Unspiration

Well, there's nothing like writing a blog to realise how dull one's life is! Or maybe it's because I'm not getting the gratification of being able to show off my knitting prowess, as everything I'm currently working on (however rubbish or marvellous) is out of bounds or on its way in to cold storage for Christmas. Or maybe it's the weather; I often think how appropriate the word 'depression' is for when we get grey, nondescript gloom tracking its way across the country, spreading feelings of grey, nondescript gloom amongst us. I would love to find out if there is any link between weather and human physiology, as we like to think we are so far removed from the influences of the natural world, but I bet we're not really. I'm sure the differences in pressure and sunlight affect us all somewhere along the line.

Anyway, I still have some flowers in my garden and the bees are still collecting pollen. Maud isn't very well though so I think I'm going to have to take her to the vet. Oh and I've got a dentist appointment on Thursday.....

Astrantia, I think

Chamomile

Perennial wallflower

Yet more lupins

Daisy, Emily, Henry and Peggy enjoy an afternoon stroll

Flowers and butterflies

I saw a beautiful Red Admiral butterfly enjoying some late nectar from my asters which seem to have gone a bit bananas:

So I crocheted a butterfly:

And I also thought I'd better take a picture of all the bloomin' headbands I've been knitting my way through:

I have ordered some yarn and also downloaded a hat pattern, so hopefully I'll be able to curse and sweat and bodge my way through that! I also put together an autumnal-inspired garland for the fireplace:

And I have also made a little broochy thing for my Mum's friend - my first commission! - so all in all been quite a busy bunny on the needle and hook front.

The chicks have enjoyed the September sun and had a bath with Mary:

I have also done some home-ed with the children: Rose did a lap-book about feathers and all 3 have had quite a bit of homework so that has kept them occupied.

Gardening

It made a change last night to be woken by my daughter as for the last week it has been the dog - he has been eating chick food which has had the expected consequences - I'm not sure his system is used to that much roughage :-/ I obviously haven't been feeding him chick food deliberately but he is a dog so will stick his nose into anything remotely edible. Anyway Amber had a headache but didn't want Calpol or Nurofen but was going for the 2am whinge and 'but-I-can't-sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep' option. It didn't go down very well especially as I was in a filthy mood as my knitting project (a simple headband) had needed me to unpick it 3 times and then once more for luck when I managed to slip all the stitches off my needle. I had had an emergency phone call to Nicky about purling and knitting but I was so cross as it is meant to be enjoyable and relaxing and it was really really neither at all. However, I have just put in my halfway marker so hopefully I will have a pic of that soon though I will need to decorate it heavily to hide the holes and wonky stitches.

I went in the garden and hoiked out all the blighted tomato plants and rescued all the others before they too became stricken:



Hopefully they will ripen rather than rot. It was lovely to spend some time in the garden, I always forget how therapeutic it is. I now have a clear-ish bed to plant my winter veg:

I have decided that next year I won't bother with summer veg and instead concentrate on having a cutting garden as I have thoroughly enjoyed having cut flowers in the house. I took some cuttings from Jude the Obscure which is the rose that gets the most compliments:

And I want to plant lots of sunflowers and have a proper sweet pea wigwam. It will look gorgeous! I also had time to watch some bees:

And the chicks had a good run inbetween rain showers. I managed to get some more wellies which cost a small fortune but I do wear them pretty much every day.

One other comment: I went to the home-ed group yesterday which was bursting at the seams, incidentally, but one of the new people was a real live home-educated adult! Yes! He's a chef, in his 20's and local so that was rather exciting given it's all a bit of an unknown quantity for me so it's good to meet people who have been through the system. Or rather not been through the system...

A Great garden

The children went off to their father this morning as it's their stepmother's birthday, so I had a free day! The weather was glorious and I felt in need of the calm and quiet of a garden so it was off to Great Dixter in Northiam for some inspiration and soul-feeding.

I'll let the pictures do the talking.

By this stage in the year a lot of the plants are going over but the show was still excellent and made me want to come back and start on loads of granny squares for my summer garden blanket!

Mary and the chicks are all well, and when I got back from Dixter I saw an egg in the run. It was the unhatched egg, so Mary has obviously decided that she wants it out. I don't know if there's anything in it and in fact I shall bury it as it seems a shame to put it in the bin or compost and no, I'm not remotely tempted to crack it open! As far as I'm concerned, that egg was a potential chick and I feel rather sorry for it so I will dig a small hole and say goodbye to the little fluffy life that wasn't meant to be.

Sunny Sunday

I wrote a list this morning...now I usually hate To Do lists as they sit there accusingly reminding me of all the boring things I should do, but I've been feeling so drifty and unachieving recently I thought I'd better do one just so I didn't womble my way through another day.

