A Visit to Perch Hill

On Saturday I took a trip out to Sarah Raven's Open Day with Kate. It was rather chilly and we hurried past the cutting garden to the warmth of the barn and conservatory where tea and cakes were being served. After a delicious slice of coffee cake spiked with Baileys, we pottered around the shop choosing seed packets, wondering where our houses could accommodate the beautiful candles, and handling spools of colourful string with their lovely smell of potting sheds. I bought a pack of gladioli "Plum Tart" in the sale as I've never grown glads before, and some veg seeds: Red Bor kale, Amsterdam carrots and red giant mustard leaf. It was busy in the shop and I get a bit nervous when I'm walking round somewhere with so many costly and smashable items but the Delft blue hyacinths in pewter dishes were kicking out a perfume so it was very pleasant. Ms Raven's styling is inspirational but not wholly appropriate to my lifestyle and it's a bit out of my price range, but it is a lovely place to go with a friend and the gardens were looking surprisingly colourful given the earliness of the year. I'm not quite sure why I find the orderly lines of veg and tulips so appealing as I'm hardly a neat freak in any other area of my life!

The afternoon was the Grand National, and I managed - by complete girly fluke - to back the winner! A wonderful grey horse, who won by a few pixels judging by the photo finish. Two horses had to be put down which always puts a dampener on these things, but I take a rather pragmatic view having had horses myself, and being a livestock owner is fraught with delight and disaster. Anyway, I'm going to spend my winnings on some yarn to knit a jumper - my largest [size] challenge to date.

I took the girls in to town yesterday and Amber purchased some semi-permanent hair colour as she's been whittering on about it for ages. She did have doubts as the Ribena-coloured water streamed from her hair when I showered her head over the bath, but I told her it would be fiiiiiine and to stop worrying as frankly it was too late to change her mind. It's quite an attractive plummy-chestnut although of course I prefer her dark honey-gold locks. It lasts for 24 shampoos according to the packet, which given Amber's current rate of hair-washing and general ablutions, should last her about 3 years.

Today has been chilly and breezy inbetween sunshine and 'useful' showers to borrow the term used by the forecasters. I've planted the gladioli corms and Amber put some French bean 'Purple Teepee' into pots. It's National Gardening Week so I'm focussing on horticulture in the afternoons...it's a valid reason! - I'm not just trying to find excuses to go into the garden in the name of education, honest. There is a massive shortage of horticulturalists and botanists so I like to feel I am doing my bit to make the children aware of what can be grown and when and how. I did discuss vegetable crops with them but got a bit unstuck as Tristan refused to believe that we actually imported broccoli, saying that surely nobody liked it that much. I will get them pricking out seedlings later in the week as I've got quite a few: the alkanet and woad have germinated, as well as a quarter-tray of some green and glossy seedlings which are a bit of a mystery. I'm not a great labeller.

I've almost finished a pair of fingerless gloves based on Susie's Reading Mitts, a wonderful (free) pattern on Ravelry which I've adapted to have 2x2 rib at the wrist and fingers as it's a bit easier.

Blossom is still sitting on her eggs so hopefully we will have chicks by the end of the month - I hope it warms up a bit before then. The bees have been flying when the sun comes out and I am hoping for some swarms soon to fill all the hives in my garden!

Spring Action

I heard the cuckoo this morning, which is the first time. I've seen orange tip, red admiral and peacock butterflies, lots of bumblebees and lacewings too so far, but of course it's the cuckoo that announces it's Spring (or at least, more Spring-like than sub-Saharan Africa). It seems to be a semi-resident as I hear it calling from the same area, and I have also seen flying in its cumbersome manner across the field behind me in previous years.

The nestbox I put up in the copper beech behind the house has had blue tits successfully breeding in it for the past two years, but I heard a tap-tapping while I was giving the hens their breakfast, and thinking it was a woodpecker, went over to have a look. It was actually a great tit hammering away at the entrance hole trying to get in. I've seen blue tits, wrens and sparrows making reconnaissance missions in and around the box but the great tits seem to have bagged it as I saw one of them shoo away a blue tit. It couldn't seem to get its shoulders through so I'm wondering how long they'll persevere.

