Swallows in the Garden

Way back in Spring we found some swallow nests being built on the side of the house.  We left them to it and they left us to it also so there was no need to go out and stare too much.  We soon heard the noise of little swallows and were thankful that the weather was warm-not thinking too much of it.

Then one morning we came out of the house to find that the nest had fallen.  We could only find two birds, both of which were alive, but they were quite little.  There still seemed to be lots of adult birds flying around overhead, but the little ones were firmly planted on the ground.  So we were very worried for them.

I phoned the SSPCA who told us to put them in a box and take them inside as they couldn't fly and feed.  We were told to put a little bit of water in with them and we made the box comfortable.  A man from the SSPCA came out quickly and took the birds away and told us that there were many little birds that had fallen during the hot weather. 

He told us that our little ones had a good chance of surviving as they were so very close to flying away themselves.  The other day he looked in whilst we were at home and said that all of the little birds he had collected that day survived.  TH is now planning a fishing trip with him and the rest as they say is history!

Little Friends

The sun is extraordinarily sunny. The breeze is deliciously warm and sweet and I am so looking forward to the weekend. We’ve had seven weeks of sunshine and it’s just so wonderful to wake up to a clear blue sky. The garden has never been so used and I have been spending plenty of time laying on the grass reading my books.

The Husband loves the bigger garden for all of the ‘man jobs’ he can do out there and is in the process of making a garden bench from an old bed. Daisy Dog has also been spending her time luxuriously propped on an old duvet that we’ve dragged onto the patio where the sun spends most of the day. She intermittently wonders back into the house to cool off, but it’s so sweet to see another little soul doing what I wish I could do.

On a wee bit of a sadder note we are having our friends little girl to stay for the weekend as her parents are separating and need to get on with some of the stuff that just needs to get done. It is very lovely that we can take care of her for a little while or give her some TLC when she is down, but we know that there is an awful lot that must be going on in her head. We know that we can’t make the world a better place all at once, but we can make the little part of the world we inhabit better by trying to make lots of tiny little changes.

So, although I can’t give her what she wants the most, I can give her a bit of a break from thinking about what’s been pulling her down.

Heavenly Gardens

We're not planting any flowers as we are maybe moving and certainly saving money...

But a girl can dream of a pretty garden..

With flowers and pretty fences...

Sigh....

Dreams for the Garden

Can't wait to get into the garden, what with saving for a move I now have to put all garden related energy into a veg patch instead of spending time on flowers I will have to leave behind...just dreaming of my ideal garden!

Looking Forward

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

A little of what you need

Saturday was one of those perfect days.  Not because it is actually perfect, but because you feel it is perfect deep, deep down inside.  It was one of those days that the sun was shining, we actually got out of the house and everything seemed to be going well-I needed a day like that.  You couldn’t ever put your finger on it, you knew that it wasn’t just because there was a farmers market in town.  I knew I didn’t feel that way because I got to go on a big walk with Daisy Dog. It wasn’t just because we made a fuss and had a yummy tea.  It wasn’t just down to the fact we added to the wood pile.  It was exactly what we needed, and that alone had the power to heal.

I hope you had a great weekend, we're in the middle of the week now, not long to go until the next one!

The Snow Outside

What an exciting couple of days of snow.  It started here on Sunday and didn’t stop in our neck of the woods until yesterday…there has been no snow since so I think it is just going away slowly now.  There are patches of grass in the garden, mostly around the shrubs and trees, but even more exciting than that is the fact that I can see little shoots of plants coming up!  This house was in an awful state when we moved here and the garden was so neglected in general that I didn’t believe I’d have any pleasant surprises.  How wrong can I be?  It’s wonderful and that bout of snow didn’t put me off my spring time prep!

Spring Time

Exciting plans ahead...

