Summer Shenanigans

A lovely house-warming gift!

I hadn’t realised that it was such a long time since I last posted a blog – doesn’t time fly when you’re enjoying yourself!

At Pitsford Water

At the end of June, Jeni and I finally managed to visit Dave in Northampton for a weekend. It was nice to have company on the drive as it is quite a long way and, occasionally, The Navigator had to re-emerge and guide me across country avoiding places like Swindon and Oxford! We had a lovely couple of days, culminating in quite a long walk around Pitsford Water, a man-made lake supplying water to Northampton. We saw lots of interesting flora and fauna, including Cormorants and a Little Tern on the water and lots of dragonflies, damsel flies and bees along the shoreline. It was a really hot day and we were all struggling with the last mile or so, but rewarded ourselves with a two-scoop ice cream each when we got back to the car park!

I officially moved into my new home on 12^th July – at least that’s when Dragonfly Removals (I had to book them with a name like that, didn’t I?) turned up and took my bed away, and the freezer, chest-of-drawers and large dining table. In fact, there is still quite a lot of my stuff still at my old home as the carpet couldn’t be delivered until 4^th August and they wanted as little furniture in the room as possible. Consequently, I do feel a bit as if I have been camping in a building site!

I had only slept in my new bedroom for 4 nights before I went off to do a 9 day farm sit at Dundry, so that added to the general feeling of impermanence. The farm sit took place during that incredibly hot weather, and I was really relieved that the majority of the work took place first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening – the rest of the time I spent indoors trying to keep cool. I even allowed the dogs to be indoors for most of the day, as they were struggling with the heat, too. I saw a post on Facebook from the local vets saying that guinea pigs and rabbits suffer badly from heatstroke and, as Sally has two guinea pigs, I was a bit concerned until I remembered that I had a big multi-coloured umbrella in the car which I managed to fix to the side of their run, so that they had shade for most of the day. Luckily, none of the animals succumbed to the ridiculous temperatures, although I was filling up the chickens’ water on a daily basis.

Before ...

... and after!

I couldn’t avoid the siren call of the garden/jungle for ever, so have made a start on trying to ‘find’ the garden. It’s a bit like a mini Lost Gardens of Heligan, as I clear back the blanketing cover of grass and bindweed to reveal the hard structure of the garden. So far I have discovered a gravel path, edged on one side by brick which, I think, edges a lawn. There seems to be an awful lot of gravel and not much in the way of flower beds, but time will tell. I am also going to have the Leylandii hedge professionally removed as it is not a thing of beauty or utility and therefore has to go! Luckily, the neighbours are really keen to see the back of it and have offered the use of their rear access to save everything having to go through the house (across the new carpet!!) or over the flat roof. Because of the restricted access it is going to be a 2-day, 3-man job so is not coming in cheap. However, I would have to pay someone several hundred pounds each year to keep it under control so the initial outlay will soon pay for itself. It will make a huge difference to the garden as I reckon I will gain an extra three feet in width all the way down the garden!

One of the slow-worms

There is a tiny pond in an area just below the decking which, I am led to believe, was part of a much larger water feature a few years ago. It obviously has a hole in the liner as, even with the amount of rain that we have had recently, it does not fill up. With a lovely house-warming gift from my aunty, which will go towards a new liner, and utilising bits of the old carpet from the sitting room, and a heap of sandy soil from the front garden (left by a lazy builder, at some point) I am going to create a larger wildlife pond to attract more beasties to my garden. I have already discovered at least two slow-worms – one was sunning itself on a flat stone and the other was lurking in the long grass.

There is still quite a bit of decorating to do, but upstairs is virtually finished now. My friends, Karen and Ade, offered huge dustsheets that virtually cover a room in one go, which made life a lot easier, and then Ade offered to come and paint the sitting and dining room ceilings for me with his long-pile roller to get into all the swirly bits of the Artex. I was so grateful as my wrists were not looking forward to doing that amount of work, and he made a great job of it in only a few hours – it would have taken me at least a couple of days to do. Before the carpet was delivered I managed to paint all the skirting boards and the walls in the sitting room, but the dining area still needs to have wallpaper put on the chimney breast and then the walls painted, so I will have to be very careful to avoid spilling stuff on the new carpet!

The dining room before ...

