Holiday!!

My holiday home

I’m writing this on the hottest day of the year, as it is far too hot to be outside, even though it looks lovely! I put down a small bowl of water for my resident flock of sparrows yesterday and have had to top it up as it looks as if they have been bathing in it too. Perhaps I should get a proper bird bath to put somewhere in my garden. 

This month I have finally got around to doing a couple of things that have been put off for a while. The first was a long-overdue eye test, as I realised that I have never had a free eye test, which starts at age 60, and I am nearly 68! I hadn’t noticed a huge deterioration in my sight and am still able to read road signs and number plates at a legal distance, but still … 8 years? I was amazed to find that my eyesight has barely changed at all in all that time – a slight change in my right eye, but no new reading glasses required, and I only ordered new distance glasses because my last pair are broken and I also wanted an anti-glare coating for night driving. 

The second thing was to finally get my camper van back on the road, with the intention of using it a bit this summer. Unfortunately, where it had been standing under trees for a few months, the body work was green-streaked with black spots of lichen and took several attempts to clean, especially as I had to clean the roof precariously swaying at the very top of a stepladder. Once it looked a bit more presentable, I booked it in for a pre-MOT inspection and MOT and service. This was a couple of weeks ago and I still haven’t got it back, although I did tell them there was no great urgency! 

Almost on a whim I decided to book myself a holiday, as I felt I had been ‘on the go’ for a year without a proper break, which might account for my low energy levels. I contacted my old WWOOF hosts down near Launceston and booked their Shepherd’s Hut for 5 nights, which felt very self-indulgent. I was due to travel down on Monday, 4th July but before that happened, I had a cry for help from Dave.

Before

After

Kerb appeal!

To put it bluntly his landlord inspection had not gone well, and they were telling him that he needed to engage the services of a professional gardener and a professional cleaner to get things back on track – cue urgent phone call to Mum! The only time I could feasibly go and help was on Thursday, 30th June, returning home on the afternoon of 3rd July. Over the course of those few days we transformed the garden (which, incidentally, had looked pretty much the same since before he moved in) from a weed patch to a garden with defined beds, we reinstated decorative gravel areas, put down decorative bark under the front hedge and stripped ivy from the back fence. On top of that we also deep-cleaned the bathroom and en-suite shower room and, after I’d left, Dave sorted out the spare room and put loads of stuff in the loft. We had a bit of fun driving to various garden centres and nurseries to source a selection of herbaceous perennials and did a tip run with the first lot of garden waste we produced. I think I broke my boy, and any concerns I’d had about my energy levels were pretty much scuppered! 

Now you see it ...

... now you don't

Is there really gravel there?

Ah yes, that looks better!

Another 'before' ...

... and 'after'

Dave putting down the decorative bark

However, I was really ready for my holiday after that and was determined not to do much at all, so I packed a selection of books, a couple of quiz books and my travelling spinning wheel and prepared fleece and headed off down the A30 to Launceston. It’s been two years since I was last there as Jeni and I had taken the camper van on its inaugural run down to Devon and Cornwall between the first and second lockdowns (see a previous blog). Jo and James made me very welcome and transported all my bags down the track to the Shepherd’s Hut in the back of the old Landrover, before explaining how everything worked and leaving me to settle in. Jo had provided some scrumptious scones, homemade jam and clotted cream so I made a cuppa and sat outside to enjoy the view and the profound peace and quiet. 

What a beautiful, cosy space!

Cream tea!

I spent most of my holiday just immersed in Nature, cocooned in my off-grid home, emerging from the field to go for a few short walks around the area and, on my penultimate day, to drive to the coast near Bude to paddle in the sea! 

Widemouth Bay, near Bude

I did succumb to work of a sort when I volunteered to help with the churchyard clear up at Lezant one morning, in preparation for a village wedding. I just don’t seem able to completely stop myself! There were five or six of us for most of the morning and we managed to clear paths and remove brambles and ivy from around the perimeter of the building – it definitely looked a lot better when we’d finished. 

