Nutty Gnome

January Blues.....and pinks and yellows!

2012-01-16T15:56:00.009Z

This has been a very weird winter weatherwise so far - way too warm for starters, with temperatures into double figures.....not a thing I ever thought I'd hear myself wingeing about really, whereas at this time last year we were up to our knees in snow - literally!

These past 2 days have been the first cold, frosty days that we've had - and a bit of a shock to the system they've turned out to be too! But as a consequence of the warm, wet weather, an awful lot of flowers and blossom have gotten very confused and popped out early.

No snow (yet!) this year, but here are a few of the plants in bloom in my garden right now!

This azalea has been in flower since early November.

This ornamental cherry came into flower on Christmas Day - a whole 6 weeks early!

It's not quite as fullsome as usual, but still very pretty.

The Hellebores are about a fortnight early.

This little fellow shouldn't be out at all yet!

The heathers normally flower in mid-February.

This Hellebore doesn't usually put in an appearance until early February.

These usually pop out in March and last for months!

I don't know when this Willow 'Kilmarnoch' should go into bud as it was only planted in July (it was a Silver Wedding Anniversary present), but I wouldn't have thought it should be coming out now, should it?!

I've still got kale, spinach, chard, leeks, 2 sorts of cabbages, 2 types of broccolli and some sprouts going strong - and some self-set peas are about 2 inches high over by the greenhouse! The sharpe eyed amongst you may have spotted that I'm a mucky pup who failed to empty and clean the greenhouse in Autumn! :(

All our vegetables for Christmas dinner for 12 came out of our garden - and it made me ridiculously happy to do that!

The Garrya is glorious this year with the longest tasssles it's ever had but, again, somewhat earlier than usual.

And a new planting that hasn't yet bloomed (or shone) is my Christmas present from Himself, new lights for the drive! Ten years of complaining about how dark and scary our drive is at night have finally paid off. This pair of lights are about 50 yards from the road, about halfway up, and a single light is going in nearer the house....and Himself has promised to get them working before Easter! Naturally, being Himself, he's not doing it the easy way. He's got some complicated plan to tunnel under the drive rather than just dig a channel in the tarmac like everyone else would! :P
Frankly I don't mind HOW he gets the electrickery to the lights as long as he gets them working!!!

What's happening in your garden?

Who stole November?!

2011-12-23T14:34:00.005Z

Now we all know that the Grinch stole Christmas, but I want to know who stole November? I had PLANS for November!
I was going to do posts on the reconvening of The Brown Earth Society, Autumnal vegetables, work in the garden, developments in the Japanese garden, the heron that nicked my fish, the renovations in the house and - most importantly, the completion of the Tea House at last. But then some heartless swine stole November when I wasn't looking and here we are at Christmas already and none of the above have got done!

So instead, all that remains is for me to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

Thank you all for reading my posts, leaving comments, making me laugh and becoming my friends ..... I'll be back in 2012 (with an extra month in it when I've found the stray November) with the as yet unwritten posts - hopefully! :)

Book Review - Sarah Raven's Wild Flowers

2011-10-19T10:56:00.016+01:00

I recently recieved an email from a Senior Marketing Exec at Bloomsbury Books who had been rootling around on my blog (!) and "thought that you might want to hear about a book that we are publishing in October – Sarah Raven’s Wild Flowers." She also wondered if I'd be interested in "seeing a sample of the book, with a view to perhaps mentioning it on your blog, as a fresh angle for your readers? "

Well, not being one to miss out on doing something a bit different for you lot for a change (aren't I so good to you, eh?!), emails were swapped and it was agreed that I would review the book from the information on the sample providing that "I have the freedom to give a clear, open and totally honest review of the book as I see it?! ". So here it is.....

I duely awaited the arrival of said sample with excited anticipation whilst not being fully sure what a sample would consist of ..... would it be a whole chapter? just a few pages stapled together? a hefty wodge of the book perhaps?! I knew it wouldn't be the whole thing because: A) I was getting a sample! and: B) the book had been described to me as 'a whopper', but even so I have to confess that I was just a wee bit disappointed to recieve this:

An A2 sheet concertinaed down to A6 size.

When I opened it out there was a very pretty poster on the back, photographed by Jonathan Buckley - who took all the photos for the book. The 9 photos on the sampler are glorious and I have no reason to doubt that the others in the book will be equally as good. The photos are clear, sharply focused yet with wonderful slightly hazy backgrounds and depths of fields or, alternatively, the soft background greens of spring grass:

I had initially felt a bit let down by the size of the sampler, but I felt even more so when I looked at the information side of the sheet - as it only contained 4 examples of wild flowers and their descriptions....not much of a sample from a book of 500 wild flowers that is described as a 'lavish book' , 'a botanical marvel' and something that will be 'the most covetable flower book on the market'!!!

Anyway, once I'd got over being miffed at having to review the book from such a tiny sample (about 3 days later 'cos I can be a stroppy baggage at times!) and sat down to read it properly, I did quite enjoy what I read.

According to the (limited) information on the sampler, there are landscape photos throughout the book and a portrait of each plant to accompany each species description.

Two of the 4 extracts are shown below and you can click on them to enlarge them for reading:

I knew nothing about the Fly Orchid, except that I thought I vaguely recognised it from early summer walks out in Derbyshire, so this description of what it looks like and why, combined with where I might find it was useful and I felt I'd be far more able to spot Fly Orchids and to astound my companions with my depth of knowledge whilst on my wanderings in future!

I loved this photo but there was no description to go with it as the writing alongside the photo was too busy telling me what a perfect gift the book would make and how Sarah Raven has travelled the length and breadth of the British Isles to find these 500 "most breathtaking beautiful wild flowers".

Apparently she will be also presenting a 3-part BBC2 series about biodiversity and British wild flowers this Autumn - what a coincidence!

Mild sarcasm at marketing aside, the photos in the book are absolutely stunning, the species description write-ups are informative, clear and well laid out. Each one begins with a brief overview, then covers plant type, flowering period, height, description (very useful), companion species, distribution and habitat.

I did enjoy reading these 4 species descriptions as I only knew one of the four plants shown, although I didn't find them quite as captivating as the sampler blurb suggested I would, and I found the initial paragraph about the Wood Anemone a little bit twee as I don't go in for anthropomorphism in plants, but that's just me! I also found that as I didn't recognise the names of some of the companion species mentioned, I'd have to be flicking to and fro through the book to find the companions if I was using it in real life (as it were!)

But the book cover is pretty - even if it is somewhat predictably of bluebells:

....yet I was left feeling that as they had managed quite easily to get 2 photos and 2 species descriptions onto one A4 sized section of the sampler when the actual book itself is a nominal A4 size with a photo on one page and the species description on the facing page, then £50 for a large format hardbacked edition (yes...fifty quid!!!) and seventy five quid for a special slipcased edition was a hell of a lot to pay for some pretty pictures and a larger font that I could read without my glasses on!

I know it's meant to be a coffee table book and I know I adore wild flowers and would love to know more about them, but there is no way that I would cough up that amount of money for any book no matter how beautiful and informative it is! I didn't pay anywhere near that for my much loved and well used RHS 2 volume Garden Plant Encyclopaedia in a slipcase and that has vastly more than 500 plants in it!

Also Sarah's hefty tome is hardly a transportable little number, so you'd have to remember to either bring a bit of plant back with you (which I suspect is illegal for some plants anyway - not that I'd know without the book there though!) or to take your camera with you and then remember to take a photo of the plant and hope it came out clear and non-blurry enough to be able to identify the plant from...or is that just me and my photography skills?!

Having said all that though, if it ever comes out in a smaller, softbacked edition that would fit in the pocket of my rucksac so that I could have it to hand for when I spot the wild flowers when I'm out and about and, ideally, costs less than a tenner, then I'll be the first in the queue at WH Smiths but until then I'll just have to hope that our local library gets a couple of copies!!!

However, if money is burning a hole in your pocket or you've got some rich relative prepared to fork out the dosh for a cracking Christmas present that will indeed look very elegant on your coffee table (and may well have to stay there because it's too heavy to move), then this could be the book for you.

It was published on Monday, 17th October by Bloomsbury Books. The large format hardbacked edition is Wild Flowers, Sarah Raven

ISBN 978 1 4088 1394 2 480PP and is £50 ...or if you go onto Amazon it's down to £28.50 already..... looks like I'm not the only one that thinks it's too expensive then!

A quick Autumnal hotchpotch!

2011-10-13T15:49:00.008+01:00

It's a jolly good job that I've got that 'Slow Blogger' label on my sidebar or I'd be chucked out of here for my lack of posts of late! Anyway, here's a quick roundup of what's going on in the garden at the moment......

Kale, spinach and rainbow chard are going at full pelt at the moment ...but the salad behind them has bolted somewhat!

No idea what sort of squashes these are as the foxes or badgers broke and nicked the labels when they ate the sweetcorn :(

Yesterday's pick of the crop - and, yes, we have still got a few Autumn raspberries left, but that's the last of the flagelot beans.

The sedum is lovely this year.

A closer look.

One of the Acers in the Japanese garden is begining to turn. It'll be a stunning deep red in about 2 more weeks.

No-one told my new water lily (Nymphaea 'Denver') that it shouldn't be flowering at this time of year. I guess the recent very warm weather confused it!

There are lots of berries everywhere this year - is this a harbinger of another hard winter?

The next post will be interesting - I hope! It's going to be a book review on a new wild flowers book that comes out next month......! :D

That's Proper Foreign!

2011-09-07T14:06:00.013+01:00

......was the phrase heard as we gazed down from the plane over the vast expanse of scrub desert that is Morrocco. For the past few years we have got cold and wet holidaying in England and France - and France doesn't really count as 'abroad' because we know the language, we know the culture, we know the way it all works and we know how cold the rain can be! So it was decided that to celebrate our Silver Wedding anniversary, we would have a family holiday somewhere different; hot, dry and 'proper foreign' for a change .... and Marrakech was certainly all those things!
So make yourself a cup of mint tea (or 'Morroccan Whisky' as the locals call it!), sit yourself down and join me in a whirlwind tour of Marrakech.

The hot dry air that slapped us in our faces as we left the plane at 7 o'clock at night was just the first of many suprises:
The traffic wasn't heavy, but it was interesting in its make up.....

Cars can't get down the narrow streets and alleyways of the Medina - the old town within the walls, so a man with a handcart trundled our bags to our guest house.

Some of the children that we talked with every day on our way in and out from our riad

We stayed in the wonderful Riad HadikaMaria, an 8 roomed guest house 10 minutes walk from the main Jemma El Fna square (or 3 hours and, eventually, the hire of one small boy as a guide to get you back on your first day!)

The courtyard gardens were beautiful.

The plunge pool was a joy when the temperature topped 40 degrees!

Our room...but, sadly, I never got serenaded by anyone under my balcony!

The rooftop terrace - the view was prettier at night as you couldn't see all the breezeblocks and satellite dishes!

The souk.

A tangle of narrow alleyways where you can buy anything and everything - for a price!

It's easy to get to get lost at first, but it's also easy to get the hang of the layout of the alleys once you dive in and get on with it. As most people are a bit wussy and tend to lurk round the main street, the further in you go, the quieter it gets and the chances of haggling down to a cheaper price are greater. A wonderful place!

We found possibly the world's largest padlock

Tassles - they just love tassles!I've never seen so many tassles, they were everywhere!

"Looking is free today!"

The best compliment that the shop keepers can give you is "You like Berber - strong! Bargain hard!"

Meet Nutty Gnome, Berber woman!

First-Born and Last-Born are also natural born Berber women! :D

"You want nice lamp? I sell you nice lamp - democratic price"?!

Never did find out what a democratic price was.

Last-Born the jewellery maker checking out the quality of the beads in her bead heaven.

*whispers* "You want spices? I sell you spices - I take you to my/my brother's/my sister's spice shop....best price...come, come!"

First-Born caught cumin-sniffing!

or you can go to the Dyers Market, a specific area within the souk, to see the yarn and fabrics being dyed - in vast vats of boiling water over roaring fires. How the men coped with the temperatures is beyond me!

....where we bought huge scarves at ridiculously cheap prices - mine was one of the blue ones you can see hanging up...and he showed us how to make it into a toureg turban - not quite sure I could do it again now though!

or check out the fresh produce.....

a bit like this kitten did!

Inside or outside everyone has something to sell

A little further away from the main square and souk the veg stalls were a bit more basic

-sometimes!

Nightime in the Jemma El Fna.

A vast almost empty square during the day, a busy, bustling, endlessly entertaining source of food and snake charmers at night.

All the stalls are the same price and serve pretty much the same food - tagines, couscous, kebabs, salads, chips(!), almost too much to choose from. You sit on benches at tressle tables with your 'Morrocan serviettes' (squares of paper!) and order your food from the multilingual staff. It's quick, it's cheap, it's generally hot from being cooked immediately and it's good!

It's worth running the gauntlet of the stalls just to hear the comments they come out with to entice you to their particular stall - hillarious!

"Come, come - cheaper than Tesco"," my stall not just any food...my stall M&S food", "lovely jubbly food", "Jamie Oliver eat here", "better than Asda price", " 'ave a butchers at what we got!", "bluuuuddy luuurvley food!" - how could we resist?

I'm guessing they watch British TV for all the food-related adverts then?!

So there you go. A brief tour of the heart of Marrakech - and I haven't even started on the mosaics, the carvings, the Majorelle Gardens, the Ozoud Cascades........! :)

Himself gets expansionist ideas!

2011-08-05T11:13:00.012+01:00

Don't get me wrong here - I'm not talking about annexing France or invading Wales, just something a bit more, well, modest really!

Let me take you back to late spring of last year........!

As we stood on the planks on the as-yet-to-be-completed veranda, a strange look came over Himself's face. He paused, then sucked in through his teeth in a 'there's a bit of problem' sort of way before sighing and saying (in a very Eyore sort of voice) "Pond's not big enough".
I coughed and spluttered for a bit before conceding that, actually, he was right! Now that the tea house was up and the extent to which the veranda covered part of the pond was fully obvious, the pond was diminished and out of proportion.

I sighed. I knew what this meant ......I would have to extend the pond!

However, I had a cunning plan. I called on my friend Sarah, who has the strength and endurance of an Amazonian woman! A few weeks later Sarah came over for the day and we dug. I had already cleared the beach, stones and plants from in and around the edge of the pond and Himself and I had freed up the liner and underlay fleece, folded it back over a plank and weighed it down with the stones I'd removed.

We filled innumerable trugs, emptying them into the nearby barrow which Sarah then hauled up the garden to dump on a tarp for use later on.

It was hot, heavy work as it was all sandstone. The topsoil is only about 12-18 inches deep in this part of the garden - yeah, I know ...which fool would want to put a pond where the bedrock is so close to the surface? Same fool that would want to put a pond under trees!!!

That'd be me then!

Pond extension hole finished, work then ground to a halt on that project as other things in the garden took priority.

Ten months later, with a party deadline looming, we realised that we couldn't put it off any longer just because we weren't quite sure how to do it. So, taking a deep breath........
we built a temporary pond on the lawn using our largest groundsheet, some random planks and old bricks. We used the pond pump to take the water out of the top pond and into the temporary pond.

Taking enough water out to get the level to well below the original shelf level so that we could excavate under the liner where the old and new parts would join up.

We cleared out all the zillions of leaves and bucketloads of gunk that had accumulated in the hole whilst we'd ignored it and Himself barrowed back down the garden some of the sandstone that Sarah had barrowed up last year.

We then put it all through a griddle to separate out sand and stones - the stones were then used to make foundations in a new path I was building elsewhere (all will be revealed on that little task later!)

and the sand was used to line the hole, the new shelf and the bit under the liner where the two parts would meet.

Whilst Himself was grovelling about under the liner, I took the opportunity to sort out the 'rockage' in front of the waterfall as I'd never been totally satisfied with it. I cleared everything out except for the rocks that we'd hoisted into place - I'm not daft, I wasn't even going to think about moving them!

I cleaned the base, put new fleece underlay in place and had a happy time arranging new rocks until I was satisfied with how they looked. The frog who lives behind the left-hand big rock kept popping up to glower at me to try and get his water back, but we weren't to be rushed on this.

Somewhere along the line it was decided that the bottom of the pond ought to be de-gunked ....a luuurvely job!

and I had to be very careful not to lean too far over !

The bit that had put us off doing the extension was the joining of the new liner to the existing liner. In the end, it was just like doing a giant 15ft long bicycle tyre puncture repair! I haven't got any photos of the process as we were more concerned about getting it right than getting it photographed! We had to clean, de-grease and scour the old liner, apply glue to the edges of both liners, wait for it to go tacky then stick a special sealant strip one one side, using a decorators' roller to press it down and get any air bubbles out, whilst making sure that there were no kinks, twists or creases in the liner or sealant strip - easier said than done when the liner isn't a straight edge and you're pressing down on sand!

