Monday 13th February 2023: Another reasonable day coming up, not much sign of any sun but it is dry and not freezing which is a bonus. I have a busy morning ahead of me doing flowers, the heart tributes are very popular 🥰 which is just as well because I love doing them. I am not doing Valentines flowers as most of my customers are women and although in the words of Miley Cyrus ‘I can buy myself flowers’ it is mostly men who buy them on this particular day. That is probably stereotyping a little but I imagine the numbers if collected would back that up. Men tend to go for the red roses which as we know are not seasonal at this time of year and so not grown in the UK in Winter, they are all imported. I don’t want to knock it but we really need to change attitudes, in Victorian times it was traditional to give small heart shaped boxes of violets, it would be nice to get back to that. I have a bit of an insight into how some of the menfolk in my family work though and they are definitely mow the grass within an inch of its life and are red rose people 😂 no matter how much I try educating them 🤪 So we have to reach out to those who are environmentally aware and get them to voice their preference ‘how much carbon was generated with those roses being imported’ ‘ I would prefer flowers that are grown here in the UK’ and then of course you have to hope they remember what you told them 😝 Joking aside there has been lots of chatter on social media pages about ‘them and us’ florists that use imported flowers, and growers and florists that don’t. It is not about bashing people for what they do it is about educating them to do it differently and besides I am pretty sure fifty years ago when flowers started to be imported in large numbers those growing the majority of flowers for sale in the UK felt exactly the same, it is just reverting back. A couple of florists with shops are backing the UK flower industry and selling nothing but British grown flowers so it is possible, there are high profile designer florists that are doing the same, we just need more of them to get onboard, after all it is the only planet we have and we need to look after it much better than we have done.
Busy morning so far, first get the ordered flowers done then out to feed the horses hay as the grass has pretty much been eaten off and with no sign of any rain or sun it’s not growing much then sort out printing QR codes for the flowers in the shed to make it easier for payment and then sit down and order some floristry supplies. Trying to remember everything I need to order is key I really should write it down as I go but no 🤪 I already have a slow stream of orders coming in for Mothers Day flowers and I need to make sure I have enough string and raffia, I also need to work out exactly how many orders I can realistically process before I get carried away 😂 By this time it is lunchtime and I am starving but I need to go through messages and emails first to make sure I don’t miss anything.
Tuesday: A lovely day, I spent some time in the greenhouse in the morning dividing up plants then a little bit of cutting back dead stuff in the flowers beds. I have to confess that I have also been reading quite a lot, normally it would be reading up on things or learning something new but this time it was pure fiction. I tend to binge read 😂 I won’t read for weeks or even months and then once I start I don’t stop very readily especially if it is a series of books. In the last few days I have just read four, yes four books in a series that is new to me. I am one of those people who resent any interruption while I am reading so intensely too, stopping to do household or farm chores is a necessary irritation though. The only interruptions that are not resented are visits from the children and grandchildren 🥰 And yesterday afternoon Shelley, Josh and Flo came over and we had a lovely walk down the lane and back, it almost felt like it was fully spring (but I won’t be fooled) The kids then helped me fill a large sack of hay and take it out to the horses filling up the water buckets while we were there. Flo is definitely an outdoor girl happily helping with the task while chatting away, Josh preferred climbing things and dragging large branches around 😂
Wednesday: A frosty start but the sun soon came out and it was very pleasant for a good few hours. I did a bit of gardening, one new bed around the side got particular attention, bulbs planted as well as a couple of evergreen shrubs plus cutting back dead stuff and mulching with woodchip. It is only a small bed near the back of the building but it can be seen from the gateway so I thought evergreen would look nice all year round. I planted a skimmia and a lemon and lime nandina 😁 A delivery of ballast arrived at some point during the day and then late afternoon I went for some Bowen therapy which is always something to look forward too.
Thursday: A bit of a dank start to the day today the forecast is drizzle I think. There are plenty of jobs on my to do list but I think I should divide the list into ‘want to do’ and ‘don’t really want to do’ 😂 or ‘want to do but can’t’ and ‘don’t want to do but can’ 😝 I really want to be sowing seeds but I am holding off. The average last frost date range is April 11th – 20th in my location, that means I need to work back six weeks to find my optimum seed sowing date, if I go for a date in the middle of that range it takes me back to March 4th so I am a couple of weeks away from that. The reason for this timeline is that seeds that are sown are generally plants that are big enough to go out in six weeks time, the weather needs to be good so that the new plants do not get damaged or frosted which would undo all the hard work you did in the first place. Then there are the amount of daylight hours needed, the more there are the better the plants will grow, short and strong as opposed to weak and leggy. There are plenty of seeds that can also be sown direct in March and of course you can grow seeds with some sort of heat, even indoors with the domestic heating on but they do all need the light (once sprouted) for strength after all that’s how they produce the energy to grow. I know all of this and yet I am still tempted to get something sown 🤪 but I also know that later sown seeds will readily catch up 😁
I spent the evening getting flowers ready for tomorrow morning as I am off out for the day.
Friday: A busy couple of hours first thing getting everything done and the flowers out for sale, I then spent a lovely day with all six grandchildren and parents at the Cotswold Wildlife Park. This is just five minutes down the road from me and so it is quick and easy to decide if the weather is going to be ok enough for the day. It was a little windy but apart from that it was a great day out, it is a lot of walking and I was impressed with how even the twins managed five hours of wandering round. For anyone not familiar with the park and wondering if it is worth the trip it definitely is, I think it is one of the best value for money parks around. You can literally spend all day there and just about cover everything and there is a lot of different things to do, reptiles, bats, penguins, lions, giraffes, zebras, farmyard animals, train ride, play park and the coffee is decent 😁 I was whacked when I got home and fell asleep mid evening 😂
I am a lucky Nana 🥰
Saturday: Another decent day apart from a strong breeze, I spent most of the morning in the greenhouse which was pleasant and out of the wind. I have sown some seeds 🤪 sweet peas & snap dragons which are indoors on the window sill, I pricked out some sweet Williams that have been growing over winter and sorted out some seeds that I saved from plants last year. I did do a little bit outside that was mostly cutting back dead stuff and pulling up annual plants that have gone over, a little bit here and there will get me ahead.
Sunday: Again the weather is fooling us with its charm, a decent day that was really nice once the sun came out. We did the morning jobs and then went out for breakfast and got on again once we returned. I spent some time in the greenhouse sorting out seeds that I had collected from plants at the end of last year and then a good amount of time in the garden tidying up the cold frame area. This is where I keep plants over winter that I dug up or divided in Autumn, they end up covered in a blanket of leaves and now is a good time to get that sorted as it will start to harbour pests. I did find a bright green caterpillar that had been devouring some small plants 😏 and plenty of slugs and snails, they have all been gathered up with the leaves and deposited elsewhere away from the plants. Some of the plants I labelled up and put out for sale along with the seeds I had packeted up. Shelley, Martin and the children called in for a cuppa late afternoon, they helped Grampy with the feeding and egg collecting and when they left we went to Charlie and Maccas for a roast dinner 🥰
Another week over and a new one about to begin, have a lovely week everyone.
Monday 21st February 2022: We have had three storms in five days and it’s not done yet, Dudley, Eunice, Franklin and next will be coming Gladys 🙄😩 The first was bad, the second was worse, the third was as bad as the second and goodness knows what the forth has in store for us, all the while each gust will be loosening tree roots and the dry winter we had just came to an abrupt end 😝 As I always say, you have to watch for February, it’s a bitch that bites you on the backside!
We managed to get the new lawn area down before the storms hit, it makes the garden look a lot bigger but I now have to decided where to put the herbs I dug up.
This is where I had the herb bed but we have done away with it and made a bigger lawn area, less weeding for me more play area for the children. Luckily we have had plenty of rain to water the new turf in 😂
There is absolutely no let up in the constant gusting of wind 😏 It’s like a headache you can’t get rid of. John has gone to work this morning but he did the rounds before he left and one of the geese has laid an egg 😁 hopefully that will be the first of many. I would really like to be getting on outside but there is no chance of that at the minute so yesterday I bought more plants and bulbs instead 😝 We have the point of lay hens arriving this afternoon, they were supposed to come Friday but storm Eunice was a bit fierce for driving in and so it was decided that Monday would be better 🙄 Meanwhile I spent the morning indoors and paid the balance of our holiday later this year, it was one that was booked pre pandemic and so we never got there. One of the stops (the main reason we booked it) is in St Petersburg, Russia, so we may not get there again this year, who knows how that is all going to pan out at the minute. It is all pretty gloomy on the news front, the weather is awful, really should just hibernate I reckon.
I decided to pop out to the greenhouse and pot up the bulbs I bought to bring them on a little and also sowed a few seeds, bells of Ireland and lemon mint both which are good fillers for bouquets. The wind is insane and we have lost yet more roof panels from the Guinea pig cage, we bought two more on Saturday to replace the ones that had already come off and smashed but we haven’t been able to fix them yet as the wind has not relented. I did say to John we need to rethink the roof but he decided to just replace what is there, well now I think we really do need to re design it because that’s just ridiculous. I personally think we will have to drop the roof to inside the walls, it just gets the brunt of the strong winds and doesn’t survive, no point flogging a dead horse as they say. The fences out there are also wobbling like crazy, I think we are going to have a good bit of extra work to do once the winds finally cease. To be honest we need what I have always said we needed and that is an extra hedge down the side of the garden area, I wanted to double fence it years ago (because the horses would eat the hedge otherwise) and put a hedge inbetween, but my thoughts always land on deaf ears, time to shout louder I think as this kind of weather is only going to get worse in my humble opinion. Hedges are the natural windbreaks that help to slow the speed and reduce damage, it’s why I am always amazed that people are so keen to rip them out 🤷♀️
We took delivery of 40 point of lay hens today, they will begin laying in a couple of weeks time and so should have plenty of eggs going into spring. The price of feed is going up massively, the feed supplier isn’t even passing the whole increase on as he is too embarrassed but we have done the figures and will be running a deficit if we don’t put our eggs up by 20p a box. To be honest we should do it every time there is a feed price increase but we don’t and now find we are caught on the hop. Half the problem is the cost of everything is going up and the other half of the problem is the bigger companies squeeze out the smaller producers, so use them or lose them is my advice to anyone who has local producers near them. I know so many people who are thinking of giving up altogether because it’s just not cost effective to carry on 😣
The septic tank lorry arrived, I had spoken to the office but they never got back to me with an appointment so I wasn’t expecting him but that’s fine we were here and it needed emptying so it’s all good.
Tuesday: Not any old Tuesday 22/2/22 it will be all the 2s at 22:22 tonight lol. I got up wandered into the kitchen looked out the window and saw the horses in the front paddock 🙄 threw on my clothes quickly and went out to get them back into the side paddock. We had let them in there before Christmas to eat the grass off but they were inside an electric fence to stop them eating the hedgerow and my fruit trees. During the storms the side fence had rocked loose and a gateway had come down, I had said to John we need to sort that out, he said it will wait to the weekend so we hashed it back up. I was cross with myself really because I should have pushed John into getting it sorted there and then, I knew what the outcome would be and I was right. The horses will not miss any opportunity to be somewhere they are not supposed to be, luckily they didn’t touch the fruit trees or I would have been so much more annoyed. As it was I jarred my back again trying to move the slip rails to get them out of the field, not the best of moods this morning. I don’t feel the best either and took a covid test just to make sure it is not that (negative thank goodness) So with the niggling pain in my back returned (it was just easing right off) and a heady sinus thing going on, I am rather grumpy and tired today. The winds have eased off but it is still pretty windy out there, it was still this morning but picked up again now. The momentum and enthusiasm I had for everything Spring will bring, has for the moment disappeared, it doesn’t help with the very depressing problems on the Ukrainian border, worrying and unsettling times. I don’t think half the population even realise what it will mean if there is a full escalation of the situation, a Third World War is not something that is comprehensible in this day and age but it could have far reaching consequences for those that are ‘fighting fit’ it doesn’t bear thinking about to be honest.
Sam and Shelley came over with the children and we spent some time in the front paddock playing in the sun was still pretty blustery mind you lol.
John went out to look at a job and when he came back he said the horses had bust into the front paddock again 🙄 So I went out and got them some hay and took them to the far paddock and shut them in while we repaired the fence a little bit better than we had before though it still needs doing properly. It is solid for the time being but once they broke through they will keep going at it so it needs fortifying 😂
Charlotte came round to discuss her venture into growing veg 🥰 She is buying a tiny greenhouse and using some space here, it will be good to pass on as much knowledge as I can.
Wednesday: John has gone to work this morning but before he went he did the animals, the back lot anyway and which left me to do the animals in the orchard and the new hens, just to check on them and make sure everything’s got water and feed et cetera et cetera so that’s what I did. Once I’d finished making sure everything was fed and watered I thought, well I will pick up some of the debris from the storm namely the roof panels that came off of the guinea pig run, two had to come off and then some more came off and smashed all over the ground. Picked it all up and put it in a pile, bent down to pick the whole lot up and 🤬 buggered my back, just when it was getting so much better 😢 I limped inside shouting ‘ooo’ ‘arghh’ and the occasional swear word and am now stuck on the sofa, I wanted to get soo much done today 🤦♀️ I have taken some painkillers and having a coffee hoping it wears off, I could cry, in fact I feel like crying right at this minute.
It would be fair to say I did bugger all today except nurse a bad back, hobble about, get an ice pack on it, get a hot water bottle on it (at different times 😝) lie down, sit down, sit up, walk around, wince a lot and resign myself to being incapable, all of which is pretty annoying as there was a fair bit to do and the weather wasn’t too bad. Tomorrows weather is looking a bit more wintery so I will have missed the opportunity 😏
Thursday: Didn’t do much apart from the usual today as I went with Sam, Shelley and the children to soft play. Well I obviously didn’t go on the soft play but I sat and drank coffee while the kids played, then we all went back to Shelleys u til mid afternoon.
Friday: A busy, busy day today. I have plants arriving left right and centre and so I spent the morning planting them up in the cut flower bed area. Roses, sweet Williams, sea holly and Veronica all went in. Plus I planted some of the herbs I dug up at the end of last year. Then John came home and we went out for lunch, well that was the plan except the cafe was on a restricted menu so it was a sandwich and cake. Back home and we got on with tidying and sorting lots of areas in the garden ready for the season ahead. I planted up a task for the flower club I go to, a ‘pot au fleur‘ I have had to Google it and interpret it to fit with what I want to do. I don’t have house plants so don’t want to buy them just to do this arrangement so I have gone with an outdoor style one lol. John cut the grass this afternoon including the new turf, conveniently I get emails telling me what to look for in order to decide when to cut it, it’s ready and it’s dry enough today so that can be ticked off the list for a couple of weeks.
Drying tulip petals 😁
Ooops sorry busy weekend almost forgot about the blog 🤪 Saturday and Sunday: Busy out in the garden as the weather was lovely for the time of year. John has been busy putting an extra row of slabs next to the cold frames so that I have somewhere to put more plants that I am bringing on. Meanwhile I have had plants arriving eeek so I am E been busy planting g them up, generally speaking plants will arrive at the optimum time for planting unless they are plug plants. I have been sowing more seeds, sweet peas as a mouse ate most of the first lot 🙄 I have been out to the garden centre today with Charlotte, she wants to grow a lot more of her own this year and so we went to get seed potato’s and onion sets plus seeds for micro veg and other salads etc. I also cooked a roast today for Shelley, Martin and the kids this time.