Some of the workers on tea break

One of the highlights of my stay was when I went with James to the orchard to see Number 74 (aka Lady) the sheep whose life I had helped to save 9 years ago! If you have read my previous blogs you will know the story and the subsequent visits when she showed every sign of remembering me. She is now 12 years old and showing her age – sadly, James thinks this might be her last summer, so I had to see her one last time. Yet again, she remembered me, and I was able to give her a cuddle and a kiss on the top of her head before she showed signs of embarrassment at all this emotion! I helped a few animals in the 5 years I worked as a WWOOFer on farms around the UK, but No 74 will always remain my all time favourite.💓

She may be looking her age, but she's still beautiful to me x

I left Cornwall on Saturday, 9^th July at the start of this very hot, dry spell that we’re ‘enjoying’ and decided to go cross-country rather than blast down the A30 and A303 with the rest of the hordes. It was great fun to more or less follow my nose through north Cornwall, into Devon and thence to Somerset and I encountered hardly any traffic, even though I was using A and B roads for the most part – people just don’t seem to use these older roads anymore, preferring to drive on trunk roads and soulless motorways! It was a bit of a meandering route taking in Holsworthy, Great Torrington and South Molton before coming into the back of Taunton via Norton Fitzwarren and thence across the Levels via Othery and Burrowbridge to Street and Glastonbury, and it took an extra hour, but it was definitely worth it for the wonderful countryside that I saw.

Perhaps, once I have a roadworthy camper van again, Travelling Jan will re-emerge and go off on new adventures!

The view from the Shepherd's Hut

A trip to London, amongst other things.

 

The cousins!

Where the heck did May and June go? It doesn’t seem five minutes since I last wrote a blog, but it’s six weeks ago!

The Birthday Boy!

On May 14^th my brother was holding a party to celebrate his 60^th - this led to a bit of confusion as he was actually 62 on 15^th, but his original party plans had been scuppered by the Covid lockdowns. The party was to be held in a hall round the corner from where he and his family live in London, so I booked myself into the Woolwich Premier Inn and bought a coach ticket. Initially, Jeni was coming up with me, but she wasn’t at all well so, in the end it was just me travelling alone. The coach is a superfast service which starts in Taunton and picks up at various points along the way, one of them being Shepton Mallet. The downside to this is that it leaves Shepton at 7.45am, so I had to drive over from Glastonbury, drop my car off at Jeni’s and walk round to the coach stop, necessitating leaving home at 7.00am! The coach takes almost exactly 3 hours and is very comfortable and I had the bonus of having an extra seat booked that I could use to put my bag, etc on. Instead of going into Victoria Coach Station it terminates at Hammersmith Bus Depot and I then navigated myself across London on the Underground – I don’t know why I’ve always stressed about doing this in the past, as it is quite simple if you know which lines you need and which direction you’re heading.

St James's Park

Because I couldn’t book into the hotel until 3pm, I decided to poke my nose above ground, like a myopic mole, at Green Park Station as the name seemed to suggest greenery and a park! I soon found Green Park, which was indeed green and a park, and strolled along in the warm sunshine until I suddenly found myself on The Mall in front of Buckingham Palace! (As you can tell, my geographical knowledge of London is sketchy, to say the least!). The Mall was closed to traffic as they were tarting it all up in preparation for the Jubilee celebrations, so I crossed over and went into St James’ Park where, incidentally, my Dad proposed to my Mum many moons ago, and had a wander round there, too, stopping to eat a baguette and drink a cup of tea whilst sitting on a low wall people watching.

The view from my room towards the Thames

I got to Woolwich, booked into the hotel and had a bit of a snooze before meeting up with my brother and going to a local hostelry for a family dinner. The next morning, I ate an enormous all-you-can-eat breakfast, so that I wouldn’t need lunch and then my bro and I walked along the Thames Path which, as its name suggests, follows the River Thames. My initial idea had been to walk to the Cutty Sark ship at Greenwich, but it was further than I thought, and it was an incredibly hot day. As I’d packed light, I only had limited clothing with me, so was totally overdressed for the weather – most people were in shorts and flip flops, I was in jeans and hiking boots! We made it as far as The Cutty Sark pub where we stopped for refreshment and then caught the bus back to Woolwich, in time to meet my sister and brother-in-law who had come down from Sheffield by train. Later on my son arrived by car and Underground from Northampton and my cousins, Chris (from Dublin) and Caroline (from Oxfordshire) and we were all booked into the Premier Inn, so quite a party of us.

A beautiful Thames barge

Canada goose and goslings by the Thames Path

The party itself, was great fun as Richard’s friend used to be a professional Drum ‘n’ Bass DJ and was in his element, and the caterers produced the most mouth-watering Caribbean cuisine, plus I got to chat to my cousins, neither of whom I had seen for four years. We had to catch the Night Bus back to Woolwich and I got quite excited remembering the Night Bus from Harry Potter, but it was just an ordinary bus that ran throughout the night 😞! (Londoners have no idea how lucky they are to have such good transport facilities – a shopping trip by bus from Draycott to Cheddar, which is just a couple of miles away, pretty much takes up an entire morning or afternoon!)

