
Second is the rate of inflation and the rising cost of living, well I just can’t shut up sorry 😝 Back in the 80’s (yes I know I am going to sound like an old fossil) inflation went above 10% and mortgage interest rates climbed up and beyond 15%, 15%! Just let that sink in if you are in your 20/30’s and have a mortgage, I am not age bashing but seriously it was a tough period for our finances and guess what, there wasn’t any talk of help in any way from any direction at all. You got on with it by working more hours or taking a second job and dispensing with any little luxuries, you rode the storm basically and yes some people sank under the cost of it all, some people lost everything and had to start again. I can tell you countless stories of the types of jobs people took that wasn’t their usual line of work because it was a necessity to do so. But also back in the day hardly anyone was in debt up to the hilt, mostly we had a mortgage and that was it, we had a second hand car that was bought and paid for not on tick and our lifestyle was not as extravagant as they are today, that extravagance has become the norm 🙄 it seems to have become an entitlement. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, I know things have changed a lot and I know that there is genuine hardship out there but from observations there are also a lot out there who do not know how to cut their cloth either that or they couldn’t possibly give up what I would consider luxuries at a time like this 🤔
We had a busy few hours this evening, I wrote a list of jobs that need doing just in case John was not aware of all of them 😂 He started off by cutting the grass in the driveway then the paddock and finally the lawn. I potted up some chrysanthemums that arrived today, these will extend the flowers available right through to Christmas 😁 I did the watering in the tunnels, cleaned the horses water buckets out and filled them all up, did a bit of weeding, sorted all the eggs after John fed the birds and collected the eggs. In-between all that we had the twins and then I had a live online workshop to attend, my eyes are very tired 🥱 Up early tomorrow to cut flowers for a 100th birthday bouquet 🥰
Friday: Still rainy lol after all those dry months it hasn’t stopped raining on and off for a week now. Up early and I cracked on with cutting flowers for todays birthday bouquet 🥰 Then it was on to cleaning and then just before lunch ironing johns shirts. The only time I do ironing is for occasions and though I don’t mind doing it I was glad when it was finished 😂 Meanwhile John had to pop out to get a small job done and then once he was back there were jobs on the list for him to get his teeth into. Shelley said make sure I leave her some jobs to do, so I definitely will 😝
I made up the flowers at lunchtime and then delivered them and when I got back I thought I would have a go at a corsage. I quite liked doing one, it’s a different skill to try out.
Popped out early evening to pick up some plants that I had seen for sale, good sized plants that were too good to pass up lol. When I got back I put the dinner on then out to the paddock to get Biscuit in and confine her to a small pen. She hasn’t been bad it’s just that she will get bad if I leave her out on all that grass after the rain we have had so this is preventative.
A live meeting then gardeners world, lovely Friday night, almost, my jeans unexpectedly ripped across the front of the thigh area so I now have to quickly order new jeans for going away 😂
Saturday: A busy day today rammed with every type of job you could possibly think off both inside and out. John has been busy as well cleaning out the birds and mowing the grass in the front paddock by hand because the belt broke on the ride on mower 😝 Shelley came over in the afternoon and we walked through two lots of flower selection, conditioning and arranging, she did a great job and all will be well with that side of things I am certain. In the evening I printed of yet more paperwork for the holiday 😂 one more bit to do.
Sunday: Another busy, crammed day of things to do, mainly packing, I think I have packed way too much and then not enough at the same time 🤪 It’s all the little things to remember but hopefully I have remembered everything and what I haven’t, tough. John has been cutting everything g with the hand mower again, flipping typical that the ride on breaks just as you need to get everything up together. Then he had the front hens to clean out and power wash, that’s the last of the big clean outs, Shelley will then be able to just skip out and all should be fine. I have cleaned the spare room ready for the kids to sleep in, I still need to go and alter biscuits electric fencing to give her a bigger area for a week, then Sam is back from her holiday and will re jig the grazing again.