Beautiful kale from the garden for dinner today 😁
That’s pretty much it for the week, things are looking awful in Europe, trying not to dwell on it too much but it does need thinking about from time to time, unbelievable in this day and age 😢 Have a good week and hopefully the situation will have improved by next week though I am not holding my breath x
Monday 31st January 2022: The last day of January and while I would never be one to wish my life away I am certainly glad we are another month nearer to some warmer weather 😁 John has gone to work this morning which meant I was on the rota to do the rounds, it is squally out there. The wind is from the west but it is quite cold, there are some big gusts every now and then and it’s generally unpleasant though not as bad as they are having it further North so I am grateful for that. Unless I can find enough jobs to do in the greenhouse this morning I will not be going out there until the wind dies down 😂
I realise I now have a large amount of bulbs to plant for the cutting garden and I really need to sit down and fully apply myself to the plan. I need to go through everything I have ordered that is not here yet, every plant I have already bought that is here, every lot of bulbs I have ready to go in and every seed packet that I have ready to sow. I need to organise a sowing plan both for under cover and direct sowing and make sure I leave enough room for both and then a planting plan that is beneficial to all the plants and makes it easy to harvest the flowers. I seem to be stuck on the plan but that is because I haven’t collated everything yet, I am sure once I have it will be easier to look at what need to go where. That will just be the beginning because then there will be the soil improvement, maybe raised beds to build for some things, the planting up and the sowing at the right time. Growing flowers for cutting is certainly different to growing them for pleasure, with the latter it doesn’t really matter when the flowers appear as long as they do at some point, with the former I need a steady ‘bloom’ throughout the months in order to have the best bouquets and posies. All of this will be running alongside the veg growing lol, good job I have been doing that for years and it’s almost second nature.
I finally sat down with all the seeds, a list of plants and some note markers and plotted out the cutting patch. I needed to make sure I have pathways so that I can reach the blooms with little effort and I needed to get in some sort of order what is seeded when, with or without heat, undercover or direct sow 🙄 I think I have it sorted, until I realise I have either missed something out or for something in the wrong place 😂
Mum called round and I helped her to get something sorted on her laptop so that she can hopefully get her manuscript sorted and sent off to publishers, she has been writing it and re writing it for years, time to get it looked at 🥰
I heard a noise outside and wondered what the heck it was, looked out to see our hedge being cut in the driveway. We had it done for the first time last year and John decided it was so much easier and quicker to pay someone else to do it that he had asked him to do it again this year, he randomly turns up when he has got time.
And now I can tell you what I have known for a while, we are going to have another grandchild 😁🥰 Charlie and Macca are expecting their first baby in mid August and no they didn’t waste any time but that was the plan all along! Six grandchildren 😮 awesome, we are totally delighted and can’t wait to meet him/her when the time comes.
The egg numbers dropped drastically from the hens we moved outside, arrgghh just when I need them to stabilise, I should have given that a lot more thought 🤔 it’s colder out there and they had the light on for a couple of hours after dark in the stable block, doh.
Tuesday: Positively pooped by lunchtime 😂 I spent a very busy morning outside, first I did the morning rounds and then straight onto some gardening chores. I set up a map of the beds for the cut flower garden then decided that is wouldn’t work how I had organised it so I am back to the drawing board. I cleared a few weeds from the raised bed between the tunnels, it still has some small cabbages growing in there but I also found some self set aquilegia and a primrose 🤷♀️ so I transplant those. I planted some more plants I bought at the weekend, beautiful hellebores and very bright cheery primroses. I potted up the foliage shrubs I bought a few weeks ago and I potted on various bits and pieces. I also tidied up a lot of the plants I divided at the end of last year, I leave the dead stems until I am certain I can recognise what the plant is and then snip them off. Then I went over to one of the bigger beds and started raking up debris, I emptied the compost bin nearby and started to refill it with any uncomposted materials (quite a lot of that) I got halfway through and realised it was lunchtime and I was hungry 😋 It’s breezy but the sun is shining and it is quite nice out there today.
Wednesday: The day started off on the wrong foot, John went off to work and I went to do the morning rounds and found that the hens had eaten most of the eggs that had been laid already🤬 These are the hens we moved to the outside pen and I have no idea why they are doing it, they didn’t do it in the stable 🤷♀️ I have now split them up a little, it’s not the room that is the problem but once one starts they all start. I called the supplier and ordered 40 more point of lay because these lot are now around 2/3 and they have developed bad habits 😂 It’s fair to say that they have been a delinquent bunch from the off, we have had plenty of batches in over the years and these were trouble right from day one, going where they shouldn’t, laying goodness knows where, in house fighting and now egg eating on a mass scale, time to go, once the new hens are laying well these lot will be sold off.
In order to work off my grumps I went out to the veg garden, it is a lovely day, fairly mild and the sun is out. I spent the whole morning sorting out the bed behind the fruit cage, it has the apricot tree (which doesn’t produce many apricots) the cherry tree (that the birds eat before I can get to them) the runner bean area, spare asparagus and the thornless blackberry. A bit of a mish mash and to be honest probably could do with a massive overhaul as comfrey and feverfew grow like billio in there and no matter how much I try I have a job to keep it all under control. After raking up debris and cutting down runners from the apricot tree I went on to sort the runner bean area out. This bit has some of the bindweed problem and so I have weed membrane down but I pulled it all up, cleared the bindweed roots that where surface and laid it back down. Then I did the other side of it, it seems like a bit of a wasted area really but for the time being it will stay like that as I don’t have the time or the energy to change any of it. I just need to make sure that it doesn’t get out of control because it is an area I don’t need to visit very much and so gets overlooked ( maybe call it the wild area 😉) The bindweed roots I pulled up will be burnt, don’t want to risk them in the compost otherwise the problem will get worse. I came in for lunch and a sit down, my legs got a bit wobbly, I was in need of sustenance. That’s when I sat and wrote this and I am hoping I find some energy to get back out there 😝
Thursday: I started off well, got all the morning rounds done and the hens are better behaved today, not munching on eggs, I have no idea what that was all about 🤷♀️ Then into the greenhouse to sort a few things out and pit some things up, I also tidied a few things, stuff I put down thinking I will move that later then before you know it there is quite a bit to move. I put some pots of tulips and allium out for sale, the green shoots are just pushing through the top of the soil so I know they are good and strong. Then Samantha arrived with the twins and stayed for the afternoon, normally she would then take the twins and go to pick up Mia from school, come back, drop the twins off and take Mia swimming. Today though she left Lucie with me and took George so Lucie helped me to feed the chickens and collect the eggs, she was brilliant, carrying a bucket with some corn in she fed the hens like a pro 😁 George was most upset that he didn’t get to stay and do it but he can have a turn next time though I don’t think he will be as helpful somehow. Lucie is definitely going to be an outdoorsy grafter type, George more of an indoorsy desk job type I think, he is already very precise with everything so maybe an architect lol. Once Mia came back from swimming and they had all gone home it was time to get dinner, John had pool night and I had an online masterclass about annuals, perennials and foliage 🥰 Will sleep well tonight.
Friday: Brrrr cold and raining first thing this morning with some sleet thrown in for good measure, needless to say I waited a while before going out to do the animals 😝 Once it had stopped raining I went out and got that all done, I was just sorting the eggs out when John came home having finished work for the day and it was only 9.30! That kind of put paid to my plans for the day (which actually was just a fair amount of reading and resting because I still felt tired) After having a coffee we decided to go and get some shopping done, I had made a list the night before of a few things I needed. After shopping we went round to see Mum and Ken for a cup of coffee and got back home around Midday. We actually didn’t get a lot else done to be honest, except the necessary, by the time I sorted out the evening meal, John popped out to have a quick look at a job someone in the village wants doing, and a few household bits, there wasn’t much time for anything major. Just as well really as it never warmed up at all really and the lower temps are around for a couple of days more yet.
I have another masterclass online again tonight and then one on Monday evening as well, I love it and there is always something to learn 😁
Saturday: Not sure what we did to be honest, apart from the usual jobs I rather think we didn’t do much at all in the day 😂 In the evening we went to the Cotswolds 2022 Sloe Gin competition at The Fox Inn, Broadway which is between Stow on the Wold and Morton in Marsh. The event raised money for Maggie’s cancer care charity. What a fabulous evening we had, firstly the fact that the entries wereWith members from Cornwall to Inverness, Flowers from the Farm is the award-winning membership association for artisan cut flower growers in the UK. all from the villagers was indicative of a great community, secondly the pub and its staff were friendly and welcoming. It is very many years since I have been to a pub that has that traditional village pub feel and vibe, we had great fun judging the 22 entries and giving them a score, we had some great food and a good laugh with the locals who were a welcoming, friendly bunch, honestly I couldn’t speak more highly of the whole event. We will definitely being going back to the pub and most definitely for next years competition lol. And for anyone who watches Father Brown investigates, that’s the pub they use for filming 🥰
Sunday: Despite the gin tasting last night we were up and at it this morning 😝 The windy weather is still here, getting tedious now mind you 🙄 but it is a little milder today I think. I spent the morning giving a full clean out to the quail and Guinea pig runs, once the guineas were done I went onto the quail, opened the door and one flew straight out past me and up onto the Turkey run roof. It stayed where it was and didn’t move so I went and got the clean straw, told John and he came to help me catch it. He waved a long pole in the direction of the quail who duly took off towards the greenhouse and landed in an ungainly fashion on the lawn. John went round to look for it and shouted he could find it, I went round and said ‘you have to think like a quail’ 😂 what is the first thing you would do as a timid little bird out in the big wide world, hide, I went round to the area I had seen it land and there it was tucked in some long grass. I was hoping that I would have some more quail delivered today but the chap is having difficulty getting hold of them, I am not in a hurry so it can wait. We came in for some lunch and then I sent John off to pick up a vase I had seen on marketplace, meanwhile I went into the greenhouse. It seems I have a mouse again this year because some of the sweet pea seeds have been disturbed and one which was shooting has been chewed off 🤬 I have now primed the trap with peanut butter, I need to get this one as soon as possible or I will have nothing growing, it is not an ‘all you can eat restaurant’ ya know 😏 Mid afternoon I decided that was enough outside and came in to get some compost ordered. I am swapping over to peat free, it will be good once the whole industry makes the move to only supply peat free. The only reason I don’t always use it is because I often ask John to pick some up, multipurpose compost he can mange to remember, multipurpose, pear free would be pushing it too far 😉
Some spring hope appearing 🥰
This week I joined Flowers from the Farm, this is an organisation I first saw and heard a few years ago at an RHS show. I was tempted to join back then but didn’t really have a plan going forward about growing flowers, well now I have and so I applied and became a full member 🥰
‘With members from Cornwall to Inverness, Flowers from the Farm is the award-winning membership association for artisan cut flower growers in the UK.’
If you want to read more about the association, where you can see them, what they are all about then go to www.flowersfromthefarm.co.uk they also have a live map of all members who grow flowers here in he UK (including me😁)
Monday 24th January 2022: Milder than it has been, dry and the ground is not frozen yay that means I can get outside and get something done. First though I had to get the animals all sorted as John has gone to work for a couple of hours but will be back mid morning. As soon as I could I went outside to get the job done that I had gone to sleep thinking about, sad I know 😂 The job in question was cutting back the lilacs in the veg garden. Quite a few years ago we thinned out the lilacs at the front and heeled in some whips, they were supposed to be dug up at a later point. That was probably something like seven years ago so you can guess how big they have got. They are at the end of the bed where I will be growing the cut flowers and so I cut them down by half in order to get the maximum sunshine but still provide a wind barrier, I also hope I will get some good lilac flowers from them although possibly not this year. I dug up a fair few whips to pot up and there was just one big root I couldn’t budge. John came home at that point and we went off to the diy shop to get some paint for the roadside advertising boards. I want to paint them the same colour (or near enough) to the logo background and try to pull everything together a bit better. Once back home John had to go off to the bank to shut down an account we haven’t used for around ten years but still had a small amount of money left in it. I sorted out what would be for dinner this evening and then got the smallest board in to give it a clean up and repair some little parts that had got damaged in the wind. I realised I needed to re do the blackboard paint so called John who was on his way back, he turned around and went to get the paint from the diy shop, bad management from me there but at least I can get the boards sorted. While John was out doing the afternoon rounds I painted the smallest of the boards with new blackboard paint and once it has had a makeover it will look splendid. John also went out and dug up that last root for me 😁 tomorrow we will go out there and put everything through the chipper, tidy up and that bed will be ready when I am for planting up.
Last night while checking my emails I looked at a particular website and decided I might like to go on one of the courses they were offering. I talked it over with John because it’s not cheap lol, but I am so excited to have booked a cut flower day course with Sarah Raven 🥰 She is the guru of cut flowers in the UK and I can’t wait to go and do that, yep it’s fair to say I am ‘cock a hoop’ about that.
At times I think to myself ‘whoa, what are you doing’ and then other times I am full steam ahead with ideas and plans, the one thing I keep telling myself is to just roll with it and enjoy everything, I mean what could be better than growing flowers all summer long. The one thing I did think was that at least picking flowers is an early morning job 😁
The poultry are obviously all still shut away and it would seem that it’s particularly bad this year 🙄 On the one hand it is easy for us to do them every day and they are not all over the place laying but on the other hand I kind of wonder what is the point of having them if they can’t get outside for four months of the year and so far that’s two years in a row we have had to lock them down 😔
Tuesday: oooosh been very busy this morning, after getting the morning jobs done including the animals, I got straight onto painting the primer on the advertising board for the front of the drive. I figured if I did that quickly it would be drying while I went about the rest of the day’s business. Today on the agenda was chipping up all the prunings from the lilacs and the apple trees I pruned the other week. That took around three hours and all the mulch went back onto the ground under the lilacs and around the lavender. John meanwhile was working on the area that will now be grass, it was the herb bed and I have dug everything out and potted up or replanted elsewhere. The sides of the bed need removing and all the soil needs moving so it is level with the pathway (although the path will also be grassed) He has been doing a fabulous job, riddling all the soil as he goes and putting on the rhubarb bed which really needed a top up. Around 11 John went out to look at a couple of jobs and an hour later returned, I had some soup in a mug outside, I didn’t want to stop and sit down otherwise I wouldn’t get going again. John got himself some lunch and then came back outside where we worked until mid afternoon, should sleep well tonight 🤪
In between everything else I was also painting and re writing the advertising chalkboard for the flowers.
Wednesday: Another busy day today, mild again which meant plenty of time outside to get stuff done. John carried on with the removing all the soil from the area we are putting down to lawn and while he was doing that I potted up all the lilac whips I dug up yesterday and I also planted 100 allium bulbs of various types. Some will go out for sale and some will be for the cutting garden. We then moved onto a different area, the brassica cage has been there for about four years I think, it is time to use it for something else before I end up with club root 🙄 I took off all the environmesh and hatched a plan 🤪 the plan involved re using items we already had to create a sweet pea growing area, I have some metal grid sheets that are pretty big and so I wanted one of those attached to the framework of the brassica cage and a narrow raised bed at the bottom for the sweet peas. It should be pretty successful 🤞 and a dedicated area for the sweet peas which have deep roots. I have now almost cleared the area where the rest of the cut flowers will be going and just need to make a plan of what is going where. I will get some pictures once it’s cleared properly and ready to go.
In between all this I was repainting and re writing the advertising chalkboard for the eggs, the boards are all having an overhaul and a refresh, I didn’t get before and after pics of the first board but I have of this second one.
I have also been trying to make hearts from the weeping birch branches, every year in winter it sheds lots of branches, they are very long and wispy, ideal for making things with.
Much better 😁
We popped out to get a bit of shopping once we had eaten dinner, figured it would be quiet in the evening. We got back just in time for a zoom meeting I almost forgot about 🙄 it was a cut flower meeting, very interesting and nice to see others who are doing the same thing.