I'm now feeling I should provide the ousted blue tits with a new box and we were looking at camera ones this evening which would be brilliant, although I'm conscious it'll be another thing for me to worry about!! I could put it in the beech tree as the ivy provides plenty of cover and birds already nest there but I'm not sure how much room they need between boxes; I don't think they like to nest too close to each other (apart from sparrows who apparently enjoy the company) and I don't want to put off the great tits. An alternative would be in the cherry tree outside the front door, then the cable could come straight in through the lounge window, giving the Ocado/post/milk man an opportunity to garrote himself as he trips over the makeshift duck barrier and dodges the bees. I will also order some roosting pockets from Wiggly Wigglers as I have had dunnocks nesting in the hedge in these before now.

The weather has been very wet today and despite parched conditions a week ago, my garden has been transformed in to a sloppy and slippery mess. I am making a new border where the chickens were during the winter, as they demolished the grass and if I'm going to make good, I'd rather not simply reseed it. I'm sure my landlord would approve of a shady border with foxgloves, Pulmonaria, Lamium and a bee-friendly clover lawn instead of boring old ryegrass??

We went to Iden Croft Herbs yesterday which was, er, interesting. We didn't know what to expect, but that wasn't it. Anyway, I got some really interesting herb seeds which I sowed today: Good King Henry, cuckoo flower, woad, alkanet and arnica to name a few. My veg table now has a hanging basket on the side of it for me to plant a tumbling tomato, thus increasing the useable area.

I am now going to knit a lemon for my tea cosy...

More Thoughts on Bees

It's the last day of half term and we spent some time in the garden, and we did some gentle homeschool. I also spent a bit of time organising my beehives. Here are some pictures:



The amaryllis has flowered

I made up a medicinal pot of feverfew and chamomile

I planted baby cacti in a 50:50 mix of molehill
and coarse sand

I have given this National hive a brood and a super, and have
put the deeper brood frames in the super so the bees have a
lot more uninterrupted space to make comb

There is another 3-4" below the bottom bar of the brood frame

I have taken out (or not bothered putting in) the strips of foundation. Foundation is hexagonally-stamped beeswax that the bees then extend out to make honeycomb. However it has been manufactured to have a slightly wider diameter than the bees would naturally build, and this has led people to suggest that it has allowed the varroa mite more room to wriggle around and get attached to the bee. Hence advocates of natural beekeeping try to let bees build their own comb if possible. It also allows the bees to produce drone comb, as the foundation is worker bee size.

A National is still not an ideal environment for bees - in the wild they would occupy a space that would fit in to a man-made beehive, but they don't cope well with corners. They build a round nest in a cylindrical tree, so us providing them with rectangular frames in a square box means the corners get cold and unpoliced as the bees really don't understand that they are there. In the winter they can end up dying of starvation even if there are full frames of honey at the edges of the hive. Bees are incredibly sophisticated insects and highly programmed but this does not equate to being able to think! The lack of hollow trees has been detrimental to our wild bee population in the same way as it has to our owls and other tree-nesting birds, and I feel this should be the emphasis for beekeeping in the future: providing them with a safe place to live rather than purely honey production.

I have given the bees some of last year's honey comb to feed on, but as you can see,
it has granulated and the bees are finding it hard work and leaving the sugar crystals behind.
I have provided them with extra water so they can dilute it; it granulates
due to cold or because of the chemical makeup of the nectar it came from.

This lady is enjoying tucking in to a comb of liquid honey

Lined up at the bee bar

It has been lovely to spend some time in the garden and be around the hens, bees and plants. 