The next morning there was a family brunch at another local pub, where we spent nearly 3 hours, chatting and eating, before I made my way back across Town, in company with Dave until Green Park, and then caught the Berry’s Bus back to Shepton and home.

Since that bit of rare excitement, it has been pretty much wall-to-wall gardening for clients and myself, although my energy levels post-Covid have taken a battering and I have found myself nodding off after lunch quite frequently, much to my annoyance. However, I did give myself a day off towards the end of May to go and catch up with my mate Mick, who now works as Head Kitchen Gardener at a place called Sculpture by the Lakes near Dorchester. They were hosting the Dorset Garden Festival there and also a sculpture exhibition, plus an outdoor cooking event, so it was worth the journey, plus it was another beautiful day. There are permanent sculptures set around two large lakes, easily accessible by meandering pathways and overhung by mature trees, giving welcome shade and cover for the myriad birds that sang beautifully as I passed by.

Sculpture in the Lake

A very lifelike cheetah

I met up with Mick shortly after I got there and we had a long-overdue catch up, then I looked around the Garden Festival, had a spot of lunch and then went back to the Kitchen Garden to listen to Mick’s talk on no-dig gardening, which was very informative and interesting, before I came away, but not empty-handed, as Mick had given me a couple of plants and I had treated myself to a forged dragonfly on a spike to decorate my new herbaceous border.

Another amazing sculpture

Swan and cygnets

Mum had been wanting to come and see my new home for the last year, but I had put her off as I was concerned about her safety on the landing, as there is no handrail so that, if she staggered on coming out of the bedroom, she could easily fall down the stairs. I had tried to get someone to come and give me a quote to put something in place, to no avail, and so she was unable to come, until my Eureka! moment at about 5.00am (I always have my best thoughts then!) one morning, when I realised that if Mum slept in my room and I slept in the spare room, she could steady herself with a wall until she could reach the banister rail. So, on the Jubilee Weekend, Mum finally got to come and stay, and we had a lovely time as I drove her all around the countryside around Glastonbury, which she had not visited before. I even drove her up Glastonbury High Street to show her some of the ‘sights’ but most of them must have gone home early! 😄

My haul of shrubs

This week I have finally treated myself to some shrubs for my border and have been planting it up in the early hours of the last few mornings, before the sun gets too high in the sky. I had accumulated a fair collection of herbaceous perennials, some rescued from my gardening clients, some bought from roadside stalls and some reduced plants from the sick bay at B & M (most of which revived after a good soaking) and really needed to get them in the ground but needed the shrubs in first to form the skeleton of the border. They all look a bit ‘plonked’ at the moment, but I am confident that they will eventually grow and spread and cover every inch of soil!

6.00am planting!

and from the other direction

Well, I think I’ve ‘gone on’ rather this month, so I’ll stop now and let you go off and make a cup of tea!

Another farm sit and an anniversary!

 

On Easter Saturday Jeni and her workmate, Lou, threw themselves out of a perfectly good plane at 15,000 feet! This was the delayed parachute jump in aid of their firm’s adopted charity of last year, BIBIC. I couldn’t bring myself to watch live so waited at home for a text message to say that she had landed safely. She jumped in tandem with an instructor, and he had an automatic camera on his wrist that took many photos of Jeni on the way down! They were in free fall for over a minute before deploying the parachute and, apparently, it was wonderful, and exhilarating and she wants to do it again!! Where does she get this daredevil attitude from? The most I've ever done is ride pillion on a motorbike at 100mph (twice!) and flown in a glider!

Jeni and Lou back on the ground

Freefall!

Parachute safely deployed - Phew!

We were due to go to Mum’s for Easter, so later that same day I picked Jeni up and we drove to Cheltenham. I’d been gardening in the morning (to distract myself from worrying about the above!) and felt a bit snuffley on the drive, but thought it was just the effects of tree pollen or something. It was due to be a lovely weekend as my brother and my son were both there, too. However, when I woke on Sunday morning I had a sore throat and felt a bit dizzy, so decided to take a Covid test, never thinking that it would actually be positive, as I hadn’t really been anywhere or met anyone, apart from gardening clients, and that was always outdoors. It was positive! By 10.30 Jeni and I were back on the road home, our Easter plans wrecked. Inevitably, Jeni also tested positive a few days later but nobody else got it, so I’m glad we acted so fast and went home. I kept myself to myself for the rest of the week, even though, officially, we don’t have to isolate anymore, and spent a couple of days curled up on the sofa, continually wiping my nose whilst watching all the latest Bond films on catch-up!