Thursday: Making the most of John being at home because today is the last day for a while. So after the morning rounds John got straight on outside finishing the sweet pea box and I got on with chalking up the egg board for the roadside, looks pretty good and should just give a nudge reminder to anyone passing that we still sell eggs. Once I had finished I went out to help John, I lined the box, moved a few barrowfulls of dead and decaying leaves (I need to burn these as they are from the pear tree that has scab) Then once John had finished I laid weed membrane down over the rest of the plot to stall the weeds until I can get on it. We measured the plot and overall size is 12ft wide by 30ft long with some small areas already planted with the lilacs and lavender but the rest is ready to plan. It then started to rain 🌧 oh rain stops play says John, nope rain just means play outside stops but plenty to be done inside 🤪 So for the second time in as many weeks John got the hoover out 😝 that is worthy of writing as it doesn’t happen very often, not at home anyway, I am reliably informed by customers that he hoovers in their houses! Hoovering, tidying, wipe round done and time for a sit down, we have the twins later so need a rest in between. I have had to order a new vacuum cleaner, we have two, one is for the boot room and used to do the Rayburn, it’s gets that stale smell so it is the ‘outside hoover’ it has given up the ghost so the ‘indoor’ one moves to outdoor and the new one will be for inside.
I am feeling like my head is fit to burst with everything at the minute especially social media lol. But it’s an extremely useful platform both for getting information out and for receiving information. I just think that at the moment I have too many social media plates in the air 😂 online courses, zoom meetings, online workshops, relevant groups for flowers, Smallholding, self sufficiency, veg growing, gardening in general, personal, then there are the farm pages to run on Facebook, and Instagram and the blog and podcast, I think I need a PA 🤪 Still it keeps me busy right 😝. That and preparing the garden for spring, all of it not just the flower patch, growing seeds, potting up plants and planting bulbs not too mention keeping up with the weeds once they start in earnest.
In the past I have tried to find and trial other more environmentally friendly weed suppressants but I have resorted to the landscape membrane. I tried jute which was ok but only lasted the year which would make it pretty expensive, the cardboard method works really well and is cheap but to cover the area that I need to cover takes a LOT of cardboard so I can only use what I have. The biodegradable membrane is great (expensive) but not permeable and very flimsy so at the moment for large areas it is the landscape membrane I am afraid. Two reasons why this is the best option for me, one, the area is pretty extensive and there is a lot to do. I need to be able to be in control of what gets done and when, which leads me to the second reason and that is the Lupus. I have no idea how the year ahead will go regards the illness, if I am lucky and can keep on an even keel without flares, it will be smooth sailing. If it doesn’t go well I can be incapacitated for weeks sometimes months and then things will get very out of hand, it will stress me out massively and stress is something I need to avoid at all costs because it is a trigger. Sometimes you just have to do what is best for you and your health even if it goes against your ethics which in this case it does but I do need to balance one against the other and until they come up with something amazingly good that’s what I will be using. The good thing is that I use it over and over again but it does shred at the edges if the wind gets at it which is not great, if anyone has any tips on how to stop that I would be interested.
Friday: A frosty morning again but hopefully the sun will thaw everything quite quickly. John has gone off to work today but he did the animals before leaving so I got on with a few household chores. I am hoping to get outside once it warms up a little bit.
Last night I drew out the cutting patch to scale and am giving the layout lots of thought, I think that is the right approach because if I rush in with deciding where things will go chances are I will have forgotten something and have got change it all. The annual flowers are easy enough but the perennial flowers all have different needs and once they are in I don’t want to find I have got it wrong.
Update on the soil blocks and the grow lights: The soil blocks are definitely a winner, I need to get the level of moisture right next time when I use the block because if you have the soil too loose they can crumble a little when the edges dry out but I think that is more user error than design fault. So far I still think they are a brilliant concept, pricking out is a thing of the past with these as exact seedling has its own little bit of soil which you just transplant into the next size block, it’s genius really 🥰 As for the grow lights they have pros and cons, I bought a set with a clip that clip to a table or bench and four arms that have the lights in, the lights are red or blue or a mix of both. The pros are that they do work well, when I change the light colour, the leaf colour of the seedlings change as well. The seedlings also respond to the lights but you do need the lights directly over the seedlings, no point trying to squeeze an extra tray at the end of the light range because the seedlings just lean in that direction. I bought them because the lisianthus are difficult to germinate and grow and I wanted to give them all the help I could. I have seen set ups with trays and trays of seedlings on shelving each with lights attached to the under side of the shelf above. My thoughts are that although we are impatient to get growing, and so use these false environments, nature really does know best and waiting for the light levels to increase is probably better, you will end up with stronger seedlings. I wonder with big set ups, where are they moving all theses seedlings onto once they get big enough to transplant, another set up? You certainly couldn’t move them to outside, not in the UK at any rate, considering we are still weeks away from the last frost date that would be too risky. I imagine people must have a second stage set up that is perhaps under heated cover 🤷♀️ I am not sure, maybe I will research it to find out. Overall both the seed blocks and the grow lights are good but for the lights I personally wouldn’t go to a bigger scale not unless I had a good second stage set up to move them too.
John came home mid morning which I wasn’t expecting. I had decided to give the office/craft room a bit of a tidy up but as soon as I finished that I went outside with John to get some work done on the garden. The compost heap needed turning and the compost that was ready needed distributing. I decided that the beds in the big tunnel could do with topping up so that’s where the compost went. I moved two smaller beds that were temporary and put in some pallet collars to make two bigger beds which John also filled. I gave the tunnel a tidy up, put some membrane over the beds. That is the tunnel ready for the season apart from a good wash which needs to wait until the damp weather is finished otherwise the green algae will just come back. I don’t think I have ever had the tunnel ready for action this early in the year. John then carried on with turning this years heap, the more you turn it the quicker it breaks down but it’s hefty work. I tidied up some broken pots and bits ready to go into the skip and then I too sorted the compost bins at the other side of the garden. In the beginning we only had one compost area but I wasted a lot of time talking it all to the other end of the garden each time that I decided to have extra bins within the garden area. I have two big square ones and two darlek type, I emptied out the darleks and put all of that on top of the material in the square ones. Again the more weight on top the quicker it will break down, I quite expected to see some wildlife in there but nope not today. By 1pm it was getting colder and we had both worked pretty hard so it was inside for some soup and a sit down. The soup is from the soup bags I made up at the end of last year, very handy to pop them in the slow cooker with a stock cube in the morning, turn onto high and its ready to blitz and eat at lunchtime. It’s also great because there are veg in there that John wouldn’t normally eat but once blitzed he has no idea 😁
It occurred to me while I was in the poly tunnel that I could offer advice to anyone who is torn between a poly tunnel and a greenhouse. If you can only have one I would say go for a tunnel, they have different uses but a tunnel can be used similar to the greenhouse plus so much more and always go for the biggest one you can afford or site, whichever that is. If it is a greenhouse you really want above all else then by all means get the best you can afford but unless you want it for aesthetics don’t spend the extra on a posh one. It doesn’t work any different and doesn’t make you a better grower, there are better ways to spend the extra money on a greenhouse, such as ventilation, shading, decent staging, irrigation systems, electrics and decent propagators. Also a green house that is well put up will stand the test of time, doesn’t matter how good it looks if the wind rocks it will soon start to leak or worse the glass will crack. Our first poly tunnel has been up for around 10 years and the covering is still fully intact and functional, a lot of that is down to where it is sited, it doesn’t get battered by the wind, which improves the life span. In the tunnels I opted for an overhead irrigation system, which I don’t use, the reason being that too much water is wasted when it is watered from the top. You water areas that don’t need it such as the pathways, watering at soil level is far more cost effective and it is directed straight to the roots of the plants which is where it is needed most.
Another online flower workshop tonight, I am learning lots and loving it 😊
Saturday: Windy lol, that’s today, but mild enough and the sun peeks out now and again. After the usual jobs John asked what needed doing and so I gave him a verbal list, he chose the duck pen 😝 great because that was the dirtiest, muckiest job and I didn’t really want to do it 😂 We had to let the ducks out for a while in order to get it done, John shovelled out dirty, wet, smelly mud and shoved up plenty of duck poop, he then power washed the whole pen. Meanwhile I did the horses water and let them into the front side paddock, they now have three paddocks to roam over. Onto topping up straw in the hens laying areas and then to top up straw in the goose hut, I also found some site fencing (that plastic green stuff) and put that up all along the side of the little paddock that the geese are in. About four years ago Mum, Ken and I planted 950 daffodil bulbs, the first and second year they came up lovely, the third year we had to keep the geese in there due to bird flu and although the daffs came up they were short because the geese trampled all along there hampering growth. The same was likely to happen this year except that I have now fenced it off and hopefully I will get nice tall flowers 🤞 Once I finished that I made the decision to move the ducks back to their original housing, we were going to wait and get the hut moved and a new floor down but the hens in the stable could really do with some fresh air and so they will now move into the pen John has just cleaned out and the ducks will go back to their own home. One of the ducks is not looking very strong so I have ,over her to a stable on her own with food and water to see if she gets any better, she was quite light in weight and muddy I am not sure what has happened to her but if I can try and get her better then I will. I then went on to do some bits in the garden, I cut back all the autumn raspberry canes, potted a few up that I pulled up I also repaired and secured the posts that the canes get tied to as some of them were broken and wobbly. By that time it was lunchtime so I came in for some soup and a cuppa, John also came in for something eat. We had planned on a quick sit down and then carry on but Sam arrived with the children for a couple of hours.
I did another online masterclass about peonies in the afternoon, these type of classes are very good because they are specific and include information about using them as cut flowers rather than just in the garden borders. I have another three classes I think over the next week or so, I am really enjoying them and although I am not a novice gardener I am learning new things all the time 😁
This is the cut flower area it is approx 30 x 12ft 😮 the lilacs I cut back are at the far end and there are some lavenders in there already. The box on the right hand side are for the sweet peas and I need to decide how best to use the rest of the area, not that I am short of plants and seeds to go in there lol.
The weed membrane is to slow down and weed growth until I can get it sorted. This bed has always been a bit of a problem bed, rouge raspberry runners, comfrey and bindweed all have their roots in here, I may have to look at a few raised beds for some of it until they have all died off which could be a year or two 😏 The list of plants and seeds I have is pretty extensive from the favourites like roses, dahlias and peonies to cornflowers, poppies and snapdragons. The beauty of the mix I have is that the bouquets will not be like the ones from the shops, they need to use flowers that will transport well, I can use whatever I want and whatever is looking good at the time of picking.
Sunday: John did a bit outside in the morning and I was indoors making hearts from twigs. Just before lunch I decided I needed a trip to the garden centre to see what is actually out now, of course that result in some spenditure 😂 I said to John, I am investing for this time next year and to my surprise he said ‘good idea’ well then there was no holding me back 😝 I bought some beautiful hellebores, nerine and anemones, I am determined to have naturally blooming flowers this time next year! We were speaking to someone we know who works at the centre and he said that I was onto a good thing, growing and selling flowers and plants, because importing them is about to get a lot harder than it was due to brexit, I hadn’t realised that when I decided to do it but it’s an added bonus I guess. We stopped at the garage on the way back because I wanted to get a cheap bunch of flowers 😮 to give something a try. I was pretty pleased with the result proving that you can even make these look like they are bespoke 😁
Garage flowers and some twigs can still make an artistic display 😁
Have a great week, we are one more week nearer to spring 😁
Monday 22nd November: The temperatures have dropped to normal levels now and so I think our run of mild weather is gone for good. I don’t mind a cold dry winter it is much better than a mild wet one 🙄 Even though it is colder the sun was out shining away and eventually it warmed the ground up enough to get rid of the frost, I had already decided I was going to be doing a bit outside and the sun was an added bonus. Bearing in mind it has got colder I filled up a tonne bag with straw and took it to the orchard where I used it for the Guineas, rabbit, quail, lovely gut Sussex and the turkeys. All the pens and huts are now filled with a good amount of straw for them to burrow into if they need it. I also filled up all the wild birds feeders so that they have plenty to keep them going on a frosty morning.
After that it was on to the big job of the day, planting all the tulip bulbs as well as some giant alliums. I think there were about 450 tulips bulbs if my memory serves me correctly, they have all now been planted in various places and should look splendid come the spring. Some of them I used to plant up some pots that will go out for sale next spring, most of them went into the raised flower bed in front of the house, a sprinkling of them went into various other pots and then a good amount went into one of the raised beds in the veg garden. Those ones will be specifically for cut flowers and once they have been cut the bulbs will be discarded. This is what happens in the industry, once the flower is cut it can’t send goodness back to the bulb, normally you would allow the foliage to die back so that the bulb can get a good recovery ready for the next year, but picking or cutting the flower means that doesn’t happen and so the bulbs are discarded. This means that once all the tulips have been picked I can clear the bed out and use it for veg later. The pots of tulips I have had to put under a metal run that we use for chickens sometimes, this is to protect the, from all and sundry, chickens from digging in the pots, squirrels from hiding nuts in the pots and this disturbing the bulbs, I know foxes will dig up bulbs, not sure if they eat them or just dig to see what else is under there. Best to try and protect them as much as possible otherwise all the work ends up being for nothing. I still have a small box of gladioli bulbs to plant as well, I need to decide where they will go. I had to books I ordered arrive today, ‘the flower farmers year’ and a flower arranging book, plenty to read and I will probably find I have already done something wrong but I had to put the bulbs in before the book arrived and certainly before I had chance to read it through.
I did notice that although the garlic I planted is coming up but that the same cannot be said for the onions, something has been pulling them out so I have now covered them with environmesh to give any remaining ones a bit of a chance. I also can’t see any sign of the broad beans I sowed, I am thinking that the mice may have got them, I really should have sown them in pots first and then planted them out 🙄
We had a rich beef stew in the slow cooker for dinner tonight and an apple and blackberry crumble, definitely getting into comfort food season now. The Christmas pudding has been boiling away on the hob for two hours, it has another two hours to go before allowing it to cool and then store it ready for its main event on Christmas Day. I also got a soup veg bag out of the freezer this morning and made a batch of soup, should be enough for the next couple of days and a welcome warm lunch on cold days. I think soup is the best thing during the winter months, full of goodness and it warms you right through to the core 🥰
Tuesday: Early morning appointment for blood tests this morning so I was up and at it as soon as the alarm went off. I had I intended to come back home and get on with some things but Shelley suggested a trip into town and so that’s where we went. We had a lovely morning mooching around and getting a few Christmas presents sorted, plus a coffee stop which is always a pleasure. We stopped to collect Flo from nursery on our way back and I spotted some amazing looking ginkgo biloba leaves, when I started gathering them up they made the most beautiful and natural pompom 🥰 The leaf collecter lorry arrived shortly after so we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time 😁
Nature is a wonderful thing 😍
Once back home I got on with sorting out dinner for the evening and then a bit of card making u til it was time to do the afternoon rounds. The day finishes early at this time out year (outside at any rate) by around 4.30 it is starting to get dark. I decided the dark evenings are a blessing and they give me time to make things and so this evening I made a dried flower wreath. The wreath is from last Christmas, I leave it to dry all year and you end up with a lovely dried moss ring perfect for adding dried flowers that I picked in the summer months and hung to dry.
I seem to have lost a couple of days in between lol, suffice to say that I didn’t do much outside stuff mainly inside. I have been filling any gaps in the walls of the pantry and my sister came over with a drawing she has done of how it will look when it’s done. I need to give the walls a miss coat of paint, just enough to take the blockiness out of the ply walls and make it look rustic.
I think it was Wednesday that the APHA announced that poultry must all be housed and bio security measures put in place from Monday, here we go again. To be fair we were expecting it as we do nearly every year now, one of the reasons it hardly seems worth continuing with poultry 🙄 Hardly good for them when they have to spend months locked away, let’s hope it’s only them this year and not us again.