... and after

The sitting room before...

... and after

Somewhere in amongst all this activity, I have managed to take my stall to two village fetes! Jeni came to help me, as I had to use my old gazebo which is much more easily erected by two people than one. Unfortunately, both days turned out to be wet ones, but it was still lovely to see people out and about again, enjoying themselves, even if they were wearing waterproofs and wellies! The second outing was to the Draycott Strawberry Fayre where we were allowed to set up in the big marquee, which was a relief as, after the Middlezoy fete, I had to dry a lot of my stock and the gazebo cover. It felt strange to get out all my stock again after such a long break, and I was surprised how much I had! I felt that my sock-knitting efforts during the winter were rewarded as, at both venues, they were the woollen items that sold. At Draycott we also had the added bonus of seeing old friends and acquaintances that we hadn’t seen for several years.

All set up at Draycott

Well, what else do you do at a Strawberry Fayre?

Work continues on my new home

One of my hidden roses

I have to keep reminding myself that I have only owned my new home for just over a month, and that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it seems to be taking a long time to get things done. Admittedly, I have picked up several new gardening clients recently so am working far more hours in a week than I was doing, and it is all physical work, so I get tired quite quickly.

Before ...

... and after

The front, or guest bedroom, is virtually finished having taken three coats of magnolia emulsion to cover the bright blue walls. I’ve also painted the ceiling and all of the woodwork (at least twice) and finally shampooed the carpet, which came up much better than I expected. During work on the room I had to make a new piece of skirting board, as there was a length missing, and do some repair work on the bedroom door which is one of those stupid hollow affairs with hardly any wood for fixings. Whoever had put the door in originally had made a right pig’s ear of installing the handle mechanism so that there was no wood to screw the handles into and only one screw on the catch plate was attached to anything. I spent a good couple of hours manufacturing bespoke bits of wood to create a new internal structure into which the various screws could be fixed!

My bedroom, at the back of the house with glorious views, is pretty much finished now, too. I wanted to paint the walls a misty green (they were pale lilac) but, when I put the paint on the wall it is more of a misty blue colour. However, I do quite like it – it’s very restful, so it will stay for the time being. Again, I have painted the ceiling, the walls three times and all of the woodwork twice and today I have shampooed the carpet. Let’s hope it comes up as well as the front bedroom!

From this ...

... to this

Meanwhile, Dave the stove man duly turned up to look at the job. He assured me that he would remove all of the necessary brickwork, install a lintel, line the chimney, board around the inside of the fireplace and supply the stove. He also said that he would completely replaster the chimney breast and alcove to give me a smooth surface to paint – all of this for an extremely reasonable price. He proposed using mock flagstones for the hearth, but I had other ideas! Some months ago, whilst out for a morning walk to the lake, about half a mile away, I discovered that someone had gone to huge lengths to fly tip a load of building materials right next to the lake. How they got it all there is a mystery as they could not get through the padlocked gate from one direction, and the other direction meant driving across a field in full view of a farmhouse! Amongst the general detritus were several biggish pieces of thick slate, such as would have been used as flooring in an expensive kitchen. My friend, Mary, and I decided that they would be ‘useful for something’, so when a hearth was required I suggested these. We duly measured them and found that three pieces would be more than enough for the job so, on Tuesday evening, we decided to ‘liberate’ them. They were quite heavy and the only way to collect them was in my four-wheeled cart that I used for markets, so we walked along the main road for about a quarter of a mile, then crossed over into a field and bumped our way across that until we met up with the track to the lake. We duly loaded the slabs onto the trolley and bungee-corded them down before repeating the process in reverse, whilst trying to look inconspicuous! When Dave and his mate, Mark, unloaded them from the back of the car they were amazed at the quality and reckoned those three pieces alone were worth £150.00! I love a bit of recycling! I did wonder whether it’s theft to remove someone else’s fly tipping?

The cart loaded with slate

Dave and Mark did a brilliant job, bagging up all of the rubble and taking it outside, and polishing the slate so that you can see all the beautiful veining. They also removed my ‘feature wall’ for me whilst waiting for their cement and adhesives to harden. I didn’t ask them to, I’d just mentioned that I had begun to stress about it as I’d found how painful it was to try and remove it with a bolster and lump hammer, but they had a Kango-type drill and had it all down in about 15 minutes – I could have kissed them!