There is such a massive amount to organise on a Smallholding when you want to go on holiday, there are endless lists of daily, weekly routines for each and every animal, lists for the top priority jobs, lists for what, where, when, how and why, general lists for the household stuff, deliveries, customers and then there is all the work needed to get it all up together to make life easier for the person who is coming to take over. We are incredibly lucky to have the girls who always know how much we need a holiday and are willing to step in and help out massively, without them we simply couldn’t go away 🥰🥰🥰
Downloaded a few books to read and the Miriam Margolyes book in Audio form, that should be a bit of a hoot 😁
This afternoon I am having my nails, eyelashes and eyebrows, preened, tinted and polished and then a roast a Shelley’s 😁 Back home to get some watering done and water in some nematodes for the vine weevil, fill up the horses water, let a biscuit out for a day and a half before she gets confined for a week, and finally get a sit down. We will have plenty of last minute jobs and things to get sorted tomorrow but for the blog that’s it for almost three weeks. That just leaves me to say have a wonderful Jubilee celebration weekend, it’s not often a Platinum Jubilee is held, what an amazing lady our Queen is in every way, and providing we get a fit to travel result I will be back in a few weeks time. 🚢😁🥂🥳 🇬🇧
Monday: 25th April 2022: A new week, tad chillier this week in the morning but it did warm up as the day went on. John had to phone the doctor this morning about his arm, who sent him to the MIU (who didn’t want to see him at the weekend) for an x-ray, when he got there they said he couldn’t have one without a referral from the doctor (who had just told him to go there 🙄) so he called the doctor who sent the referral over, got the x-ray done, no break which is good but they said they would send the info over to the doctor next week. Next week! He was kind of left in limbo then as he has to get his job finished but he is having real problems with the mobility and pain in the arm, next week pfft. We had the conversation that many people are having about what has happened to the NHS since covid. Don’t get me wrong I fully support them and I think overall they do an amazing job and during the pandemic the strain would have been unbearable but the service does not seem to have come out the other side yet. Multiple factors I am guessing like massive back logs and workloads but the basic functions of connecting departments seems to have fractured leaving people in limbo and I know I am not the only one saying this. Having said all that John must have said something to them because in the afternoon he had a call from the doctor who was surprised at how quickly she got his results back 😁 Anyway the upshot is that the elbow joint is worn out, I told John that is lifting too many cups of tea 😂 didn’t go down well 😝 in all honesty it will be the years of plastering, grouting and heavy lifting that has done it and he is basically getting old and falling to bits. The doctor was great though and has given him stronger painkillers, told him that if after his holiday and rest it is no better, to go back and they will look at more options, can’t ask for more than that it was just the getting there that was difficult.
Meanwhile back here I was busy getting on with the day, weeding, pottering, watering, checking things over, all the usual stuff and nothing more exciting than that really.
Tuesday: Still a chilly start to the morning almost cold enough for a touch of frost I think. Once the eggs were done and out, the washing was on, the household bits done, I went out to cut some flowers for a hand held posy someone has ordered and collecting g later today. Doing a smaller posy is lovely because you can use the smaller flowers that don’t have the stem length needed for a bouquet and there are some delightful flowers to use.
I have started to wash my tops with the UV wash which gives me just a little added protection from the sun in the coming weeks. Every little helps as they say and I have already started to get itchy raised bumps on my arms so I need to be more careful going forward. We often think the spring sunshine is not strong but the UV rays are still capable of doing damage to my skin and it would be good to get it under control as soon as I can, that is the best way to avoid a flare up.
I went out to look over the plants for sale out the front to find something has dug out some of the strawberry plants. Judging by the smell it’s fox looking for worms 🙄 yesterday it stole the butter left by the milk man and it has been leaving its smell and making a mess tipping out various rubbish here. We have know it has been hanging around for a while because every morning when I open the back door it stinks of fox, it has tried digging in the run where the front chickens are as well. All of this does not bode well because the mandatory housing restrictions for the poultry is being lifted on May 1st, we will need to get something sorted before they are allowed out.
Another fiasco we have had is that someone has hit Johns van while it was in the driveway 😡 hit it and then just driven off, it’s not the damage so much as the not saying anything that is infuriating. He has been like a little rabid dog trying to figure out exactly when and who it was. I get it, I really do but chuntering on and on and on about it will not solve anything at all. It’s done, the damage is done, we have an idea of who it was but no way of proving it so 🤷♀️ what can you say except that some peoples morals are not very high 😏
I said back in the middle of the pandemic that I thought we were in for a bumpy few years ahead, not sure why I just had a sense of foreboding 😏 The pandemic was bad enough, the invasion of Ukraine by someone who can only be described as an out of touch despot made it all worse and the knock on effect of both of these events are food shortages, a fuel crisis and big price rises. Now to add to the misery we could well be heading for a drought year, a dry Winter, lack of rain in Feb, March and April and the longer forecast showing not much sign of rain for most of May 🙄 John and I have been saying for weeks that it’s not looking good this year, the water tanks are almost empty and no rain ahead to fill them up again. I know we have mains water but that all adds to the bills so we try and use as much rainwater as we can collect for the animals and garden. The soil has a deficit of 23mm of water at the minute which doesn’t sound like a lot but it is Spring and 51% of the rivers are below normal levels already. Hopefully we will get some eventually, probably a deluge just when we don’t want it 😂
A small hand held posy made to order today for someone who has lost a family member, this one has one small sprig of symbolic Rosemary in it which represents remembrance ❤️
Wednesday: I was up before the alarm went off this morning, at first the sunrise looked promising but it soon clouded over and was a tad chilly for a while. I had breakfast, got the usual stuff sorted, washing, eggs, rubbish, recycling and then it was time to cut flowers 🥰 I don’t think this will ever get boring 🌸😁 I have two bigger bouquets to make up today, one for a birthday and one is a weekly order going forward. The tulip season is going to be over soon but there is so much more coming on, I watch the garden every day to see what is coming next, in the words of Penny (Patricia Hodge) from Miranda (one of my absolute favs) it is ‘such fun’. Once the flowers and foliage are cut they are ‘conditioned’ this means sitting in a bucket of water in a cool dark place for as many hours as possible before arranging into a bouquet. Sometimes there is a little bit of extra conditioning to do for some things, woody or hollow stems but in the whole they are all pretty much treated the same.