Thursday: My plan was to paint the pantry but first I wanted to get some cleaning done, the low sun at this time of year drives me nuts as it shows up all the dust 😂 After lunch Shelley, Flo, Sam, Lucie and George called in after their morning at soft play. Later that afternoon Sam was back with all the kiddies including Mia and the twins stayed here while Mia went for her swimming lesson.
Jack (horse) is lame 😒 no apparent cause at the minute, no cuts or heat in his leg, it’s possible he has knocked it or kicked it himself. He will be monitored for a couple of days to see how he goes, no point bringing him in as he will just kick the stable door and that won’t do his leg any good as it is one of his front ones. He is bearing some weight on it but clearly has an issue, I cut him some fresh willow to see if that helps at all, he is better off to continue moving at this stage we think.
Friday: I still haven’t got the pantry painted and I had no intention of doing it today either, it’s blooming cold out there so I would rather be inside doing something else 😜 Mostly that consists of making Christmas cards etc, trying out new ideas, making bread and cooking. The weather took a dive at lunchtime, windy, rainy, cold, not nice today at all, I was not looking forward to going out and doing the rounds late afternoon. In a couple more days that will not be an issue as they will all be penned up in the stable block so I will only have to nip across the hard standing.
John has just phoned to say he is in the queue for a booster vaccination at a walk in clinic, that means I will probably have to go outside again to shut everything away for the night 🥶
Josh and Flo are coming to tea tonight and staying over, it’s been a long time since they have stayed at Nanas, before the pandemic they would regularly come and stay and then everything went sideways and we have never really quite got back on track with sleepovers 😏 Spaghetti Bolognese and a jam sponge pudding for dessert is on the menu.
You may wonder (or you may not) how I am getting on without the Rayburn, well I have a lot more time to do the things I like doing and I thought I would miss the heat but I don’t. The only thing I really miss is being able to dry the washing each night but it’s a small price to pay compared to the amount of work it took all year to run and maintain it.
Saturday: Oh my days what a night 🙄 gale force winds were roaring and kept me and plenty of other people awake half the night,seriously strong gusts at times, scary stuff but no damage though as I write this Saturday evening the winds have not actually stopped all day and are still pretty fierce. Add to that snow, yes bloody snow and it was not at all nice out there, the wind was bitingly cold. I had to go out and top up the horses water and also give them some hay, on the way back I made up the stables in case the snow didn’t clear and I had to bring them in. John went off to get feed once he had done the morning rounds and then in the afternoon he reluctantly went out to fasten down some of the roof that had come loose from constant buffering. At 4pm shelley came over with Martin and the kids and we walked up to the farm next door where they were having the Christmas craft Fayre ooosh the wind was strong and cold but it all added to the adventure, we met Mum up there, had hot chocolates and mulled wine, bought some raffle tickets and then walked home again. I will be glad when I don’t have to go outside anymore tonight 🥶
This is my pantry which at the moment is a blank canvass but it will look super and be a great place to store all my produce and things. Beautiful but could do without it lol
Sunday: It started off as a normal enough day, we did the animals, Sam and Mia came over to check the horses and rug up Jack. We had a discussion about where and when we will move them next but at the minute they are staying as they are. We went to the farm shop to get some bales of sawdust ready to shut the birds away and then we went out. Basically I dragged John round a couple of garden centres and a Christmas craft Fayre. I am doing well buying locally made gifts for the girls, I can’t really do it for the grandchildren but whenever I can I try and buy local. We bumped into Charlie and Macca at one of the centres so we stopped and had coffee and cake with them. Up to that point things were grand 🤪 We got home, unloaded and then the power went 🙄 I spent too much bloody time trying to get through to the power company, they are very busy due to the storm we had and so basically send you round and round in circles trying to report the outage and find out any info about when it would be back on. We had the big job of moving all the birds to do so we got togged up and went out to get that started. We put in clean bedding, blocked up any escape holes, put in water, feed, dust baths, perches and grit bowls as well as making nice little nest box areas. We also moved the ducks this time, they have gone into the point of lay pen, obviously they don’t roost so I made a little sleeping/egg laying area out of hay bales and straw for them. By this time it is starting to get dark and we have no lights 😂 we got the geese back up into the back paddock where they will stay for the duration and we herded the ducks from their current abode to their new des res. Then it was time to move all the hens, some of them had already been living in the stable block so they were easy enough. A few stragglers in the side paddock had gone to their usual hit and so we gathered those up a d put them in with the others. Then onto the big hut in the front paddock, we filled the first two poultry crates and took them to the stable, when we came out the lights were back on in the house yippee 🙌 We collected the last two poultry crates of birds and put those in the stable and finally we were done. It’s a pain having to shut the birds away for what is likely to be a few months but it’s what we have to do. On the flip side it makes them all easier to look after and of course they won’t get eaten by the fox plus we shall be able to find all the eggs. I have given them some extra treats, sunflower seeds and dried seaweed and I have used diatomaceous Earth in their feed as a wormer and in their bedding and dust bath, it’s like a five star poultry hotel 😂 Once that was done it was time to come in and get that cup of tea we had been looking forward to when we came home earlier in the day.
Monday 8th March 2021: Good morning and good morning to all those children who are finally returning to school today and big high five to the parents who have been home schooling ✋ Hopefully today marks the beginning of the road to some kind of normality later this year 🙏 When I think about the last year of our lives it all seems surreal, governments have ordered people to stay home and paid them to do so, made travel illegal, isolation and quarantine have become normal words in a conversation, furlough is a newly invented word for being paid to stay home, shortages of toilet roll and other vital supplies 🙄 No seeing your family, no hugs, no birthday celebrations, no weddings, funerals that couldn’t give people the send off they deserved, people dying by the millions all over the world, scientists working flat out to come up with a vaccine, NHS working round the clock in extreme circumstances, shops, bars, clubs, pubs, theatres, sports grounds all closed for the duration, and this time last year we had no idea what was coming!
John was up and did the animals before going off to work this morning. I swung the hoover round and did a bit of polishing, that will make me feel better when I go outside and spend most of my time in the garden 😀
Good grief is it still Monday 🙄 seems like a very long day today. Been busy in the garden first thing, raking up and burning garden debris, nothing quite like a garden bonfire in Spring. Then I was digging up more deep rooted weeds before they start to flower and set seed. Sam came and I looked after the twins for an hour while she went food shopping. Carried on in the garden after she left and John came home, we got the last bit of compost riddled and what didn’t fit in the new compost bins went on the garden. It will all end up on the garden I am just not ready for it yet. I cleaned the small poly tunnel cover with the algae remover, did a few more bits before sowing the first two rows of carrots for the year 😀 covered them with environmesh because the cats are getting round to playing in the garden and we have a storm coming Thursday apparently, so if they are covered nicely the seeds should not get to disturbed. Environmesh is an expensive outlay initially but it is very long lasting, I have had mine for years and it can be used for a multitude of coverings including brassicas. Checked the postbox and Johns call up for the vaccine had arrived, he was invited to go to the Kassam stadium but booking it online was a right ole rigmarole 🙄 by the time you had chosen a date and pressed next, the times had all been allocated and it was back to square one, in the end he phoned and spoke to a human and got it all booked 😀 Then it was time to get the eggs done and light the Rayburn, get the dinner sorted etc etc. I did pull up a few good beetroot today so I need to decide what to do with them, normally I would leave them in the ground to get bigger but I really wanted to clear the area for a fresh start.
In this area there is the apricot tree a cherry tree which is out of shot then rhubarb, a thornless blackberry some horseradish and asparagus but I have plenty of room to plant other crops, I am just not sure what that will be yet. To the right you can just see the runner bean frames so they also grow here. Last year I grew pumpkins in this space which just meandered around everything else which worked well.
It won’t be long until I can start picking some of this years produce, the rhubarb I have been forcing is looking brilliantly vibrant and there are enough stalks to pull, I really need to have custard with mine 😀 The purple sprouting broccoli has a few little heads appearing, I think by next week there will be enough for a picking. The leeks I planted last year have been slow but they are just about big enough to be useful if pulled from here on in, it’s all looking promising and I can’t wait for that fresh, home grown, full of flavour goodness. As a side note there are plenty of things growing that we could eat right now but they are from days long gone and are mostly considered weeds, plantain, dandelion, goose grass, chick weed, nettles, but always worth remembering just in case you ever need to know 😜
This forced rhubarb looks amazingly vibrant (no filter needed here) can’t wait to have some with custard 🥰
We are getting near to the end of the veg I froze last year but I still have loads of frozen fruit left mostly plums. The plums won’t be ripe until late August, early September so no rush to use them but I will probably make some more jam with half of them, there are also a few bags of mixed berries which again I will use to make jam as we have run out.
After five whole days of our broadband and phone being fixed it’s back to dropping out again so that more time wasted contacting BT, seriously they are shockingly shite! I would change provider but that doesn’t really solve the problem as Open Reach service the lines anyway not matter who the provider is so I can’t imagine it would be any better 🤷♀️
Tuesday: A sunny morning with a frost, it should burn off and be a pleasant day. I am trying to get as much done as possible during this dry period, we have wind and rain approaching in the second half of the week so making the most if it. Once the weather turns I can do a bit of baking, haven’t done any in a long while so John will be pleased. BT are coming out tomorrow to fix the problem, just like they did the last three times 🙄 not holding out much hope there 😜 We had another power cut the night before last, not for long but still, our services seem to be getting worse and worse with each passing year.
The big news today is the Megan and Harry interview, I am trying to avoid it but it crops up everywhere 😂 suffice to say my opinion, for what it matters, is that there are better ways of dealing with things than airing your dirty linen on a worldwide scale, they haven’t done themselves any favours. I had supported them in everything they decided to do until now.
It’s 1.30 and I have just come in and had some lunch after a very pleasant morning in the garden. I have been doing various bits but nothing too hard which is why it was so nice I think, pottering is the best term for it. I have sown some more seeds, firstly some flowers, sunflowers and echinops to be precise and then in the big tunnel I have also sown some little gem and winter gem lettuce, some spring onions and some white radish. I have cut back some of the hazel that overshadows the small tunnel, I think looking at them they need a really good cut back, I will have to sacrifice nuts this year. Then I thought I ought to sort out my seeds, they seem to be in complete disarray and I am forever going through all of them to find something. Now they are all in tubs for various types, root veg, squash, salad, you get the idea. The one thing I haven’t got is courgettes, none at all so I will have to get some and some more broad beans while I am at it. I have made sure that any flyawayables are secure for this wind we have coming, shame the weather is going to break but we have had a good run over the last week. It doesn’t sound like I have done much but I have done other bits as well such as retrieve the goose eggs and fill up their water bucket, sort out the eggs and the returned egg boxes, not much but it has filled my morning with only a quick coffee break when John came home to get something he needed. Yep a very pleasant morning indeed.
My guilty pleasure on such a lovely day 😜
I spent another hour in the greenhouse, I didn’t intend to, I went in to give the next size up propagator a clean ready for moving seedlings on but I got listening to a story on radio 4 and so I couldn’t leave until it was finished 😂 I found plenty of little things to do while I was listening 😀
Wednesday: It’s not as cold this morning but we have drizzle and a slight wind, worse to come later according to the weather forecast 😕 John was up and down the animals before going off to work, the builders merchant lorry arrived with the remaining top soil for the last bed, it has taken 15 of the big builder bags, I am not sure how much they weigh but that’s a lot of top soil. John arrived back home as he saw the lorry passing him and came back to help unload which was great as I was not looking forward to that. They hold the bags up on a grab over the bed and then cut underneath to let the soil fall but even so I struggle to cut the bag with my rusty old Stanley knife 😂 They all left and I came in to finish the washing up and then out to take the soil as flat as I could, we have a small mound left in the middle and I will let John decide wether to rake it over or take it off (heavy work lol) I seem to have lost a lot of strength over the last year, I keep trying to build it back up but then everything hurts, at the minute I have shooting pains now and again up the middle of my lower palm and into the wrists. I need to book some more blood tests for next week to see how the white cells are doing, hopefully they have not gone too low, that could be causing the problems I am having which are only minor but still inconvenient. I am also waiting for BT to arrive again today, we will see what they can find this time 🙄
As the weather is not favourable I had decided I will probably do some baking today, it will keep the kitchen nice and warm and keep me busy. It also means I will have things in the freezer that I can just grab to defrost once the gardening season is well under way and I have less time indoors to do stuff like cooking 😜
I have baked scones, biscuits, two fruit cakes and a mincemeat slice pudding for dinner tonight to go with out delicious looking shoulder of lamb 😀
I will freeze a fair bit of this for another day 😀
It was nice and warm in the kitchen while I was cooking and moving around but a short while after I had finished I could feel the cold so it was time to light the Rayburn. Another valid reason that I will be glad when I no longer have to do that is this scenario: It is pretty windy today, the wind is coming up from a south westerly direction and whipping past the back door, the Rayburn is next to the back door and when I empty the ash pan I go straight outside, you can put two and two together there can’t you 😝 And also a good reason for lighting it mid afternoon is to do with the wind, we already had one power cut this week and one the week before I think it was so the potential for another is high. The winds are forecast to reach up to 70 miles an hour on the coast, they will be less fierce by the time they come this far inland but still could reach 50 miles an hour and that will be more than enough to bring down a tree onto a power line. If I warm the house up now at least we won’t be freezing if it does happen later 🙄 Always pay to have a plan 😉
Thursday: Good grief what a night, I was going to sit and blog at 4.30 this morning but decided not to bother. Due to the winds I was awake at 1.30, 3, 4, 5 which is when I made a cuppa, went back to bed and the alarm went off at 6.30 but I went back to sleep as the winds had subsided a little by then. Seriously it was roaring all night, the metal roof occasional banged, the wooden building flexed, creaked and groaned, each time I nodded off there would be a loud creak or bang and I would be wide awake again. By 6am my eyes were stinging where I was tired. The local station recorded 47mph peak, their elevation is 88m ours is 101m with an open west aspect which is the direction the winds came from most of the night so I reckon we probably could have recorded 60mph or more at times here. Loud is an understatement, I was trying to compare it, I think it was mix of a big waterfall and a fast speed train 😂 It never let up all night long and this morning is lighter but still blowy, it changed in speed and direction around 6am. On a good note though it’s not raining this morning no yet anyway, I had expected a lot more rain than we have had 🤷♀️ By contrast, John slept through the lot 🙄 Amazes me because if he can hear the second hand of a clock he can’t sleep apparently but rip roaring winds not a problem, he was the same when the children were little, never heard the baby cry or the dog bark to go out but would complain that the clock on the oven downstairs made a noise!
John was up before me and do the animals, I got up and had a cuppa, then I made another one and thought, John will be in any minute from doing the rounds so I made him one, I drank mine and thought, where has he got to? I then realise that his phone and glasses were no on the table and so I looked out the window and his van was gone, he had left for work before I even got up 😂
I whizzed round and got a few things done, made an appointment for bloods next week, sorted out the eggs, the Guineas, cats and dogs, put the rubbish out, give the place a check over to make sure no trees had come down then had a coffee. After that I went to town to get some fruit from the market, takeaway coffee and a pastry from the local coffee shop musing over how lovely it will be to be able to go in and sit down for coffee eventually 🥰 A quick trip into the supermarket and the bakery, I haven’t managed to make bread so I bought some. Then over to see Sam and the twiglets in time to help feed lunch. Back home for 2pm and I could have lit the Rayburn but then I am tied to it for an hour so instead I spent an hour in the greenhouse checking things over. I also sowed some night scented stock seeds, these flowers are vital to things like moths and night flyers, they need nectar too. I got caught up listening to another afternoon story and couldn’t leave until it had finished 😂 The cardboard over the seedlings hack is looking promising, so much so that I have mow covered all seeds with it. I am not sure why I have never come across this before but if it works well it’s a keeper hack. I thought I then ought to light the Rayburn but first I had to get a few barrowfulls of wood into the back, saves going out in the dark and cold to get it later on. We will have two extra areas once the Rayburn is gone, one just out the back in the undercover area where we bring the wood into and then the big undercover area outside where we keep all the chopped wood, it’s big enough to fit a horse box or tractor in so quite a decent size, I am sure we will figure out what to do with them pretty quickly.