Ten days after contracting Covid I had another farm sit booked, so was very glad that I felt almost normal again by then. I did take the precaution of wearing my mask while Sally did the handover, as the last thing she and Geoff wanted was a dose of Covid while on holiday in the Scilly Isles! There were a few less adult chickens than in previous years, but there were two brooders (boxes with heat lights over) with several chicks in each and a tray of eggs due to hatch while they were away, plus two more trays in another incubator, and a random few more in another incubator! There were also three or four pens with broody bantams in, all sitting on clutches of eggs, and these I marked with a piece of red baler twine, as several other bantams were trying to go broody and had to be persuaded off the newly-laid eggs each evening.

I soon got back into the swing of morning let out – checking food and water levels, and lifting the broodies to see if anything had hatched overnight; and evening shut-in – closing all feed hoppers (against the ubiquitous rats and squirrels), picking up eggs and checking that everyone was inside before shutting the hatches. In between, I did a bit of gardening, fed cats, tortoises and dogs, topped up the bird feeders and did a bit of knitting. There are numerous bird feeders hung in an apple tree just outside the kitchen window, so I had a really good view of the birds that came to feed – there were two pairs of bull finches, chaffinches and even a greenfinch, as well as blue and great tits, robins and dunnocks. Sadly, the camera nest box has remained empty this year, even though there seem to be plenty of blue tits around – that was always fascinating to watch at this time of year.

Tortoise picnic

Four days after my arrival, the eggs in the incubator started to hatch and by the end of the second day I had an extra 13 mouths to feed! I set up another brooder box in the barn and carefully transferred the chicks in a straw-lined bucket from one building to the other, where I introduced them to their new home and made sure they knew where the water and food containers were, before leaving them to settle in. It’s very difficult to get a good photo when the chicks are under an infra-red heat lamp, but I tried:

Newbie chicks - so cute!

 

On my last day there, I was checking all the broody bantams when I realised that one, who had only been sitting on four eggs, was now only sitting on three. As I was wondering what could possibly have happened to the fourth egg, and moving the hen around to check every corner, a small black chick suddenly dropped out from under her wing! As she was in a run with a bantam cockerel and they can sometimes kill the chicks, I carefully removed her, the chick and the remaining eggs, to a different house and run, where she soon settled down to look after Junior! All-in-all, I managed to hand back more lives than I was entrusted with at the beginning of the sit, but I did have two hen deaths during the week. When I first started doing farm sits for Sally, which is nearly 11 years ago(!), a sudden hen death would have panicked me, but I’m much more pragmatic these days!

On 7^th May, I celebrated an anniversary – one year since I picked up the keys to my new home! I looked back over the estate agent’s photos and the ones that I have taken during the year and realised that I have actually achieved quite a bit, even though, at times, it felt as if I was running through treacle! Of course, there are still quite a few things that need doing but then, I’d be pretty bored if everything was up together and completed! The garden is gradually taking shape, as I uncover more of the original hard landscaping that had been buried beneath all the weeds, and put my own mark on it, too, although it would be nice to be able to plant more things rather than building raised beds, stabilising banks, repairing fences and sifting gravel! I have just completed a raised bed where I have planted my soon-to-be-espaliered fruit trees - an apple tree from a WWOOF host near Oswestry and a greengage. I have another apple still to plant against the bit of fence I haven't repaired yet, and this one was grafted by a WWOOF host in Cornwall. 

My new raised bed

Fruit trees

I chanced a look on Rightmove the other day to see what was about in the area, in my price range. There isn’t a lot and, I understand, what there is, is selling like hot cakes, but I did notice a bungalow with a good-sized garden ‘in need of cosmetic improvement’, in a village near my best friend …….

The garden in May 2021

The garden in May 2022

Spring farm sit and other shenanigans!

 

Spring flowers on my decking

Yet again, it’s been quite a while since I last wrote a blog!

At the end of February we experienced Storm Eunice, which was very scary perched on Windmill Hill in Glastonbury as the winds shrieked around the house, took out the electricity and threatened my new fence! I was very glad that I’d had the log burner installed as, if the power was off for too long, I’d at least be warm and able to cook toast and heat soup! In the event, all was well, although one part of the old, rickety fence on the other side of the garden succumbed to the inevitable. As the house on that side of me is empty at the moment, I have decided to instigate repair works myself, to save any further problems. The next morning, as I packed and prepared to go off to farm sit the alpacas near Bristol, I noticed a strange film on all of the rear windows of the house. Upon further investigation (I ran my finger over the film and then licked it!) I discovered that it was salt spray, brought over 15 miles from the coast at Highbridge by the wind!