Himself had, naturally, worked out how to get round this. He used chalk to mark where to glue the liner and created a solid base underneath where we were working by using a strip of hardboard propped up on wood - with stakes driven into the base of the extension to make sure it was secure (never knowingly overcomplicated or over engineered!) to rest the liner edges on and give us something solid to work against. He's good!

We then had to position the 2nd edge on top of the sealant strip, hold it in place, peel off the special backing paper and roller the 2nd liner onto the 1st liner all at the same time ...a tricky business!

It all then had to be left overnight to go off - but covered by a tarp in case of rain as we weren't allowed to let it get wet at this point.

The following day was crunch time. We laid out the fleece underlay then carefully unfurled the joined liner and eased it out into position - you can see the fold where the two liners join, running between the 2 large rocks of the original pond. Then we pumped the water back into the pond and waited with baited breath to see if it leaked.

Of course it didn't leak - Himself was in charge!

A couple of weekends later, when the water hadn't gone down at all, Himself declared that he was satisfied with the seal and started making the pond edging. He excavated enough sand and soil away to be able to put wooden strips in to fold the liner over and give a good, solid edge for me to put rocks and stuff on - naturally the rough wood had strips of fleece on top so that the liner wouldn't get ripped.

He built a measuring 'thing' to ensure that the edge was level all the way round.

Then he tucked the liner into place and backfilled with sand and soil.

Me? I was busy on the inside of the tea house - but I was happy with my waterfall rockage!

It's ended up a bit of a long post, so I'll leave the arty-farty finishing off stuff we did until next time!

The Big Bash

2011-07-22T17:44:00.031+01:00

For those of you who have been wondering where I'd disappeared off to for the last couple of months, I've been a bit busy!

I've NO idea why it keeps leaving a big blank space here - if anyone has any advice on blogger's idiosyncrasies, please let me know! :)

A couple of years ago my beloved(?!) daughters realised that their 18th and 21st birthdays would happen 9 days apart in the same year ....not necessarily good planning on our part although it was deemed to be an excellent idea for a joint party! :P They then worked out that our Silver Wedding anniversary (25 years) and my dad's 80th birthday would also happen in the same year therefore we just HAD to have a HUGE party, at home, in a marquee, self-catered, with live music, space for camping and all our friends here to share in such a momentous occasion. A few weeks before the Bash we also realised that my wonderful Parents-in-Law would have their Golden Wedding anniversary 3 days before the party and, although they were playing it down, we counted them in too!
Great idea two years ago! Quite a good idea last year. Still a moderately good idea as we hit this New Year, but hit my traditional pre-party 'whose stupid idea was this and why on earth did I agree to it?' panic in March!

What did I do? Did I succumb to the desire to get caterers in? Think that an iPod and some manky speakers would be the perfect music option? Pay a small fortune for a fully erected, bedecked and ballooned marquee? Nope ........ I made lists - lots and lots of lists!!! Then I put my head down and got on with it.

Lists are vastly under-rated things. You can do lists for just about anything. They keep you organised and focused AND you can have the thrill of 'crossing things off' when you've done them ....and, if you're like me, when no-one's looking you can quietly add new things on as you do them - just so that you can cross them off again 2 minutes later safe in the knowledge that that job has been done! I LOVE lists!

There were various comments that I should have a list of my lists because they included:

guest list

food to make

food to buy

food for others to make (quite a small list that one, but I owe a HUGE debt of gratitude to the other cooks!)

jobs to do in the house

jobs to do in the garden -general

jobs to do in the Japanese garden

jobs in the vegetable garden

things to buy

things to borrow or scrounge

The combined guest list came to around 130 people aged from 8 to 80 - hence the reason it became known as 'The Big Bash'! Okay, I thought - I can cater for that many for one night ..... then various friends and family (9 of them) said that they'd be coming on Friday to help and First-Born announced that all her university friends would be coming for the whole weekend (another 10!)

I turned into Mission Control. I was the Flight Director and CapCom combined AND I had the lists! I called in a few favours. I persuaded bored teenagers to do some gardening for me. I borrowed tents, chairs, serving dishes and camping fridges from friends. I scrounged crockery, cutlery and mugs from school and had a free glass loan from the local supermarket (Sainsbury's, if you're interested!) and I cooked ....from May to July, I cooked. I can't help it. I'm from Yorkshire. It's innate. People are coming - we cook! I could feed an army for a month just from the normal contents of my pantry and freezer, but for that many - mass catering. Yo! Bring it on! Good job I've got big freezers!

I also borrowed a couple of mess tents, 10 tables and a load of benches from the local Girl Guides - and the weather turned just as we got them home. It threw it down for 24 hours.

The day we put them up was glorious.....

but the forecast for the weekend was dire - cold wet and windy. NOT what you want for an outdoor party in July!

So Friday saw Himself, the Wonderful Pete, Ower Dave and Last-Born's boyfriend - the Drummer Boy, building a structure that would have been worthy of Scrapheap Challenge! (Why did they stop making that series? It was great and I developed a bit of a thing for Dick Strawbridge! Oooops - did I just admit that out loud?!!!)

Using only what we had around the house and garden, they produced two 10 foot high
frames (I thought they were building gallows when I looked out of the window!), which they then covered in a range of awnings and tarpaulins fastened down with rope and tent pegs, but held together with clothes pegs! It worked.

The finished structure covered all the area between the 2 two mess tents and stretched across to the potting shed (the bar) and the black shed (the food 'hall') to keep us warm and dry.

It bucketed it down overnight and only finally stopped raining about 2.00pm on Saturday, but it was still a slightly chilly evening, so the 'extension' was worth all their work ...thanks chaps! :)
Friday also saw us erecting 'tent city' ...or 'Chesterbury' as it became known! There were 12 tents up there in the end - the joy of a big garden!

Friday night's tea for 25 in the tent - moussakka, followed by gooseberry crumble and ice cream!

Saturday night finally arrived - and so did the guests.
Ower Dave gave a bit of a speech

and Himself brought in the cake (Thanks Linden, you did a fantastic job). The girls had a hat each, we had a bouquet of white roses, dad (a retired painter and decorator) had a painter with all the tools of his trade and Himself's parents had gardening related things. It was beautifully done and made me quite teary-eyed!

After the speeches and cake, as the singers got ready to do their bit, (they're the couple behind us in the next photo) we were taken completely by suprise when our best friend - J went totally off-list and presented us with a combined present from many of our friends. They'd all clubbed together to give us a wopping cheque to buy a carpet or something of our choice when we go to Marrakech in a few weeks ....I cried!

A huge thank you to all of you ...we are so lucky to have such great friends :)

Last-Born sang us a beautiful song before handing back to the singers again.

There were people everywhere - in the gazebo.....

up in the tea house....

but mainly dancing to Rachel and Mark, the singers, in the tent. They should have done 3x 1/2 hour slots, but they were having such a good time that they just carried on singing most of the night ....nothing to do with the food or wine they had, honest! :D

They were fantastic and the range of music was perfect for dancing - not sure my grass will ever recover though! :P

Around midnight they turned it into a karaoke. Sadly, I have an appalling singing voice but when First-Born's friends called on me to join them in a song, I did my first-ever karaoke session ....safe in the knowledge that the lads were actually all worse singers than I was!!!!

We finally went to bed around 3.30am for about 4 hours before doing bacon butties for 40 for breakfast. We don't do things by halves here!

It was a wonderful party and an amazing weekend, surrounded by a huge bunch of fantastic people of all ages - not a party to be forgotten in a hurry .... nor one to be repeated at any point in the foreseeable future!

But did we rest afterwards? Not exactly!

First-Born graduated from university on Monday despite trouble with her tassle!

making a magnificent end to two months of hard work!

But if I mention hosting a party again any time soon ....just slap me!

PS. Normal service on tea house and garden related stuff will resume again shortly - once I've got my energy back! And please don't think I did it totally single handed....Himself's part in it all will become clear in the next couple of posts!

Love thy neighbour?

2011-05-30T12:40:00.007+01:00

As many of you may well be aware, we have an unusually large garden for one so close to a town centre. It also runs parallel to a road, with all the gardens backing onto ours, so consequently we have 14 neighbours. Most of them are great - Tony next door is a joy, but the odd ones can be erm.... shall we say, a tad trying at times! There's 'Mr.Grumpy' at the bottom of the drive, 'Mrs. They've-Built-Another-Bloody-Eyesore' by the tea house and 'Mrs. Whinging-Bag' ("your trees have dropped their pine needles in my pond again") up at the top! But the ones we never expected any hassle from were 'that nice couple with the young children....I think he's a policeman' about halfway up the garden.

When I got a phone call from the local Council 'Tree Man' saying he needed to discuss an issue about our trees with me, I assumed Mr.Grumpy had been on at him again to try to get the Tree Protection Orders (TPO) rescinded on the two trees on our boundary by his house, but no!

"What was it then?" I hear you ask - go on then, ask!
Turns out that he'd had an email from someone - he wasn't allowed to tell me who (but it wasn't exactly difficult to work it out!), asking if the oak tree in our back garden had a Tree Protection Order on it because if it hadn't then the email suggested that they wanted to appeal to have it chopped down. The reasons for them wanting this were unclear at this point as the tree is neither dangerous nor dead, so.......

PANIC!
Once I'd calmed down a bit and started breathing again, the very nice Tree Man offered to pop round, have a look at the tree and discuss the options with me. I snatched his hand off and he was there within 10 minutes - who says the Council can't move swiftly when they need to? ..... and it was a Friday afternoon!!!

Here's my beautiful oak tree, as seen from Last-Born's bedroom window. It's slightly lopsided because 'that nice couple...etc' had asked permission from us to 'trim back' an overhanging branch, but then had lopped it so badly that we'd had to get our Tree Surgeon to sort it out - by taking the whole branch right back to the bole :(

The Tree Man estimated that the oak is around 90-100 years old and, although they usually only put TPO's on trees in front gardens where they enhance the neighbourhood, he suggested putting a TPO on the oak tree to protect it. I jumped at the chance and by Tuesday of the following week, the paperwork had arrived with a 6 month temporary TPO for the oak tree.

Now we Brits just LOVE paperwork, but the Council excelled themselves this time! There were 14 (yes, 14) pages in the main document and 3 pages in the subsiduary document! The bits I liked best were:

TOWN AND COUNRTY PLANNING (TREES) REGULATIONS 1999, As amended by the Town and Country Planning (Trees) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2008. TREE PRESERVATION ORDER

Prohibited acts in relation to trees
4. Without prejudice to subsections (6) and (7) of section 198 (power to make tree preservation orders) or subsection (1) of section 200 (tree preservation orders: Forestry Comminssioners), and subject to article 5, no person shall -

a) cut down, top, lop, uproot, wilfully damage or wilfully destroy; or
b) cause or permit the cutting down, topping, lopping, uprooting, wilfull damage or wilfull destruction of,

any tree specified in Schedule 1 to this Order or compromised in a group of trees or in a woodland so specified, except with the consent of the authority and, where such consent is given subject to conditions, in accordance with those conditions.

I kid you not - this a word for word transcription. The other 13 pages list the exemptions, specifications, appeals system etc, etc, etc.

The photo below shows our garden (with the wobbly black outline - which kind of mirrors the wobbly boundary fencing!). It's the 1994 map showing the 13 trees in the front garden which were given TPO's at that time. The little circle marked T1 in the back garden is the oak ...spot where 'that nice couple..etc' might live?!

The 3 page Formal Notice states:

The Council have made the Order because:
1. It comprises one specimen tree, which significantly enhances the character and appearance of the locality. This tree is in a promininet position and can be seen from surrounding residential properties and from --------- Lane and ------- Road and as such it is considered an amenity to be enjoyed by the general public.

2. The tree is located in the rear garden of 41 --------- Lane and although not in full view from the public highway it is a tree of good shape and form and which contributes to the general amenity of the area.

3. The tree can then be retained as an amenity and effective control can be maintained over any future intentions for pruning or felling which may be proposed.

RESULT!! I just love TPO's!

It's a 10 minute job to fill in the form for permission to do any work on the protected trees, about a week or so for the written permission to come back from the local Counciland about 3 months before our Tree Surgeon gets round to coming to do it, but that's another matter!! The work is then checked by the Council Tree Man as the Tree Surgeon is working and, as they say round here, job's a good 'un!

Here's another photo of our lovely oak towering above the Copper Beech (which is particularly gorgeous this year). I was standing on the Land Rover bonnet in front of the garage when I took this one - as you do!

Oooops, forgot to tell you why they wanted the oak tree chopped down ........ apparently they don't like clearing up the leaves!!!

But it turns out that their selfish laziness has got them exactly what they didn't want and has ensured that the tree will remain standing long after they've gone.

Be careful what you wish for!

31.05.11 ADDITIONAL NOTE
The neighbour popped out to talk to me just now as I wandered up the garden. He wanted to apologise ...turns out it was "all a big mistake and a misunderstanding". He says he'd only asked the Council about TPO's because he'd wanted advice on trimming back branches overhanging his garden (and we all know what happened last time he did that!) and apparently the Council had ''misinterpreted'' it as him wanting the tree chopped down!
He was suitably apologetic and didn't want me to think he'd gone behind our backs or anything.....! Anyway, the Tree Man has been to see him and explained the procedures for any work on a tree with a TPO on it. He feels happy with that and he's not going to appeal against the TPO as he doesn't and, according to him, never did want the tree felling.
So there you go! :)

Progress...at last!

2011-05-05T16:16:00.009+01:00

There have been moans from some quarters regarding the recent lack of posts about developments on the tea house - this was down to lack of progress because it got just a bit too chilly to work up there over winter !

However, Spring has finally arrived and work is progressing again :)

Himself, knowing how much I can gripe, whinge and moan if I'm cold, thoughtfully decided to insulate the entire tea house, ceiling and all - better now than having to come back to it later eh?! He started by cutting the insulation to size........

whilst the wonderful Pete measured, cut and fixed little batons to rest it on.

First side of the roof done.

Whilst they were working away inside the tea house, I was busy forming the Brown Earth Society, creating lots of new vegetable and salad beds out in the vegetable garden - and getting distracted by low flying hot air balloons

and the glorious rich colours on the Acer 'Shin Desojo', which has benefitted from its move out from under the shade of the Wiegelia where it had been languishing for a few years.

When the wonderful Pete returned to help out again a few weekends later, Himself had completed fitting the insulation, so it was time to tackle the plywood sheets that will cover the walls and ceiling, then it'll be ready for me to paint. This was a two hero job! (and, luckily, it was a lovely day!)

Happy with their progress.

Himself doing all the tricky, fiddly bits he'd been putting off on the grounds that it might "all go horribly wrong!" ....needless to say, it didn't! :)

The tea house is now totally lined but I haven't got any photos of it completely finished yet as that bit happened over the Easter holidays whilst my camera was in America on a school trip with Last-Born!

The end may actually be in sight!!

PS. Just to clarify .......it's the lining that's finished, not the whole tea house - yet! :)

The Brown Earth Society.

2011-04-11T20:08:00.015+01:00

Nutty Gnome is pleased to announce that, having spent the past few weeks preparing, she is now ready to open up The Brown Earth Society to all comers! The Society welcomes applications for membership from anyone who adores the transformation of weed-covered areas like this:

or vegetables that haven't survived the winter, like this:

or grotty untidy weedy areas like this:

into a brand new vegtable bed like this:

or a cleared bed (except for the over-wintered spinach and chard) like this:

or this, with the last of the leeks and the newly sprouting globe artichokes:

or this - my brand new herb and salad bed, finally created after hours of clearing weeds, mint, wild strawberries and the world's deepest set muscari and bluebell bulbs! :

by the simple virtue of using this: Compost ...I just LOVE compost!

The Brown Earth Society is open to all people who enjoy that brief transition period every Spring and Autumn when, after distributing vast amounts of compost around the garden, manky weed-ridden soil is magically transformed into smoothly raked beds full of nothing but clear brown earth... albeit for only a few days before weeds start to grow or crops are planted!

Membership is free providing you can prove your love of beautifully composted weed-free soil. There are sod all benefits to joining other than letting me know that I'm not the only sorry soul who stands in happy admiration of a bed of evenly raked brown luciousness at any opportunity!

Applications are accepted via the comments box.
Don't delay, join today - you know it makes sense!
(and applogies for any huge gaps or weird word wraps around photos in the post - Blogger doesn't appear to want to save it properly at the moment!)