The rest of the day remained chilly 🥶
I did a bit of pricking out and some potting on in the greenhouse and some pottering around. I spent way too much time trying to get something up and running online 🙄 I cut a load of hazel and soaked it in the bath for something I want to try out for a flower arrangement I have to do. I made two prototypes of the thing I had in mind, one out of paper and one out of wire to see how it would all go together. Then finally I tried it with the soaked hazel sticks, half of it went well the other half not so much, not at all in fact 😝 I have good ideas but I am not very good at executing them, on that basis I have asked if anyone has anything similar I can borrow that is already made 😂
Then it was time to make up the two bouquets, one to be delivered the other to be collected, it is just delightful working with such beautiful flowers and foliage 🥰
Thursday: It’s still cold, what’s with the lack of sunshine, mind you with the total lack of rain as well it’s probably not a bad thing, everything would be keeling over by now otherwise. I did say to John I would go out and give anything struggling a bit of the wet stuff but once out there I felt it seemed too cold and they wouldn’t benefit from getting even colder, tricky one. So instead of that and after I had done the necessary jobs, I decided to play with flowers 😁 I had a colour combination in my head and wanted to see how it turned out, rather splendidly I think don’t you?
Dark purple and white tulips, an allium and some pale blue Jerusalem cowslips together with mock orange foliage and some sambucus nigra make a winning combo 🥰
Friday, still a bit chilly but I got a few things done outside including mowing the lawn. Last year I left it for no mow May but this year we have the new lawn piece and I have to keep it cut to stop anything growing in it such as comfrey. The ground that we cleared still had a few roots left in it I think and so in order to kill them off we are going to have to keep it mown. Just before lunch Sam came over with the twins, the farrier was coming late afternoon and so she came to get the horses in beforehand. She couldn’t stay because it was right over school pick up time but it meant all I had to do was get them out of the stable and tie them up on the hard standing area. Biscuit had been a bit pottery on her feet but luckily she has not developed laminitis, her feet had just grown a bit long and she was footsore. She is now all trimmed up and on a restricted patch of ground so she doesn’t end up poorly. Jack is fine so he gets turned back out on the grass.
Saturday: Up and got all my jobs done because I was off out for the day with a friend 🥰 We went to a Beltane singing group day, it was lovely, we sat in a circle, the entrance was a May bower with foliage and ribbons and we sang songs about May and Beltane and the Green Man. We went to the woods and sang among the Bluebells and really connected with nature, I feel very ‘earthed’ now 😁 Or at least I did until I got back 🤪
We have what I can only described as the most incompetent pharmacy ever or so it seems. Month after month they never have my prescription ready despite having put it in well in advance, it’s always the same, you will have to come back tomorrow, I leave it to the last possible day as it is. This time John came home with it and it was only a bit of it, come back for the rest tomorrow 🙄 he goes back today while I was out and when I got home it was only a bit more of it and by now the place had shut and I am without some of my meds until they open again. They just didn’t give him the whole lot, nobody checked to see what should have been there and realised that was not all of it. I would t complain but this is all the time, it’s fractious going to pick up a prescription from them and it’s not just the pandemic it’s been going on for years. I would change pharmacy but from what I have heard they won’t have another company in the town 🤷♀️ how is that possible and how is it that they can give such poor service without any consequences. It’s not just me saying this either, ask just about anyone in the town and they will tell you the same thing, bloody useless and that’s on a good day!
I had to help John retrieve the goose eggs this evening, one of them is sitting but the eggs are not fertile so no point her doing that. The plan I came up with was to get the other three out of the paddock that way you only have one to deal with not the other three coming to her defence 😝 I tried a stick first to see if I could get her to move off the nest that didn’t work, so I got a bucket, put it over her head and manoeuvred her towards the door and off she went while I collected the eggs 😁
Sunday May 1st, May Day, Beltane, blessings to you all on this very special day. A day celebrated throughout time in many different countries and religions, a day to welcome the ‘growth’ of all things. One of the best days of the year I think 🥰 Except that it was cold and rainy, the rain I am not complaining about as we really need it but the cold side of it can do one 😂 Not much gone done today really, John did some burning and some cleaning out, can’t remember what I did but later in the afternoon I went over to look after Mia and the twins while Sam and Luke went out for dinner.
I did make up a small bouquet for the flower shed just in case anyone wants one 😁
frieslandfarm (flowers) 