Looking Forward to Spring

The snow is hopefully on its way out, as we have high pressure bringing us some Atlantic weather rather than dragging in cold continental air, so the forecast is for temperatures up above freezing. It means rain too, but hey, can't have everything! I got to work in the garden over the weekend as the chaotic mix of privet, winter jasmine and bramble was looking dreadful outside my front door, so it had to go:

I didn't take a 'before' photo as it was a it of a spur of the moment decision but take it from me, it was a mess. So, I now have some space to plant some new plants, and given the proximity of the beehive, I'll focus on pollinator plants, although really I feel if you're going to plant plants at all, they may as well be pollinator ones. I bought some Cobaea scandens seeds from Sarah Raven which can romp away to 6 metres, so I will sow some of those in trays this afternoon and see if they germinate. I've not been particularly impressed with Ms Raven's seeds so I'll see how they do. She produces a very attractive catalogue though!

When Nicky and I made lavender bags a few weeks ago, we used the dried seedheads from my Mum's plant, and there were lots of tiny seeds at the bottom of the storage jar. I popped these in to some compost and I was pleasantly surprised to see some tiny green shoots this morning:

I have been reading my book about biodynamic gardening, and it's certainly intriguing. I've a chart that gives times for sowing and tending different groups of plants (flower, root, leaf and fruit) and I am going to try and stick to it. I quite like having restrictions actually so if nothing else it will prevent me feeling overwhelmed by the needs of the garden! A lot of people garden according to the lunar cycles as it affects groundwater in the same way as the tides, but biodynamic is another step on from that. It's easy to scoff but I think there is so much about the planet and its workings that we don't understand, I'm happy to give things a go, especially as so many aspects of our relationship with the soil and plants and the natural environment as a whole is out of alignment. So, this afternoon is a time to focus on flowers. Maybe some cosmic influences will enhance the germination rate of the highly-marketed seeds I was seduced in to buying! I'll let you know...

My granny squares have been transformed in to a cover for my wicker basket:

I am really really pleased with it :-) I would have loved a big blanket but realistically, the rush of enthusiasm had slowed to a trickle, and at least with this I will use it all the time (plus I have lots of lovely blankets already). I have a few squares left over, so I am thinking of making a wool-insulated bottle jacket, but that's still gliding around in my head at the moment, waiting to become a proper idea that I can work with. I did a picot edging and the picture doesn't show it, but I have buttons at the handles, so it can be taken off, to possibly make an impromtu picnic cloth? I find wicker baskets so handy as I often carry boxes of eggs and food and drinks, as well as knitting, so they would get squashed up in a bag. It's a shame Glyndebourne is too highbrow a venue for the likes of me; reckon it would go down a treat.

It's half term so I made bagels and muffins. I was given a friendship cake starter, but having given a portion out to two of my friends, I couldn't think of who else would want it so I'm keeping it for myself! I know that is really not the point of it at all but I figure people would rather I took them a batch of cakes. The recipe suggests an addition of apple and cinnamon to the batter, but this morning I put in some grated carrots and a cup of walnuts instead to ring the changes. They are delicious.

The girls are playing with their fairy theatre and singing along to their favourite songs, as well as practising for Oliver! as part of their Stagecoach performance. T is in bed reading his Bernard Cornwell for a third time, and luckily I was so late getting breakfast I'm hoping it will sort of count as lunch too so I can be relieved of that duty!

A Sock, a Shawl and some Houseplants

The snow still hasn't melted and frankly I'm rather bored of it now, especially as I've been walking up the footpath/Olympic luge run twice a day which now has slippery muddy patches as well as the slippery icy patches. I've had to separate the hens again as despite giving them an enormous run (the large ark, extension run plus small ark), Henry kept picking on the chicks, and I find it so disconcerting to hear them squawking. So, the chicks and Ida now have the small ark and the extra run, and the 4 older chickens have the big ark. I can't let them out for long as there's not much to do in the garden with the snow on the ground, so they end up on the verge outside, or - their favourite place - across the road in to the garden where my white call ducks met their fate :-/...honestly. So, I have decided to take the opportunity to keep them shut in for most of the day and give them their Flubenvet-spiked mash so they actually eat it, otherwise I can't get any wormer down them. The ducks have a herbal pellet which is added to their food on a monthly basis but I can't rely on the hens sharing the food out quite so equably as Mr and Mrs Duck. Anyway, they all seem ok and there are enough hens in each coop to keep each other warm when they roost.