Friday: Friday again already 😜 John did the morning rounds and then went off to work. I had lots of little things to get sorted before the farrier arrived at 10am. All sorted indoors it was outside to get some hay in nets to hang for the horses on the hard standing and then into the paddock to get them in. As always Biscuit was a good good and came biddingly and Jack was an arse 😜 finally managed to get his head collar on and lead him in. I picked out their feet and waited for the farrier who was running late. Just as he turned up so did Sam with the twins, got that sorted and the twins had a little sit on the back of biscuit which they both seemed to like and then it was time for a sing song before lunch. A while after lunch I went with Sam in the car to sit with them while she got some shopping, it was around their afternoon nap time so that worked in well. By the time I got back John was home and he had even got the Rayburn lit. The wind is rather cold today but at least not as fierce, we have had a good bit of rain which has refilled some of the water tanks so that’s good, it’s amazing how quickly it gets used during a dry period. We have not got much else done this afternoon but we have a busy weekend ahead of us weather permitting so it’s fine to have a little rest now and again.
Early evening and it’s raining, it think we have rain for most of the night.
Saturday: Pretty windy again this morning, we got the morning jobs done including moving the light Sussex back out to their outdoor enclosure so that we could move the hens from the point of lay pen back into the stable ready for the batch of POL coming in this week. I also completely cleaned out the Guineas pig run and observed them for a while, I don’t think it’s mites that the guinea has got I think it’s being bullied by the other one. The reason I came to this conclusion is that the other one shows no signs of mite and he is constantly chasing the other one off, need to monitor that and do something about it soon. We also have one cockerel bullying another, it was fine while the other one was young but now it’s grown and on someone else’s territory it’s not so good, also need to do something about that 🙄 It’s always the male of the species that are a problem 😂 the females live together in relative harmony 🤔 We then went to the garden centre so that I could buy some plants for the final bed, I have a lot that I have previously grown ready or already had but I wanted a few more smaller plants for infilling, this bed is (hopefully) a nod to a cottage garden style, roses, Hardy geranium, delphiniums, dahlias, stocks, saxifrage etc, each bed should have a different look eventually.
While I was out there planting things I had a look at something I planted in the other bed, it hadn’t made it through the winter which was strange as it’s a huechera which are fairy Hardy. I dug it up thinking I might be able to recuse it and was horrified to see lots of little grubs in the soil. My first thought was cut worm and if it is in the topsoil then we are buggered as it will undone all the work we have done already, chewing through the roots of everything and killing it all off. I lifted the plant, and all the surrounding soil making sure I found every little grub that I could, this all went in the skip, there was another plant that was similar so I dug that up and yep one or two grubs in there to 🤦♀️ My next thought was that if it’s in the compost I am also buggered as I have used that for everything! A quick scan round and everything else is fine so I think it is localised luckily, I googled it and it’s not cut worm but vine weevil grubs which will be easier to deal with, they like pots of things so I imagine an adult has crawled in when I had stuff in pots and laid it’s eggs. Not so bad because it means it’s not in everything and I can get nematodes to water in and deal with them, panic over 😅
Besides that I had a lovely time planting everything in between hail storms and rain that is and of course the never ending wind. In the end I got fed up of being buffeted and went into the greenhouse for some respite from it lol.
Once I had finished that it was indoors to do a quick bit of hoovering all round and get the Rayburn ready for lighting. John had been out the back giving the POL pen a power wash so it’s all ready for next week and then came in and made a cuppa.
We booked our first post covid overnight stay away 🥰 when I say we, I don’t mean John and I 😂 Ever since our eldest turned 30, the three girls and I have a new tradition of having a spa break at a 5* boutique hotel in the Cotswolds. Last April we were booked to go for Charlie’s 30th but it got cancelled due to the pandemic and so after a whole year of waiting we were able to book it again for the end of July 👏 So looking forward to finally being able to go so fingers crossed the rest of the year goes as planned 🙏 I will have to look for somewhere for John and I to go, it’s only fair 😂
Sunday: Still windy, getting tedious now lol, it’s more tiring working against the wind all the time 🙄 Still, not to be deterred we got up, I have to say I had the most amazing breakfast by strength_chef delivered from Charlie and Macca, then got the animals done and then out the front to get some more bits tidied up. Sam arrived with Mia to do the horses and bought some beautiful primula to plant in my new flower bed along with some seeds for the butterflies and bees. Mia went home with a goose egg for her breakfast 😜 Shelley popped over to drop off a present and that was a lovely little recycled notebook that is impregnated with seeds that you can plant when you have finished using it and some amazing blondies from Indulge by Amy, find her on Facebook, fab cakes 🥰 Feeling the love today from my amazing girls, love them all to the moon and back 💕 💕 💕
Mia with her dippy goose egg 😀
We did a bit more outside after I lit the Rayburn, it’s pretty chilly today, John laid a few slabs and sorted out some of the driveway, it needs raking off and levelling, I collected empty flower pots that had blown around and we moved the fig tree and the olive tree to the fruit cage. The birds pinch all the emerging buds on both so I never get anything, hopefully in the cage I will stand more of a chanice of a harvest.
Eventually in the early afternoon we had both had enough outside and so a well earned Sunday afternoon sit down was in order.
Not long until the spring equinox 👏 👏 👏 happy days ahead 🥰 Have a fabulous week whatever you are doing x x
Monday 8th February 2021: Morning 😀 it’s 9.30am and I have sat down to have a coffee. I have already been out and rolled a wheel of hay to the paddock with John and fed the horses, lit the Rayburn, got a loaf of bread proving, got lunch and this evenings dinner organised, put some washing on, fed the cats and dogs, made an appointment for bloods at the end of the week and a multitude of other little jobs that needed doing. It’s cold outside brrrr , last night the wind gusts kept waking me up, around 10 times I would say as the roof rattles with each one 🙄 It is a crisp, dry cold morning though with a light dusting of snow, actually not a bad morning, at least it’s not raining 😝 John has gone off to work this morning but he doesn’t have a lot on this week so he will be here quite a lot, he said the less he goes to work, the less he wants to go! Not sure what I am going to do today, I plan to sling the hoover round quickly and I have some bits of paperwork to sort out and file, too cold to do much outside so that’s off the list, maybe I will work out what I am going to plant this year and where also what I need to do in order to get going when the time is right. That last bit will be a long list as nothing has been done in preparation as yet, there is cutting back, weeding, mulching and re positioning to do. I had planted a flower bed in the veg garden, that’s because I didn’t have anywhere else to put flowers but now we have the front beds I could move a lot of the bigger stuff and just leave good pollinating plants behind. The calendula which readily self set everywhere are great for the veg plots but the delphiniums, rudbeckia, dahlias etc will be better in the front I think. Each week I wait and hope that the weather will be kind enough to get going and so far each week it hasn’t been, I am sure I will get there in the end 🙄 I have another raised bed to think about at the side now, this one is fairly small in comparison to the others, 8 x 4ft and only one sleeper high. There is a sumac that grows there which I would like to see back again, it has got ravaged when the trees came down but should recover, it’s just a small one but if left could get lovely and big, there is also an elderflower that self set and if I keep that smallish that will be nice too, under those I plan to plant hellebore, snowdrops, for winter interest and probably some good ground cover. I want that bed to be fairly maintenance free if I’m honest as I have plenty of others to keep in order. I also plan to have a bench the other side because we get some fantastic early morning sun there and in the early hours of a summer morning it would be nice to sit and have coffee before the sun gets too hot. If I remember I will get some pics today so that I have before and after, when it eventually gets finished that is 😀
10.30 and it’s trying to snow 🙄 good job I got some leek and potato soup out for lunch today 😀
Snow flurries all day but nothing much is settling so far luckily but by golly it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!
Mostly I pottered indoors, John came home at lunchtime and did do a bit outside but it was soo cold he gave up and came in. He did the animals in the afternoon while I got the dinner cooked and that’s it for Monday. I rather think that will be similar most days with these temperatures, can’t really do a lot out there and can’t go anywhere else 😂
Tuesday: Oh god it’s only Tuesday 😂 pretty much a Groundhog Day, or same shit different day type of day lol. John did most of the animals this morning before nipping out to do a quick job, I did the horses, Guineas, cats and dogs plus the normal household stuff. I spent a hour getting a shepherds pie ready for dinner this evening, all the while thinking, this will take John approximately 3 minutes flat to wolf down 🙄 Got some veg soup made from my frozen stash, made a couple of cards and did a Lino print. In the afternoon it’s feeding, egg collecting, egg sorting, dinner and that is pretty much the day. Very boring at the minute, can’t really do much outside, it’s freezing, very cold dry air and a cold wind to go with it, not nice and not much to be able to achieve really. John did have a little go at some more of the side driveway but even he got fed up and cold and came in for the afternoon.
I did a fair bit of research in the evening after watching Rick Stein in France where he watched someone pressing their nuts 😛 Walnuts to be exact and I thought well maybe I could do that with our nuts, why not, makes sense to use the resources we have here. What I already knew was that cold pressed oils are better than hot pressed though I wasn’t sure why. Now I know that as the nut meat is heated ready for extraction they lose a lot of their goodness , it was obvious really if I had thought about it enough. The oil industry uses heat as it can extract much more volume but the quality is poorer whereas cold pressed yields lower volumes of higher quality oil. I always buy cold pressed olive oil, we went to an olive grove once in Tuscany and I understood that cold pressed was the best quality you could get so ever since then that’s what I have bought. The harder part of my research was trying to find the best method of extraction, I suppose here in the UK it is not something that is done on a small scale. I imagine that in warmer a Mediterranean climate many homes would have olive trees etc and practise pressing 🤷♀️ but here in the UK I think that is rare 😂 I found a few worktop machines that are available, they vary in price and I could not decide if they were worth the investment or not. Then I started thinking about how you could do it with a ready made machine which would be a better option, the nuts need to be crushed and then pressed. Crushing would be easy enough, you could do small batches in the food processor, but the pressing is harder to work out. You can use a hand operated press but my experience with pressing is that you need good hand grip and wrist strength both of which are long gone for me 🙄 some kind of hydraulic aid is needed, I did ask John if it would be possible to convert the log splitter which has 400lb of pressure, it might be an option, I will keep looking to see if there is anything that might work, or I may end up buying a machine 😜
Wednesday: Still really cold, still dry but the sun is shining this morning which makes everything feel better doesn’t it. John did the morning rounds and then went off to do a small job. I had a shower and sorted a few bits before venturing out to sort out the rest of the motley crew. Two years ago today we went on holiday, as it turns out it was the last holiday we had to date 😔 had we known we would have booked in another one later that year lol. Still it was an adventure, we sailed the high seas, and at times they were high 🤢 we crossed the Artic Circle (tick that off the bucket list) and we went to right up to Alta in search of the Northern Lights (storm Eric scuppered those plans 😣) what I would give for a holiday right now 😜
Sorted out what I needed to outside then back in to light the Rayburn which was troublesome today 🙄 I took me over an hour to get it stabilised which is a pain in the arse quite frankly. John has left over shepherds pie for dinner tonight but I got out some gooseberries to make a crumble with and one of our home produced chickens for tomorrow’s dinner. Then I went online to order some more bread flour, during the first lockdown when it was hard to come by I ordered from a whole food company and it is by far the best flour I have used for making bread so far. I ordered bread flour and also plain and self raising as well as a few other bits and pieces. I had a good look through the range they offer and it was a huge range, I was struck by three things. First that 60/70% of the people I know wouldn’t have a clue what half of them were, second that 80/90% of people I know wouldn’t know what to do with them anyway and third that I 100% don’t make full use of everything I grow here! That actually all adds up to a forth and that is that on the whole we, as a ‘modern, white, first world’ population have entirely lost touch with good food ingredients, I can’t include ethnic minorities in that statement because I believe that they still know and do use the majority of these ingredients in cooking. Yes I realise that a percentage of people use fresh ingredients but I also think that they are very basic in their choices as indeed am I really, when you start to really look at what is available we use such a tiny proportion. I shall have to set myself a mission to widen my ingredient usage and really look at the things I grow and broaden the ways I can use/store/preserve them. If you are wondering what the hell is she on about (admit it you were 😜) it’s is things like drying kale and using the powdered form or de hydrating much more produce for use during the winter or really drying plenty of beans and pulses for the same reasons. I have dabbled a little bit, the fruit powders were not terribly successful as I found they burnt a little bit maybe I should try again, and I have done beans and pulses but I should do many more I think. There are so many things I grow both in the veg garden and the flower garden and indeed also includes weeds like plantain, cleavers etc that I don’t use fully and maybe I really should.
That’s what happens when it is too cold outside to get anything much done, I start thinking and looking and learning and then churning it out but it’s a good thing I think, certainly brightens up the day to have a project in mind 😂
I went out in the afternoon and did a few bits mainly defrosting the water tap and hose so that I could get a decent amount of water up to the horses, when they are on ad lib hay they drink a lot. I had to bring the hose connector in and run it under the hot tap, when I finally got it off the tap that was, nothing is easy when it’s freezing weather, I think the temps go down to around -5 at night if not lower. I filled up all the wild bird feeders, they are also eating a lot at the minute as there is nothing else available. Then it was on to putting fresh bedding in for the geese and ducks, I had a look at the hens, I will be so glad when they can get back outside but I’m not expecting that to happen until April really. The stables are ok but not the best environment for them and they need clean bedding every couple of days which has a knock on effect on running costs. Back indoors to top up the Rayburn although when you come in from outside it feels like a sauna 😂 Make a cup of tea and after that I will probably go back out to do the egg rounds and probably put clean bedding in for the hens too.
I had an online discussion about pressing nut oils and it would seem that I can use my Apple scratter and press to do the job so I will probably give that a go later in the year, I don’t have anything to lose by trying it out.
Thursday: I have no idea what the temperature went down to overnight but it was mightily cold this morning! John did the animals while I got dinner in the slow cooker and sorted out the washing etc then it was off to town to have my blood tests. Even though it was market day it was very quiet everywhere, we did a bit of shopping while we were there and then back home.
I wish this cold grip would move on, it’s getting tedious now, hard to get anything done outside, bloody freezing when you do go out and large parts of the day spent indoors where it’s lovely and warm but it makes you feel tired.
My new tree arrived today but I can’t plant it until the frozen weather moves on.
The news is all very depressing 😔 goodness knows when this whole situation will get any better, I think most people are really feeling quite low at the minute. I never thought I would hear the words ‘it is illegal to go on holiday’ 🙄 It is not looking like we have very much to look forward to in the first half of the year at least, fingers crossed for a few months respite in the summer.
I have 30 pallet collars arriving tomorrow 1200 x 1000 we will be using them to re organise the veg beds. Much easier to deal with smaller raised beds that great swathes of garden.
I feel quite despondent today, can you tell 😜 so I bought a gardening magazine to cheer myself up and I think tomorrow I will start writing a list of seeds to start sowing at the beginning of next month. There is plenty to organise really and I will have all these pallet collars to start putting in as well, organising what I will grow where might give me the boost I need at the minute to get me through the rest of this month.
Friday: I got over my self indulgent melancholy and had a pretty busy morning.
Last night the the wind was constant and the metal roof was banging about, for almost three hours I laid awake until I decided to sleep in the living room, that got a bit cold in the early hours so I went back to the bedroom where the wind was somewhat quieter for a while.