The following day was a lot calmer weather-wise and I made it to the village of Woollard in good time, and was duly taken around the farm to see where everything was, prior to Chris’s and Sarah’s departure. Everything was going smoothly with the hand over until we came to the boy alpaca field. Sarah had suggested that she show me how to catch the alpacas, in case I ever needed to as, in fact, I had needed to back in November when I was last here, when one of the boys got a noose of baler twine, from a hay bale, caught around his neck and I had had to catch him and then cut the noose with my pen knife. Luckily for me (and for him) he was one of the calmer, more amenable boys and used to being handled so, although nerve-racking, had not been impossible to do single-handedly. To demonstrate the catching technique we first gathered all the boys into a large pen and it was then that we noticed one of the boys had a weepy eye. On closer inspection we could see that he must have got something in his eye and the cornea was quite ulcerated and obviously very sore – cue urgent phone call to the vet who, unfortunately was nearly 20 miles away doing a tricky lambing, and couldn’t get to us for at least two hours. Poor Sarah and family, their anticipated departure time got later and later, but at least when the vet came, she could give eye drops and pain relief and a long-acting antibiotic so no further treatment should be needed, as long as I checked each day that it was healing OK.

My duck patients!

 I also had, in my care, and housed temporarily in the large cellar larder in a dog-whelping crate, two poorly ducks. They both had ‘bumblefoot’ which sounds rather cute and slightly amusing but is anything but! It is caused by a virus entering a wound on the foot, caused by stones, a foreign object, such as glass, or a thorn. The virus creates a painful swelling and overgrowth of tissue and the bird struggles to walk and is more common in chickens – it is also more easily treated in chickens as, once the swelling has been cut away, it is relatively easy to bandage a chicken foot. It is not easy to bandage a duck’s foot, as you have to be careful not to bind the webs between the toes too tightly, as the circulation is then compromised! As the wounds had to be dressed, at the very least every other day, it was decided that I should take the ducks to the vet, a round trip of about 20 miles, to enable the feet to be checked, assessed and re-bandaged. I popped the two girls into a cat basket for the trip and they seemed to quite enjoy the ride and Classic FM on the radio, they weren’t so keen on the vet procedure but we were soon on our way back. All was going well until the car in front of me decided to brake suddenly coming up to Bristol Airport, necessitating a bit of an emergency stop on my part. Imagine my horror when I heard behind me the sound of the cat basket shooting forward and obviously rolling over! As soon as I could I pulled into a field gateway and leapt out, expecting the ducks to be very distressed and/or hurt, but they seemed fine, a little confused as to why their world had suddenly turned upside down, but no worse for their adventure. Phew!

The rest of the farm sit proceeded in a fairly straightforward manner with no more animal emergencies, and I managed to hand back the same number of living creatures as had been entrusted to my care – always a good thing I’ve found!

A view from the Tor

My ‘intention’ to climb the Tor regularly got off to a great start with a climb at the end of February that took me 27 minutes ‘Door to Tor’ with three stops on the climb up the steep side to catch my breath, and another climb the following week that took 25 minutes with no stops! However, if there had been anyone at the top of the Tor that morning, I would have been completely incapable of speaking to them for at least 5 minutes! Since then I’ve only been up the Tor once more and that was more of an amble with Jeni, stopping to admire strange tree roots, wild flowers and a small vole who poked his nose out of his burrow jus as we wandered past. Needless to say, it took us 45 minutes with countless stops along the way!

In the middle of March, Jeni and Hutch went off to Egypt for a much-delayed holiday, and I de-camped to their house in Shepton Mallet to look after the cats. I was still able to get to my gardening clients, so life was almost normal, apart from the fact that the cats insisted on sleeping on the bed with me, which is something I wouldn’t normally tolerate, but the alternative was them scratching at the bedroom door all night. At least they were fairly well-behaved and didn’t wake me in the middle of the night.

The day after they came home, I drove to Cheltenham to stay with Mum for a couple of nights as it was Mother’s Day on the Sunday and, on the Monday, we had a funeral to attend in Gloucester. This was the funeral of a lady who featured a lot in my younger years, as we all used to go on holiday together; five in our family and five in theirs, with the three children in each family being of a similar age. My older sister drew the short straw there as her ‘corresponding’ child was a boy! In a way, I was doubly lucky as my corresponding child was a girl, a year younger than me, and we got on really well but I also got to hang out with the older brother as we both liked to go rock-pooling. We had some amazing holidays, staying in self-catering cottages or bed-and-breakfast on farms in both Cornwall and Wales, where lots of childhood memories were made. It was seven years since Carol’s father had died, which was when I had last seen the majority of the family, and it was a bitter-sweet day as we said ‘Farewell’ to Audrey and then exchanged memories and chat at the ‘wake’, held in the same hotel as before. I was a bit unsettled by it, to be honest, as it brings home the passing of time and that we are all now ‘old’!! I can’t imagine that Kevin and I would be much good at rock-pooling any more, or that Carol and I could get so enthusiastic about getting up in the middle of the night, to go and see a calf being born! (Actually, I can still imagine us doing that!)