I've got Big Bud Mite.

2011-03-01T09:12:00.010Z

Well, not me personally, obviously - that'd be daft! As far as I can tell I am not now, nor have ever been a blackcurrant bush ..........I've been called a bit of a nut and a complete fruitcake on more than one occasion, but never a blackcurrant bush!
Anyway, having cleared that up, I have to sadly report that all my blackcurrant bushes do indeed have Big Bud Mite. How do I know this? Thanks to the sharp eyed vigilance of Carah, aka Her On The Hill, at http://viewfromthehighpeak.blogspot.com/

She spotted the telltale round buds in a photo in my previous post and, bless her heart, took the time to write to me explaning it all and to give me a link to the appropriate site to check it out :- http://www.dgsgardening.btinternet.co.uk/bigbud.htm

Having BBM explains why for the past two or three years, my blackcurrant bushes have started off well, then many buds have just shrivelled up and died! I had no idea that the buds shouldn't be round and she has NO idea how grateful I am to her for spotting the problem and telling me about it! Thank you so much :)

Carah writes an excellent, amusing, newsy and informative blog that's well worth a visit if you've never been over there. She's also doing a 2 year City & Guilds course in Practical gardening, hence her knowledge of BBM. This does make me feel that I really ought to do some sort of 'proper' course instead of just making it up as I go along, like I do now!

This is what healthy blackcurrant buds should look like - nice rugby ball shaped buds. I struggled to find these few on my bushes.

This is what Big But Mite affected blackcurrant buds look like. Bigger, rounder, more like a beach ball . No problem finding a plethora of these to photograph! :(

Of course, having now read all about BBM, I know that I have to dig up all 8 - yes 8, of my beloved blackcurrant bushes and burn them to stop the mites spreading. I then have to get new bushes and put them in a different part of the garden. This will, of course, necessitate moving our large fruit cage .......however , I have a cunning plan!

There's a very nice patch of newly cleared ground where the conifers used to be - up behind the greenhouse at the opposite side of the garden - still sunny, still protected from the winds (in fact, better protected from the westerlies we get here!) and if I move the fruit cage, the redcurrant bushes, the gooseberry bushes and the 2 blackberry bushes that I planted the day before Carah spotted the BBM, then that leaves a large empty space topside of the tea house and japanese garden...Hmmmm!
Now what could I possibly do with a 20ftish x16ftish space so close to my tea house eh?! :D

Whilst you're pondering on that one, just to prove that spring is happening - albeit more slowly than usual, here are some snowdrops and a couple of crocus.

The flowering cherry by the vegetable garden is just coming into blossom.

and a few more snowdrops, because I love them and it's my blog so I can put as many snowdrop photos in as I want! :)

And just for The Gnome up in Glasgow on Down On The Allotment here are the home-made anti-squirrel devices I was telling you about! One or two one litre pop bottles with the bottoms cut off and some 'trician's tape on the pole to stop the bottles sliding down - job's a good 'un!

Have a good weekend.

Spring - a matter of life or death?

2011-02-14T10:04:00.007Z

Inside the house is as cold as outside because the decorators are stripping the hall, stairs and landing and have flung open windows and doors with gay abandon. The living room (where my computer is) currently has no door at all, so I'm wearing several layers, furry boots and a fleece blanket too - trust me, this is not a good look for a romantic Valentine's Day. Good job Himself's away on business really!

Outside it's cold, grey, miserable and doing the whole rain/sleet/rain/hail/rain thing, so I thought I'd look at the photos I took yesterday during a very brief sunny respite from the rain!

It's been a funny winter so far (funny peculiar, not funny haha!) We had all that snow and intense cold in December, then lots and lots and lots of rain ever since. Several trees got damaged from the sheer weight of the snow, but it's only now that I've been able to see the full extent of the damage to the plants. Good job the wonderful spring life cycle has started up again then - although it didn't feel like it was going to at one point. Everything is a bout a fortnight behind!

Snowdrops on the rockery below the front terrace.

Wet Hellebore ....did I mention it had been raining here?!

Winter jasmine strangling the light at the top of the front steps - it's not a problem, the light doesn't work anyway!

Hellebore Nigra. I split and moved this one last year so I was really glad to see that it had survived under the snow.

The 3 phormiums haven't coped well with winter!

I'd been planning on moving the largest one (the one nearest the house) this spring as it had become way too dominant up there. At least now I only have to dig it up and it's only about a third of its previous size now!

Crocuses are poking their heads through the dead and very soggy remains of the geraniums. I don't know if they'll recover given that they've been frozen, buried, defrosted and drowned!

This is one of the branches that broke off the big fir tree at the side of the house under the weight of the snow. It's about 9" in diameter .........

and has left a big gaping wound in the tree :(

Another smaller branch fell off the same night and the tree surgeons have had to cut 2 more branches off because they were cracked and dangerous, but they reported that the tree remains intrinsically sound, so that's good news even if the tree does look a bit lopsided now.

We lost a chunk of fencing in the gales last week and I'm not convinced that the saplings have survived either - but I don't know what they are anyway, I found them in a border!

I'm planning on grassing most of this soon - once I've sorted the fence out

I don't think the Mexican Mock Orange is going to bounce back somehow - it's only tolerant to -5, rather than -15 and two feet of snow!

No purple sprouting broccolli this year either - and it was doing SO well :(

More tree damage.

These conifers were all weak spindly multi-trunked specimins that I wasn't particularly fond of, but I didn't expect them to collapse under the weight of the snow.

The tree surgeon said they'd had it and wouldn't recover, so all 9 - yep, 9 had to come out
.....mind you, much as I was saddened by their demise I have gained a large chunk of extra vegetable garden - once I've sorted out the manky fence !!!

I'm sure you're all fed up with my tales of the potting shed fire, but guess what survived the inferno?

Yep - the wood!

I'd stored a whole mass of kindling and logs in the back part of the building. It's all covered in soot and the plastic bags have melted, but it didn't burn! The wood was the only thing that the cleaning firm were able to rescue for me. Hope it burns on my wood burning stove!

I obviously didn't clear my new salad bed as well as I'd thought I did last spring given the number of crocuses that are popping up!

New buds on the blackcurrant bushes - lets hope for a monster crop this year :)

The heather bank is just begining to come into flower. Another week of torrential rain and sleet and it'll be perfect! Did I mention how wet it's been here of late?!

May spring be dry and bright where you are - 'cos it's obviously not going to be dry here! :)

Good things can happen too!

2011-01-24T17:06:00.009Z

As many of you already know, some cowardly slimeball set fire to our brick potting shed on Christmas night whilst we were away. (If you're not already bored with the subject, you can read about it here).

As a result of their actions we lost all our vast collection of plant pots, propagators, seed trays, seeds, tools and numerous other gardening goodies that I'm still trying to identify from the blackened, mangled heaps.

Anyway, IG from 'The Idiot Gardener' having read my tale of woe, very kindly sent me a goodie box to begin my seed replacement and to cheer me up ....it worked!

Look what he sent me :D

If you haven't read his blog before, go over and have a read. He claims to be a beer swilling idot, but I think that's just a front because he's actually a very articulate writer who appeals to my sense of humour, often wanders off at an apparently random tangent then makes me laugh out loud. He's also just a little bit rude at times , but that usually makes me laugh too!

The world's biggest tomato seed collection?!

I have NO idea why Blogger insists on turning this photo on its side! I've had numerous attempts to get it the right way up, but to no avail - so you're stuck with it!

But just in case you can't read sideways, these are things I've never grown before -

fennel, hot cayenne peppers, munchkin pumpkins and salsify.....

I can't wait to get them started, so I'm off to blag some spare pots off my local gardening friends .....but before I go, I just want to say Thank You IG from the bottom of my compost bin. You have restored my faith in my fellow men!

A very traditional English Christmas?

2011-01-03T15:34:00.006Z

Whilst we were down on the Isle of Wight for Christmas with Ower Dave and his family we all went a bit traditional. One of my nieces, Megan, was in a Mummers Play on Boxing Day so the remaining 8 of us drove half way across the island to Arreton Barns to watch -yes, I know it's not that far to anywhere on the Isle of Wight but have you tried organising us lot?!

Anyway, Mummers Plays are Christmas folk plays that have survived since the early 18th century - although the term 'mummers' has been in use since medieval times. The word 'mummer' is variously believed to derive from Middle English 'mum' (silent) or Greek 'mommo' (mask) or Early New High German 'mummer' (disguised person), but wherever the word originates from, Mummers Plays still happen all over the British Isles in fairly similar forms and all seem to revolve around a quack doctor with a magic potion that can restore life.

Typically the plays take place in a pub!

As well as the Doctor, each play contains a Hero - King George *hurrah*, a Villain - the Turkish Knight *booo*, Old Father Christmas, Mother Christmas, a Noble Captain and various others who I can't remember despite having seen the same play about 5 times now! The plays are broadly comic (this one was hilarious and included King George having his script taped to the inside of his shield!) and apparently represent the battle between good and evil. The onlookers are expected to cheer, boo and hiss as appropriate, whilst the actors have licence to forget lines, ad-lib at will and thoroughly enjoy themselves! Best ad-lib this time? ......."stay there, you're still dead"!

Each character introduces him or herself in rhyming couplets and battle swiftly commences, resulting in the seriously overacted 'death' of one or the other character, thus allowing the good Doctor to rush to the rescue with her magic bottle of potion to restore the victim back to life *Hurraaah!* The play finishes with a song from the whole cast before a hat is passed round to raise money for charity. Excellent fun!

(that's my niece as the Doctor)

After the excitment of the Mummers Play we went out into the cold to see some Morris dancing - once the, erm, 'band' set up!

First came the ladies - a bit twee and insipid for my liking I'm afraid... all boughs, bells and garlands. I'm sure it's very clever, just wasn't for me!

Then the clog dancers, who were quite impressive in their speed, the loudness of the clogging on the boards

and the complexity of their steps. I'd always thought clog dancing was a Northern thing, so I was quite surprised to see them 'down south' - they were good though, for southern jessies!

Then the bands changed and Santa came to play his violin - a man of many talents is Santa!

as the first Morris Men came out - a bit more roughty-toughty than the ladies, but still with tinkley bells on their legs! They managed to remain looking quite serious as they danced, despite looking a bit daft!

The next set of Morris dancers were a young mixed male/female group. They have eschewed traditional Morris dress for anything as long as it's red or black - resulting in a slightly piratical look. Their music remains traditional, but was played slightly faster. The woman in the left of the photo called the moves for the dancers, who appeared to be having much more fun than the previous ones!

They also put much more 'ooomph' into the wacking together of the sticks.......(good use of technical terms there Nutty!)

...much more vigour into their faster dancing and lots of shouting and grunting as they whipped around each other - but then they were all a good 20 years younger than the other Morris men!

Having lost all feeling in our fingers and toes by that point, we denied ourselves the pleasure of seeing the other Morris groups perform and we headed home - although some of us would have prefered to go back into the pub for a pint by the roaring log fire first.....or maybe that was just me!

Keeping the traditional theme going, the following day 14 of us aged from 4 to 79 went to the pantomime, along with about 300 others - "oh no you didn't!" ...."oh yes we did"!!

Shanklin Theatre was doing a production of Aladdin. It had all the prerequisits of a panto - a man in the female lead role with a totally over the top set of costumes, a villain who was thoroughly enjoying his role, a sweet Princess, a handsome Prince/Aladdin (unusually, this was a actually a young man.It's usually a young woman)lots of 'bad' jokes, old jokes, wobbly scenery, cute little children dancing, cast ad-libs that reduced other cast members to quivering laughter jellies, forgotten lines, lots of audience participation with booing, shouting...."he's behind you", "he's nicked the lamp" etc, plenty of communal lobbing of dry sponges onto the stage to get the baddie, a cast-led singing competition between the two sides of the audience (- we won!) and, of course, the Happy Ending! I love a good panto! :D

It was all great fun and a great way to end our family Christmas holiday!

Why?

2010-12-29T18:09:00.006Z

Why, in this season of peace, love, sharing and goodwill to all men, would someone want to torch our potting shed on Christmas night?

The outside

Looking through the window. Immediately under the window was a large wooden potting bench - as long as the window, about 3 feet wide and 2 inches deep. Gone. The facing wall had contained 3 full height shelving units with the world's largest collection of plantpots. The 2 charred remains of planks had held 3 propagators - 1 electric and 2 large normal ones, all of which have melted completely away.

Looking in through the door - and, yes, that is a semi-melted Black and Decker strimmer in amongst the paint explosion.

The corner under the window - where the fire was started. The fire officer thinks 'they' put or poured something flamable through the louvre window. That's the mangled remains of a petrol leaf hoover, the triton workbench and other as yet unidentified 'stuff' plus the ash of the potting bench.

One petrol Flymo, one small electric hovermower, 2 jerrycans.

All that remains of about 50 metres of hosepipe.

I couldn't bring myself to post any more depressing photos, but I can console myself that it could have been so much worse.

Happy Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-23T12:56:00.003Z

Merry Christmas to all of you - friends old and new from near and far who have visited my blog and left comments for me. You have made me laugh, made me cry, inspired me to better things (mainly photography and writing!) and allowed me to peek into your lives and pinch ideas and gardening skills. I thank each and every one of you for your kindness!

Soppy bit over now! :)

The snow continues unabated here.........

With just the occasional attempt at a thaw

and although Ceefer cat no longer hates the snow, he has proved to be useless at hide and seek!

I wish you all a joyous Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2011.

Enjoy! :D

I think I know where Narnia is!

2010-12-02T16:57:00.009Z

Snow started falling on Monday - the first time we've had snow in November in the UK since 1993 apparently. That didn't bother the snow - it just kept right on falling...and falling....and falling until it was the heaviest snowfall for 33 years - not that I cared about statistics.
IT WAS SNOW. I LOVE SNOW!!!

I opened the front door to find a tsunami of snow greeting me - doesn't look so big until you consider there are TWO steps down from the front door to the terrace! I realised that the last time we had snow like this I had ended up in Narnia. Could I do it again? Was it possible now that I was an adult - albeit an adult with an inner eight year old?!

The inner 8 year old wussed out at stepping down into 2 feet of snow so, stopping only long enough to don 3 layers of thermals, 4 pairs of socks, coat, scarf, hat and 2 pairs of gloves, I left swiftly by the back door - a gentler route into the whiteness beyond The House.

The world was quiet and still as I ventured forth and decided to head north to start my search for Narnia. Briefly the sky cleared. I saw tree tops ladened with snow. The snow was deep, but I waded stoically onward.....

I worked my way slowly up steep slopes and passed trees with their boughs bending under the burden of the snow.

Moving yet further north, I paused to gather my strength and, as I did so I spied a fairy ring - a table and seats in the shelter of the trees. Was this Narnia?

I remembered that beyond these trees lay wild animals and I was afraid to go further in case the foxes or badgers jumped me. I couldn't see a lamp post and Mr. Tumnus was conspicuous by his absence so, with a heavy heart (and just a slight sigh of relief) I turned south east.

As I pushed my way through the deepening snow I found one small splash of colour in the overwhelming whiteness of the land...an Acer 'Shin Deshojo' bravely peeking up above the snow and guiding me on my way.

I paused again to consider the beauty of the snow on the gnarled old apple tree (- but actually it was just an excuse to to get my breath back. It's surprisingly hard work wading uphill through snow!)

before resting for a while 'neath the shelter of a conveniently located tea house as I scoured the land around me in hope of finding that flippin' lamp post.

I moved on, but the Ice Queen's grip on the land was strengthening, I was loosing my bearings - I instinctively knew I had to keep heading south/south east, but I vaguely remembered that that involved going down some steps and I no longer knew where they were ... I felt they were somewhere close, but as to where - I could no longer tell. I paused, confused and disorientated....

but then, stepping slowly and cautiously forward, I located the steps and managed to descend unscathed - a tricky business I can tell you, I nearly went base over apex more than once.

I shook in terror as I found myself wandering in the barren wastes of Lawnland, lost until I came upon Bench and Table, buried and unloved yet still hoping for someone to remove the weight of winter from the Ice Queen's grasp.

To my horror I realised that I had veered way too far west in Lawnland and was at risk of arriving in that most terrifying of places - The Herb Patch!

I swiftly took my bearing from the weak winter sun as it all too briefly showed its face. I headed due south once more and soon came across a fellow traveller. We paused to exchange thoughts on the whereabouts of that dratted lamp post and Mr. Tumnus, then I smacked myself firmly round the head - the snow and cold were getting to me. I was talking to a garden sculpture...the Ice Queen was winning!