So! I did hoover my bedroom and the landing, and I did make cinnamon buns, and I did move the chicken run. I also did my bees who are loving the Himalayan balsam that lines the banks of the Cuckmere river although because they all end up with a 'brand' of pollen on their thoraxes it's a bit tricky to spot a white-marked queen. But they are all well although one colony is queenless so I popped the little colony on top to unite them. The other one is doing brilliantly too despite having to hack my way through the undergrowth to get to them:

I decided to set up the stall as Sundays means walkers and cyclists and we sold a box of eggs, a yellow squash and two pots of honey :-)

I've been feeling rather disillusioned with my studies recently, probably because I'm not very good at geology which I want to be really good at but you need to be concise and non-waffly and good at linking together all the different elements which I am rubbish at (it's my blog - I can say what I like about myself!) so I got all my resources together and immersed myself in them; literally in fact as I put them all on my bed and sat in the middle. I also reminded myself as to why I'm doing it and it's so I can understand a bit more what's going on with the planet and actually, I do. Phew. So I did a chapter of each module and fell in love with it again.

Look at John! - he's growing up! He's losing his brown downy feathers on his head and will soon be all glossy black and he's also getting those little curly feathers at the top of his tail:

Very exciting, he's going to be soooo handsome.

Amber has been grinding corn today to make flour. Unfortunately, despite having home-educated for some years, I didn't seem to have a quern stone in the house so we improvised with the coffee grinder:

Continuing with the home-made theme, the apple wine is fermenting away like crazy - lift off the towel and a great waft of appley-yeasty aromas come up, probably just as well I have no idea how alcoholic it is!

So apart from some tinkering in the garden,

I'm in love with these flowers!

it has been a relaxing day and the last item on my To Do list, namely to crochet a green chain for my garland, will be done during all the lovely Sunday evening programs like Antiques Roadshow and Countryfile which always remind me that it's the start of another week and I don't have to worry about a thing.

Yet more flowers

I am very pleased - I discovered that my terribly expensive Sarah Raven Salvia patens 'Oxford Blue' (that I had forgotten to label when I pricked it out so didn't know which pot it was in and therefore where I'd planted it) has flowered!

Gorgeous

I have added some other crocheted flowers to my collection. I say 'collection'; my one hellebore:

Rose

Buttercup

...although I'm sure that captions are unnecessary as they are instantly recognisable. I asked Charles to choose a flower for me to crochet for him and he said ooh a Viola please, not noticing the subheading at the page top marked 'ADVANCED CROCHET' but hey, how hard can a crochet flower be?? Just to squeeze the very last ounce out of the words crochet and flower, I also made a vase holder to hang up at the window:

Vase = bottle

and here it is in situ:

Quite pretty although it does draw attention to how filthy my windows are.

Other than that, it's been a quiet day. I had a final check over my project and realised my Reference section was rather um, sparse let's say so I did some Google Scholaring and read a few papers on the subject and adjusted my Discussion accordingly. My course work is really interesting at the moment and it must be worth doing a degree to be able to write notes about bdelloid rotifers who ditched males of the species 100 million years ago and reproduce parthogenetically (that's cloning) and seem to be doing very well. I'm not going to make any analogous suggestions at all :-)

Oh I forgot to post a pic of the fantastic sunset last night so here it is. I realised my camera has a sunset function so it seemed a worthy subject on which to try it out:

Flowers everywhere

I had to take my car to the garage at silly o'clock this morning as someone had smashed my wing mirror while I was parked in the road at Sports Day so I am now the best part of £200 worse off, thanks very much. Bet it was a taxi driver }:-(

Anyway I spray painted the cover myself which saved me about £30 although it does very much look like I spray painted it myself, hmm. I sat and crocheted some flowers while it was being fixed so I've got 4 now:

I only need about 50 more to make a garland. Still they are fun to do and it's all good practice.

I returned home, checked email and discovered I got 89% for my assignment! I am thrilled! Just waiting to hear what John P got, as by past performance, he should have got about 112% which I don't even think he could do (love ya John). I was feeling so pleased, I shut down the Excel spreadsheet I need to wrestle with for the next assessment and went and brewed some coffee.

Wandering round the garden, I saw that the big green plant as referred to in a previous blog has decided to flower:

It's quite pretty but I'm not keen on white so possibly not worth the wait! I'm thinking it must have been the result of that time Charles was left unattended at the garden centre during the '4 perennials for £10' season. I am pleased with other bits of the garden tho:

Pink echinacea and pink hollyhocks

Chocolate scabious, penstemon 'Blackbird', dahlia and borage

And I picked this unconventional combination to have on the lounge windowsill:

Right, back to a bit of crochet and a spot of Evolution textbook, followed by some Great Ice Age, all helped along with a large glass of rather lovely Merlot :-)

Sports Day

Today was fun, although I was quite tired having gone to bed late and been woken up by Tristan [sore throat] and Scruff [??] in the night but the evening had been fun as Nicky had brought Loretta over to observe a meeting of the Country Clarft Crub, and we had a very pleasant time talking about stuff and knitting things and eating chocolate. I also revealed Mr Buff-Orpington to his wife but the flash photography was not very flattering so we will get them together for a photo op at some point but here is Bertie:

He looks slightly less Quasimodo-ish in daylight

I am feeling rather wary of posting such a picture on a blog that both my father and brother might look at but I'm hoping my Dad won't know how to comment and Nick will be too embarrassed to admit he's related to me...