I don’t have many photos to share this time – I’m not sure photos of old bits of fence prior to refurbishment are that inspiring. Perhaps there will be more next time!

My camellia in full flower 

February 2022

 

Snowdrops and hellebores at North Cerney House

It’s been a couple of months since I last wrote a blog and, in the worsening situation in the world, I have found it increasingly difficult to put pen to paper, figuratively speaking. The minutiae of my daily life seem so incredibly pointless in a world beset by a continuing global pandemic and the machinations of a Russian despot. However, I find, at times like these, sometimes the only thing we can do is to concentrate on our small sphere of influence and try to make a difference where we can.

Since the New Year I have spent quite a lot of time staying with my Mum in Cheltenham, as I have done for the last couple of years. Mum really dislikes the months of January and February and in this she is not alone, and I have no gardening jobs to do at this quiet time of year, so it makes sense to keep each other company. Of course, this year has been slightly different in as much as I now have my own home that needs some input from me, even if it is just to check that the place is still secure and still standing!

The fence nearing completion

My fencers were due to start erecting my new fence on Monday, 10^th January, but Mum was not at all well over the weekend with a heavy cold that reduced her to bed rest, an unheard of event, and I didn’t like to leave her, so Jeni swung into action, organising a key, fresh milk for tea and coffee and checking with my neighbours that their side gate would be unlocked for Russell and his mate to gain access. My sister and brother-in-law, who had been due to come and see Mum on the Wednesday, hastily rearranged their week and arrived on Monday afternoon, allowing me to drive home that evening. It was dark when I got home so it was not until Tuesday morning that I got to look out of the window and see what progress had been made. Well, what a surprise, the bulk of the fence was already up! Russell and Kevin duly turned up at 8.30 and had pretty much completed the job by lunchtime – we’d even found time to drive over to Pylle and retrieve my four fruit trees that we loaded into the back of Russell’s pick up. I am so pleased that the job is complete, and my neighbours are delighted with it, too.

New shelves

Finally unpacked my books!

Having spent a week at home, in which I finally got around to making my bookshelves for the alcove in the sitting room, I headed back to Cheltenham, where the first stirrings of Spring were beginning to be felt. Mum had pots of violas and miniature daffodils on her patio and there were aconites and snowdrops emerging under the weeping silver birch in the front garden. On a bright, sunny day we drove over to Rendcomb, a small hamlet on the way to Cirencester, where there is a streamside house with a profusion of snowdrops and crocus spilling out across the lawns and down the banks of the tumbling brook. They are the first real show of snowdrops in the area, and they really lift the spirits. Later on in my stay we carried on further along the road to Cirencester to North Cerney House. This is a private residence, but the gardens are open to the public all year round for a £5 entry fee. At this time of year their snowdrop walk is popular, but Mum and I love the walled garden where there are snowdrops, pulmonaria and a huge collection of different hellebores. Later in the season the beds are full of different coloured tulips, and there are roses and espaliered fruit trees, as well. To complete the perfect morning out, they have a self-service café in the garden bothy, with the most amazing cakes! We came home cross-country and were amazed to see a large flock of what appeared to be chaffinches, feeding on a stubble field. I had never seen so many at one time so Googled it on my return home, to discover that large flocks of visiting chaffinch fly in from the continent to overwinter in our countryside.

Snowdrops at North Cerney House

Because the weather was, on the whole, pretty murky and miserable, we spent quite a lot of time indoors watching the birds on the bird feeders and became aware of the same birds visiting regularly. There were the ubiquitous jackdaws, who have learned within a couple of years, how to perch on the fat ball feeder without having to flap their wings to balance all the time. They are quite messy feeders, so we have at least two wood pigeons who take up station under the bird feeders, as soon as the jackdaws appear, and clear up the mess like a couple of grumbling housekeepers! We also noticed several blackbirds, but they were already getting territorial and spent a lot of time chasing each other out of the garden. However, we did notice a rather odd ‘friendship’ - whenever a certain female blackbird arrived under the feeders, she would invariably be joined by a dunnock, who seemed to find her presence reassuring. They would peck around quite happily together but, if any other bird arrived, the blackbird would chase them off and the dunnock would dive for cover in the border! Our greatest pleasure was when a jay visited the garden – they are normally very shy birds and stay near wooded areas, but this one came regularly, especially when I started putting a few peanuts out on the lawn each morning. If I was a bit tardy with my breakfast offering, he would come closer to the house and sit in the magnolia, peering in through the patio window as if to ask what I thought I was doing!