... and this ...

... to this!

Last Sunday I made myself have the day off, as I’d been burning the candle at  both ends, so went on a foraging expedition to pick elderflowers, which seem to be everywhere at the moment. I have now made and bottled a double quantity of cordial, so that should last a little while. If I can find more bottles I may be tempted to make another batch soon.

I have still managed to control my urge to start tackling the jungle that is my garden, but I have discovered two beautiful, scented roses which is lovely – they will need some TLC later in the year to bring them back into some sort of shape, but that can all happen after I move in! Moving day is still a bit of a moveable feast – I’m heading for the first week in July, but that could change if I can’t get all the messy jobs finished and new carpets fitted downstairs.

It's a shame that I am spending a lot of this gorgeous weather decorating inside but, when I stop for a break, I realise just how lovely this spot is. I take my lunch outside and sit on my decking gazing at the fantastic view and listening to the birdsong. There are blackbirds and house sparrows close to, with the ubiquitous jackdaws and magpies in the field below me and occasionally a burst of activity in the air above as a small gang of swifts go screaming by, playing tag and twisting and turning over the fields. The absence of traffic noise is a blessing and I understand that the sunsets up here are magnificent. I'm getting quite excited (rather than anxious) about moving in, now!

My other lovely rose!

Wintry May

The view over my garden

Well, I think Spring lasted for about a fortnight before we were plunged back into wintry weather!

I planted my potatoes on Good Friday (the traditional day for planting spuds) and they cautiously peeped their heads above the parapet a few weeks later, only to have their leaves burned by a ferociously cold wind. They will grow through it OK, but it stopped them in their tracks for a bit. Many of my gardening clients had plants that were burned by that same wind, hydrangeas seem to have come off worst from the encounter, with some very sick specimens around at the moment – hopefully they will all recover.

At the moment I have no idea what to wear when I set out of a morning to go gardening – I usually start off in three or four layers and gradually shed them if the day warms up. If the weather deteriorates, I have shower-proof trousers and jacket in the car, plus full waterproofs if necessary and several hats! At least I’m prepared for whatever our crazy climate throws at me, although some warm, dry weather would be nice, preferably with a soft breeze blowing to keep the temperature just right – I am heartily sick of working in gale-force winds, as it tires me out and makes me very irritable. Someone once told me that the reason that I hate the wind is because I am a Fire Sign and it extinguishes my flame!

I’m afraid that I have not been ‘up close and personal’ with Nature recently, so cannot give you a full update on what is about at the moment, although the Hawthorn is all in bloom and the beautiful Queen Anne’s Lace and Campion are filling the hedge bottoms. There are still splashes of bluebells and also the pretty lilac-coloured Lady’s Smock or Cuckoo Flower, on the roadsides round here and in the woods the Wild Garlic reigns supreme. I am eagerly awaiting the blooming of the Elders as I have run out of Elderflower Cordial and need to replenish my stocks for the year ahead.

My new home

The main reason that I have not been out and about as much during this last month (apart from the inclement weather!) is that on 7^th May I got the keys to my new home and have been busy trying to get it sorted before I move in. I have not lived in my own space for eleven years – the first five were spent ‘on the road’ WWOOFing and the last six I have been renting my friend’s annexe. The house is a two bedroomed, ex-Local Authority house built in the 1950s and not at all what I had expected to buy when I first started looking several years ago, but the West Country has become a rather popular destination for city dwellers looking to escape and the prices have risen quite a lot in the last year. Having said that, the house is very light with a sitting room and dining room linked by an archway and the most glorious views towards the Mendips – in fact it’s pretty much the reverse of the view that I used to have from my cottage in Draycott which, with a powerful set of binoculars I could probably see from my dining room window! More to the point I will finally have my own garden again, although it is more like a jungle at the moment, and will take a lot of hard work to get under control.