John got started on the morning rounds while I whizzed round and did a few things inside before joining him on the yard to get going on cleaning out the hens. We moved the light Sussex from the POL pen into the stable that flooded but is now dry, we moved the hens that were in the small dark stable out to the POL pen so they can get some natural light and air, we then cleaned out that stable. Probably around seven to eight wheelbarrows full of sawdust and chicken poo 😝 We then put in all clean sawdust and moved half of the hens from the stable at the back into the smaller stable, the rest will stay where they are, the reason being that the fewer hens in one place the less meets they get in or at least it takes longer to get in a mess. They also tend to break a lot of eggs when there is 30 of them all in together, hopefully now they all have more space there will be less breakages as well. The other lot of hens in a different stable keep relatively clean as there are only about 16 of them, while I was in there putting in fresh straw for laying in one was about to lay, I got my phone out and took a video, it’s rare you actually see an egg being laid 😮
The chap came and dropped off the pallet collars I ordered and then it was time to come in and light the Rayburn, it’s still pretty bitter and the wind has not let up at all, hopefully it will be above freezing tomorrow as we still can’t use the outside taps or hoses🙄
Afternoon rounds consisted of egg collecting, feeding and bucketing water up to the horses and geese. John thinks the geese are getting close to laying as the gander is getting more fierce by the day, geese begin to lay around Valentine’s Day so hopefully they will be right on cue this weekend 🥰
Tomorrow we will clean out the remaining stable, ran out of time today and that will be them all done for at least a week 😝 We can also look at where the pallet collars will be going as I haven’t quite decided on a design yet.
Saturday: Up and about, John went out to do the feeding and I sorted stuff out indoors before going out to help with the last stable cleaning. My god it was bloody freezing, I mean freezing 🥶 the wind chill even at 9.30 must have been around -6, it is the wind that is the problem, even barrowing back and forth I could not warm up my finger tips and hips even with good clothing on. In the end I said to John I can’t do this its too cold so I came in to light the Rayburn and get dinner sorted for this evening while he carried on. I think this problem I have been having with the ends of my fingers is the problem, they hurt like billyo even inside thick warm gloves. Hopefully this evening the temperature is going to come up to 1c and stay above freezing, our average winter temps are between 1c and 7c so you can see why a whole week of continuous below freezing is unusual and hard work. Some where in Scotland it went down to -21 I think, that’s insane for the UK 🙄 Our weather seems to become more extreme year on year, record heat, record cold and record rainfall is becoming normal and the seasons seem to be shifting slightly too, any veg grower will tell you that they need to adapt all the time for growing and harvesting.
Sunday: Be careful what you wish for! The temperature finally came up above freezing sometime during the night and as a consequence we had a burst pipe out the back on the dog shower, good job we have a live in plumber 😜 It had drained all the hot water so the shower I was going to have didn’t happen, it was still cold this morning and I was looking forward to a hot shower. I lit the Rayburn first thing, not in the best of moods when it’s cold and I can’t warm up at all. It’s Valentine’s Day, not that it makes much difference in our house, although I organised a dine in for two on Friday evening and have organised afternoon tea for today, John as usual did nothing, no flowers, no card, no nothing, thanks pal, that has not made my mood any better I can tell you 😜 It’s no surprise really, I used to have tell John to take his Mum flowers or she would never have got any then he would take all the credit when his Mum was delighted 🙄 Like many women, for the first probably 25 years after we got married I always organised the birthday presents and cards etc then one year I said to him that he needed to take over remembering his Mum and Dads birthday and getting them something, that resulted in his Mum getting a bunch of artificial flowers and he never even noticed the difference 😂
It’s definitely warmer by a few degrees and guess what, it’s raining, jeez can’t we just have a nice day, Winter seems sooo long at the best of times but this year it is just endless.
We had our afternoon tea, although there was quite a lot of it so we have saved some for another time, then it was time to do the animals again and that is another week done and dusted. Time relentlessly marches on regardless of anything in its path, that is the one consistent thing in life, time and tide waits for no man 😜 same time next week, see ya 👋
Monday 18th January 2021: I like typing 2021 it feels very futuristic 😂 Monday morning again and the weather is ok, you can tell when the weather is just ok as the English don’t mention it, we tend to talk about extremes, isn’t it hot or it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, we mostly always mention the rain though, we state the obvious, wet today isn’t it 😝 We are definitely weather obsessed as a nation and that’s because it is usually all over the place, you can’t guarantee that Spring will be spring like or that summer will be warm and dry you have to wait and see what comes our way and we can change it but what we can do is use it as a conversation starter 😀
John has had to go and change a set of taps for an elderly disabled lady this morning but first we did the morning feeding and watering. Once he had left I did some household bits plus get some bread on the go, since the beginning of this lockdown we have not bought bread at all I have made every loaf.
I did contemplate going out to the front and cutting back dead foliage on the flower bed by the front gate but I think I will wait, there will be plenty of insects hibernating still and although I am keen to get tided up I don’t want to disturb them just yet.
We need to decide what job we are going to get sorted next, the side driveway is on our radar but that will be weather dependant, when it’s dry we can get on, if it’s pouring down (and there is rain on the radar) then there won’t be any point as it will just make more of a mess than necessary plus who wants to get a soaking when you don’t need to.
I am on a roll this morning, whilst having bread on the go I have also got some bits of paperwork done, Bill paying, filing, sending out invoices etc and lit the Rayburn and got soup on for lunch. One of the things I did last year for the first time was the bags of frozen mixed veg for soup and I am so pleased I did they have been great and will definitely be doing them again for next Winter. This mix has courgettes, celery, turnip, onion, carrot and runner beans in it, mostly they were odd veg that I couldn’t do much else with and so I chopped them and open froze then put them all in one bag to use as a soup mix. If you have the odd carrot or stick of celery in the fridge do the same, you will soon have a soup bag ready for when you need it, anything can go in even the odd potato. I tend to cook mine down until the veg collapse then whizz with a hand blender, add stock of your choice and voila lunch is ready in no time, we have ours with freshly baked bread today which is a bonus 😀
We got lots of little bits done in the afternoon, the door stop and door handle, I have a fold up table that we have hung neatly on the back of the door, that’s for when I need extra room for crafting or sewing etc. The next radiator got delivered and that was put up in the spare room. I know it is a little thing but I am loving the heat from these radiators, it’s hard to explain but the room feels all over gently heated rather than what we have now from the wet system 🤷♀️
Dinner tonight consists of left over roast lamb so John has a throw it in the pot dinner with lamb, potatoes, carrots and mixed veg plus stock and cornflour, throw it all in and put it in the Rayburn until cooked. Not sure why so many recipes faff about with preparation when these dinners always come out smelling delicious 😋 I on the other hand am having a healthy version of lamb korma made by marinating the lamb in yoghurt and a korma spice, I will add ground almond to it when I cook it, having that with whole grain rice, a cucumber and grape salad and a wholemeal pitta bread, together with a diet Cherry coke I can almost kid myself I have had a lovely takeaway 🤣
John did the afternoon rounds while I got the dinner ready and that is Monday almost done and dusted, just the evening to relax and enjoy, this lockdown lark is quite enjoyable really 😜
The vaccine rollout is well under way and over 4million people have already been vaccinated, they are vaccinating a higher number than those that are testing positive so that’s a great thing. They have started to call in the over 70s as well now, hopefully it won’t be long until we get ours. As I said before Shelley has been a volunteer at the local vaccination centre and she said people are very emotional about receiving their jabs, for some of them it has been their first trip out since last March 😔
Tuesday: Busy again today, it’s much easier to keep busy while the days pass than sit doing nothing though I appreciate some don’t have the choice. First up John did the morning rounds, I had a shower and then did some hoovering, fed the cats and dogs, put out the rubbish those kind of jobs. Then onto the main events of the day and we had two, John was on concrete duties, we have an areas just outside the double doors in the back bit, for some reason the paths ends before it reaches the doors and so I wanted to get it extended to keep the mud down when we come in from the yard. Meanwhile I spent an hour in the greenhouse sowing broad bean seeds and some peas, the peas will be for harvesting the shoots as I am rather partial to pea shoots in my salad. After that I decided the big poly tunnel could be done, the garden itself is too wet but the tunnel is perfect for working in at this time of year. I spent a good couple of hours, weeding, pulling up anything that was still growing, salad mostly, and then putting barrowfulls of mushroom compost on the beds. Last year I left things to grow on but I feel that was a bit of mistake as I never really had a starting point, I was always trying to work round everything, the salad leaves went to the chickens in the stable, judging by the scuffles they were very happy to have something to peck over. I have beds in there because after we sited it I discovered it was on a clear seam and a big one at that, year after year I tried growing straight into it but it was hard work with little return. We cobbled together beds out of what we had lying around and the difference was amazing, I get good crops now, the left hand corner near the doorway is fine, that has lovely soil and so does not need any type of bed, funny how the soil type can change within centimetres 😜
It’s mid afternoon and I haven’t lit the Rayburn yet, it’s positively balmy at around 11 degrees today 😜
I discovered that the kittens or at least one of them is as much use as a chocolate teapot 😝 I was digging mushroom compost from the big tonne bag when a couple of mice suddenly appeared. No sign of the cats outside so I went into the boot room and picked one up and took it back with me (Jack) I put him in the bag and he jumped straight out without even looking. I the tried to catch him again but he wasn’t having any of it so I caught the mouse, I put it down on the floor, the cat was looking, the mouse ran, the cat looked and only once the mouse had disappeared under the fence did the cat venture forward and sniff where the mouse had been 🤣 I said to John I am going to have to train them I think!
John had covered up his concrete as it’s right outside the door but as I am always telling him your defences are only as good as your weakest point, the dog went out and stood on the tiny bit that was not covered 🤣🤣 which caused some swearing 😜 To be fair he has been lucky with the weather today as storm Christoph is battering the UK and until about 4pm we hadn’t really seen any sign of it at all. As it is at the minute we have a bit of rain but nothing much, it may progress through the night mind you 🙄
I realised after looking through my seeds that I didn’t have any peas, I had a few, those I sowed this morning but nowhere near enough to grow a decent amount of peas for the year. I ordered, mangetout, snap peas and a dwarf early variety which I will probably sow in pots and then transfer to the tunnel. The carrots I was hoping to have in the small tunnel never got very far, they sprouted but something and I suspect that is a mouse, keeps eating the greenery so not much chance of anything developing underneath. I also ordered some lemon grass seeds, I really loved growing it though I didn’t use much of it and need to rectify that. I love the smell of anything lemony, the lemon verbena has survived the winter so far and it smells amazing even in the depths of the dormant season.
The onions, garlic and shallots are doing well as I said last week, I got a photo so you can see how they are coming along.
Onions, garlic and shallots, I thought it was a lot when I planted them but will probably find it’s not enough 😂 Broad beans sown, the others are plants I have had on the heat mat through the winter which seems to have worked well 😀
The weather took a turn for the worst during the evening, heavy rain and high winds, hopefully it will have blown over by the morning 😀
Wednesday: Ewww storm Christoph got going overnight, I think I was woken three or four times with the wind or the rain making a racket and all today has been nothing less than a washout with constant rain. John attempted to dig a hole for the first post of the fence that will run down the side of the new driveway but he gave up, too wet, who wants to work in the rain. Apart from the necessary we didn’t do much else.
We did spend a fair bit of the day watching CNN, the outgoing President and the incoming President, how different the two ceremonies were 🙄 I hope the USA manages to heal the differences that have set them so far apart from each other ❤️ 🇺🇸
Thursday: OMG excuse my language but that was fucking awful out there doing the animals this morning! After around 36 hours of constant rain and gusts of wind battering the place, it was wet, soggy, windy, raining, blowing a hoolie and bitterly cold to boot, one of the worst mornings so far. At one point it looked as though the sun was coming out and it was clearing up but just as I left the stable block to go and do Ted I did an about turn and ran back. The sky turned black, the wind whipped up from nowhere and the rain lashed down for all of around one to two minutes then it was gone again but I still got wet and windswept. I am so over winter already lol, we have the usual lake and river in the side paddocks, that is becoming a much more frequent feature as the years go by. Early on it was an occasional thing, eleven years later and we get it about four to five times a year, every year 🙄
We had decided to go into town this morning, the local market is on a Thursday and I wanted to get some fresh fruit and a few bits of veg. I got leeks, mine are still in the ground and still rather small, potatoes as I didn’t grow enough to last us and then fresh fruit for snacking on. We saw Shelley, Josh and Flo down there so we bought some cakes and went and got a takeaway coffee to stand and drink. I haven’t seen Josh and Flo except when they are in the car or on messenger so it was lovely to interact with them 😀 We went to the butchers where I got some chicken breast and then to the supermarket where we bought more than we thought we originally needed 🙄 I dropped off some leeks to Mum on the way back and a bunch of flowers , great news she had her jab yesterday and Ken had his today. Then it was back home to a warm house as we lit the Rayburn before leaving, I didn’t want to come home to a cold house on a day like today. It had stopped raining by the time we went out mind you but it was still a cold day. By the time we got back it was early afternoon and so not much point starting anything, I have chopped up some potatoes, leeks and celeriac and put that in the slow cooker for tomorrow’s lunch, it will cook the rest of the afternoon and all evening then I will turn it off overnight and turn it back on in the morning ready for lunchtime.
That will probably be it for today except for the afternoon rounds which John is doing as I type, an evening snuggled up in the warm either reading or watching a film maybe. Tomorrow is supposed to be dry and Sunny although still quite cold, I will spend some time thinking about what job I can be doing in the garden or polytunnels.
Friday: A sharp frost this morning. We went out to do the rounds and discovered that Jack had bust out of the field, the electric still had not been turned back on, big mistake 😜, and he had worked it out. He has had a good wander round the place and broken into the hay barn 🙄 We got him back in the paddock, sorted the fencing, turned it on and hopefully he will stay there for a while. They have finished their big roll of hay so I will have to get some more delivered, I doubt very much the grass will start growing anytime soon. In the meantime I will have to fill up sacks and drag them out to the field. John did most of the birds and I went over to do Ted and the Guineas, in with Ted are the two light Sussex that hatched first last year, the female has laid her first egg today 😀 it’s always lovely to get the first egg from a pullet (young female) no matter how many times you have seen it. I went into the small poly tunnel where I set the mousetrap yesterday and result, two in the trap 😀 I will have to reset it, and I tried but it kept going off, there are bound to be more around eating all my veg, these two are the ones that have been nibbling the carrot tops all winter long.
I came indoors to do the washing up, hoovering and get the Rayburn ready for lighting later, meanwhile John carried on with digging the holes for the side fence and he has now gone off to get cement to have a rest from the digging lol. I have a bit of a headache this morning, hopefully nothing but I can’t seem to shake it off, normally I guess, nobody would worry but at the minute you never know what you have picked up even being very careful on the limited times you go out 🙄
The pea seeds I ordered have arrived and so have the seed potatoes, I will get the earlies ready to chit and they will go in the big tunnel, also I will start of early peas and grow them on in the big tunnel as well I think. I have some garlic chive seeds that can be sown anytime so I will go and get them done later. The sun is shining beautifully now and the greenhouse will be a lovely place to be working in about another hours time I reckon 😀 It might even be warm enough in the to pretend it’s spring 😜
We have the leek and potato soup for lunch today so I do t have to stop and think about what I need to be doing for that.
I did go out into the greenhouse and sowed a few peas, I also tided up the small tunnel though it didn’t need much doing but it was still very cold on my feet and my toes began to hurt so I gave that up. Instead I set about fixing the egg board which usually sits out on the front of the driveway. It got blown over during one windy night a few weeks ago and the leg came apart so I fixed it back together re wrote it and put it back out.