Altering my course to the south west away from my new found friend, erm *cough*- garden sculpture, I laughed hysterically in relief as I spotted The Bird Feeders. Moving precariously down the now invisible slope between the two posts I knew I was back on the edge of Lawnland (and possibly my sanity) and close to The House - but still no sign of any bloomin' lamp post.

I headed due south down The Drive, keeping close to The House. But wait! My way was blocked - was this the Ice Queen's evil doing? Was I getting too close to the lamp post even though I still couldn't see it???

Popping briefly back into The House, I warmed my toes, ate chocolate (purely for the energy content of course), nipped to the loo, then peered out of The Bay Window, hoping to gain insight into the blockage on The Drive. It was worse than I'd imagined.

The Ice Queen had made the trees bow down before her and surrender to her will.......... I'd have to fight my way through - was I strong enough? Did I care enough?!

But I had no choice if I was ever to find Narnia before the sun went down. I HAD to go back out.

Returning to The Drive, to my surprise and delight a beautiful young woman was waiting to help me in my quest. Was this a sign?

(No, it was Last-Born, armed with a broom!)

She battled heroically against the snow, wielding her trusty broom with gay abandon and releasing the trees from its icy grasp whilst I stood well back out of range of avalanching snow - I'm not daft!

As the trees shuddered back vaguely upright leaving the path clear-ish for us, I though I heard a distant scream of rage from the Ice Queen ...but it turned out to be a very angry magpie who'd been de-treed by Last-Born's broom attack!

Free now to move forward, sure that Narnia lay before us and feeling that success was within our grasp, we surged south - well, when I say 'surged', it was more of a sluggish waddle, but then! Lo!

We'd found Narnia.............it's at the bottom of my garden!

Last-Born gazed around in wonder at the beauty of it all.

I gazed around in frustration...where the heck was that flamin' lamp post?

And then I spied it ....the modern equivalent. The guiding light to get me home.......

My Land Rover!

Now I know where Narnia is I can come back any time, so sod the lamp post - I'll buy one

in spring!

How To Make Tea House Doors, Part II

2010-11-27T12:43:00.009Z

Take yourselves away from the snowy winter wonderland outside and just try to imagine for a few minutes that you are Himself, Master of Complexities! How would you build the tea house doors?

Would you:

A) Enthusiastically nail together any old random bits of almost matching sized pieces of wood you happened to have lying around that hadn't rotted yet to make some frames. Grab a few bits of tatty perpsex from an old disused coldframe up the garden, saw them roughly to size whilst making a vague stab at getting 90* angles, panel pin them into the frames hoping for a semblence of rigidity and crossing your fingers that all 8 panels will be more or less the same size and fit together reasonably well, taking, oooh, about half an hour per door? or

B) Write out a meticulous plan of action of how many of each piece of wood I needed, what the measurements were and what extra joints etc each piece needed, before cutting all the wood. Then carefully construct a production line of 8 complete frameworks of pre-planed interlocking pieces all previously cut to the predetermined sizes, with a range of slits, notches and complicated joints already in place. When making the panels, use polycarbonate that was cut to approximate size by the company as requested then trimmed to the exact size using a hand-made jig and taking the excess internal pieces out with a stanley knife, taking several weeks over the whole delicate precision process?

Yeahr, we'd have all gone for option A. Good job it was Himself doing the job then wasn't it?! :D

This is his jig to trim the polycarbonate.

The polycarbonate we (okay - HE) used is really designed for roofs and conservatories. It has two layers - similar to double glazing, for insulation (vital for me!) and is structured to make it strong. We didn't need the strength so, with hindsight, we should have gone for 2 thin sheets instead of 1 thick sheet. The pieces would have been cut accurately to size, Himself wouldn't have had to spend hours trimming off the insides and the entire process would have been a whole heap easier!
However, the co-efficient of thermal expansion of polycarbonate is 6 times that of wood, so you can't mount a big piece in a frame without having huge clearances (6mm per metre), which = lots of movement, which = lots of draughts, which =unhappy Nutty Gnome! (I didn't get the technical bit, but I understood the draughts!)
Here is a finished trimmed piece. The internal measurements had to be smaller to allow the panel to fit in the cross piece of the frame.

This is the Brio train track Himself constructed! Ooops, sorry - wrong again. It's one of the many cross pieces he made to slot the polycarbonate into.

Like so!

Several doors in various stages of assembly.

One door completed and being glued. This took ALL Himself's begged, stolen and borrowed clamp collection and made him very happy. He does love to use all his clamps! :)

You can see in this photo that the opaque polycarbonate has
stripes in it as it's slightly ridged. The stripes echo the paper shoji blinds in a traditional tea house.

The finished door!

Polycarbonate is much lighter than glass and makes handling and using the doors much easier.

Ceefer cat was on Quality Assurance that day!

As Himself got ready to try the first panel in position he realised that he'd not made any edging strip for the floor .......another 'it's all going horribly wrong' moment!

Delving deep into the dusty recesses of the garage, he found some old mahogany shelving from a hideous stone bookcase that I knocked out years ago -'never know when things might come in useful'! He cut nice complicated shapes in them to fit over the floor panels and frame .......

...and because no one piece was long enough, he also cut nice complicated joints to get the pieces to butt up together smoothly. The dark strip along the top is also slightly taller than the paler wood so that the panel can butt up against it.

He then borrowed the wonderful Pete's biscuit jointer (not the edible variety unfortunately) to make the top and bottom fixings for the 4 non-opening panels. That oval thing is the biscuit apparently!

Biscuits in place, joints at the ready.

First door panel finally in place - although only testing at this stage.

The 'ears' on the top and bottom of the door still have to be cut off.

The door is also the wrong way round - for my photo opportunity!

We kept the protective stuff on the panels so that we could easily see which was the outside and also to protect them when I painted the wood with the eco-preservative.

Himself screwing the door hinges in place.

Ooops, dropped a screw!

The hinges allow the doors to fold right back.

Then he had to make a piece of quandrant to fill the gap where the two panels meet - and to use his REALLY big clamps whilst the glue dried!

Checking from the inside.....

Looking down the garden towards the house. The stream is just visible to the left of the rocks on the island.

A little bit of precautionary bracing until Himself was convinced that the quadrant wasn't going to ping off! Can't be too careful!

Then the whole lot had to be covered in blue tarp until I'd got time between growing vegetables and digging pond extensions (more of that later!) to paint all the doors and panels with the eco-preservative.

The grand unveiling....TA-DHAH!

It's even got proper lights in there now.

How it looks at the moment!

and Baaaarney in the snow!

I think Himself is making a fantastic job of the tea house. He thinks you should never do a job the first time as it's always better the second time. Does that mean I get another tea house?!!!

1st December. Quick update on Baaaarney!

"Oh I do like to be beside the seaside......."

2010-11-15T16:43:00.021Z

After getting through a fairly grotty summer plus a very wet holiday in August I decided that Himself and I deserved a break, so I booked us in at The Marine - a 'Restaurant with Rooms' in Whitby, North Yorkshire, as a 3 day surprise for Himself.

On our way there we drove over the North Yorkshire Moors, which are a similar distance from the coast as Dartmoor - where we were in August, but about 350 miles further north.
Which would you prefer?

The North Yorkshire Moors in November - clear blue skies, endless visibility ?

or Dartmoor in August - grey clag, cold, wet, dank, sod all visibility?

Tough call eh?!

Anyway, the weather was fantastic all weekend and we had a great time. So put your stout boots on and pack your flask because I'm going to take you on a walking tour of Whitby......... a town that is perhaps best known for its role in Bram Stoker's 1897 book 'Dracula' - even though only 3 chapters are set there.

The town is divided between the East and West banks of the River Esk and I think it's fair to say that there's not much flat land on either side of town!

I took photo below on the West bank of the Esk, roughly where the 17th and 18th century shipyards once stood. Captain James Cook was an apprentice in the town and his ship, 'The Endeavour' was later built here. The full size Australian replica of 'The Endeavour' has moored here several times, but her berth is now occupied by 'The Grand Turk' from the TV series 'Hornblower'.

Looking up one of the many steep hills from the river to the ruins of the Abbey.

Whitby was the sixth largest port in Britain in the 18th century and still has lots of impressively large houses lie these which were built for the rich traders, whalers and shipyard owners. The top floors of the houses were the servants quarters, which is why the windows were smaller , crowded together and very close to the roof line - servants didn't need nice large, high ceilinged airy rooms!

The stonebuilt West Pier dates from before 1642 but apparently a wooden pier stood there at least a hundered years earlier. It was widened in 1814 and extended in 1914. The 70 foot high lighthouse was erected in 1831.........

and is still regularly open to the public!

It was a bit nippy up there, but it had great views! This is one of the local prawn boats bringing in their catch.

A seagull on the lookout for a quick snack.

Looking west along the beach to Sandsend village - the white blobs in the distance, about two and a half miles away.

Awwh!

You can still get donkey rides on British beaches - even in winter.

The tide was going out as we walked to Sandsend - but we were a bit impatient, so did a bit of rock hopping to beat the waves. We only got slightly damp!

Unlike these mad surfers! This is the North Sea for heaven's sake!!!

The groynes don't offer any protection from the sea any more as they've been eroded by years of pounding waves.

But they do make beautiful sculptures nowadays.

After a cup of coffee and a scone whilst sat outside the Wit's End cafe (Yep! OUTSIDE! On the East coast! In November!), we stopped to help a family dam a stream , as you do, before heading back along the beach to Whitby under a setting sun

to marvel at a seagull trying to eat the moon!

Sunday saw us wandering the streets of East Whitby. It has a typical mediaeval village layout of narrow cobbled streets, but the steepness of the town means it also has narrow yards leading up the cliff face on one side and narrow 'ghauts' (pronounced 'goats') leading down to the river on the other side. I don't know why they call them 'ghauts' - should've just called them jennels like we do!

Here Himself is taking care not to bash his head on the 1870's 'jettied' (overhanging) market hall known as the Shambles - old English for 'slaughter-house', which is what the site was previously used for.

In Georgian times many of the yards behind the buildings were infilled with cottages.This is the yard of the White Horse and Griffin Inn. The first stage coach ran from here to York in 1788 and Charles Dickens stayed here. It's still a flourishing pub.

Most of the yards are private but some are through yards. This is Blackburns Yard and leads eventually (via VERY steep steps) to the cliff top. This cottage owner had made very good use of extremely limited garden space. I think they must cut the lawn with nail scissors though!

This is Burgess Pier, brought to fame in Dracula when the Russian schooner 'Demeter' crashes into the pier and an immense dog leaps off and bounds away into the darkness.
The beach is Collier Hope, named from the practice of coal ships beaching there either to unload cargo or for safety after being driven into harbour by rough weather.

A huge anchor on the pier.

A few of the 199 steps of Church Stair (yes, I did count them - again. It has to be done!) leading up to the Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin. These were re-renovated in 2005/6, but were originally made of wood with the first known reference to the steps being in 1270!

There are broad landings and seats as you go up - useful for us now, but originally for 'the easement of bearers of coffins where they rested their burden on the long climb to the cliff top grave yard'. I wouldn't have liked to try and lug a coffin up these steps I can tell you!

Himself going up the steps but overlooking Donkey Road -or Church Lane as it's properly known. Walking up there is even harder than walking up the steps!

Legend has it that Lord Mulgrave supposedly drove a coach and four up and down the lane in the 1870's to prove his love for a lady!

Idiot!

It's worth the slog for the view at the top.

Across the river on the grassed area at the top of that cliff lies the bench where, in Dracula, Mina pauses one night whilst looking for Lucy. According to the book, 'she gazed across to the the churchyard on East Cliff (here) and, in a shaft of moonlight she glimpses a familiar white figure with what looked like something dark bending over it'. All I can say is she must have had flipping good eyesight - I looked in the reverse direction in broad daylight and could only JUST make out a few figures in bright clothing!

Not only that but she then legged it down the zigzag path and along the riverside road up to the bridge, then ran across the bridge, along the full length of Church Street and up the 199 steps to the churchyard - all without having to stop to get her breath back ......so she was an olympic athlete too!

The harbour walls with the elbowed extensions.

The Norman church was founded between 1098 and 1129, but stands on the site of an earlier Saxon church.

It's also famous for the three pirate gravestones in the graveyard - marked with carved skull and crossbones. I used to know where they were but, sadly, despite looking for ages until Himself was bored and starting to get mildly irritated with me, I couldn't find them this time :(

Many years ago when we were in our early 20's, Himself and I used to come and rough camp in the Abbey grounds. This time we couldn't work out how to get in! The Abbey is now in the care of English Heritage and they've build a wacking great wall round it! We had to walk right round to the back and through the world's ugliest ticket office/toilet block to access the grounds!

The Abbey stands on the site of an Anglo-Saxon settlement. The original Abbey housed both men and women and in 644 held the Synod of Whitby, which set the date for Easter - so the moveability of that feast is all their fault then!

The first Abbey was destroyed in the 9th century but was re-established in the 11th century and became one of the richest monastries in Yorkshire. These 12th and 13th century buildings fell into ruin after the dissolution of the monastries in 1539, but at its peak it was a lavishly decorated vision of immense wealth and power.

The Abbey ruins can be seen from over 5 miles away inland and strike an amazing view on the headland. Just imagine how much more impressive such a huge stone edifice would have seemed to peasants living nearby in mud and thatch huts!

After wandering slowly back down to the harbour for a last look at the fishing boats and a last sniff of sea air, we headed to Fortunes to buy the world's best smoked kippers before homeward - relaxed and at peace with the world!

I hope you enjoyed your time in Whitby as much as we did?!

Acer, Acer Baby!

2010-10-31T16:42:00.015Z

Good grief but I detest that irritating ridiculous Halifax Bank advert and the way the tune sticks in my head!
Anyway, moving swiftly on...... I had a very convivial dinner (or lunch as some people prefer to call it!) at the Fat Cat Pub in Sheffield on Friday with Woody and Wilma Woodbury from Allotment 81 (which, if you've not come across it before, is a great read as Woody has a smashing sense of humour!). I've met up with Woody before and thoroughly enjoyed his company, but this was the first time I'd had chance to meet Wilma, who was equally as congenial as Woody. I really enjoyed our meal and conversations, all washed down with a very pleasant half of Pale Rider. Pale Rider Bitter is an extremely good real ale from the Kelham Island Brewery, which is conveniently located next door to the Fat Cat!

Anyway, the reason behind my tale of beer, food and convivial conversation is that as I was driving home along the dual carriageway between Sheffield and Chesterfield I was suddenly struck by the sheer beauty of the autumnal colours in the trees. Kicking myself for not having my camera with me, and not sure quite how well "I stopped to take a photo with my phone because the trees were so pretty officer" would go down with the local constabulary, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and I continued homeward to survey my own trees on more legal ground!

My Acers are stunning this year - but it's a lot more by luck than good judgement that they all put their autumn coats on at slightly different times and give us ongoing sparks of colour for about 6-8 weeks!

A. palmatum 'Ornatum'

...which purred as I came up close to it! Odd! Plants don't usually purr....

......except when next door's cat is nestled under it!

I love the way this one is growing to hang slightly over the rock in front of it. (and to give a cat a cosy place to hide!) The radience of the red leaves stands out like a beacon and draws the eye to it from the house. In spring and summer it is a duller deep bronze colour but really comes into its own in the brief flurry of autumn.

A. 'Emerald Lace'.

I love the elongated shape of this one as it mirrors the path alongside it - good planning there I thought! :D It'll get to around one and a half metres tall, which is perfect for walking under along the path but not too tall that it'd dominate the garden.

It's underplanted with Camomile and Ophopogon 'Nigrescens' for textural and colour contrast, plus the camomile will spread as gorgeous, scented ground cover.

A.Conspicuum 'Red Flamingo'

- a striking snakebark maple in shrub form. The red of its bark is quite luminous with the sun on it. New leaves are pink, moving through red to green to brown as the year progresses. This one is next to the top pond so we often benefit from its reflection as well.

A. palmatum 'Kotohime'.

It reminds me of a Triffid for some reason! It didn't photograph well as a whole bush because it's at the back of the Japanese garden up by the fruit cage, so the background behind it was just too busy. Up close and personal you can see that it's begining to change colour.

A. palmatum 'Seiryu'.

This one is the most vibrant green of all the Acers in summer, but will turn fully into red over the coming week. It nestles comfortably under the old flowering cherry outside the tea house and will be lovely to walk under along the stepping stone path down that bed once it gets a bit bigger.

A. palmatum 'Shin Deshojo'.

I moved this one this spring from further down the garden where some idiot (that'd be me then!) had planted it under a Weigela a few years ago. It was loosing the battle for light and not growing well. It's been a lot happier in its new position.