Jeni stripping wallpaper

Since the beginning of May I have spent most of my free time, between gardening jobs, to-ing and fro-ing between Pylle and Glastonbury, getting the decorating underway and trying to sort out the order in which the messier jobs need to be tackled. Upstairs only really needs a painting job done on the bedrooms and bathroom with the odd bit of wall-drilling to reposition the wonky curtain rails, but downstairs needs a bit more done. I had hoped to have the Artexed ceilings in the sitting and dining room skimmed to create flat ceilings but the plasterer that came to look at the job was rather pessimistic about the strength of the plasterboard fixings to hold up an extra weight of plaster and obviously didn’t really want to do the job. On reflection I decided that I would save myself the £600+ and learn to live with them! The next messy job was opening up the blocked-in fireplaces to enable me to have a multi-fuel stove installed. Having removed the ghastly mock-vintage wallpaper from the chimney breast and removed the piece of board covering up the hole where a fireplace should be, I was presented with a much smaller orifice than I was expecting as the original fireplace had been reduced in size by the insertion of some rubble and copious amounts of concrete. I knocked a bit of it out with the aid of a bolster and lump hammer but then lost my nerve – it wouldn’t be the best way to introduce yourself to the next-door neighbour would it, through the back of his fireplace!! I now await the arrival of the stove guy who is coming to view the job on Wednesday afternoon and will, no doubt, tell me how much more brickwork I need to remove.

The sitting room fireplace

I’m not going to install a fire in the dining room, as the two rooms are linked, but may leave the aperture as a feature. There were two pieces of plasterboard hiding this fireplace and its adjoining alcove, but they had been badly put up in that there was at least a half inch gap between the plasterboard and the ceiling and another gap all down the length from floor to ceiling, so they had to come off. However, they had been stuck to the existing plasterwork with ridiculous amounts of glue, so have taken a fair bit of plaster off the chimney breast as well – another job for me to try and fix.

Dining room wall before...

... and after!

The only other really messy job that needs sorting before I move in, is the removal of a strange feature wall constructed (very badly!) as a fill-in in the triangular space formed by the staircase. Whoever put it there obviously felt inspired by the large ammonite that they had acquired, but it is so awful that it is not a thing of beauty and needs to go! I can’t decide whether to hire a skip or build a rockery!

The 'feature wall'!

I had hoped to have done all of these jobs before any furniture was moved in, but the timing did not quite work out, as I was offered a 3-seater sofa and an armchair that had to be removed by the end of May so, last Saturday, Jeni and I met up with her friend Aaron and his long-wheelbase Transit van to collect the furniture and a double divan bed. The bed was destined for Jeni’s house in Shepton Mallet so we drove there first, in an absolute cloudburst, unloaded the bed, loaded her old bed, which I am having in my spare bedroom, and set off for Glastonbury. Everything was going well (apart from the appalling weather) until we came to take the sofa in through the front door – it wouldn’t fit! The sofa is seven foot long and the porch ceiling is about six foot eight inches high, and you have to turn through 90 degrees to get through the internal front door into the sitting room. We put the sofa back in the van while we thought about the problem.

At this point I should mention that there is no rear access to my property. What had obviously once been a free-standing storeroom with a passageway running from front to back between it and the house, has been converted into an attached,  flat-roofed single-storey extension housing the kitchen. We thought we could probably get the sofa through the back door, into the kitchen and then into the dining/sitting room but how to get it there? The only answer was across the flat roof! Aaron and Jeni got the sofa so that it was balanced on the edge of the roof and then Aaron climbed up my step ladder and heaved himself onto the roof where he proceeded to push the sofa across the roof whilst Jeni and I took the stepladder round to the other side and repeated the manoeuvre in reverse. Unfortunately, I was so busy doing this that I didn’t get the chance to take a photo! I don’t think that sofa is going anywhere for a long time and when it does, it will be in manageable pieces! I will be carefully measuring any other furniture before taking it to the new house to make sure that it fits through the front door.

Today (Friday, 21^st May) I have driven across the Mendips to do a weekend farmsit for my friends at Dundry. It is the first farmsit that I have done since September, so I hope it all goes well. The weather always seems to be blustery when I head for this exposed hillside just outside Bristol, but today was worse than usual with high winds and lashing rain! I felt a little nervous as I drove along under the dead and dying ash trees! Before the leaves came out on the trees, it was easy to kid yourself that ash dieback was not really such a big problem, but now the devastation is blindingly obvious and tragic in its enormity. Last year you could see that some of the trees didn’t look very healthy but now they are dead, bare branches clawing the sky in their death throes, and it seems to have happened so fast. All the ash trees, whatever their age and size, have been affected and there are stands of trees with not a leaf on at all and many more with tiny, wispy leaves at branch ends. The look of our countryside, particularly on Mendip, is going to be dramatically changed as these ubiquitous giants are gradually felled, leaving huge gaps in hedgerows and shadeless fields. I am going to nurture my tiny ash sapling that I brought back from Shropshire, where I pulled up hundreds in the years that I WWOOFed there, in the hope that it will prove to be immune – I feel it’s the least I can do!