Saturday: I have been feeling a bit urgh the last couple of days, can’t put my finger on it but I think it’s to do with the Lupus, I have tiny red hives on my fingers and toes and they hurt if I knock them against anything. I feel tired and lethargic and have a borderline headache, I actually didn’t realise that there is such as thing as a ‘Lupus headache’ and what I need to watch for is vasculitis, oh joy another thing to keep an eye on and not so easy at the minute when the doctors are really busy with a pandemic. It all seems a bit trivial to bother the doc with but if it gets worse I will have to get it looked at, of course with Lupus it can sometimes just clear up and go away of its own accord which is what I am hoping it will do.
It’s cold and frosty this morning, because I have been feeling sluggish John left me to sleep in and did the animals this morning 🥰 I am grateful that I have someone to pick up the reins if needs be. He then went out and started on the fence again while I did the usual household tidying bits, rubbish, recycling, milk bottles all those little jobs. I had just made coffee when he came back in, his feet were too cold working out there so he drank his coffee and went off to the merchants and the bank, hopefully the sun will have warmed the ground by the time he returns.
According to some news reports a hospital in Kent is trialling elderberry as a treatment for covid, I imagine it runs alongside other more conventional treatments but finally the medical world wakes up to alternative treatments. I make plenty with elderberries, pies, syrups and Pontack sauce, I will definitely be picking them and putting them out for sale this year lol.
I have had a lovely day, I have been in my little room designing cards for Valentine’s Day, I can’t make them yet as I am waiting for the recycled card to come but they are along the same lines as the button Christmas cards I made. It’s very therapeutic and just what I needed today when I don’t have the energy for much else.
I did go outside mid afternoon and attempt to fill the water buckets up at the back the the hosepipe was still frozen so I took buckets of water up. I also put down some clean bedding for the geese and the ducks. I am hoping the geese will begin to lay very soon, it’s a short season for goose eggs and like duck eggs you either love em or hate em and luckily we do have customers that love em 🥰 I also lit the Rayburn quote early and have been keeping that going all day as well as getting in a couple of loads of wood from the store, we are due snow tomorrow so best to keep it all topped up.
It’s a fish and chip supper tonight from the chip shop, I am really looking forward to it, one day when I don’t have to think about what to get for dinner 😜
Sunday: got up and had a look out of the window around 6.30am, nothing to report, went back to bed, got up at 8am and we had a good layer of snow and it was still snowing 🌨 The forecast says we will get around 5 to 8cm 🙄 and it will snow most of the day. So we donned our snow gear and went out to do the animals, I love pristine snow but the dogs always get there first at least it will clean their coats nicely. Then I made John go for a walk in the side paddock, a couple of snowballs thrown and we went back in. Snow days mean no days for us, we can’t do a lot outside and I am wondering what on Earth people do all day long 🤷♀️ it will a marathon tv watch or reading which I will be so bored of by the end of the day 🙄 I lit the Rayburn, John got some bacon sizzling on the hot plate and that will probably be it for us until the animals need doing later. In normal years the kids might have come over but this year the at is not an option sadly, we did get the sledge out but I couldn’t pull John on it 🤣 Years ago when we lived at a different house the kids had plastic ones and when they came in to warm up, someone nicked them so my dad made them a wooden one but we never really had any decent snowfall for years after so it never got used, we got it out today but it has woodworm 😝 it is still sound enough but too small for either of us to use, maybe one year it will get used by children again.
Afternoon rounds done and dusted, the snow is still on the ground only slightly melted and the forecast is for a very cold night possibly -5 so we made sure we filled up water buckets ready for the morning, we will have to break ice but at least there will be water. Dinner is in the Rayburn, the curtains are now shut and the house is nice and warm. Have a great week, stay safe and stay warm x x
Monday 21st Sept 2020: You may remember, but probably not lol, that I bought a tea bush (sapling actually) Camellia Sinensis, well it’s been steadily growing and although it’s still not very big it does have quite a few leaves on it. Hopefully it will get big enough to make both green tea and black tea, wouldn’t that be an achievement ‘grow your own tea’ I can’t wait to try, maybe next year 😀
Another sunny day ahead and I had been doing a bit of cleaning on Mondays but the weather is set to break quite hard around midweek and so I wanted to get some outside housekeeping done. Firstly though start the bread making process, while the first prove was happening I watered everything out the front and everything in pots in the main garden. Then during the second prove I cleaned out the guineas and quail. While the bread was baking I put together a new feeder we have bought, I did get it for the chickens but am trying it out in the duck pen. After the bread came out of the oven I put clean bedding in the goose hut and cleaned the water bucket refilling it with fresh water, I cleaned out the duck hut and put in new bedding and I cleaned the floor in the chicken hut out the front.
I came in and tried to catch up with the briefing on the virus, it’s not good news as we kind of knew it wouldn’t be 😏 Cases are rising and the government is keen to get control of it, it’s not looking good. But what is annoying me is that we have been really good, doing all the right things during lockdown and the easing measures. We have only socialised with family, we haven’t been out and about at all really except food shopping and the garden centre 🙄 and yet it is going to be the likes of us that are penalised I think and by that I mean families. You can go to work, school, pub, restaurant, swimming, sport activities, even get on a bloody plane and go abroad but you probably won’t be able to have family over for dinner, I am guessing here but if that ends up being the case it’s really going to piss me off 😏 We wait with baited breath for the next update!
It’s quite a depressing outlook what with Winter literally on the doorstep and the possibility of further measures. I am usually the one that says ‘it could be worse’ and of course there are much, much worse situations to be in but still the thought is a gloomy one. I see a few pod cast and box set catch ups coming 😜
Early evening Charlie came round to help paint the cladding, we are getting nearer to the rain coming and it would be good to get it all done before then. I did some bits of clearing up and making the cups of tea, one of my jobs is to tun the magnet over the ground and pick up and old nails or new screws and nails that have been dropped (plenty of those as John is not the tidiest of workers 😜) I ordered some sparrow flats which have arrived, I could have used the bird boxes I made but some nice new ones will look better. Sparrows like to nest and roost in colonies and these are three boxes all in one unit, I bought two of them and am just hoping they are delighted with them. The old boxes will still be used somewhere else, they did use them and so hopefully they will again 😀
Tuesday: Autumn equinox, equal amount of day and night, a time for celebrating the harvests 🌾 and the turning of the wheel, The feast of Avalon, Mabon, blessed be 🥰 It is a lovely sunny morning and so first thing I picked raspberries and then went up the back to pick blackberries. I love the fact that I can pick blackberries from our own hedges, I know they have not had anything sprayed on or near them and they are as good as you can get, full of vitamins and minerals, potassium, magnesium and calcium as well as vit A, C, E & B vitamins and of course they are great antioxidants 😀
I spent a good couple of hours in the garden. Firstly in the big poly tunnel, the tomatoes in there have succumbed to blight so it’s a case of save what I can and pull up the rest. They are now ripening (hopefully) in the greenhouse, any green ones I will probably make chutney from. Then it was onto picking anything that will get hit by frost, we have had some fabulous weather but any day now it will turn. The first frosts will affect anything that has a high water content such as courgettes so I might as well pick them now. I also harvested the pumpkins, again I don’t want the rain to affect them and I don’t want the birds to start eating them once they get ripe enough, they are now stored in the small tunnel. I only got four butternut squash and they were tiny 😜 bit of a disaster as far as they go but hey ho there is always next year 🙄 There were a few cucumbers to pick, they are much smaller now and the skins get tougher but they will still taste good. I picked runner beans and pulled some beetroot and the last of the corn cobs. I then came in and got straight onto sorting it all for the freezer, mostly soup mixes today, I’ll look forward to cooking and eating those in the colder months.
There are a couple of other things to harvest but not until the frosts come, they are Oca and Yacon. I had a little look at the yacon, I found one tiny tuber under one plant 😏 however, I did taste it and it’s lovely, sweeter than I thought it would be so definitely something to try and bring on again next year I think. The Oca get left until after the frost kills off the top growth, I am not expecting great harvests from them though as it has been so dry. I could leave them in the ground and they will be fine and grow again next year with maybe a better harvest.
I need to tidy up the poly tunnel now that I have cleared the tomatoes but I thought it would be better left as a rainy day job. I have basil that needs cutting and drying, some of it I am going to leave to go to seed and hopefully collect that, the more seed you can collect from things the cheaper and more sustainable growing your own becomes 😀 I will give it a good tidy and take out things I don’t want in there, like the cape gooseberry, and then see what I could sow for winter use.
Wednesday: It rained overnight, not much but the weather has definitely broken this morning. Last night we went out (out, out lol) that is the first time since the beginning of lockdown way back in March. We went with Charlie and Macca, Maccas Mum nad her friend Jackie, it was a tasting evening at the venue Charlie and Macca have booked for their wedding next year. The healthy eating went out the window 😜 as canapés were followed by starters, main course and pudding, all the choices on the menu and a taste of all the wines to go with them. The food was amazing, the wine was a treat to try, so many including Prosecco and champagne, the venue is delightful and we had a great time. I only hope that all those that have booked weddings next year will get to have their day 🙄 That will probably be the end of our nights out until next year 😂 The world felt normal (well apart from the one way system) for a few hours 😀
This morning even though it was very fine drizzle, I decided to get a bit of clearing done on the veg garden. First I tided up the compost area so that I could get in there to put more stuff in and then I set about the area with the sweetcorn. Although I had a few cobs, I didn’t have as many as I usually get and I also think that the baby corn would be a more versatile option next year. I found another butternut squash which takes the total to five 🙄 I pulled up plenty of weeds and got stung by stinging nettles and dug up some self set potatoes. We planted some red (Duke of York I think) about four years ago and every year any small tuber left in the ground produces about half a large bucket of spuds, no work needed, brilliant 😀 I have cleared it and piled the compost heap high, I just need to go back and pull any weeds that are left but it started raining a bit more heavily so I decided that was enough.
On the sunny days when there is no cloud cover at all, John has been coming home early to feed the hens and collect the eggs but yesterday and today I have done it as it’s overcast and I can easily move around outside. Yesterday I found a hen with her legs chewed off from underneath the hut which must have happened overnight. Today I suspect we have lost some more, we had four broody hens that get turfed off the eggs each day as they are not viable eggs, today there is no sign of them and the eggs were a mess. It takes ages to break brooding and so I can’t imagine that all four have suddenly decided to stop 🙄 That means a daytime fox which is always bad news.
Thursday: It rained heavily last night for a short while and then again this morning but the sun is out, it’s a cold breeze though. John did the morning rounds and I have spent the early part of the morning prepping lunch and dinner. Tomato soup for lunch, tastes amazing and shepherds pie for dinner this evening.
Fresh tomato soup: 1 onion chopped, 3 carrots chopped, 1stick of celery chopped, 5 good sized tomatoes chopped, I tsp olive oil, black pepper to taste, 1/3 of a chicken stock cube. Sweat down the onions in the olive oil, add the other ingredients and cook on low until soft, then blend. At this point you can sieve out the seeds and any bits of tomato skin if you want but I leave them in. I have been precise with the measurements because if you are calorie counting this is for two people and 1 portion is 111 calories 😀
Fresh tomato soup, easy, nutritious, low in calories 😀 I added a teaspoon of low fat black pepper cream cheese 😀
Home made soups are the easiest thing in the world, they taste much better than tinned soups, you can put almost anything in them but the best three ingredients to start of any soup are, onion, carrot and celery call them your base ingredients, if you can’t have onion (I know peeps with IBS struggle) use leek or spring onions instead, then add whatever you have, a great way to use up stuff in the fridge even half tins of beans/hummus etc. Normally it will be veg I use but bacon is a lovely addition, cook it crispy and sprinkle on and of course chicken bones often have very tasty bits of meant firmly stuck to them, just simmer the bones to release the meat. The soup season is nearly here so get experimenting, it’s a great way to get some or all of your five a day 😀
We have new measures in place to limit the spread of the virus, the rule of six indoors and outside also extends to restaurants and bars with table service only and they have to close by 10pm. Apart from that I think it’s much the same, again people have been asked to work from home if they can and hand washing, the social distancing and face masks are all still being encouraged. A new app was launched today for track and trace, how many people will download it is yet to be seen, there are plenty of conspiracy theorists about warning people not to do it 🙄 I wonder about their theories especially the whole ‘the virus isn’t real’ one, I mean what government in their right mind would pay everyone to stay at home and governments all over the world are doing the same, doesn’t really sound like something they would do unless they had to does it? I would also ask any of them ‘what is the ultimate aim if what you say is true’ because I can’t see what they would gain from it personally.
Urgh it’s that time of year where you put the washing out and suddenly a downpour arrives, which is exactly what happened today 😏 I toyed with the idea of putting it in the tumble dryer but decided on the line would be better, wrong 😝
This years failures are next years compost, I was listening to a pod cast when I heard this, it’s fabulous and I love it, so true and a reminder that nothing is wasted except maybe some of your time 🥰
Friday: You can feel the temperature drop even though the sun is out, it’s a cold wind today. Some days I know what I am going to be doing and some days I have to think about what to do, today was a ‘What shall I do day’. I don’t want to waste the day but I don’t feel like getting outside to do any gardening (even though I really should 😜) I went for a walk, good for the mind, good for my health especially as we live at the top of a pretty steep hill 😂 I took a few photos on the way round, it’s a typical Cotswold village full of creamy stone cottages, very pretty even on a day like today, very quiet though I didn’t see a single soul in the thirty five minutes it took me 🙄
When I got back I set about making some bread and cake, two loaves of whole meal bread, one for now and one for the freezer and two wholemeal flour sultana cakes again for for eating this weekend and one for the freezer. I have switched to using wholemeal as it’s better for you, organic, even better and if you can find organic stoneground flour that’s the cherry on the cake so to speak 😀 luckily for us we have a local mill that does.
Saturday: We went out, not just out but out of the shire out 😮 We were supposed to go to Wales for the weekend but that had to be cancelled so we decided to go on a road trip. We went to Stonehenge, haven’t been there for well over twenty odd years and it’s all different now, not the stones obviously they are still the same but the visitor centre has moved. When we last went you could park right next to them now you have to walk a mile to see them, you can get a shuttle bus but it was a dry day so I made John walk 😂 We did get the bus back though as it was incredibly windy and although the sun was out it was cold. Then we were going to go to the coast but we went to Marlborough for lunch instead and had a walk round, after that it was time to go to Goring on Thames where we had a couple of animals to pick up, more about that in a couple of weeks time 😀 Not quite the weekend we had planned but it was nice to get out and about and see some different countryside. We see a lot of country side because if I am navigating I avoid the bigger roads, John likes to go from A to B in as little time as possible, me I like the scenic route 😜
The iconic Stonehenge 🥰
It’s getting much colder now, almost October so we will have to think about lighting the Rayburn soon, it’s tricky to get it right, we don’t run it all year like some people do as it would be way too hot in here so it will be a case of lighting it mid afternoon for a few hours to build heat then let it out. This is not ideal for this kind of boiler but needs must, eventually it will be on all the time.
Sunday: We went out for breakfast, I know, we only went out yesterday you are thinking lol, but we were supposed to be away for the weekend so I thought a good cooked breakfast this morning would keep John going as we have plenty to do today. When we got back John started on the last leg of the cladding and I got on with cleaning Rosie the Rayburn. She has sat patiently all spring and summer getting covered in dust, had baskets of veg and fruit dumped on her and now it was her turn to shine. Shine she does, she looks as good now as when she was installed all those years ago, mind you it has taken me a good few hours, the flue had to be swept, all the grate taken out and cleaned a general hoover out, check all the fire ropes, replace the ones that were no good, replace the rock wall where it’s needed and finally give the outside a good clean.