This one is at its best in spring when its leaves are a vivid scarlet, fading to bronzey-scarlet in summer then turning to the plummy-golden tones you can see begining here.

Right. Acer tutorial over - I'm so glad I kept those labels :)

Here are just a few photos of what's going on in the rest of the garden.....

Windfalls of cooking apples.

Heuchera 'Creme Caramel'

The cherry tree we planted in spring.

Yes ..... I know I should have netted the pond by now!

And a final view of the top pond.

Happy autumn.

Book review - Plant Whatever Brings You Joy

2010-10-22T14:34:00.008+01:00

I've never really had the urge to write a book review before - well, actually I have - but never strong enough to bother doing anything about it! However, having recently got my hands on 'Plant Whatever Brings You Joy- Blessed Wisdom From The Garden' by Kathryn Hall, who many of you will already know from her blog at (funnily enough!) http://plantwhateverbringsyoujoy.com/, I decided that this was a book that needed sharing with the world - so here I go....but please bear in mind that this is solely my take on the book and other people will have their own thoughts on it :)

I loved it!

It is ostensibly a book about Kathryn's life, her multiple house moves, her life in different countries and in different part of America, her beloved daughter and her many gardens - yet it is so much more than this and touches the heart (my heart anyway) because of it.

The book is divided into 52 chapters, some very short at just a page and a half, some longer lasting at several pages but all having very temping titles such as 'Never underestimate the power of one tiny seed', ' Aim for beauty', 'Never pull up and discard what you cannot identify', 'Appreciate small returns', ' Cultivate plants which attract lovely company', 'Clean up after a storm' and - my favourite title, 'Move gently among bees'. The titles intrigued me and pulled me in.

As the autumn night closed in and I had the house to myself for once my plan was to settle down in front of the fire, a glass of fine red wine at my side, and indulge myself in Kathryn's book - I intended to read it from cover to cover that evening and, at 228 pages, it was an achieveable goal. However, because this is no ordinary book it didn't turn out that way!

Kathryn's memories and experiences are rich and fascinating. They helped me to further understand the Kathryn I think I've got to know through her blog and our email correspondence, but they also deliver clever but gentle metaphors for self discovery and learning - both hers and her readers.

She has a canny nack of making her last sentence in the chapter either a statement or a question, both of which seemed designed to make me go "oh, what? yeah! I do that!", " Ooops, perhaps I could have done that differently?" or "Hmmm, maybe I ought......!", but always making me stop and think. Hence the reason I couldn't read the book all in one sitting, no matter how much I wanted to, as I just had to have some thinking time. Not all the chapters made me ponder for hours, but some certainly did and I feel better and stronger for having done so.

She writes in such a way that I found myself smiling, nodding and even, on more than one occasion, my eyes filling with unshed tears - from both pleasure and sadness previously held in. Memories of people, places and events long forgotten or sometimes supressed came unbidden into my head as I read.

I think that if I have one minor niggle with the book, it's Kathryn's use of the phrases 'Dear ones' and 'Dear readers' - but I am aware that this is my issue as reading these phrases whipped me straight back to my slightly stroppy teenage years and exams! (stroppy? Moi?!) The Bronte sisters and similar writers all used those phrases and, as part of English Language and English Literature lessons and exams, we had to dissect their books to the Nth degree - thus ridding them of any pleasure for years ...as proved by my response!

That aside, this is a thought provoking book that stands repeated readings - and I will certainly be dipping back into it on a regular basis. Her motto for her book publishing company is 'Changing the world one book at a time' and she has certainly done that for me with this book!

I shall leave you with Kathryn's final thoughts in the book ...and, no, it's not going to spoil the ending for you! ;

'Each and every adventure I have chosen, dear readers, held within it the power to expand, to teach. The more I risked, the wider and more diversely I chose, the richer my experience and the more precious the gift. I have been so blessed. Aren't we all?'

Bliss in a book!

The doors - stages one and two

2010-10-13T14:48:00.008+01:00

As March progressed, so did my impatience! Himself and the wonderful Pete had spent many, many hours debating how to make the tea house doors. We'd had sliding doors that slid from the corner, leaving the whole corner open, we'd had sliding doors that slid from the middle of both sides of the building, we'd had swinging doors, inward opening doors, outward opening doors, one pair of each sort, solid doors, panelled doors, half panelled doors, clear doors, opaque doors ....if fact everything but REAL doors!

I knew the endless discussions were more to do with a reluctance to get started in case it all went "horribly wrong" (- as Himself the pessimist is prone to saying!), but eventually my albeit limited patience ran out, I had a hissy fit, stamped my metaphorical foot and told 'em just to flippin' well get on with it!!! *ahem, coughs in a slightly embarrassed way*

The upshot of my temper tantrum was that Himself suddenly found the ideal solution to the door dilema! He decided to do one trial door first though ......just in case it did all go horribly wrong!

He assured me it was all in the design detail:

For some reason known only to Himself and Pete, they couldn't have a solid piece of wood and pop a realtively simple tenon joint into it. The frame is one piece of wood, split into two down its length, with complicated joints that I don't even know the names of at relevant places down its length! The two long pieces are then glued back together again.

Checking for fit.

Very neat!

Himself got to use some of his clamps - happy days!

The basic frame at the end of stage one.

Next came the 'simple' cross pieces.....

Door stage two!

Trying it for fit ...can't be too carefull :)

Happy with the style and fit of the door, Himself went into mass production mode in the garage and I didn't see him for three weeks!

A total of eight doors meant an awful lot of pieces - most of them with complicated joints in.

Seven door kits ready for assembly!

And in the next episode of 'How to build a Tea House in the most complicated way possible', we'll see what Himself can do with polycarbonate panels!

Suggestions on a postcard please! :)

201.10 Addendum.

Himself has finally read one of my blog posts!!! He's asked me to point out that the reason he split the door frames is not because he wanted to make more work for himself (!), but because the frames are very thin for the height of the doors. Wood bends, so by splitting the wood and turning one piece round ( a part of the process I didn't know about as he was locked in the garage at the time!), the tendency of the 2 pieces to bend cancel each other out and the door stays straight ...so there you go! :)

Well - I'm floored!

2010-09-29T15:14:00.008+01:00

I spent last weekend on our annual 'Mums Weekend' at Whitehall Outdoor Activity Centre in Derbyshire with 25 other women aged from 17 (not a mum!) to 65 (grandma!) all doing activities usually done by 10 to 16 year olds, ranging from canoeing, mountain biking, ropes and assault courses to climbing, caving and stream scrambling - yep, you read it correctly - stream scrambling AND climbing waterfalls under a deluge of icy water on a cold late September day and I enjoyed it!!! However, the associated aches, tweaked ankle and awesome bruise collection meant that a bit of R&R was deemed more necessary than gardening this week - but at least several hours immersed in the icy water meant that I didn't get huge swellings to accompany the bruises! Anyway, my enforced rest has given me chance to take you back to a weekend in late March of this year when it finally warmed up enough to work outside again ........

In Yorkshire the phrase "I'm floored" usually means "I'm amazed/astounded/gobsmacked.....!" etc, but today it means that my Tea House finally got its floor!

Himself added extra floor joists for strength and put batons in to rest the insulation on.

Batons in place.

First piece of insulation being slid into place.

Floor insulation complete - I'm going to be SO toasty warm in there!

Cutting notches out of the chipboard flooring panels to go round the vertical posts.

Checking for fit.

Last board in place as the sun starts to set.

Building the frame for the last solid piece of wall.

Me attempting to hold the outer waterproof membrane in place in a high wind whilst being about 4 inches too short AND stood on a wobbly plank over the water.........again!

Outer plywood panel in place and painted - job's a good 'un!

Himself is a star!

Whilst Himself was grafting away on the Tea House, I was busy in the garden and greenhouse. Here are some of the products of my labours, picked recently!

Apples - variety unknown as the tree was a freebie, given away when we bought 3 other fruit trees last year. They taste delicious.

Autumn raspberries still going strong.

A pear from a pear tree we didn't know existed until we took down a cankered apple tree on one side of it and chopped back the ceonothus on the other side of it. Given space, it has blossomed and born bucket loads of fruit this year!

My first ever string of garlic - it may not be the most beautiful or the neatest, but I'm strangely proud of it!

Heirloom tomatoes grown from seeds sent to me by Monica at Garden Faerie's Musings. Thanks Monica, they've been great.

And look what Last-Born bought me .........I absolutely love it and it certainly beats the skanky, tatty bit of paper I used to pin to the door! Thanks love :D

Yesterday's haul of goodies.

Meet Baaaarney, the newest member of the family. I found him for sale in Devon where he made me smile during another very wet walk round the grounds of yet another stately home.

...and he still makes me smile now!

Of Stately Homes and Gardens

2010-09-08T11:02:00.009+01:00

On our way down to Devon Himself and I went to visit Tyntesfield, just south of Bristol, which has been a National Trust property since 2002. I'd always thought it was pronounced Tin-tes-field for some reason, but it's actually Tints-field.

I'm not quite sure when the house was built, but it was bought by the Gibbs family in 1843. They began a full-on rebuild in 1863 to transform the house from the original Regency-Gothic style into the incredible Gothic-Revival extravaganza it is today. The family made their fortune by importing bird guano from South America - possibly giving rise to the Yorkshire saying of "where there's muck, there's brass"! (Muck=anything dirty. Brass=money!)

The beauty of the exterior of the house can't be seen at the moment because of all the renovation work - but the roof has now been restored and made watertight, so the scaffolding should be coming down over the next couple of months.

This is what you see instead of the house at the moment! The entire building is sheathed in scaffolding and polythene - stunning eh?!

The little monkey puzzle tree was planted last year. One has stood in that same position for a couple of hundred years, but had either died or been chopped down at some point late last century.

Amazingly, we were allowed to go up 68 steps inside the scaffolding to a viewing tower. I initially poo-pooed the prospect of looking at a roof, but Himself seemed keen so up we went .....and I'm SO glad we did. It was fascinating - something I never thought I'd say about roofs! I was smitten!

I had to resist the urge to break into a rousing chorus of 'Chim Chim-En-Eee' from Mary Poppins, given that I have the musical abilities of a dead slug, we were sharing the viewing platform with a family with easily scared young children and there were workmen nearby!

Some of the spans were so large that ordinary scaffold wasn't big enough or strong enough, so RSJ's had to be used to span those distances.

The carvings even at roof height were exquisite in their detail.

Having got over our shock at the beauty of the roof we joined a free guided walk of some of the grounds. There are 500 acres in total, so we couldn't really do that in a couple of hours! We did one of the Tree Trails with a very knowledgable National Trust volunteer (and a few other interested people).

An Oriental Plane tree Platanus orientalis.

These were introduced into Europe in around 1550, but this one is believed to have been planted in the 1840s.

The Irish Yew Avenue consists of 57 trees. The first 36 were planted around 1851, the others were added later. The slightly strange shape of the bases of the trees is down to the deer nibbling them as high up as they can reach!

As we moved from the formal garden into the parkland we came across the Ha-Ha. It's basically a trench that is invisible from the house, giving an uninterupted view of the grounds without any nasty fences or walls in the way. It makes the deer and livestock appear to be grazing in continuous open countryside but prevents them from getting into the formal gardens. They're called Ha-Ha's because that's what 'common people' apparantly said to express their suprise at finding them ...just after they'd fallen in them then?!

Tyntesfield's Ha-Ha was quite long and could have made a jolly nice moat!

Shading the Ha-Ha at this point was a beautiful and unusual Japanese Keaki Zelkova serrata, which was probably planted between 1865-1870. It hadn't yet begun to turn, but in Autumn it becomes a beautiful orange/red colour.

Having admired various other stunning Champion trees such as the Crucifixion Thorn Colletia hystrix and the Cut Leaved Hornbeam Carpinus betulus 'Incisa' , we made our way to the kitchen gardens and its range of gorgeous old greenhouses.

A tool store to covert?

and an Orangery in a very dilapidated state. Restoration work is due to begin in here very soon. We were only allowed in here wearing hard hats and with the guide. Good old 'Elf n Safety'.

The kitchen garden was a superb example of a North-South orientated brick walled fruit and vegetable garden and we totally fell in love with it.

A local primary school and a centre for adults with learning difficulties each have some growing space there. Other fruit and veg are available for sale and one quarter of the garden is planned to be producing food for the cafe in the grounds next year.

Apples, pears and plums are grown on the south-facing walls and sour cherries are on the cooler north-facing walls. The garden originally produced fruit and veg for the Gibbs family households in Tyntesfield and London - there is a railway line nearby on a direct line to London ....and one of the Gibbs family owned shares in the line!

We came out via the Lady Garden - another enclosed garden where the ladies of the house strolled before dinner. The square plinths with wooden planters on originally had large citrus trees in planters on them. The poor garden staff had to shift them in and out of the greenhouses whenever the ladies were in residence and might want to use the garden!

Finally we made our way up to the partially restored Rose Garden with its long pagoda

and its 2 gazebos...... one is partially restored and

one is almost completed, having had new tiles specifically made to match the originals and a new curved bench. You're supposed to be able to sit here and admire the glorious view........ but the bench faces the wrong direction!

It had the most beautiful roof though.

It was a real pleasure to wander round Tyntesfield - we were amongst the last to leave and would happily return again. The volunteers were all so knowledgeable, enthusiastic and helpful that they were a joy to listen to. All the conservators would stop what they were doing to answer questions or demonstrate what they were doing - we found out later that this was written into the contract by the last member of the Gibb family when he bequeathed the house to the National Trust - smart man!

It definitely comes under the heading of 'well worth EVERY penny of our National Trust membership'. I hope you enjoyed your visit too :)

I blame the jet stream!

2010-08-31T09:49:00.014+01:00

At this time of year the jet stream normally sits well up north between the UK and Iceland, bringing warm, sunny dry weather to our shores. This year however, it has been stuck firmly over the southern part of the country, bringing lots and lots of rain throughout August - and may possibly be responsible for both the extreme heatwave in Russia and the devastating floods in Pakistan.

Naturally enough, we were on holiday in August - and it was wet. VERY wet!

It rained during part or all of every single one of the 12 days that we were down in Devon. We're not talking gentle showers here either, we're talking torrential downpours worthy of November or February ........ the only positive thing about the rain was that it was warm!

However, being the roughty-toughty Northerners that we are, we were prepared and didn't let the rain stop us doing anything - but I'm very glad we weren't camping this year!(we were staying with my lovely sister-in-law, Sal, and her family). The weather caused my Yorkshireness to sneak out one day when the rain began and I yelled "Oye, Andy, chuck us me cag!" Sal's partner, Josh - a southerner, had NO idea what I'd just said!!!

Lavish praise will be heaped upon any non-Yorkshire dweller who can work out what I meant! :D

We went up onto Dartmoor - land of endless skies............!

We did a walk up to the Avon reservoir about 5 miles from where we were staying. The day started off well, although that 3 inch deep stream wasn't supposed to be there according to the map! :)

The thick moss on the dry stone walls should have been a bit of a clue to the general dampness really!

The gentle summer stream trickling down the rocks!

The dam we were heading for - with its overflow in full use.

Our original plan was to walk round the reservoir and back down over the moor via the remains of a pre-historic settlement - but the clouds gathered, the clag came down and the heavens opened so, rather than risk being on Dartmoor without a compass or much visibility, we went back by the route we'd come up, still managing a nice respectable 10 miles.

The rain eventually let up just before we got back to the village, having done about 4 miles in the downpour! Himself's trousers aren't two-tone, it's just that we were walking into horizontal rain! Our walking boots were drenched and although our jumpers were in the backpack they still had to be dried out when we got back.

The rain has done wonders for the colours on the gorse though :)

Having failed to see my pre-historic settlement, we decided to visit the pre-historic stone rows, a menhir (standing stone), cairns and stone circle at Merrivale instead a couple of days later. Couldn't find the stone circle, but the stone rows were quite impressive and I've always had a bit of a fondness for menhirs!

Yep ....another walk, more clag! That stream was a bit of a puzzle as it was higher than the surrounding ground and appeared to follow the contours of the hilltop rather than a more obvious route. It also appeared to be lined with rocks - did pre-historic man divert a stream away from a ceremonial site?

Whilst me and Himself debated why pre-historic man should want to build things in such isolated, bleak places and wondered what they were used for, Last-Born chipped in grumpily with her theory that they were probably bored! It has to be said that she really wasn't impressed by either the ruins or the weather!

Many of the numerous ruins, stone circles, remains of settlements etc that scatter Dartmoor are in a fairly straight line running south west to north east and are on ley lines apparently - but it still doesn't help us understand what pre-historic man was up to.

One of the stone rows and its guardian stone.