The ducks were a bit disappointed with the glorious sunshine/lack of rain that greeted the morning but having been loudly quacked at by John when I got back from walking the dog, I got their bath ready. They were quite keen:

In fact so keen, they couldn't wait and hopped in:

The swirling water out of the hose brought a wave machine element to the proceedings and they were quacking excitedly - the adrenelin rush of surfing white water is obviously applicable to ducks too.

I managed to tear myself away from the garden long enough to take the children to the Home Ed Annual Sports Day which was great fun as usual. They are all so keen to join in, it's great to see.

Strawberry lace eating contest



Obstacle Race

Three-legged Race

I opted out of the Parents Race as a) I was tired b) I have won the last two and c) I was too busy knitting. I finished my coathanger cover last night and stayed up ridiculously late last night crocheting flowers but here it is:

Quite pretty I think

I've started my next one and also cast on 60 stitches for my cafetiere cosy. Oh and crocheted some more flowers for a garland to go round my fireplace.

My garden is looking fantastic. Here's a couple of pics:

Squash

Giant Sunflower

Bit of a mess but all very productive

I'm off to Glyndebourne tomorrow!

July in England

The ducks once again were about the only ones happy with the rain, closely followed by the Scrufter who frankly doesn't care as long as he gets taken for at least 2 walks a day of no less than 11 miles each.

Tristan had some footie thing that required us to be out of the house by 8.20 this morning so it was a perfect opportunity to wheel out the "it would be like this every day if you went to school...how lucky are you???" whilst thinking to myself how on earth do people get up at this hour and get their kids to school every day???

So, that being over, my project is pretty much done and I am up to speed with the Great Ice Age, thoughts turned to the state of the lounge. All this craft stuff makes me want to make lovely things for the house so in a spirit of orderliness, I got to work dusting and wiping and hoovering. I had done about 1/10th of it when Charles arrived and he was deeply impressed and probably rather shocked at my frame of mind but nobly offered to help. We moved the chairs and the tv and I cleared the windowsill, so instead of dust and paperclips and hairbands I now have this!

Gorgeous

We had done about half the room when we went for lunch and despite my best intentions to continue in same vein when we got back, after a roast dinner and Harveys Best bitter courtesy of the Merrie Harriers, a snooze was called for. Anyway I did do a bit more tidying in the office as I'm getting rid of my enormous printer as I hardly ever print. It's run out of ink and it will cost me about £70 to refuel it so I'm giving it back to my ex-husband. All heart, me.

I have finished Mr Buff-Orpington's torso, and whipped up a few tail feathers during Tonight's the Night yesterday evening but I need to do his feet again.

I staked my hollyhock and I'm hoping the sunflowers will cope with the weather as I'm wanting to save the seed to feed the birds. I am quite interested in not only trying to grow my own veg and flowers but also plants to feed the rabbits and chickens and ducks. Although I think if I devote a border to dandelions and goosegrass, people may well think I've gone completely bonkers.

Ooh talking of ducks:

I must confess that much as I absolutely adore my little ducks, I just don't get the 'dozing off in a tub of cold dirty water' thing. Hmm...

Strimming with rabbits

Now, one of my many bright ideas was to literally harness the grazing power of the bunnies in order to get into those awkward corners that their run doesn't fit in to, as currently there are lots of neat rectangles of cropped grass [admittedly with burrows and poo] but plenty of areas of long grass and dandelions around the vegetable patches etc. So, leads and harnesses were purchased and Amber has done a fantastic job of getting Willow up to scratch (again, literally - poor girl looks like she's been through razor wire) but Scarlet is very bouncy.

So, with a free morning today, we had a go:

First, persuade your strimmer to come out of the shed

Next, strim round the places where the mower cannot reach, like under a bike

Continue until, as with their mechanical counterparts...

....one runs amok through the herb bed...

...and the other conks out completely

So after a relatively successful morning's strimming, the bunnies were put back into their run to carry on with the regular mowing.

T has gone to Joel's for a sleepover which means I don't have to think up 3 square meals for the next 24 hours as the girls don't seem to notice if it's wall to wall toast with the odd omlette thrown in for protein. I have been carrying on with my crocheted cockerel and filling in my field notebook for Summer School - any course where it is a requirement to purchase stationery gets off to a good start as far as I'm concerned. I've also been reading about the Great Ice Age and attempting to tidy the kitchen but I felt my allergy coming on again so gave up and picked some flowers instead.

All from my garden!