I've suffered a bit of pain in my wrist from all my knitting! Oops. So, I've not done so much recently, although I've done the first bit of colour work on the second fairisle sock:

I am also crocheting a cobweb scarf/wrap in the green Kidsilk Haze yarn - I made a shawl for my mum and couldn't resist making one for me! It's a bit of a trawl and rather a boring stitch but it looks good and is lovely and springy:

I've also decided on a project for my Sissinghurst granny squares, but I've a bit more to do on that before I can take a proper picture:

I spent some time in the garden yesterday as I'd had the foresight to bring my sack of compost in overnight to defrost it. I had lots of spiderplant babies in dishes of water, and they now have roots. I've potted them up in to Nutella jars and tins with grit and sand at the bottom for drainage. I love golden syrup tins too so the ivy went in there:

I have a new book about biodynamic gardening so I'm going to try and get my head around that this weekend! I sowed sweet peas in large yogurt pots and pricked out some Cosmos seedlings, as well as some lupins from an old seed packet, which I now realise are the rather boring yellow ones but not all of them germinated. I'm longing for some sunshine and spring warmth. I always get so desperate to have plants I always sow everything far too early so it gets all leggy or damps off, but I can't resist. I have about 20 hollyhocks in the coldframe which are looking brilliant, and I have sweet peas in there too, and at least when the snow has gone I should have some crocuses and snowdrops to enjoy :-)

February...

...is upon us and Nicky and I have cast on the socks for this month's challenge:

They are a going to be a fairisle design and are knitting up quickly, always good! I've also been sorting out my beehives as a result of the beekeeping event I went to, and have removed all the beeswax from the frames and melted it down. I'm hoping to be able to use some of it for home-made lotions this summer. I had some strips of foundation which I rolled around wicks, although I also dunked my wicking in the molten wax to make it longer lasting.

I bought Amber some new wellingtons as she only has a pair of canvas shoes that she bought in the sale at Primark for £5 so I didn't really regard them as sufficiently robust footwear for our part of the country. She's in adult sizes so the Barbour wellies weren't cheap but the Dunlop ones are so uncomfortable, and I figured she can wash her new ones and wear them with jeans; Glastonbury chic.

The chicks are becoming very tame which is lovely:

This is Hazel, who became Wilbur for a bit but is now back to being Hazel. She/he isn't a cockerel...or at least Henry doesn't seem to think so :-/ The chicks are in with the older hens now to keep them warm when roosting, although Pippa found a new place to lay an egg - the house attached to the rabbits' outside run, although they weren't in it at the time. Never a dull moment when collecting eggs.

Unfortunately I lost my white call ducks to an unfortunate incident involving a neighbour's dog (it wasn't really the dog's fault), so I am very sad about that. I still have the mallards though, who don't seem to mind the sub zero temperatures and icebergs in their tub:

Snow is forecast for the weekend which I am going to use as an excuse to stay in bed. I can't ever recall being warm or having any greenery in the garden at this time of year; it all seems a distant memory and I keep getting emails about seeds and sweet pea plug plants...it makes me long for summer. My crocuses are poking up in the lawn and borders and I always wish I'd planted more - I could do with having great swathes of them, and so could my bees!

It's been raining today and very grey - I find it difficult to get going with the weather like this, although it is also the time of year; the urge to hibernate is very strong...

The ducks are happy though, and have been rootling about in the muddy grass finding all sorts of unsuspecting invertebrates - they particularly like the manure I put at the base of the apple trees, (ugh) but also the grass around the greenhouse which is more photogenic:

We've worked out that the chick called Hazel is the cockerel, and the two others are hens. The boy has much bigger wattles and comb compared to his nest-mates. Hazel is now Wilbur, and the three of them have been separated from Henry (as he has rather an unhealthy interest in the pullets and keeps picking on his son). I am waiting to hear from my friend Joss as to whether she can take Henry - if not, the chicks can stay as a trio.