A sunny corner for breakfast

Spring at last?

 

Amazing Periwinkle (see below)

Last Sunday afternoon, as it was bright and sunny, Jeni and I decided to meet up for a walk. We were going to do a longer version of the wintry walk that we had done back in March, starting at her house and walking towards Wells on footpaths and bridleways. As we set off we realised that the warmth engendered by the bright sunshine was illusory, the wind was very keen and we were probably not wearing quite enough clothing but, being intrepid (!) we were determined to ‘tough it out’. However, it wasn’t long before Jeni had a phone call from her partner, who had gone mountain biking with a friend, to say that his bike had broken, he was coming home earlier than intended and he hadn’t got a house key! Reluctantly, we turned for home and retraced our steps but we were glad that we did as suddenly the wind got up, the sun hid behind a bank of ominously dark clouds and, first of all, we were pelted with soft hail and then it snowed! Within half an hour we were back at Jeni’s, the sun came out again and we were able to sit in the garden with a cup of tea! Really weird weather.

This weekend a friend asked if I could feed and let out her chickens for a couple of days. Her smallholding is about a mile away across the fields so it seemed a good opportunity to get some exercise. Both mornings have been bright and sunny so I left home at about 8.00am and went off across the fields behind the house. There was a slight frost on both mornings, but the grass was mainly wet (I discovered that my ‘waterproof’ walking boots, aren’t!). The fields that had fodder beans planted last year were sown with spring wheat about three weeks ago but it has been so dry that there is no sign of the seed germinating yet. Large flocks of rooks rose into the air as I approached, cawing anxiously to one another – I don’t suppose they see a human out there very often at that time of day. There were skylarks up above me singing joyfully and one took off from only a few feet away from me before soaring heavenwards in full song.

a very blurry hare!

As I approached the furthest of the newly sown fields I saw two hares lolloping away from me, but was only able to get a very long distance shot of one of them. There were other hares about in the grassy fields further on, but they kept a low profile as I walked around the field perimeter. The hedgerows were alive with the rustling of small birds but I was only able to identify chaffinch, great tit, blue tit, dunnock, blackbirds and wrens. Some of the wrens serenaded me, with their beautiful song, from the tops of the hedges as I wandered by whilst others scolded me like mini Geiger counters being approached by highly radioactive material!

As well as letting out the hens, collecting eggs and checking food and water levels, I was also in charge of feeding and watering six Kune Kune pigs. Technically, these belong to the local animal rescue charity, who supply their feed and bedding and, originally there were only three but these have been joined recently by another three. They are all related but do not get on so, a couple of weeks ago, I helped divide the paddock in half so there are now two groups of three and peace has been restored. The best way to feed them seems to be to stand at the dividing line and hurl a scoop into one pen followed swiftly by a scoop into the other pen, alternating until all the feed has been distributed – this stops the possibility of one group storming the barricades to get at the other pigs’ food!

Kune Kune pigs

This morning I came home a different way (yesterday I came home along the lane) by crossing a couple of fields that had maize in them last year. The fields have obviously been sprayed with weedkiller and then top-dressed with slurry before they are replanted with a crop for this year. Because of the dry weather, the manure has formed a hard layer over the soil and I was able to walk across it quite easily. In the first field was a range of old farm buildings that I hadn’t explored before, at first I thought it might be an old cottage but, on closer inspection I think it was always meant for animal accommodation. I then continued across the next field, past the barn owl barn, and out onto the lane. By this time it was about 9.30 and I had removed my outer layer and a fleece and was still too hot walking along in my long-sleeved T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up – such a contrast to last Sunday!

Do you think it's a 'doer-upper'?