The menhir.

Even Dartmoor shouldn't be this wet in August!

This is normally a nice view point!

The sun did come out sometimes, so we did a little bit of this.....

and a bit of this........ Himself on look-out duty from Totnes Castle!

and even a brief bit of sunbathing inside the castle!

and one day we even managed a very nice 6 mile circular walk along the coast and back to the pub in time for a late lunch!

We also visited a few stately homes and gardens ......... but more of that next time :D

Dinner.........!

2010-08-04T09:55:00.010+01:00

My wonderful parents in law came up on Sunday, so for dinner we had: potatoes, runner beans and carrots, eaten with roast duck and bitter orange sauce .......

followed by Summer Pudding with home-made blackcurrant ice cream! Yes - I know these are raspberries, but they're a major ingredient in summer pudding .....and we'd just eaten all the blackcurrants!

Tea was home made scones with cream and jam - plum, damson or mixed fruit, take your pick! Just to prevent any confusion, in Yorkshire, we have dinner at dinner time (1.00ish) and tea at tea time (6.00ish). It's only posh southerners who have lunch at dinner time and dinner as their evening meal......unless we're going to a restaurant in the evening, in which case we're going out for dinner.... but if we're going round to friends for an evening meal, then it's still tea! I bet you're dead glad I clarified that for you?!

Anyway, moving swiftly on! A quick tour round the vegetable garden in all its prolific glory!

Sweetcorn, courgettes, squash, parsnips,radishes, chard, spinach, runner beans, with raspberries along the right hand edge.

Leeks, red and white onions, garlic.

Globe artichokes.

The new salad bed - onto its 4th rotation of salad leaves - not bad considering .......

it looked like this in May!

Purple sprouting broccoli, broccoli Romanesco and vertus cabbages.

Broad beans, peas, mange tout and runner beans ...... but all was not well in the broad beans.

They got SERIOUSLY black-flied again in spite of everything I put on them and everything that nature could chuck at them as well! It took me ages to identify these ladybird larvae - but they didn't mind me not knowing what they were as they muched away happily on the black fly :D

I also found a new variety of ladybird that I'd not seen before - anyone know what variety it is?

The bees were busy on the echinops

A little (camera shy) black and white bee on the heather

A moth I found on a woodpile I was clearing last weekend

All the early potatoes dug up and dried off ready for storing. The first cucumber and tomatoes from the greenhouse, radishes and rainbow chard.

It's not just the fruits (and veg!) of my labours - it's the flowers and plants too!

The top pond in the Japanese garden is maturing nicely.

And this stipa is quite superb this year!

I LOVE this time of year!

Walled in - almost!

2010-07-23T15:59:00.007+01:00

It may be hot and humid where some of you are, but it's turned cold, wet, windy and Novemerberish here these last few days so I thought I'd transport you back to last Autumn to the next phase of the Tea House .... at last!

So, imagine it's Autumn outside, the days are drawing in, a chill settles on the air.......!

The Tea House walls finally started going up in October last year.
First there was a layer of breathable membrane which lets water vapour out of the tea house, but doesn't let liquid water in. This is actually the middle layer of the sandwich, but was easiest to put up first.

Then batons - zillions and zillions of batons - each lovingly (!) hand painted before being fixed on to ensure there was a small air gap between the layers. (Not quite sure why only small air is allowed in - but that's what Himself said, so it must be right!!!)
You can tell it's still only Autumn here - I'm on 3 layers of clothes, but my trusty old body warmer has come out - yet I've still only got my cotton hat on! :D

Next comes the internal layer of thermal insulation - 2 inches of compressed foam to make sure I stay toastie warm!

.....with the outer layer being painted plywood. This is the dodgiest workshop I've ever had - cold, windswept and balanced precariously on wobbly planks over 4 foot of very cold water!!!

I swear Himself does all he can to make sure I'll fall in at some point!

Himself fastening the plywood to the rear wall. Behind him is the path and border that took me 6 weekends to clear in high summer ....... oh how I was longing for it to be warm again now!

I was still on painting duty - any wooden parts that might come into contact with rain had to be painted. The little kick-back in this photo is where a 6 inch deep cupboard is going to be. The front of the cupboard will be flush with the internal walls so as not to take up any space in the already small room. As with many things about the tea house and garden, this was an afterthought and had to be designed in retrospectively - but it works, so hey!

The 3rd coat of wall paint was done in the pouring rain - hence the rather blurry photo as Himself didn't want to get the camera too wet. I did the cutting in with a brush, but the main painting with a roller ...haha, look at me - the decorators daughter thinks you'll all be really interested in how I paint my plywood!!!

This was supposed to be the top coat, but when I went to check on it the next day I realised that it had rained so hard, the water had bounced off the mud and up onto the walls - NOT happy! I had to wash the paint on the bottom 2 feet of wall, re-coat the entire wall, then put down a layer of tarpaulin weighed down with stones on top of the mud to stop it happening again!

By November it was getting really cold - even Himself had to put his hat on!

More baton painting! November and December were really cold and, being the total wuss who doesn't 'do' cold, I was now in about 6 layers of clothing - including a full set of thermals, fleece hat, fleece lined wellies and hot gel packs down my gloves!

Finishing off the external wall and trimming off the membrane at the back of the tea house.

The walls painted pre-rain!

At the end of a long, cold, wet weekend the walls were up, insulated and painted! I was very cold and exhausted but Himself was very relieved to have got it done!

The results so far...........there's still a long way to go -

but then the snows came - and nothing more got done until March........!

Schools Gardening Project Part 2.

2010-07-12T09:06:00.009+01:00

As many of you saw in my last post, Kathryn at http://plantwhateverbringsyoujoy.com/ kindly asked me to do a guest post about our local schools gardening projects. She posted the first part of my post about Parkside Community School http://www.parkside.derbyshire.sch.uk/ , but as her posts tend to be short and sweet, my tendency to verbal diarrhoea combined with the huge number of photos that I sent her overwhelmed her and she suggested that I should post it myself and she will link to here from her blog! Serves me right for getting so inspired and producing what Kathryn said could have been a very lengthy magazine article! (she has a point - I've had to cut this down quite a lot myself!)

Anyway, the Parkside school staff told me that I just HAD to go visit the inspirational gardens at one of our partner primary schools. So I made my appointment and trotted off excitedly to Spire Infants School to meet their gardener, Valerie, have a tour round their wonderful gardens and take part in one of their 5 gardening clubs! You can have a look at their website here: http://www.spire-inf.derbyshire.sch.uk/ , but be aware that some of the garden photos on the website are 2 or 3 years old now, but they show where the gardens started from.

Valerie is funded by school to run all the gardening clubs and a wide range of gardening projects throughout the school. She does 2 clubs at lunchtimes and 3 After-School clubs and is supported by a whole range of staff in different ways depending on the project at the time. The clubs run from February to November regardless of the weather. There are roughly 22 Y2’s and 15-18 Y1’s (5 and 6 year olds) mixed across the 5 different sessions. Younger children in the Reception class aren’t involved in gardening club, but do have gardening sessions at other times.

I started with the tour of the gardens – VERY impressive. Here is the fruit garden with a variety of fruit trees creating a boundary, then raspberries, strawberries, redcurrants etc in the middle beds.

Each year group has a raised bed which this year included onions, cabbage, beetroot, courgette and radishes. There are also potato buckets per year group and a general bed with cabbages in. There are some beautiful Canna Lilies growing by the small greenhouse and the most beautiful variegated ornamental sweetcorn plants that I’d never seen before and instantly fell in love with!

More of the year group beds.

Each class’s bed is carefully labelled and equally carefully nurtured and tended.

The storage shed and flower beds. All the tools are kept securely in the shed as they are proper tools, not the namby-pamby blunt ‘kids tools’ you often find, which are actually useless and don’t help the children to learn how to garden.

Flowers in the cold frames ready to be planted out. Even the Reception children (4+years) grow things. This year they’re growing 3 different coloured sunflowers and short sunflowers.

Next I went into the huge Keder greenhouse to see what was going on in there. 2/3rds of the greenhouse is growing space and 1/3rd is activity space because the children work in all weathers and use the activity space in the greenhouse when the weather is bad.

The day I went, the gardening club were digging up, washing and weighing potatoes for the Potato Council ‘potatoes for schools’ competition. The variety and number of plants was set by the council and the school with the biggest crop gets a prize.

Listening to the instructions.

Searching for potatoes.

Many of the children were very limited about what they were prepared to eat before the gardening project started, but will now try new foods.

Once the children had gone home Valerie told me more about the project and how they link it into the National Curriculum and the school timetable:
Every September there is a whole school gardening project so, for example, in 2008 everyone was involved in planting 50 trees in the school grounds as part of the national Breathing Spaces project. They have also done mass bulb plantings of narcissi and daffodils. This year they’re doing a potato project with every class growing a tub of potatoes, which will be counted and weighed in maths numeracy lessons before being eaten – a whole school version of today’s potato project really.

Planting swede seeds. The swedes will be used to make winter vegetable soup in a cookery lesson in the January/February half term.

The gardening groups hold a plant shop 2 or 3 times each term to sell surplus plants to fund more seeds etc. The Y2’s do all the money handling, adding up the bills, giving out correct change etc – but because it’s fun they don’t realise they’re learning maths by stealth!

Valerie also goes into class lessons and whole school assemblies to do demonstrations and get the children involved with planting and growing. She also involves the children in hard landscaping. So far they have made paths, spread gravel, built bat boxes and hedgehog houses and planted fruit trees – not bad for 4 to 6 year olds!

I asked Valerie about selling the produce to the kitchens on a regular basis. They do supply them with salad leaves, chives, onions, leeks, cabbage and rhubarb in season but they can’t yet sell to the kitchens because:
• Our beloved (?!) County Council who we buy the kitchen services from cannot work out how to charge for the produce from a different supplier (i.e., not them!).
• Apparently neither can they work out how to deduct that cost and amount of fresh produce from the food they supply to school!
• The kitchen staff would love to have the fresh produce as all the food supplied comes ready prepared and chilled or frozen but they don’t have time to prepare fresh vegetables within their allocated hours.
• The lack of fresh food preparation is deskilling our kitchen staff … a HUGE bone of contention for many people.
• There isn’t the funding available to pay for the increase in the kitchen staff’s hours to allow for fresh food prep time.

And, of course, the knock-on effect is that the children don’t often see the follow-through from seed to plant to kitchen to plate, not do they get to taste the difference in home grown food versus supermarket or fast food outlet cook/chill foods, so it’s a constant uphill battle to move many children and families onto healthier and cheaper diets and away from fish & chips (fries) onto fruit and vegetables!

Picking strawberries.

I’ll come down off my high horse now and explain about the rest of the garden projects down at Spire!

When Valerie was an RHS student in 2004, she approached school for permission to do a 200 hour horticultural project there as part of her course. Jane - the inspirational Head Teacher there, being a very canny woman gave permission for Valerie to do the project as long as she completed it! The whole project took closer to 400 hours!

Valerie designed and constructed (with a little help from a builder for the hard landscaping) a secret garden, a gravel garden, a woodland garden and a bog garden – no mean feat in ground that is almost pure clay!

The secret garden was the first area to be constructed in 2005. It is 3 areas within 1, separated by arches and bowers. Despite having the school on one side and a car park on the other, it feels a very quiet, calm, restful space. The 3 areas each have their own colour scheme in amongst the riot of greenery. The children are accompanied by staff when using this area.

‘The Little House’ was added in October 2005 and its roof incorporates a wooden beam and an old bench from the old school hall which was being demolished around that time.

I forgot to take a photo of the woodland garden as I was too busy looking at the hedgehog house under the shrubbery, but this photo shows the bog garden and the gravel garden, which began in 2006. they are in raised beds as the clay was just so dense it was almost impossible to dig out!

Part of the gravel garden.

The school has entered and won the East Midlands in Bloom schools category three times – and won each time! They were also one of three winners of the Garden Organic competition in 2008 – and I’m sure you’re able to see why they won!

The gardens in Spire Infants School and Parkside Community Secondary School are all very different, but equally inspirational in their own ways and I feel very privileged to be able to access them all …. I just need to borrow Valerie for a year to help me in my own garden now because she has inspired me to bigger and better things!

I feel another plan coming on…………!

Guest posts and garden animals!

2010-07-01T17:38:00.008+01:00

A slight diversion from my normal-type posts first! Kathryn at http://plantwhateverbringsyoujoy.com/ recently did a post about Jamie Oliver's American version of his Food Revolution in Schools, which people may remember from when he did it here and mums feed children chips through the school railings!!! Following a comment I left on her blog about what is happening in the gardens at the school where I am a Governor and in one of our partner Primary schools, Kathryn very kindly asked me to do a guest post for her about the various projects. I felt very honoured to be asked - and really rather nervous about doing justice to the amazing young people involved in the projects, but I did it - and had a jolly nice time touring the gardens, catching up on all the developments and talking to everyone involved in the process!

If you'd like to read the posts - Kathryn has had to split it into two because I went on a bit (....not like me at all eh?!), then you can follow the link here to get to the first post. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed investigating and writing it!

Back to more mundane things now. I thought I'd share some photos of the wildlife in our garden as they're all being as busy as, well, bees really!

Busy on the Campanula..........

Busy amongst the raspberries.............

along with an ant or two!

and busy on the azaleas

Aragog the spider didn't die in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows .......... he's alive and well and living in my greenhouse!

- and a big beggar he is too! *shudders*

Also residing happily in a tomato plant in the greenhouse is Thomas the Toad.

Ceefer the ferocious guard cat in amongst my salad bed!

A ladybird-type insect on an unknown and unscented rose (note to self - get your eyes tested!)

Tadpoles and newts in the pond in the front garden - alright, alright - so it's an excuse to show off the gorgeous iris, but the pond really IS teeming with taddies and newts!

Does blackfly on the globe artichokes count?

Evidence of slugs and snails on my hostas

The hostas are enormous - and I suspect the slugs and snails are too!

But my favourite of all the wildlife in the garden is Last-Born on her way to the 6th form prom last night!

No more wildlife, just a few flowers to finish off with :)

White azaleas

The old rose bush by the front door - it has a beautiful scent, but I have no idea which rose it is.

'Heritage' -a climbing rose bought for me for my recent birthday

Red azaleas

All tanked up!

2010-06-18T10:48:00.010+01:00

Some of you may recall that for my recent 50th birthday my friends all clubbed together to buy me a Tank Driving Day! I have to admit that this may not be to everyone's taste, but I thought it was a fantastic present ..... so much so that I actually jumped up and down squealing with pure glee when I was presented with it! Perfectly normal behaviour for a 50 year old who's only 8 on the inside!!!

Anyway, me and Himself went to Tank Mania (http://www.tankmania.co.uk/ ) last Sunday and had the most brilliant day! Our friends had also bought a spectator ticket for Himself ... but he didn't spectate - he came in all the vehicles as a passenger.

The package was to drive 4 vehicles and then, at the end of the day, crush a car! The vehicles I got to drive were - from left to right, an Abbot self-propelled gun tank, a 432 Armoured Personnel Carrier, a 4 tonne Bedford MJ 4x4 truck and a lightweight Land Rover.

I had really fancied driving the BV206 hagglund Amphibious Personnel carrier but some heartless swine had tried to nick it from the farm where all the vehicles are stored but, in their failed attempt to steal it, they had wrecked all the electrics and it was away being repaired.

The drivers were split into small groups of 3 or 4 to one instructor, all of whom are ex-army driver/mechanics. We were lucky enough to get John (aka George Dawes!) who was excellent! We were told to wear 'old clothes and stout boots or shoes'. They supplied the overalls (one size doesn't quite fit all ......I've never worn something with the crotch round my knees and the hems turned up 6 times before!) and what appeared to be 2nd World War German helmets!

Our team for the day:

I was designated as the first driver - were the lads being polite or just scared?!!!

First up was the Armoured Personnel Carrier - a sweet little vehicle, steered by 2 levers which controlled the brakes on the tracks. Push both levers forward and the brakes are off, pull both levers back to put the brakes on. Turn corners by heaving back mightily with both hands on the lever at the side you wish to turn to - dead easy!

I quickly got the hang of the steering, but because the vehicles are all quite old (30+ years) and a bit clunky, it needed a LOT of brute force and shouting of "come ON" to turn corners - or was that just me?!

The course was well thought out, with some tight corners, steep ups and downs and long straight bits to put your foot down .... not that I did any speeding you understand :D !!!

Next up was the ligtweight Landy. These are designed to be put on pallets and parachuted in to the ground troops in hostile areas. This baby was a hoot to drive as it's considerably smaller and nippier than the Land Rover 110 Defender that I normally drive. I've done lots of general off-road driving and competitions, so I just had fun hurtling this round the course.