Wilbur and Pippa

 The hens don't enjoy the rain but yesterday they enjoyed a communal groom and snooze on the bench:

I was out in the garden yesterday too - I cleaned up the cobwebs in the outside toilet, although the chickens have a habit of appropriating it. Ida keeps laying eggs on a pile of old papers and Henry finds the dark corners irresistable for a secret trysting spot. He goes in there and makes a very soft, purringly seductive bok-bok noise and the hens fall for it every time, so we call it his Lavatory of Lurve...

I am trying to reorganise my boot room which is the smallest space in the house yet is the most congested, as it is also our main house entrance. I decided a welly rack would free up a bit of space and had seen some lovely ones from Wilderness Wood, but at £39 I thought I could do it myself for free given I had a bit of pallet and some broom handles. Dad gave me some tips and - voila!

It's sturdier than it looks, honest. Home education today has consisted Biology GCSE with Tristan, although it was all about classification and frankly rather out of date as it had birds as a separate group to reptiles which got on my nerves, but did give me a chance to revisit some of my OU Evolution course knowledge! Amber and Rose have been surprisingly harmonious and working together on all sorts of things.

I made some bread, with one third stoneground spelt flour and the rest organic white. It gives a lovely nutty flavour which I find tastier than wholemeal. I also use a mixture of raw organic milk and molasses as the liquid, and Doves Farm yeast, so I'm guessing it's a pretty healthy loaf! The children prefer it to plastic bread which I feel is quite an astounding achievement:

My spider plant (or Chlorophytum comosum as I learnt today) has had lots of babies so I have clipped them off and popped them in to a shallow dish of water:

I can thoroughly recommend the book, which is full of instructions for everything you could ever wish to divide, graft, sow and take cuttings from. I also repotted and planted up the babies of my aloes too:

I love the generosity of plants when it comes to regenerating, although I get a heartsink moment when it says a particular species takes a year to germinate or 7 years to flower, as I am rather forgetful and I have my doubts as to the prospects of such plants in my care: "Oh look a seed tray full of old compost with a faded label...nah, don't need that..."

I went back for an anaemia-related doctor's appointment this morning and I had the usual 40-minute long wait so the sock is coming along well:

Party Time

Today was the day of the CCG Christmas Party! It was a select gathering but all the members of the Guild attended - and as the Country Crafters Guild consists of Me and Nicky, it meant we could have 3 Heston Blumenthal pine-sugar dusted mince pies each :-)

Yum. We also discussed the projects and crafts we'd like to complete/try/attempt. I'd like to have a go at needle felting and Nicky is contemplating knitting an Afghan throw, and of course, there will be the seasonal produce to preserve. We decided to press on with the Sock-a-Month challenge by casting on our January socks!

I am absolutely loving the yarn - it's British blue-faced Leicester wool from the Natural Dye Studio and feels lovely and soft. The colour is gorgeous too; I am really in to my greens at the moment!

Earlier on in the day I wanted to make the most of the mild weather and try and split one of my lupins as I need some space to fit other plants in and also need to do some dividing so I can populate my new border. I took out one of the smaller ones but it was still quite a whopper:

However, I took some tiny plants from the base, a bit like this one:

and potted them up in gritty compost and trimmed the leaves right back. I have no idea if they'll take, but I've put them in the greenhouse and I'll see if they produce some roots.