Garden Jobs

There is something about being able to stretch and go outside after such a very long time inside that really does quite a magical thing to you. I have been experiencing this magic recently as we are now enjoying a short visit to the garden shortly after waking up. We take our tea and coffee and watch Daisy Dog potter about, investigating the same tree, and barking at the trees when the wind blows through them.


I have been making preliminary plans for the garden which right now is a patch of grass, moss and weeds. There is no bare soil and it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting any pleasant surprises popping through to greet us. I have plans, but it looks like a lot of what I want to do will be an Autumn job-remind me to save my holidays from work for then!

We have an area of the garden which seems to be in perpetual shade as it is in the middle of the house and wood shed/garage, if there were no windows facing it I think I would do the easiest thing and put some gravel over it and fill the area with boxes for wood. It is, however, right in front of the kitchen window, and although from there we get a pretty view if standing at an angle, I can’t stand the idea of making it so dark and boring. I am going to be trying to find the best plants for such a dark, dampish area so that I can brighten up one small corner at a time.

Until then I think we will spend some of the coming weekends at garden centres reading up on the plants they display trying to figure out what can be done now to brighten the place up. We will be busy enough quite soon chopping down three trees which cast a giant shadow and seem to be precariously close to the house and garage. The Husband is also in the midst of putting a fence up so that Daisy wont have to be supervised on her jaunts in the garden, with so many squirrels about I worry that she will dash after them.

It seems like everything is coming together nicely and I’m sure it wont be too long before it all falls into place and we’ll be sipping strawberry daiquiris in the warm sun!

Snowy Weekends and Kitchen Plans

The radio this morning told me that more snow was coming, well actually, that “blizzards are to batter the North East.” We were also told to phone in when we saw the first flakes, and were reminded that the other end of the country has a red warning. I wanted to reply that yes snow can be disruptive, it can be dangerous, and it can be a pest, but we are not children that need to be told to wear our mittens, and not go out at play time. Surely this is not the way it has always been? Surely people actually kept calm and carried on instead of screeching it at the top of their voices from their car as they over take you on a bend in a snow storm? “Oh dear, the roads are bad, I must rush home as fast as I can to be safe!!”
This weekend I intend to be inside, safe and warm. I will toast crumpets and keep toasty. I will read specific chapters of books that contain any reference to snow. I have already started to re-read The Wind in the Willows, one of my favourite books, even if it is aimed at little ones.


TH is making a loaf and we will gorge on soup and warm bread this weekend. I would love to get into the kitchen and start the baking I always promise myself I will make time for. I would like to pull all of the things I need to make marmalade together and use the kitchen I fell in love with when we first saw the property. The garden needs work, but it will be hidden in a whirl of flakes, and I don’t believe you can be cross with a warm tummy full of good things.

Bertie

“Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off and they are nearly always doing it.”

― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Now thats what i call busy

The long bright days that gleam and shimmer in the low sunshine has left us and we are surrounded by thick increasingly puncturing rainclouds. The baby blue sky is no more, but it is autumn now and we must expect as much.


I wish that I were preserving fruit, however I am doing no such thing. Nonetheless there are plans afoot and we must all learn to choose our battles. I am cultivating ideas if not the garden and making lists and lists for things to be done.

Autumn is the beginning. The beginning of school term, the beginning of a real change in the ground and the trees, it is the start of something new, and that is always exciting. Autumn is the start of the year for me. It is full of good things, of harvests and harvest festival, of spending more time contemplating inside, in the warmth. This is a time of nesting and resting.

The Husband and I may be moving in the New Year, however we are attempting to stay calm and not get carried away and let our hearts break if this wisp of an idea does not turn into something solid and stable.

So for now it is pottering, wondering and marching through the deep, thick mud which will keep me employed.  I love seeing what everyone is up to and can see out of their windows at this time of year.  I also love that even the bloggers that hardly blog-i.e. me, actually do find time in this climate to get the old computer machine chugging into action to see the old blog every now and again!

High Hopes

I think I have bemoaned my garden in previous posts. Once the reason we packed up and headed for the country, now it is a grind to see it in its current state.