The whole day was a family affair. Ian organises it - he's the ex-army waller. Les (dad) does the 'meet-and-greet' and takes all the photos and Debbie (mum) cooks all the spendiferous food we had for lunch - and afternoon tea when we'd finished (how jolly British!) and Ian's brother drove us all back to the field where we'd parked the cars out of harm's way.

After lunch things got really interesting as I got to drive the Bedford. It drove just like a big Land Rover and I had no problems in knowing where all the corners of it were and what route to steer. Himself may possibly be a little bit biased, but he reckoned that I was by far and away the best and smoothest driver of the Landy and the Bedford! (bless him!)

I LOVED driving the Bedford ....but Himself is not yet convinced by my need to park one on our drive!!!

Being a passenger was fun, but driving it was much more fun! (control freak - moi?!)

Himself had a very relaxed day :)

They saved the best till last and I finally got my hands on the Abbot!

Only one minor problem with the Abbot. You see that metal sticky-up bit immediately in front of me? Well, being a short-arse, I couldn't see over it! I did a very good impression of a meerkat as I tried to stretch my spine to give me an extra inch or four.

Going uphill gave a very nice view of blue sky ...and NOTHING else, mind you, I couldn't see a great deal more going downhill either!

In the army they train the drivers blindfolded so that they learn to trust the tank commander and follow his instructions ....... I'd have been fine blindfolded!

Err .........Ooops! :D

The instructors, drivers and spectators at the end of a hot, dusty, day!

I thoroughly recommend having a Tank Driving Day. My cheeks ached by the end of it from grinning so much - it was such excellent fun!

Now I want to drive something REALLY big!

Weed of the Week!

2010-06-02T16:29:00.008+01:00

Charnock - a right nasty little beggar!

It's actually part of the cabbage family and apparently, in years gone by, its leaves were eaten as a source of protein when people were too poor to buy anything better. Not sure I'd fancy it myself though!

Don't be fooled by those pretty yellow flowers. It is a voracious grower and spreads rapidly. The new growth is spindly and shallow rooted. The older growth (as I found to my cost at the weekend) has long, interconnecting roots and is a PIG to dig up!

Its seeds have been known to germinate even after up to 50 years of laying dormant in the soil - which is why the weed is such a common site in ploughed fields. I don't know if our garden was ever ploughed, but the flippin' seeds have come from somewhere!

I'd never really noticed the charnock before, but it was a bit rampant this year .... until last weekend, that is! I was fairly sure it was a weed and a knowledgeable friend/ weed expert identified it for me. The part of the garden it had sprung up in is the area behind the fruit cage, which I cleared of stones and dug over last year to transplant the rhubarb into it - Aaha! Yikes! It's all my fault!!!

The piggin' seeds were there all the time, lying in wait for some idiot to come along and dig 'em up!!

What it looked like pre-Charnock can be seen here: http://nuttygnome.blogspot.com/2010/02/so-what-was-i-doing.html

In fact, what it looks like post-Charnock can also pretty much be seen there too except that the rhubarb is in there now! Having dug up the Charnock, without disturbing the rhubarb, I've sown Honesty and Poppy seeds across the bed around the base of the variegated maple. I can't wait for them to come up.

The rhubarb is well travelled - and not just from inside the fruit cage to outside it either! It originally came from the famous Yorkshire 'rhubarb triangle' about 20 years ago. .http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2010/02/the_rhubarb_triangle.htmlIt It was brought down the 30 miles from the triangle to Rotherham (where we lived at that time) via a link that is best kept secret(NEVER give away the source of rhubarb triangle rhubarb!), then up to Aberdeen (long way, long story!) and back to Chesterfield 10 years later, where it was split into 4 and is still going strong. When I moved ours out of the fruit cage last Autumn, I split it into 4, gave 2 away and planted the other 2. It does mean we can't have our own rhubarb crop this year as it needs time to re-establish itself, but it's doing well.

Also doing well are the willow shoots I planted about 6 weeks ago at the top end of one side of the vegetable garden to hide our large and motley collection of compost bins. The holes are actually the 200 leeks I planted at the weekend! They are to the left of the onions and garlic and above the globe artichoke, carrots, spring onions, pak choi and chinese cabbage.

These are some of my carrots before I thinned them! This may not seem much to get excited about to you, but I didn't need to thin them last year as you can't really thin one single carrot!

I planted FIVE rows last year and all I got was one measly carrot - it may have been the biggest and most perfect carrot I've ever grown, which isn't saying a lot given my previous lack of success with carrots, but it was only one. Threatening them that this was their last chance obviously did the trick!

Further down the garden, the azalea is looking seriously fabby this year and works so well with the colours of the Laburnum tree and the Wigelia.

........ and the poppies are abundant this year too.

A hard winter obviously means we get a cracking spring show!

Spring is sprung......

2010-05-17T20:30:00.009+01:00

Spring is sprung,
the grass is riz,
I wonders where the birdies is?
The bird is on the wing they say,
but that's absurd,
because the wing is on the bird!

Lets take a walk round my garden.............
starting at the back

The bush in the photo below has never flowered before as it was dominated by the huge laurel - until we cut that back hard last year.

I'm not quite sure what the yellow bush is. Any ideas?

Name that bush?!

If anyone knows what the lovely maroon plants are, I'd love to know!

They grow to about a metre high and have sweet little yellow flowers in mid to late summer.

Now to the front garden - and first the view from my bedroom window.

The quince flowers positively glow at this time of year.

The wisteria is slowly opening - it should be a good year for the flowers after our hard winter. The fragrance has been wafting around in the breeze today ...... I wish I could bottle it, I'd wear it all year round!

Let's go back up to the Japanese garden to finish off.

I hope you enjoyed your wander round?!

The roof, the whole roof and nothing but the roof!

2010-04-26T15:18:00.004+01:00

Yeah, yeah. I know I said 'nothing but the roof' - but I lied!!!

First of all I 'd just like to say a big thank you to all the people who have popped up on my comments section, email or facebook to find out where I've been and to check up on me ........ I'm fine, I was just temporarily MIA.

The list of stuff I had to complete in the real world meant that my forays into the virtual world of blogland had to be temporarily curtailed until other proper deadlines had been met. But, as Arnie would have said if he'd thought of it ........."I'm back!"

The 'stuff' included watching Last-Born shine as the world's skinniest Tracey in a local production of Hairspray. I was so proud of her that I leaked tears throughout both the opening and closing numbers! She was magnificent and should clearly follow her dream to go into Musical Theatre - in my totally unbiased opinion of course! First-Born also gets an honourable mention here for the fantastic work she did on the costumes when she was home from uni for Easter - I think they would have been a bit stuffed without her!

I was also preparing to be inundated - which wasn't quite as painful as it sounds!

I had 10 family members in the house all this last weekend and a party for 40 people here to celebrate my 50th birthday on Saturday night. I'm still not quite sure how I got to 50 so quickly when I'm only 22 on the inside (make that 8 some days) and my dad swears he's only 33, but then maths never was my strong point! (or, as one of dad's friends pointed out, " yer dad's a lying bugger!!!")

I'm also not sure how, when it was my party to celebrate my birthday, I ended up doing all the cooking and preparation but, hey, I had a ball. I also got the world's best EVER birthday present............................................. a Tank Driving Day!!!!!

FANTASTIC!

I've always wanted to drive a tank!

Trust me. There WILL be a blog post on this once I've done it! :D

Anyway, back to the roof last summer!

Having got the purlin ring safely in place, Himself set about putting the waterproof, breathable membrane on the rafters.

This involved him being able to use some of his clamps - which always makes him very happy for some reason that I don't yet understand ........... must be a man-thing!

I was still clearing the holly jungle at this point, but nipped up onto the scaffold tower to do a bit of multi-tasking baton holding and photo taking!

Having got the first baton fixed, Himself rapidly dispensed with my services and sent me packing back into the depths of dusty, spider filled holly and skanky old birds nests whilst he got on with laying more batons.

Even though the membrane is only covering the roof over my therapy room and not the veranda, the batons have to sit over the whole roof. They serve a twofold purpose of allowing airflow between the membrane and the shingles and give him something to nail the shingles onto. Good planning that man! :)

The tea house is beginning to settle gently into its surroundings.

There was great excitement from both of use when the shingles arrived. Lovely Canadian cedar shingles - the smell of the cedar was wonderfully enveloping as I opened the plastic wrapping.

Now.In my defence, I have to say at this point that I had EVERY intention of doing the shingle roof myself! I had even told Himself I was going to do it - I planned to do an important part of the tea house rather than just being the mad ideas woman, gofer (you know ....... go fer this, go fer that!), lugger of heavy things and an extra pair of hands , but fortunately Himself is only too aware of my very low boredom threshold on repetitive tasks (except for weeding, but that's a completely different thing!) and so got started on it one day when I was safely out of the way doing something more exciting!

It's perhaps as well that he did - I would have been SO bored by the end of the second row and could never had got the level of accuracy on any of it, let alone all the beautifully mitred corners as he did. His commitment to detail and accuracy is unparalleled whereas mine is slapdash, to say the least! So, because of his ingenuity and foresight, we have a tea house roof that is a thing of beauty!

The first shingles are laid out.

Himself made a jig frame to ensure that all the shingles were parallel.

A complete row was placed and checked for size and thickness before any stainless steel nails went near them.

Mitred corners.

Beautiful!

The ever wonderful Pete gave up yet another weekend to clamber around our scaffold tower. Himself and Pete made a good team - and Pete being a carpenter was a big help! Pete laid out the shingles, then marked and cut all the mitres whilst Himself nailed them on. They made cracking good progress that weekend.

Working out how to do the ridge and hips.

Moving round to the last side ....almost done!

A pile of sorted shingles.

A work of art!

It even looks good from the inside!

My 'boys' at work :D

Last side - done!

Bring on the big drum roll..................................

TA-DAH!!! The finished roof.

It was worth waiting for wasn't it?!

Disaster!

2010-03-22T12:39:00.014Z

Apologies for not being around peoples' blogs much these past few weeks - life got a little bit hectic and something had to give!

Anyway, back to my disaster...........!

Last July I was merrily pootling my way up the garden to pick some fruit and veg for tea a couple of weeks after the purlin ring had been put onto the tea house roof when I became aware of a strange buzzing noise working its way into my happy little world. Wandering up past the bottom pond in search of the source of the noise, I became aware that something was amiss;

The bottom pond was empty!!!!

The buzzing was the pump pumping fresh air. Whaaah!

This discovery resulted in a brief outburst of a chorus of the Yorkshire swearing song interspersed with wails of "where's all the water gone?" as I danced up and down in panic! This was NOT a happy dance, I can tell you!

(For those who don't know it, the chorus goes "bugger, bugger, pig, sod, sh*t, sod, damn"!)

I searched around, but to no avail - I just couldn't find where the water had gone. The top pond was still full, nowhere seemed boggy or soggy ...... it had well and truly vanished! I went in search of Himself, Master of Mysteries, to see if he could shed any light onto things!

Himself, having a pessimistic outlook on life (- although he claims it's realistic) immediately decided that there must be a leak in the big top pond. I pointed out that as he hadn't dropped anything sharp into the pond ....had he?, that couldn't be the reason. (nice speedy deflection of potential blame there I thought!).

I don't normally leave the stream running during the week when I'm not around, but I'd forgotten to turn it off the previous Sunday and it had been running constantly for 5 days - so I had no idea how long the pond had been empty. Himself then added in a very satisfactory worry about whether or not the pump would be wrecked from running without water flowing through it. I reckoned that, as it's a German pump, it'd be fine!

We both spent a restless night trying to figure out what had happened. Himself was holding firm on his belief that we'd have to strip out the top pond to find a leak (see - told you he was a pessimist!), but I was convinced that there was another cause - ever the optimist and trying desperately to avoid emptying the top pond of its 5000 litres of water!

The following morning showed that the top pond water level hadn't changed : QED, no leak in there (phew!). Then I remembered Ower Dave!

When Ower Dave had come to help, I'd shouted at him for walking up the stream bed - something along the lines of "gerrof me stream yer gret daft wombat!" (Translation = "please come out of my stream you silly person!"). He'd claimed that dry stream beds were just paths by another name ... too much walking up Kinder Scout Downfall and Grindsbrook together when we were younger had obviously left its mark!

All of the top pond and most of the stream has solid support under the edges of the butyl lining. The only bit that hasn't is ......... the bit of the stream where the beach is! That's just got a thin aluminium strip under it to give it some rigidity.

I reckoned that Ower Dave had marched his great clod-hopping boots right over the stones and pushed down the liner and either bent it (hopefully) or ripped it on a sharp edge (please no!). So I shifted all the stones on his possible short-cut and, after a few minutes of serious breath-holding, found that he had indeed squashed the edge, but hadn't ripped the butyl - thankfully!

The lowered edge was then below the water level of the stream and meant that the constantly running water had been able to leach its way through the stones into the moss and soil and soak invisibly away - until there wasn't enough water left to create a flow.

Much relieved by my discovery, I then cleaned out the bottom pond. Yes, I know that technically it's still just a big hole with liner in it but in my imagination it's a finished pond!!!

This summer......! :)

Anyway, I spent considerable time removing water snails, frogs and other small aquatic beasties from the pond before cleaning all the gunk out of the bottom. Very smelly and not the pleasantest of tasks - and not aided by this frog who came back FOUR times after I'd carefully deposited him in the top pond - daft creature!

I gave up and kept him in this tub where I could keep an eye on him!

I then faced up to fixing the stream bed instead of procrastinating! I dug out the soil to give me a clear area to work, unfolded the butyl, rebuilt the edging using stones instead of the aluminium strip, refolded the butyl liner down over the stones then replaced the soil, holding the new edging securely in place. I set the stream running to check that I'd not missed any tiny tears - which I hadn't, and to prove to Himself that the pump was fine - which it was! German you know. Dead good!

Once I was happy with that, I started to replace the beach - putting in some bigger stones to support the edging should some plonk with big feet decided to walk up it again!

I left the stream running constantly for a couple of days to see if the levels dropped - which they didn't, before I put the finishing touches to the stream, adding the stones and pebbles to hide the liner and spill over onto the moss .......... you'd never know I'd been messing about with it would you?!

Stream running beautifully - even if the bit below the bridge still isn't finished!

Then Autumn came and all my hard work was covered up..........

What idiot wanted to build ponds under a load of trees eh?!

The pond and island yesterday -and, yes, the moss really is that green! A combination of all that snow and lots of rain has been very good for it this winter!

And a perfect way to end the day!

So ........what was I doing?!

2010-02-26T18:23:00.017Z

You know how there's always one bit of the garden that is either far enough away or tucked round a corner for you to be able to ignore it for some considerable time (or, in our case, lots of bits, ignored for years!)? Well, the time had come that I could no longer ignore the garden beyond the fruit cage.

It all started with the need to build a path to access the back of the tea house without fighting through the plants that I planned to have next to the veranda! I had already previously dealt with the privet-and-spikey-things hedge down the boundary side of the fruit cage and had produced a very nice path about a metre wide that went ............. exactly nowhere!

At the far end of the fruit cage, where I wanted to come out, was an impenetrable wall of dense holly which - on several of the hottest weekends of last summer, I had to tackle. So, whilst Himself was swanning about up a scaffold tower in his shorts and tee shirt, I was in my thickest jeans and sweatshirt doing battle!

Doesn't look too scary from here does it?!

Try the bird's eye view - any scarier?

No? Still not scary? Bring on the drum roll..............!
Try THIS!

and, if I ever managed to make it through that lot, I'd still got to deal with - you've guessed it, yet another pile of stones that I had previously dumped here when I had dug the hole for the pond and which were now in the wrong place - again (and had been there for so long that they had got their own little micro-climate thingy going on!)

and, if that wasn't enough, there was the full length of the 'border' to deal with! The whole strip of land I was about to tackle was about 10 feet wide and 50 feet long - another 'little' project fro me to "get me teeth into"!

Rumour had it that, once upon a time, there was an actual flower border and a path under that lot but at some point early on in the 8 years we've lived here, it had somehow morphed into the Derbyshire equivalent of the forest surrounding Sleeping Beauty's palace and no-one knew what lay beyond the greenery...........

There was only one way to find out! Armed with my trusty tools and a step ladder (- on account of the holly hedge being WAY taller than my measly little 5'2"!) I began to do battle. It was very hot, very sweaty, very hard, very prickly work......... I was attacked by midges and flies on account of the salty sweat pouring off me as I laboured. I knocked years-old dusty birds nests onto me and had to fight off spiders of terrifying proportions - it was a jungle in there and I HATE spiders! What I really needed was a young Indiana Jones to fight his way towards me wielding his trusty machete, grinning his lopsided grin, sweeping me into his manly arms ........ sigh!!!