I think we can safely say that Spring is now here and we have entered the blue-and-white phase of the Spring wildflowers. There are still lots of yellow flowers about in the celandines and dandelions, but more and more white and blue/purple flowers are emerging: there are the first bluebells nodding in the hedge bottoms along with ground ivy and tiny violets as well as white dead nettle, wood anemone, wild garlic and comfrey. In places, there are patches of periwinkle, which is not a native plant (how many really are?) but has naturalised in many parts of Britain, mainly in the south. This plant, although invasive in the garden, holds a special place in my heart as it played a part in saving Jeni’s life when she contracted Hodgkin’s Lymphoma as a fourteen-year-old. Both the chemotherapy drugs, Vincristine and Vinblastine, are derived from periwinkle and both of these were used, in two different drug combinations, to treat her. Our ‘wise women’, centuries ago, probably knew a lot more about the beneficial properties of plants, before they were burned at the stake and their knowledge consigned to history! Did you know, for instance, that the clippings from the yew hedges at Chirk Castle in North Wales go to making the widely-used chemotherapy drug, Tamoxifen? And, of course, aspirin was originally derived from willow and meadowsweet. What amazing things plants are!

Ground Ivy

Wood anemones

violet

Soft Comfrey

The weather is looking dry and warm for the next week, at least, so I shall have to remember to include sunscreen in my gardening paraphernalia and take a bottle of water and, more importantly, remember to drink it!!

Wych Elm seeds

Alien-like male flowers of Butterbur

March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb

 

‘March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb’, so goes the old saying and, this year, it seems to have held true. It has been a much colder March than last year and, consequently, the Spring activity that I was noting in my blogs last year, has been delayed by about a week. Having said that, the last few days of the month, which have been so warm and sunny, have hastened on a spurt of growth.

The yellow winter aconites, with their Elizabethan ruffs of green, have given way to the glossy yellow petals of the celandines, which seem to be popping up everywhere this year. They prefer damp, shady spaces but, the wet weather that we have had in recent months, has made them migrate to less typical spots, where they hold up their sunny heads to brighten even dreary days. Have you noticed that, after the fragile white snowdrops, the predominant colour of early spring flowers is yellow? I am sure that this is Mother Nature trying to reassure us that the sun will return and that the days will get warmer!

Primroses beside the lake

Quite often we have the warm spell, that we have just enjoyed, in mid-March and the daffodils and primroses fade and wither before the end of the month but, this year, they seem to have flowered for a long time. I can remember a few years ago now, when we still had our smallholding, that I took a week off work in mid-March because we were due to start lambing. The weather was glorious all week and I spent every day up in the fields, keeping an eye on the pregnant ewes and basking in a short-sleeved T-shirt. Needless to say, not a single ewe lambed in that week – they waited until the following week, when I was back at work and the weather had turned cold and wet again! Typical!

I have been for a couple of walks to the lake recently and saw my first deer of the season, but too far away to get a photo for you to enjoy. The skylarks are also up and singing and a couple of mallards are courting on the little Whitelake Stream, flying off indignantly quacking when I inadvertently disturb them as I pass by. Our resident buzzard is seen on a regular basis, often being mobbed by rooks or crows. They, in their turn, are mobbed by our resident gang of Jackdaws if they are deemed to have come too close!

There is a mist of green on the hawthorns and, in sheltered spots, the blackthorn is coming into flower. I am keeping my eye on the elder as it has a nasty habit of coming into flower before I’ve had time to prepare for Elderflower Cordial making, but although it came into leaf a while before anything else, I have a few weeks to wait yet, before the blossoms appear - plenty of time to get in supplies of oranges and lemons.

Today (1^st April) there will be a lot of happy chickens, ducks and geese (and some very relieved owners) as the poultry lockdown, caused by an outbreak of avian flu before Christmas, was lifted last night after 12 weeks. It has caused worry and headaches for a lot of poultry keepers as, although chickens can be housed for a period without it being too detrimental to their health, as long as they have plenty of room and ‘toys’ to stop them getting bored and feather-pecking their fellow prisoners, water fowl, and geese in particular, really struggle in an indoor environment as their diet is mainly fresh grass and they need water to bathe in to keep their feathers in good condition. My remaining two old ladies seemed quite happy to be housed in the large barn with plenty of straw and hay to play in and only looked wistfully out of the gate when the sun shone!

Joy and Ginger enjoying their freedom!