I love seeing a tray full of cuttings! So full of promise. The greenhouse is also being used for another purpose; I had lost Ida the hen earlier in the day and eventually found her in there having a bathe in the slightly drier earth. Mary also took advantage:

So as you can see they really appreciate my recent purchase of a fancy dustbath and perchery station with oven-baked sand :-/

The bees enjoyed the relative warmth too and I thought I'd give them a feed and use up some old waxy honey cappings that have been sitting in a tupperware on my worktop since the spring. I diluted it with hot water and popped it in a dish with a bit of sponge so they didn't drown, then placed one in the sunshine near the entrance of each hive:

I did also get round to giving the bathroom a thorough clean and Rosie said it looked much better and not so haunted...a reference to the cobwebs!!

So, it's now time for a podcast and a few more rows of the socks :-)

Frosty Morning and Fancy Dustbath

Well, it was beautiful yesterday morning. Cabbages can be pretty unimpressive but then Jack Frost calls and, well:

I also took a picture of all the plants we rescued from their tumble in the greenhouse and rehoused in the cold frame:

Roll on spring, I can't wait to plant them all out :-)

The other part for the new dustbath arrived and after a lot of bad language and misplaced screwdrivers, ta-dah!

I bought some play sand to put in the dastbath itself but it's sopping wet so I am drying it out at the moment. For anyone else in the same situation, don't cook it, it doesn't work but does create a lot of steam...

The ducks are still enjoying their compost-spiked mudbath:

Ah, I am very fond of my ducks.

A couple of years ago I collected some seeds from the Scots Pine trees in the copse and planted them. They are doing really well:

When they first germinate they are the tiniest little thread of a trunk with a fan of half a dozen needles on top, just adorable. I really recommend growing them for their miniture perfection! Growing tree seeds is so full of promise, I love them.

I have finished the mitts! But they are wrapped up and I forgot to take a photo so you'll have to take my word for it.

I'm now knitting a circular scarf for my friend but with lighter-weight yarn and smaller needles so I've added on another 30 stitches and am hoping for the best.

It's Jamie's Christmas on tv and I'm absolutely starving, it's not the best program to watch as I am drooling...

Exciting Stuff

It was our home-ed Christmas Party at the hall today which was, er, loud but anyway, after a soothing cup of chamomile tea on arriving home, there was a knock at the door and my new feeder arrived and...the covered dustbath! I have put my electric screwdriver on to charge ready to assemble it tomorrow. I think the hens will love it, and they certainly need a place to bathe - Peggy especially looks rather filthy, mainly because Henry doesn't wipe his feet, if you know what I mean :-/

The treadle feeder looks really good and I put it out for the hens to try, with the treadle-y bit propped down with a plant pot so they get used to feeding from the hopper. Once they've got the hang of it I can remove the weight and they should learn that when they stand on the ramp, the flap lifts up and exposes the feed. I'm aware this assumes a certain level of intelligence that I'm not entirely sure my poultry possess but they were certainly intrigued:

So I hope they get used to it as it will save a lot of wasted feed and fat rats.

Then - great excitement - Laura took me out to Sarah Raven's place in Perch Hill as the Christmas shop was open. Dangerous, even with the 10% off. But we had a lovely time drinking in the stylish homewares and garden accoutrements, although we agreed that gorgeous though everything was, one had to place it in a realistic fashion given our lifestyles; the huge vase with mophead hydrangeas looked fantastic on the enormous wooden dining table in Sarah's conservatory but would probably look less so surrounded by cornflakes packets, bottles of Calpol and toast crumbs. Ditto the candlesticks/vases/tasteful trinkets....

I put my camera on charge before we left so that it didn't run out halfway round our visit but then forgot to take it at all. Laura has said she will email me some photos but it was very inspirational and I reckon I could pull off the sempervivs-in-terracotta-dishes-with-gravel that Ms Raven had placed on the table, and I did invest in a large pillar candle in a beautiful green that I think will work well for both Christmas and spring. A couple of seed packets did make their way in to the bag too - the cup and saucer plant, Cobea scandens and Tithonia 'Torch' (which are a bit like an orange Cosmos) so I am looking forward to sowing those. I also bought some hyacinths for forcing as they were in the 'reduced' bucket and £8 for 15 bulbs seemed pretty good.

What fun :-)