It has been left too long and hasn’t had serious intervention since this time last year. We have been getting by, we have been coping, but it is one of those niggles that build and build. I am aiming to spend a very short amount of time over the coming weeks getting the worst dealt with and ensuring that we never end up in the situation again…..however I know that I will.

Oh well, I always say that Autumn is the start of my year, so why not try to stick to a resolution for once!

Old Friend Jack

Jack Frost will be visiting us up here in the North very soon. Each morning when I wake up it is very dark, and as I stumble through to the hallway to blast myself with bright, bright light I take a peek outside. The car is a little bit too shiny, the paths are a little bit too laminated. When I finally step outside I catch a wisp of my breath twirl through the air. If I have time-that is, if the chores of the previous night do not need to be done-I slip away for five minutes into the garden. I take my cup of tea and walk around. I lean down to pick at some weeds and pretty much stretch out the last bits of sloth I can. The Husband on the other hand is gently sleeping, Daisy Dog will by this time have moved into the warm space in bed I have just left.

Soon, when I step outside I may have to wear a scarf and wellies as my little slippers will get much too wet from the cold and leave patches of darkness all over our flooring.

Finding the Reading Corner

I have spent an awful lot of time recently reading cosily snuggled up burrowed into my bed. I’ve had a stinking cold which has built up steadily until it burst forth in a spate of coughing and sneezing, refusing to be held back any longer by lemsip. The cold has taken hold, and the only way to deal with it now is time.

I’ve got through a good many books that I have already read and love dearly. I have read for the first time a couple of books as well. None are highbrow; all are very easy and sentimental in prose. However I have to say that these are the best medicine. Not only the books in themselves, but the time taken to read them. The plans made to curl up to fit under a blanket. To push cushions all around me and settle down within them. The plans already made to make time, to put a slow roast in the oven, to light the candles and lamps, to take the phone off the hook…

I always seem to get a cold at this time of year, but I think a great many of us do seeing that we persevere with the light and summery clothes in a determined bid to make the most of any light or warmth. I have personally been pushed into the garden by seeing the mess left behind after gales that rip, tear and wreck anything in their path. The dying blooms hang dull and limp. The once beautiful harvest of cutting flowers swing from being dry and ready to pop their tiny seeds into the soil or damp and slimy deeply in need of being cut down and dug in.

None of the garden is fully under control, but that is for another post. There is time for that later, and in any case it simply must be done at a later date. I can not do it now and that is something the garden will just have to understand.

Every so often I make myself a big pot of tea and plan to write on here. I get half way through describing a place I have been or a book I have read and I stop only to delete the paragraph, get up and start washing the dishes.

I do however spend time reading other blogs, which say, do and make many things I wish I could.

The Husband and I recently returned from a lovely two week holiday in Cyprus, and I guess very much like a New Year makes us say we will act differently, and I feel a break does the same.

This leads me to the point of why I wish to write on here now, and not get up half way through. I wish to say that I haven’t fulfilled many of my New Years Resolutions, and getting into my favourite season is going to spur me on to do what I actually want to do with my own free time.

My New Seasons resolutions are to use up the flexi days that I am entitled to through work. I am very lucky to be given an opportunity which not a great many have, so I will use it…and do you know that in my head they are already spent? I plan to potter, and potter a great deal. I plan to use up weekday holidays moving plant pots from one room to the other. I plan to use them by completing a great book in a day. I plan to drink plenty of tea.

Another resolution would include spending more quality time with The Husband, who falls into a category marked ‘other’ at present. We sit together when there is not another task to do, we walk together when there are not other people wanting our time and we collapse together when we are tired from the activities of the day.

I look forward to bringing these resolutions into the Autumn, and I also look forward to actually blogging in the season too.

Spring has come!

“There's naught as nice as th' smell o' good clean earth, except th' smell o' fresh growin' things when th' rain falls on 'em.”

― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

January is here!

Oh January, I used to think you awful. You used to be plain and boring after the excitement of December, November had Bonfire Night, October is our anniversary and Halloween, and before that is the general excitement of Autumn. January used to just be exam time at University, or thawing snow.

This year is really quite different. Not only is there no snow, but the garden is completely untended to, and although it’s mild, oh my gosh is it windy-and the whole place looks a mess. This is not helped by the fact the fence is half blown over, the gate has been whipped off, and rubbish is strewn across the place from toppled over bins and recycling totes, and a busy, busy Autumn meant the place was never really tidied after Summer in the first place.

This means that on top of the normal things like sowing sweet peas (if you want to get lovely strong ones), I need to dig everything over. I would like to grow my own potatoes this year too, so will have to get a move on and start to chit some of the many varieties taking up vast corners of garden centres at this time of year.

January is actually quite exciting this year. My friend Holly who was involved in a terrible accident has an amazing outlook on life which has completely rubbed off on me. I feel like last year was a bit ‘Urgh’, I think lots of people have thought that. There seems to be a general consensus-certainly around the coffee table-that yes we did get through it, and yes we should learn whatever lessons it’s taught us, but it was a bit of a long hard slog.

I think we are still in comforting food mode, but a bit more ready for fresh things with bite too. Re-heated second helpings of Christmas and New Year dinner are long forgotten! We’re planning on going on holiday with my family this year and getting a villa in Cyprus for two weeks, so like last year I think I'm going to be having lots of Greek and Cypriot food as we’ll be booking our flights early and I tend to get in holiday mode early…very early! There is loads of gamey foods available, and we’re incredibly lucky that our local butcher has such a wide supply of really good food. Living by the sea means that we’ve got a massive choice in fish namely; John Dory, Mussels, Oysters, Scallops and Turbot. There are bundles of root vegetables about for filling up on, and the clementine’s are always there for a burst of colour.  I'm living by the BBC foodie website here which is full of really great ideas from a range of really great names.

Most of all I think its time to get like Paddington Bear and make some marmalade with Seville oranges!

I'm hoping to have a busy year, I'm planning to go out and do more, this means lazing about less, but with working one normal job means I spend less time travelling. I hope that I'm busy actually doing fun things, or at least a chore I need to do. I don’t want to fill my time with travelling, I don’t want to fill my time with nonsense I don’t want to do, and I don’t want to spend time with people that drain my energy. Those are pretty much my new year’s resolutions-but probably something that you should subscribe to in general-and something I should have had the sense to actually act upon long before now.

Lucky Birds

The Husband had woken up early because of some really tough tablets he's on, so when i crept through the house to find him i caught him in the kitchen making treats for the birds!  How cute...i can just imagine these strung up in a line...lets hope the bigger ones dont come along and steal them all!

x

Its all a bit different, isn't it?

Can you believe that it’s September already? Where did summer go? I know that I was looking forward to it...

...I know that I was planning some activities and I do remember getting excited about the caravan. I know that work was hard before summer…

...I know that I knew things would have to change for me to be happy, and then summer passed.

Things are slowly in the process of changing. I felt so down about work before our holiday, but seeing my family and having time to think and remember what its like not to be worried or sad about work got me thinking no amount of money could be worth this.

So with renewed vigour I came back and decided to set change in motion.  This summer was a wash-out up this way. We apparently had summer in April, May and early June…then the heavens well and truly opened.

I feel so bad when I think of all the farmers, we’ve been hearing the tractors and trucks go up and down the roads all day and night whenever we’ve been clear of rain for a couple of days. I do hope things have worked out all right for them.

Autumnal sunlight wakes us when its not raining, and its quite nice to take the morning cup of tea out into the garden first thing and wake up in the cold morning, clear and bright, casting the most beautiful shadows over our messy borders.

I look forward to the changes happening, personally and with the seasons. I just keep reminding myself its character building…its character building…