Our visiting Jay

If you remember, from my last blog, I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions but have ‘intentions’! Two of my intentions for this year are to keep in better contact with friends and relatives, and to climb Glastonbury Tor once a week to improve my aerobic fitness! I am not doing too badly on either, at the moment:

I went to see my old school friend, Mads, whilst I was staying at Mum’s, as she lives at Royal Wootton Bassett which is only a 40-minute drive from Cheltenham. I arrived in time for coffee, and we never stopped talking the whole day! I have no idea how we find so much to chat about, but then we never had any problems nattering when we were in our teens, either! I eventually left in the early evening and drove back through a dark and rainy evening to Cheltenham, tired, a little hoarse, but incredibly happy that we had made contact again.

Towards the end of my stay with Mum, I decided to take her to see my Welsh ‘aunt’, Jen, as they hadn’t been able to see each other for a long time and Jen had been quite poorly before Christmas with Covid and was still suffering the after effects. Jen lives in Cwmbran which is about a one-and-a-half-hour journey from Cheltenham. We set off in good time and, having negotiated various new road layouts around Gloucester, entered the lovely Forest of Dean. We’d hoped to see some wildlife on our journey, but it was a damp and drizzly day and they were obviously all sheltering somewhere – I thought we might have seen some wild boar, as there is quite a population in the Forest. Again, we had a lovely day chatting about this and that, and Jen cooked us a delightful roast dinner with a wonderful summer pudding for dessert. All too soon, it was time to head home through the dark and the drizzle, which was quite trying as the windscreen wipers on ‘intermittent’ were not quite enough to clear the screen, but screeched horribly on full wipe, so that I couldn’t decide between being barely able to see between wipes or deafened by the banshee screeching! We were both very glad to get home!

Finally, on my way back to Somerset, I called on another childhood friend, Carol, and her husband, Pete, who live in a village near Stroud. It’s at least a couple of years since I saw them so, again, it was great to catch up and meet their new dog, Dexter, who is a cross between a Labrador and a Bernese Mountain Dog! Carol walks him twice a day and reckons she covers about 8 miles, which made me realise how unfit I am – hence the intention to climb the Tor.

The view from the Tor

So far I have managed to climb the Tor twice, both times from the steep side and having to stop a couple of times to catch my breath. It takes me 25 minutes from ‘door to Tor’ but I am hoping to improve on that over time. The views from the top are magnificent on a clear day and there is usually someone at the top playing guitar, digeridoo or drumming! The first time I went back down the gentle side, into the town, and found a collection of painted pebbles for sale at the bottom – it’s all ‘normal for Glastonbury’. Dave reckons I’ll fit it in with all the weirdness really well!

Well, that just about wraps up my meanderings for now, I hope they have made you smile. Stay safe and positive until next time x

Painted pebbles for sale 

New Year, New Blog!

A burst of sunlight on winter trees

Firstly, I would like to say a very Happy New Year to all my loyal readers! I’d intended to write another blog in December, but you know what they say about good intentions! When asked if I make New Year Resolutions, my inevitable reply is that I have ‘intentions’, not resolutions, as it doesn’t seem such a heinous crime when I, very quickly, fail to keep them!  

The long-anticipated fence erection is due to go ahead within the next week, which will help me massively in the planning of my garden. I finally fought my way down the other fence line to the bottom of the garden and discovered the filled-in remains of an old pond and associated water course, which is going to cause me a few issues as the ground level drops away at that point. I’m now wondering whether to try and construct some form of bank/terrace to separate the ‘utility’ area of the garden from the ‘pleasure’ area. The utility area, with no-dig raised beds, really needs to be the next thing under construction, as I have pots of sea kale and rhubarb from one of my gardening clients, that need to be planted out; a pot of rescued raspberry canes; a potted gooseberry bush; yacon tubers and four fruit trees, and that’s just for starters! Once the fence is completed everything to and from the garden will have to come through the house, so I am hoping to get at least the four fruit trees brought over from my old address before that happens.

Before pruning

After pruning

Last week Jeni and her partner came over and pruned the large Bramley apple tree that takes up a lot of space at the bottom of the garden. It was heavily festooned with brambles, as well as having been left unpruned for several years, I would guess, so it looks a lot more open now. More pruning, to reduce the height, will be required next year to bring it back to a good shape and size and, hopefully, I will be able to control the brambles so that it doesn’t get choked again.