The warmer weather has also brought out the over-wintering butterflies and some truly huge bumble bees, which have been buzzing around my two rosemary bushes that I have in pots outside my front door. One of the plants is a cutting that I took from my friend’s plant down in Cornwall and is subtly different to my other one, which I bought in a garden centre, in that it has darker blue flowers in bigger clusters, and the bees love it! I sat outside the other afternoon, quietly reading, when a Peacock butterfly landed on my shoulder. It was obviously one that had overwintered successfully somewhere, as it was much smaller than the new season ones will be, and looked distinctly tatty around the edges, but we had a nice little chat before she flew off to find some nectar.

Cornish Rosemary

I am still awaiting, with bated breath, the return of our swallows as I understand that they have been spotted in other parts of Somerset. We only had one pair nest here last year, but they did successfully raise three broods – it would be wonderful if some of them made it back this year and re-colonised the garage nest sites. Unfortunately, we still seem to have a large population of Jackdaws, and that will put them off nesting anywhere that is accessible to these corvids, who predate the young and eggs. Much as I love wildlife, I wish that something predated Jackdaws!

The long border

When I arrived at my new clients on Monday it was to be greeted by two large, finished borders! They had managed to get a huge amount of cardboard from somewhere and then Tom had got the bit between his teeth and carried on constructing the beds, in between his farming chores! I must say that I was incredibly relieved as the thought of wheelbarrowing all of that muck and then all of the topsoil was very daunting. I spent the morning transplanting plants from a now-redundant border to the new border and planting some shrubs that had been in pots. There is still a lot of space to fill in the longer border and I haven’t even started on the shorter one yet.

The short(er) border

My Tuesday clients wanted me to transplant their strawberry bed as the existing one will be covered by a new greenhouse that arrives in a few weeks’ time. This year they have decided to switch to raised beds for vegetable growing, as grass kept encroaching on the beds last year – it’s amazing how much more organised the garden looks already. I was allocated one end of a new raised bed (constructed, I am pleased to say, using the ‘no dig’ method) and managed to transfer about two thirds of the plants – the rest we may well plant up in pots next week. I also continued to wage war on a honeysuckle that has become a bit of a thug, smothering two bushes and rooting itself all over the place. Next week I have been told that I can have a bonfire (albeit in an incinerator)!!

Wednesday’s client wanted me to carry on re-structuring her herbaceous border. I started last year and cut back a rampant climbing rose, moved a few things and cut back some other overgrown shrubs. Last time I went I moved most of the shrub roses, leaving some towards the back of the border, and replanting them in a new location where they will have two chances! This week I trimmed an annoying bit of the Choisya that I attacked last year and then cut off some overhanging branches on the two rather elderly Weigelas. Having done that I dug up and split a huge clump of day lilies that was too far forward and another perennial that grows to about six feet high and was in the middle of the border. This has now freed up a swathe in the middle of the border where we can plant some new and colourful perennials. I will shortly have to don my wellies (or waders if it rains again) and get into the stream to plant up the pots anchored in the gabions that were built last year – it’s all very exciting!  Whilst drinking my coffee I walked around the pond, looking for signs of frogspawn, but it was only later when I took a closer look that I spotted tadpoles swimming about already, even though there are still amorous frogs swimming about, too. I also saw some newts but have no idea what sort they are. Last year, when I first started gardening there, it must have been later in the season and I kept coming across tiny frogs everywhere, so I must watch out for them later.

Bookings are also trickling in for farm sits later in the year when, hopefully, people are allowed to go on holiday again and I even have a provisional booking for April 2022!

March 2021

Pussy Willow

 Well, another month has slipped away and we are officially in Springtime!

I am sure you are all as pleased as I am that the tricky cupboard has finally been finished to my exacting standards!

The finished cupboard!

Originally, I had thought to leave Cheltenham in mid-February but Mum had a minor fall, so I decided to stay for a little longer, as she had to go to and fro to the doctor’s surgery to have a small wound on her arm dressed, which would have been difficult and tiring if she had had to rely on taxis. Initially, the wound did not seem to want to heal so I bought some medical-grade Manuka honey and asked the nurse to apply this before putting on the dressing. We were all absolutely amazed at the results – after two applications four days apart, the wound had started to heal, so much so that a dressing was no longer required! I think I will be adding some of this honey to my First Aid kit in future!