Looking good Rosie 😀
I took some photos of the road we go along to get to breakfast this morning, how amazingly lucky are we to live somewhere so beautiful 😍
This green and pleasant land 🥰
In the afternoon we were busy tidying up the front area now John has finished the cladding although we have more to do, we need to find some metal flashing for the top and then put in a row of slabs along the front of the building to make it easier to clean the windows etc. After that another flower bed has to be built and planted up, I bought some new sparrow flats as they like to live in colonies hopefully they will begin to investigate them soon, the satellite dish had to go back up and the security light as well. We have a mountain of wood to move which we will hopefully get done tonight and then on Wednesday we have someone coming to take down the rest of the big conifer trees. We can then start on the side of the building and the new driveway that will go along the side, as well as a new fence and gate, so much to do 😜
Monday 17th August 2020: Up and about this morning get some veg picked, I think I need a bigger basket 😂 loads of tomatoes this morning and the conference pears were ready to pick. After sorting it all out, putting some out for sale, finding homes for the rest of it, I got started on the front area we are creating the border in. There were bramble bushes growing which needed digging out and then shredding any material from the existing bush that I cut back yesterday. I had a go at a few of the perennial weeds as well but there is still plenty more to do. That took me up to about 11.30, that’s when I heard the first crack of thunder and felt the first spots of rain. Honestly we seem to dive from one extreme to another as far as the weather is concerned, I’m pretty sure it ought to be a little more constant than this 😏 A customer arrived to collect the last of this batch of hens, the next batch is nearly all sold already and they are not due in until October 🙄 The rain got heavier but that’s fine as I have a bit of tidying to do indoors, I haven’t done any all weekend and things get plonked down all over the place, I have looked at the forecast for the rest of the day and it’s a washout so might as well stay in.
Although staying in was my plan it didn’t actually carrying on raining and so all I did indoors was the washing up, a quick phone call to Sue and then outside again. I wanted to dig up the rest of the carrots because the rain we are forecast all week will not do them any favours so might as well get them up and into the freezer. I found a marrow that had escaped my eye as they often do, it’s not too big but big enough, some of the smaller courgettes had rotted at the ends so I cut those off and threw them to the chickens and I picked a few berries from the fruit cage and some cape gooseberries from the tunnels. The clouds were intermittent and you know what that means for me, diving in an out of shade areas lol, it’s pretty strong when it makes an appearance 🙄
This mornings haul, under the tomatoes and pears there is a good layer of beans as well 😀
Someone gave me some packets of chilli seeds back in spring, I am not a fan of spicy food as it causes my acid reflux to play up but I grew them anyway and now I have loads of little Thai chillies lol. Not sure what I am going to do with them apart from put them out for sale. It’s the first time I have successfully grown chillies though, must have been the high temps we had back in spring and a decent greenhouse, I might try growing some with less heat next year.
I am running out of available space in the kitchen, there are tomatoes and plums everywhere 😂 I think a good amount of tomatoes will be ripe enough to pick again tomorrow as well, I really need to do something with them.
Tuesday: I decided to make today an ordinary day, that is nothing out on the farm or in the garden except the essentials, a day pottering around indoors, a bit of cleaning, washing, tidying away and anything else I fancy doing. I started off with good intentions and got the boot room hoovered and tided and a few bits in the kitchen, then got side tracked by chatting with customers. One couple I was chatting to come once a year when they are down in their caravan on holiday, they always come and get their breakfast eggs here which is lovely 😀 A bit more hoovering and put the washing on the line though I’m not sure how long it will be out there before it rains 🙄 I am not picking anything today as I have plenty still to sort out before I get more in, I have ordered a food mill/purée maker so that I can purée the tomatoes etc for passata. I made some last year if you remember and I experimented with one jar in the fridge and one in the cupboard to see how they did, well they are still both fine so that’s a year they have kept easily, really ought to use them up lol.
Wednesday: On reflection I should have done some outside things yesterday! It’s 7.30am it’s already raining and it’s set in for the day according to the forecasters 🙄 There are plums on the trees still to pick and there are seeds to collect, none of this couldn’t wait until the next dry day except that there are strong winds forecast after that, the plums will all be on the floor 😦 Hopefully somewhere in between our demented weather I will get an hour or two to do these jobs. They say make hay while the sun shines and I should have heeded the old proverb 😏 Having said that there is only so much you want to be doing or you would be totally submerged in the processes of self sufficiency, maybe you should be, I don’t know. What I do know is that to be totally self sufficient in food you would have to work from dawn to dusk at this time of year. We are ss in fruit/veg/nuts/eggs and that keeps me busy enough imagine if we had a house cow as well, I’m not sure there are enough hours in the day even if I really would love one. Imagine on top of those two you grew your own grain as well and reared meat in what ever form you decided, that’s a very busy, full on life, I salute anyone that manages all of those!
I could bake today, I always used to say, rainy days are baking days but to be honest we are trying to eat healthier and cakes and pies don’t fall into the healthy category 😂
I was delighted to see The Guardian report that the interest in allotments soared during the pandemic, our fragile food security was exposed during those early days and people recognised the need to have home grown food (and by that I also mean UK grown) instead of relying on imports. My aim is always to encourage people to have a go at growing your own even if you just start with a tomato bush and some herbs, it’s something and you never know, you might get hooked 😀 There are so many gardens in our wonderful country, town gardens, country gardens even some city gardens and the potential to grow food is massively overlooked. Even small spaces have potential with the idea of vertical gardening, get creative, you don’t need masses of ground area and the taste is amazing.
In my blog I try to keep it simple and non reactive (on the whole anyway) because it’s a diary blog after all but there are a lot of topics that I research or follow in much more depth than I write about. One of those is the fragility of how we live, not just the climate but our fundamental way of life, which is pretty fragile as shown by the pandemic. That was a disease and on the scale it’s not a bad one either, of course to those affected it is catastrophic but at least it wasn’t airbourne, can you imagine how cataclysmic that would have been and who’s to say that won’t happen sometime in the future with a different disease. Now you are beginning to see why I keep it quite neutral aren’t you 😂 The government stepped in and kept the country ticking over by ploughing money into the system because to them that’s the most important thing and even I was grateful for that. Now imagine that airbourne disease and how it is affecting everyone, people are dying by the tens of thousands and the systems that we rely on can no longer function, what are we going to do? Anything is possible as we have just witnessed, how well are we equipped to manage?, on the whole, we are not and that is the scary part. Electricity & Water, outside of the basic food system, are the two biggies to focus on, at the moment they are pumped to our properties with uninterrupted supply, on the whole. We don’t think about it until the supply stops for whatever reason, but if you really think about it you will begin to realise just how much we rely on it, electric especially. If the power plants closed, because there was no one to run them, EVERYTHING shuts down even your water supply 🙄 If you want to learn more then there are plenty of pod casts out there, Permaculture for the future is a good one to listen too, and far from giving you nightmares I think the knowledge builds strength within you to cope with whatever life throws at you, I hope so anyway.
Does anyone have the address for ‘offmet ‘ I want to write a complaint about the weather 😜 Seriously, this time last week we were sweating our nuts off, today it’s umbrellas and rain coats all day and then we have high winds coming, nothing resembling a ‘normal’ late summers day in sight 😒 I think I need to stop watching the forecast and just be surprised by whatever it is wet get thrown as us, it’s just depressing otherwise.
Thursday: A nice morning so far, not raining and not too hot. The first job on my list was to pick plums, with the high winds forecast later today and tomorrow, most of the weekend in fact, the plums would be all on the floor pretty quickly so needed picking pdq. I now have many kgs of plums to sort and process 😂 I also picked a few other bits, the tomatoes are coming in thick and fast, I picked beans of various variety’s and of course courgettes, marrows and cucumbers. This is where we move from the ‘grow your own’ into the self sufficient realm, definitely self sufficient in fruit and veg that’s for sure and so many things can be made from the basics that we won’t go short for the next few seasons 😀
A snapshot of some of the produce this year 😀
There is still plenty to harvest, the sweet corn I checked today but that’s not ready just yet, butternut squash still growing nicely, plenty of turnips, beetroot, swede and leeks still in the ground, cauliflowers coming on, there are also Oca in the ground that won’t be harvested until after the from and the yacon, I have no idea when to harvest that but I’m sure it will become evident. There are chillies continuing to grow and ripen along with the cues and toms, next will be nuts and blackberries 😀 busy times ahead!
It’s 1.30pm and I am having a sit down, mainly to stretch my back out lol, I have spent the whole morning processing. It’s surprising how much time it all takes but I now have 8 jars of plum jam, and for the freezer two containers of tomato purée, two bags of plums and a tray of French beans, plus two plum breads in the oven. Seriously, that has taken me about 3 hours and there are still loads of plums left to do something with 🙄 Hopefully the plum bread will turn out ok, the recipe was a bit finicky but I just threw it all in a gave it a stir so we will see 😜
Plum bread was delish 😋 After a rest I did more plums then all the washing up, got some bread on the go, sorted the eggs, got the dinner, knackered now, over and out for today, writing anyway, still got to water the tunnels later!
I did spend a pleasant half an hour gathering some seeds from marigolds, cornflowers, love in a mist, poppies and morning glory. I intend to cast theses next spring, along with a few others that have not set seed yet, in a part of the veg garden that I struggle to get round to. Hopefully they will cover it and provide some lovely colour and nectar and save me weeding 😀
Friday: Oh my word they were not wrong about the wind, some of the gusts are savage 🙄 First job was to get the egg shed sorted with stuff for sale as Fridays are proving to be pretty busy at the minute. There was a lady at the gate who’s words were ‘I have a strange request’ that’s fine I said, you wouldn’t believe some of the requests I get 🤣 Turned out not to be that strange, not in my experience anyhow, she was after fertile eggs to incubate, all pretty normal so far 🙄 The embryo would not reach full gestation though as they would be frozen and used to help develop a new scanning system for animals, a cross between an x-ray and a scan, still in 2D but more detailed, I think I got the gist of it. We have fertile quail eggs and duck eggs but not many chicken eggs as our layer flock don’t run with a cockerel I explained. I also explained that what fertile eggs we do have are currently being sat on by broody hens, we went to have a look to see how many they were sat on and guess what, chicks 🐣 they had hatched! She went away with quail and duck eggs and my e-mail and she is going to send me the results of any scans that they get, exciting stuff, she asked how much she owed and I replied, it’s for science, they are free 😀 got to help science along as you never know when you are going to need it yourself.
I had Florence and Josh for a couple of hours this morning while Shelley was busy. She runs an eyebrow/eyelash business from home and has only just been able to start up again after the lockdown and so customers are queuing up. It’s funny really as when she left school she qualified as a beauty therapist but ended up in hotel management for years. It would always be something she could fall back on when she needed to and so once she had Josh and Flo she started up again so that she could work from home, it proved to be a great back up plan 😀
I asked Shelley to pick me up some brandy as she was popping to the shops before coming back here, I think I am going to make some plum brandy, might as well make good use of these plums. It might be a very nice warming, winter tipple if I add some cinnamon as well 🥃 I used the Rumtopf vessel I have as that’s as good as anything, gradually getting through the plums 😋
Plums, Brandy, Sugar, Cinamon, Orange zest, stir and leave for a few months until ready then strain and bottle or drink up 😀
After they went home I went outside to do a bit of weeding and feed the guineas some weeds but although the weather itself is ok the buffeting from the wind is as always pretty exhausting. When Shelley came back to pick the children up she said it’s not that noticeable in town, we definitely notice the weather extremes here because it’s fairly exposed.
I called John to tell him we will need some chick crumb and now I have to work out where they will go, the last mum and babies I moved out because of the holes in the ground if you remember, I don’t want them falling down crevices, not sure where I am going to move them too, I will need to have a good think about it.
I fed the chicks and there are five little yellow fluffy bundles in there 😀
We decided to go shopping, we didn’t need much but had run out of washing up liquid and cheese so off we went. Well I wish I hadn’t bothered, it was hammering down when we left and all the way there, got a soaking getting into the shop to start off with, then of course my glasses steamed up. The whole glasses and mask thing is a pain in the arse, I can’t see the labels clearly without them, they don’t sit on my head (they slip off) and no matter how I adjust the mask they constantly steam up. We were just about done and I remembered that I had forgotten something but I couldn’t think what it was and the bloody music they pipe over the whole place wasn’t helping with my concentration levels. I ended up being so irritated I decided I’m not going again, I will send John with a list and do without whatever I forget to put on it. I know I’m a grumpy cow lol.
Saturday: The weather is a bit on and off today. After doing the animals John got the tractor out to dig a trench for the new border, this will have a low fence to hold the soil in and keep the shingle separate. It was sunny and we were out there discussing the outline when out of nowhere it starting raining, 1st soaking. He got on with that while I went and did some picking, again it was sunny when all of a sudden it started raining, I dived into the poly tunnel before I got a second soaking, by now John was on the tractor digging and he got a soaking lol. No doubt that is how the day will carry on by the looks of things.
We had a busy morning, John on the new border and me sorting out the newly hatched chicks (6) and their Mums. I have moved them into Teds pen, there is a little hut in there and the ground is not full of potential pitfalls for small chicks. Both the mummy hens and the cockerel have been moved along with the chicks. That means Ted will have a new place to sleep tonight and that might be difficult encouraging him to change. I cleaned out Teds pen, sorted out food and water then caught up one hen dusted her for mites, moved her, moved the chicks, then the other hen, dusting her as well, then finally the cockerel giving him a dusting too. Then cleaned out then pen where they had hatched and burnt the bedding, where the hens had been sitting tight and the weather has been hot there were quite a lot of red mite in there, burning gets rid of a vast majority of them. I then used the DE to dust the hatching area and I will leave it a while before cleaning it out completely and giving it a wash down with some jeyes fluid. The pen was never intended for chickens (originally it was for the rabbits) so it’s a bit awkward to clean out. We never intended to have hatchlings, typical, if you had wanted them it wouldn’t have happened and now we have eight including the two that hatched a few weeks back!
While we were both busy patch started yapping incessantly, I could hear John telling him to be quiet but I also knew that the type of yap he was doing meant he was telling us something. Not all lassie like lol, there was no one stuck down a well or anything like that and usually it’s if the horse has got out. I went to investigate and found a large hedgehog, I’m guessing the dogs had disturbed from wherever it was sleeping. I watched it and it was trying to get along the fence line of my garden so I opened the gate and in it went, I turned round to see where it was heading and it was gone, they really moved fast when they want to. I said to John we need to make little hedgehog tunnels so they can move between fenced areas more easily.
Sunday: Another busy morning, the weather has been favourable, for me at least 😜 John got on with the front bed and I did a bit of cutting back in the garden and then some potting on of a few pots of things as well as some pricking out of lupins and huechera seedlings that have grown nicely. After that I went to help John in the front, digging out weeds etc. We are hoping to do the bed without weedkiller which is a pretty big task as it’s very weedy and not just easy to pull weeds either but some real tough rooted ones. I think I have settled on putting flowering shrubs in there and intersperse with some late flowering plants, then scatter some annual seeds for a wispy look. I also have some bulbs which can go for spring interest, hopefully hat will cover all the seasons and be changing all the time. Most of the shrubs I already have growing in pots and once they are in the ground they should tare off pretty quickly provided we can get them in fairly soon.
I took some photos of the flower bed in the veg garden as a few smaller plants have got lost in with the giants, there is a lovely little salmon coloured dahlia that can hardly be seen as it’s behind a much bigger yellow one, all things to consider for rearranging in autumn. The photos are to remind me once the plants have died down, it’s all very well having an idea of what height they grow to but seeing them gives you a much better idea of where to place things.
All looks a bit of a mess as I did just shove it all in this year but come autumn I will re arrange it all a little better 😀
frieslandfarm (flowers) 