At the beginning of December, I also acquired a small shed, through Facebook Marketplace, and am hoping to find a suitable place to put it once the new fence is finished. It was delivered, disassembled, and Jeni and I managed to woman-handle it into the garden, via my next door neighbour’s side gate, where it is now lying on top of the large pile of uprooted sedge grass that I’ve created. All of the components for the fence were also delivered in December and left in my front garden, so I had to carry all of those around to the back in the same way – 7 x 2m fence posts, 130 x 1.5m feather-edge boards, 18 x 3m lengths of rails and the capping pieces! I was exhausted at the end of that mission! I’m just very glad that the fencer is bringing the Postcrete to set the posts in the ground!

3D felted vessels

The full display of vessels

Also, at the beginning of December, I tried to kick start my creative mojo, which has been dormant for far too long, by going on a day’s felting course with Jeni. I’d been to a couple of courses with the tutor before and am really lucky that she holds them at the community hall just up the road from me, so we could walk there. We were making 3-D decorative vessels and could choose between small ‘pods’ or a Christmas stocking – needless to say, I chose a pod shape, as did most of the attendees. She only has 8 people on each course, so that she can give individual attention, and this works really well. We had great fun and were completely absorbed in what we were doing and are hoping to replicate the day at my house sometime soon – after all, I have got most of the materials required!

I felt very old on December 17th when my 'baby' turned 40! I felt the occasion should be marked in some way, so made the first birthday cake that I've done for about 30 years! It was a triple-layer chocolate sponge with chocolate butter icing, a mascarpone cream filling and a dark chocolate ganache with piped decorations - that got the seal of approval! Dave and I had clubbed together and bought Jeni a second-hand ceramics kiln so that she can get creative again with her pottery, and we had a lovely weekend celebrating.

Work on the interior of the house has slowed to a virtual stop although, after complaints from Dave, I have now put up a couple of mirrors in the bathroom, so that he can see to shave when he comes to stay – gotta keep the boy happy! He has been to stay with me a couple of times which is lovely, after so many years of living in a one-bedroom home and unable to accommodate him comfortably. I cooked a roast dinner for us the other day and we then realised that it is probably upwards of ten years since I last did that! It feels so wonderful to have the potential for family (and friends) to come and stay.

Bathroom mirror #1

Bathroom #2

As a family, we had planned to spend Christmas at my sister’s house in Sheffield. I was to travel to Cheltenham on the Tuesday, stay overnight and then travel onwards the next day, with Mum, so that she could have a couple of days to rest after the journey and prepare herself for the onslaught of the rest of the family; Jeni was going to travel up by train on Christmas Eve and Dave was going to drive up early on Christmas Day as he had to work on Christmas Eve. However, things nearly got completely scuppered, and not by Covid: I’d noticed increased ‘road noise’ from my car over the last few months and had asked for the wheel bearings to be checked when the car was MOT’d back at the end of September, but nothing was found, so I put it down to a change in my hearing and turned up the radio (like you do!), but then I gave Dave a lift to Shepton and, out of the blue, he said, ‘You might want to get your wheel bearings checked, Mum’. Of course, this was on the Friday evening before I was due to travel on the Tuesday, so I had a bit of a meltdown and spent the weekend stressing about how I could still make Christmas in Sheffield happen. First thing Monday morning I rang my local garage and explained the problem, but they couldn’t even look at it until the next morning. However, on Tuesday they looked at the car, took it for a test drive, diagnosed a wheel bearing problem and agreed to try and fix it that afternoon, even though I could see that they were insanely busy. By the end of the day I had a supremely quiet car and the confidence to drive it to Sheffield and back. My brother-in-law drove down to Cheltenham and collected Mum and Jeni cancelled her train ticket so that the two of us could drive up together on Christmas Eve. It was more than a five hour journey but made so much better by having company and when we weren’t chatting away we were singing carols along with the radio.

Max!

Christmas was lovely – I got to see my great-nephew, Leo, and finally meet his little brother, Max, who was born back in April and, even though I’m not that keen on small children (give me a lamb, calf or piglet any day!) I had to admit that they were both real sweeties – I even had a cuddle with Max, but no-one got photographic evidence. All too soon we were dividing up the Christmas leftovers, packing our presents into the car and heading South. Jeni and I took Mum home and stayed overnight in Cheltenham before returning to Somerset, where I got to see the New Year in with both of my offspring, for the first time in many years.

Dave (revisiting his childhood) and Leo

I am now embarking on my winter stay in Cheltenham, although it will be slightly different this year as I will be travelling home more frequently than in previous years, so that I can do some more jobs, supervise the fencers and have some ‘me time’ with friends and family.

Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy and look after yourselves x