Staying for another couple of weeks enabled Mum and me to take advantage of an improvement in the weather to visit North Cerney Gardens, a few miles from Cheltenham on the way to Cirencester. The gardens are glorious a little later in the year but in February they have a Snowdrop Trail and a lovely display of Hellebores. We had a great morning and enjoyed al fresco tea and cake outside the self-serve cafe in the Bothy, whilst people watching and basking in the warm sunshine.

Mum at North Cerney Gardens

One of the things that contributed to the general 'down' tone of my last blog was the sale of my cottage in Draycott. It had been on and off the market for over a year and, once my tenant moved out in May 2020, I spent a lot of time redecorating it. Once back on the market in mid-July, I had a few viewings and then, finally, at the end of August, I received a good offer, which I accepted. There then followed six months of agonising waiting while my buyer’s solicitor responded slowly to everything and then started raising more and more spurious queries, most of which had already been answered (at least twice in some cases). I began to despair that the situation would ever resolve itself but, on 3^rd March, I finally exchanged contracts and completed on the same day! Phew! The relief of finally stepping away from the cottage, which I had come to refer to as ‘Millstone Cottage’, was immense. This now frees me up to find a new home of my own after 11 years of living in other people’s spaces, first as a WWOOFer for five years, and then as a tenant for the last six. To say I am excited at the prospect is an understatement!

I arrived back in Somerset on 1^st March as I had a dental appointment on 2^nd March to repair the damage that a whole year without an appointment had wrought. Luckily, it was all put right painlessly, and my dentist is such a lovely chap that I don’t mind going to see him.

I decided to give myself the week off to catch up with paperwork relating to the sale of the cottage but started back at various gardening clients the following week. After approximately 3 months of complete inactivity, my muscles objected strongly to this sudden assault. This last week has been worse, if anything, as each client required some digging work!

The first client, on Monday,  was completely new to me and she wants two new herbaceous borders created from what was once part of a field on their farm. My first job was to roughly measure the site and make a sketch – they had already marked out the shape of the bed with rope. I then set to and dug a small trench, following the rope outline, to mark it out so that we could remove the rope and sticks – this took me nearly 3 hours! The larger of the two beds is some 68 feet long and twelve feet wide at its two curved areas. The smaller bed is a mere 40 or so feet long, with a couple of 8 foot deep curves. I have decided to create them using the ‘no dig’ approach, which involves laying cardboard over the entire area, covering it with well-rotted manure (of which they have plenty as they are beef farmers) and then a layer of topsoil. This is a huge task for a 60-something woman who is not yet ‘gardening fit’! One day I will learn to just say ‘No!’.

Part of the new border-to-be

On Tuesday I went to another client who wanted me to dig out an invasive perennial from her herbaceous border. Unfortunately, it had long, bulbous roots and was tangled up with an invasive decorative grass and the almost equally invasive knapweed! I had just about managed to clear the area after three hours of digging, first with a fork to loosen the soil and then with a spade to chop it all up into manageable bits.

On Wednesday I paid my first visit of the year to another client where we had decided, back in the autumn, that the majority of the shrub roses in her herbaceous border, were in the wrong place and needed digging out! Again, it was a battle waged over several hours as the roots go down for what seems like miles and they also throw out runners in all directions! Aagh!

I gave myself Thursday off to recover, and went into Wells to have a Pasty-on-a-Bench with Jeni in her lunch hour. It's lovely to be able to do this again.

On Friday I went back to the new client, armed with a car load of cardboard that I had begged from several sources – it didn’t even cover half of the long border! I then had to start barrowing manure from the JCB bucket to the bed to cover the cardboard before it blew away. After three hours I left the farmer to do a bit more sh*t shovelling and came home.

Laying down the cardboard

The extent of the first car load of cardboard

My 'favourite' occupation!

It’s funny – I thought I was supposed to be retired now!

In other news: I have been out to the lake a couple of times since I came home to see what is stirring in the world of Nature, but it has all been pretty quiet, so far. The primroses by the lake are looking particularly lovely and I expect that buds will be breaking soon, so we have come full circle together, since I restarted these more frequent blogs this time last year. I shall continue to walk and record the changing seasons and also report on my gardening and house-buying efforts!

Some of the beautiful primroses by the lake