Ooops, wandered into a little fantasy to keep me on task there!

But treasures worthy of Indi' which had lain hidden for many years gradually began to emerge out of the gloom of the undergrowth - metal dustbins with no lids or bottoms, what a find! He'd have been well impressed! Further on in my quest I found what used to be wooden compost bins - at least, I think that's what they were! I also found a path under the outer edges of the vegetation. It hadn't seen the light of day for some considerable time, but cleaned up really well - and made access SO much easier!!!!

Elderberry trees, self-set flowering cherries by the dozen and great long holly branches by the gazillion! I kid you not! Some of these branches were so thick I had to saw them off as my largest loppers wouldn't go round them! Many of them were about 10-12 feet long and closely interwoven with their neighbours ...... they would have got a prize in a French-skipping competition if they'd been in school! They needed heaving and tugging to get them free - all whilst I was balanced precariously up a wobbly pair of steps with sharp-ish equipment. Oh joy! What fun was mine! Oh Indi' save me from this jungle nightmare!

Eventually, after about 5 weekends of long, hard, hot slog I could see ....... Ta Da! The Far End!

I had beaten the holly but, despite being exhausted by my valiant efforts, I still had to face the flowering cherries and elderberry trees!

However, a knight in shining armour appeared just in the nick of time. Not quite Indi', but I didn't complain too much! Calamity arrived, professing boredom, and offered his gardening services! He was rapidly put to work digging up the flowering cherries and lugging the boxes of stones from where I was clearing them across to where I was creating the path.

The following weekend OJ came up and dismantled the remains of the compost bins, carted the burnable wood to the woodpile at the opposite side of the garden, dug up a few random tree stumps from previous clearing work on the grass, then dug up one elderberry tree and did some serious pruning to the other ........

whilst I carried on dealing with the rock pile, building the path and making a toad house for all the dozens of toads and newts I found hiding in the stones. It's just 7 bricks forming an L shape, but it seems to have done the trick. It's evident that the toad house has been in use over winter, which has made me very happy!

The end result?

8 weekends of hard labour produced:

and:

I continue the path from the back of the fruit cage using 'weed-stop' suppressant matting, then all the stones I'd unearthed from the stone mountain went on top. The path continues along the full length of the border just in front of the holly so that I can get to the beastly hedge easily - as I'm fully intending to keep on top of this job in future! It splits to come forward to the left of the remains of the elderberry tree for quick access down to the back of the tea house.

I then transplanted 2 rhubarb plants and a redcurrant bush from inside the fruit cage to just outside it - you can see them at the very far right of the photo if you enlarge it.

The rhubarb didn't need the protection of the cage (it's a roughty-toughty northern rhubarb after all!) and was getting very big. The redcurrant was moved to give more space to the 5 blackcurrant bushes and the 3 gooseberry bushes in the cage in the hope of a better crop this year - although, as I also shifted 3 of the blackcurrant bushes to new positions inside the cage, I'm not holding my breath on this one!.

I didn't want to just get rid of a good healthy bush, so I thought the birds might like it!

What am I going to put in the rest of it? I have NO idea ...... but I'm working on it!

I know I want some perennial, evergreen plants for structure, but I'm not sure what yet, so any ideas for planting in a west facing, fairly dry large, empty area will be very gratefully received!

How to fit a purlin ring!

2010-02-15T12:46:00.012Z

For reasons I don't fully understand (erm, actually - don't understand at all!), Himself decided to put the main rafters on the tea house roof and then fit the purlin ring whereas I would have done it the easy way and put the purlin ring on without the rafters in the way ........ but this is probably why he's in charge and I'm only Technician, 3rd Class!

The purlin ring was glued together on the yard, chocked up so that it didn't twist on the slope, then held firmly together with the strop. (for non-British readers, in the UK the 'yard' means just the hard surfaced area outside the back door - everything else is the garden! It gets very confusing at times when blogs talk about their yard, then show you the garden!)

Moving swiftly on from discussions on the joys of a common language........!
The purlin ring.

We roped in several of our strong male friends, Garth, Big Dave and Big Dave's FiL - Pete, to help with the manouver. The next 10 photos show how it was done. Apparently it would have been a lot easier without a big deep pond in the way!

Once the purlin ring was safely in place and tea and biscuits had been devoured by the workers (got to look after your staff, you never know when you might need them again!), Himself took all the 'bird's beak' wedges he'd saved when he'd previously cut them out of the rafters where they rested on the main beams. He turned them over and glued them onto the purlin ring under each rafter to give extra support - always thinking that man!

He then did the final adjustments to the corner post...

cut the appropriate sized piece out of the corner rafter.....

and tried it for size! It fitted - naturally!

He put the corner wedges in place.......

then cut the bottom edge at an angle.......

and worked his way along the front and back sides of the roof fitting the remaining rafters.

Until he got to the point of feeling that the roof frame was finally secure enough to take off the extra batons!

And what was I doing whilst all this was going on? (apart from clambering over scaffolding and making tea!) .......... that's in the next post!

The day my brother came to help!

2010-02-04T12:55:00.012Z

During this past week whilst I was languishing in my sickbed, racked with fever and a hacking cough, with Vaseline being my facial moisturiser of choice and necessity, my brain (having nothing better to do with itself) sidled off into a corner and began to ponder on some of life's imponderable mysteries: why was I wrapped in an invisible electric blanket?, where on earth was the 'off' switch?, why can't I successfully grow carrots?, how come I can only see the hills on the other side of the valley in winter? (yeah, yeah - I know it's because the trees are bare! I told you I was pyrexic!), where does the horizon go on grey, snowy days? and - The Biggy - when would my tea house be finished?

I still don't know the answer to the last one (or as to why I can't grow carrots!), but I thought it was time I caught up a bit on where we've got to. My big brother, Our Dave, (not to be confused with my father-in-law, David, who helped put the frame up!) came up for the weekend in July to help put the rafters on.

Introducing Our Dave!

Some of you may now be wondering why he's called Our Dave? Easy - I'm from Yorkshire, that's how we talk! (Himself's NOT from Yorkshire and therefore he speaks posher than I do!) British readers will be nodding their heads sagely at this point but, for the benefit of non-Brits, I'll explain:

In Yorkshire, immediate family members are often referred to as 'Our ..........', to denote to outsiders that they are family. I'm 'Our Liz' or 'Our Kid' (little sister). Some families even talk about 'our mam' and 'our dad'. 'Me' can also be substituted for 'Our' - eg; 'me dad', 'me brother'. Quick, easy, avoids long explanations! HOWEVER, you've got to get the pronunciation right - Yorkshire has quite a flat, guttural intonation, so 'our' is really pronounced 'ower' and you have to be able to hear that w! So he's really 'Ower Dave', oh, and 'Me ...' is pronounced 'Mi' and Monday is pronounced Mundi, but there you go!

So, anyway, back to the tea house!

First Himself and Ower Dave re-jigged the scaffold tower to make a safe working platform.

Health and Safety would have had a field day, but it was actually a lot more solid than it looks - honest!

....take a whole load of wood and turn them into rafters - your time starts ... now!

Standing 6 ft up on a slightly wobbly scaffold tower is not the best position to try to cut precision wedges!

One of many 'bird's beak' wedges carefully cut by Himself and Ower Dave.

Accuracy is paramount.

The first rafter in place and upright at last!

The odd shaped piece at the apex is just a temporary fixture to assist with stability.

It's quite difficult to see from this angle but Himself had marked out every single rafter and taken them down to school where the D&T technician had cut them all with a 5* curve along one long side.(oh the perks of me being a Governor!) Himself had then glued the cut piece onto the other side to keep the width of the rafter whilst giving it a very gentle overall curved shape to make the bottom edge flick out a bit - just like a 'proper' tea house!

Sighting along the rafters prior to the main beam going in.

Finishing off the day by fixing a couple of batons for extra stability - you can never have too much temporary extra stability!

...... and thanks for your help Ower Dave! :)

Good things seem to come in threes!

2010-01-22T14:28:00.011Z

....... and that certainly seems to have been my recent experience!

My First Good Thing:
Back in December I entered a competition set by Monica at http://gardenfaerie.blogspot.com/ to work out her favourite modern art sculpture at Meijer Gardens (easy - there were several photos of a bright orange 'thing', which was 'Aria' by Alexander Liberman!) and to identify where the lyrics "Caw! I guess it was alive!" came from.
I spent ages trawling t'internet in search of that flippin' quote ........I finally found it on YouTube done as a song called Mounted Animal Nature Trail by the Arrogant Worms (most amusing!)

Anyway, the upshot of my sheer stubborness not to be defeated by song lyrics from an obscure Canadian band meant that I was the very lucky winner of 'The Painted Garden - a year in words and watercolours' by Mary Woodin.

It's beautifully illustrated book as you can see from the photo below. It's a cracking good read, but you can also just dib into it for the sheer pleasure of looking at the paintings and picking up little snippets of useful information such as 'plant crocuses near lavendar to stop the birds pecking the petals' - a real gem! I love it ...thank you Monica :)

She also sent me some very scrummy 'Twilight Delight' dark chocolate, which I thoroughly enjoyed and which made me re-evaluate my relationship with American chocolate! Me and Hershey Bars have never really bonded!

My Second Good Thing:

Around the same time, Diana at http://voiceinthegarden.blogspot.com/ offered a limited edition print of one of her paintings to celebrate her anniversary of 3 years of blogging. I was obviously up there amongst the best begging letters in her comments box (oh how I can grovel when I really, really want something!) and was honoured to be chosen.

She sent me this lovely print of 'The Train Station', which is hand signed and numbered - but I can't tell you the number right now as the print is away at the framers even as I type. I'm hoping it'll be done within the next few days and I can't wait to get it back! I know exactly where I'm going to put it - which wasn't where I first thought of, but doesn't involve redecorating!!!

Sadly my photo really doesn't do it justice though.Thank you so much Di, I'll treasure it and care for it :)

My Third Good Thing:

is Himself!

This will seem obvious to regular readers as Himself is the star in my firmament in all things tea house (and lots of other things too ....... ooops, starting to wax a bit lyrical and soppy here, but you know what I mean!)

ANYWAY, the reason this time is non-tea house related! For ages now we've had an old clock in the hall which Himself found on ebay. (the clock, not the hall!) It came out of the old Vauxhall car factory and was the master clock used to regulate all the other clocks in the factory as well as the clocking on/off machine. He did some fancy electronic magic to make it work, but really wanted to find a slave clock to run off it.

(ignore the mushy pea green hall ....NOT our choice, but there's no point in decorating here until we've done everywhere else!)

Having finally found a slave clock on ebay, Himself discovered that one clock had a 30 second motion and the other had a 1 minute motion. This called for even greater electronic wizardry so, whilst we'd got the hatches battened down during the great snows, Himself got to work and produced this thing of beauty...........!

The end result was that the slave clock in the kitchen is now wired into the master clock in the hall - so we now have two clocks that actually tell the same (and correct) time! The clock suits the age and style of the house and fits in beautifully. It's also made of the same type of wood as the renovated servants bell box which is in the kitchen.

I'm chuffed to bits with it ...and Himself!

What en excellent start to 2010!

Ooops, forgot to mention that I'd promised First-born I'd give a little plug to her Etsy shop, http://www.etsy.com/shop/cooplet . She makes gorgeous things out of reclaimed and vintage materials, and all her packaging is recycled. Here are a couple of examples of her work:

A handstitched patchwork cushion

..... and recycled envelopes made into notebooks.

Pop in and have a look! Thanks :)

Trudging home in the snow.

2010-01-06T13:12:00.018Z

In a moment of madness I decided to enter the January Picture This Photo Contest on the www.gardeninggonewild.com blog. Why? I have no idea - I blame the mulled wine!

But anyway, here is my entry:

Almost Home!

Winter for me is about our family having fun together in the snow, then warming up in front of the wood burning stove whilst drinking hot chocolate.

The photo is First-born starting the long slog up our drive to our warm house and that hot chocolate - enough to make anyone smile! And, yes, the backpack was full - and quite heavy.

We had braved the elements yesterday (thermaled up to the eyeballs, naturally!) and walked and slid our way down to the local shop for in a (not very) epic expedition for emergency supplies ..... milk, eggs, crumpets and a trashy magazine! Needs must eh?!

Below is a photo of the topmost part of the very steep road down to the shop. The photo does not do justice to how steep this road actually is. We NEVER drive on it even in the Land Rover when there is any amount of ice or snow. It wiggles down the hill to the main road at the bottom - with no flat bit to stop any sliding before you get there!

A red cotoneaster hedge en route.

I have never seen our telephone wires so iced up!

I was going to enter this photo in the competition, but the other one made me smile more! :)

Ceefer cat is totally unimpressed by the snow!

The animal prints are actually on the ice on the pond.

I had to rescue the brassica cage before it broke this morning.

Last-Born and her friends built a new snowman yesterday as they had decided that the remains of the old one was just "too freaky"!

Is it just us that thinks he looks like a gargoyle?!

.....or maybe a left over angel from the 'Blink' episode of Dr.Who? Oh let David Tennant come rescue me with his sonic screwdriver and the Tardis!!!

Winter walks .....or ' Back to the Thermals, Part 2' !

2010-01-04T14:28:00.022Z

Traditionally we have usually spent Christmas with our extended family and New Year has always been for friends. This year was no different and 10 of us had a jolly pleasant night at our house seeing in the New Year, singing 'Auld Lang Syne' (badly, in my case!) with the wonderful Pete being dispatched outside with a lump of coal to do the 'first-footing' as the bells stopped ringing!

Tradition also has it that we go for a walk on New Year's Day to blow the cobwebs away ...so off we went!

It was a very cold day and was threatening rain and snow so we went to the nearby Linacre Woods. It's owned by the local Water Authority and is a series of 3 small reservoirs in a valley surrounded by trees (no....really!)

The ground was rock solid underfoot but some icy remnants of the recent snow made walking a little precarious at times - especially downhill. We started from the top car park, but what goes up in Derbyshire must inevitably come down...and back up again!

We circled the top resi', staying up high ........

before dropping down and round to the retaining dam wall to look down on the middle resi'.

Quite a lot of the reservoir was frozen, causing mayhem for the birds and amusement for us!

Himself and Pete inspecting one of the overflow channels!

Fascinating eh?!

Looking down the middle resi' from the overflow channel.

The bottom resi' with the plughole just visible

I had a lovely photo of most of the semi-circle of the plughole but Blogger kept turning the photo through 90* and made it look really weird, so I eventually gave up in disgust ...so you'll have to settle for a bit of the plughole instead!!!

Saturday was grim - cold, sleet, snow - NOT the day for going out, but Sunday dawned with glorious clear blue skies and crispy snow - just the day to go out to the Dark Peaks for a decent walk! Curiously enough, the Gnomelets didn't want to come, so me and Himself donned our thermals yet again for a trek on our own- but first we had to get off the drive!

Ceefer cat was not impressed by our desertion of him!

We drove up to the Curbar Gap car park, with the road being like this most of the way ....oh I can get smug about having a Land Rover some days!

Leaving the car park we had to choose ....left for Baslow Edge or right for Curbar Edge? (or straight down the salt road to the village pub?!)

We went up onto Baslow Edge first and gazed longingly at the pub in Curbar village in the valley (well I did anyway!)

snow dunes up on the top

It was bitterly cold at minus several, plus the wind chill factor made it minus even more, so we did a circuit that took us back to and across the road, up onto Curbar Edge ......

...where the sheep knew where the sheltered spots were.

Both Baslow and Curbar Edges, along with Froggat Edge, form a horseshoe shaped gritstone outcrop that is famous for its climbing. Many Everest expeditions trained here - and as a young child I loved our Sunday family trips out here to go weasling and bouldering. Later, as a teenager, I spent many a happy hour climbing on here - never to Everest standards, but I wasn't bad...especially considering I'm only 5ft2 and my climbing partners were all around 6ft!!!

We followed on with family trips here and both Gnomelets have bouldered here many a time. I swear First-Born has glue on her feet - or is part spider!

The gritstone used to be used to make millstones and there are many incomplete or broken ones dotted around up here as you can see in this photo. The perfect ones were taken back to Curbar Gap, then down the salt road to Curbar and Calver villages down in the valley or across into Cheshire to the mills there.

Having finally gotten cold enough in the minus lots wind, we headed back to the car park

....and home for some mulled wine!

What a lovely way to end a glorious day!

Happy New Year and may all your days be as wonderful as this was :)