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feasible :: May intentions

As last month was about preparing for Easter and the party, May is all about the Christening and catching up with myself – as much as I can.

But isn’t May just a wonderful month, even with all this rain – if April is full of promise of what is to come then May is just starting to deliver.  I have sprays of white lilacs in tight bud just waiting to bloom as soon as the rain leaves us and the sun returns.  I don’t mind the rain but I haven’t enjoyed being plunged back into the cold spell….again – at least the rain has refreshed the garden, while our recent holiday at the cottage in Scotland has refreshed me and now I am raring to go. 

So these are the intended  targets for this month on my to do list.

First on the list is the Christening dress. I have already cut the pattern for this and made a sample dress and on Sunday I will see Sweetie for a fitting. Fingers crossed there will not be many alterations needed.

I have yet to switch over my winter and summer clothes, and while I am doing this clean the wardrobe and perhaps send anything I know I will not wear again to the charity shop. The general housekeeping will be taking a back seat this month and DH is on catering management whilst I am busy sewing.

The garden in Scotland will now be taking care of itself for a while and I must turn my attentions to the garden here at home.  I bought a mini growing house for the tomato plants to give them some extra protection and warmth.   It needs putting together plus I have the lawn to feed and weed if the rain ever stops and some spring flowering shrubs to prune back.

Vodaphone contract – I have decided I need to get a cheap basic contract that allows me some data and access to the internet on my phone. PAYG is far too expensive to use the internet.

Book the financial appointment – this is still to do – bearing in mind we went to the pension seminars in March! The information we gained then is slowly fading in my mind.

One of my favourite places to go for a day out is the Open Gardens… and this weekend it will be the group village open gardens at Little Ouseburn in North Yorkshire.

My second favourite is the Well Dressings in Derbyshire and this will be on my list to visit one during May.

So I am keeping my list quite short this month as the Christening weekend and making the dress will take up most of my time. The house will need a good clean again afterwards but because I gave it a ‘good do’ for the party it will no doubt last a week or two.

I intend to go to my Yoga class on Tuesdays – I missed two classes whilst we were in Scotland and I feel ready for a good stretch again. My health plans never really got off the ground last month and I might not be able to do much this month but I am making plans for when I do have time.

And the knitting – well that is still in my basket – Sweetie will just have to stop growing for a while until I can get it finished. I didn’t do any knitting whilst I was at the cottage (caravan), I was usually too tired at night and the weather was too good not to go in the garden.

Well those are my plans – it is always interesting when I review my to do list at the end of the month to see what I did get done and what is still on the list.

Of course as regular readers can see I am having great fun with the new WordPress Block Editor – anyone from Blogger won’t know about the changes that have been introduced – I am not sure what I think about it yet but the normal classic version will be phased out soon so I thought I had better give it a go – I still cannot find out the reason for the missing spellchecker symbol on the dashboard….but it is a pain. Apologies for any errors and typo’s.

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April review

April seems a long time ago now but I remember it as a very busy month; but then most of my months seem to be very busy…. I will reclass it as extremely, exhaustingly busy. By the end of the month I was flagging and ready for our few days away in Scotland. It was the party that made it both stressful and delightful in equal measures, colliding as it did with Easter.

But Easter Sunday was such a beautiful warm day and it meant we could hold the party outside; it was enjoyable too having an extended family gathering, lots of food and drink, lots of chatter and catching up with one another…. and an Easter Egg hunt. Just never again. How many times have I said that before.

So to recap on my intentions last month – did I have time to fufil them all?

April was all about the Spring flowers, Easter decorations and of course the party preparations. A really pleasant month with plenty of warm sunny days and so much bursting into life in the garden.

Easter tree decoration

All though it was a lot of hard work the party came together quite well and I even managed to make a few individual quiches; the cake not so well but it was passable and tasted really good beneath all that sickly green fondant icing.

As soon as I was thinking about changing our menus for something a bit lighter the weather changed my mind, so during the cold spell we continued making soup. I was hoping that May would be warmer but we are now well into the month and no positive changes yet.

I spent a very pleasurable afternoon with glue and tissue paper making Easter eggs and butterflies for my Easter tree.

With so much going on I didn’t manage to finish the little jumper for Sweetie but I have ideas and fabric for her Christening dress – I will keep you posted on this one later…

….and I did make some very simple Easter cards.

Most of our cleaning was centred around making the place look presentable for the party and that included doing quite a bit of work in the garden. DH managed to get a lick of paint on both the front door and garage door though we are not satisfied that it is quite the right colour yet – it needs to be darker and a greyer tone than it is at the moment.

Health – the less said on this subject the better. I had intended to give myself a bit of a spring clean but time was limited and the house and garden won! Perhaps next month. I have continued with the Yoga class though – so that is a plus.

One of the highlights of April was an impromptu day out in Glossop – such an interesting place and not too far away from us – if you missed this post you can read about it here.

I suspect another heavy month for the bank balance in April. I did try to limit my spending and then caved in when I saw this magazine with the word ‘Treat’ on the cover…. it was calling to me and so I did just as it said – I treated myself! More on this subject in the April Tally post.

So all in all April was a success. The oven might still be ‘playing up’, the weather too, but the garden has started to come to life and that always lifts my spirits and I thoroughly enjoyed myself making things for Easter. Bliss.

As you may have noticed this is not my usual format – WordPress have just launched their new Block Editor and I couldn’t resist having a play around to see what it will do. I am not sure I will use this format for all my posts – it does allow you to switch back to what they call ‘classic’ but only for a while – it claims to do tables though which might prove interesting.

Oh…and there is no spellcheck/proof reader so any typos might just end up published!

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bEAching ~ rambling around the borders and New Luce

I must put plasters on the shopping list.

DH was making anti-bunny cages for the plants yesterday and had a slight argument with a hacksaw.  Ouch.  This is not unusual when he is doing ‘things’ in the garden – sometimes it’s his head, sometimes his fingers – luckily for him today it was only his finger.

This is why a flat tyre might prove fatal one day if we needed to get to A&E.

I continued in the trellis border….. all 40ft of it.  It is beginning to take shape, well some kind of shape – not exactly the shape I had intended but I can titivate it later;  flowing curves are not easy to cut so they look good from all directions…..…. but for now the hard work is done, the lawn edged, the bed weeded and the stones removed other than the ones that are there for decoration or bunny protection.

This is the end of the border before….and after……When I get the rest of the planting in and there is less bare earth and more colour it will start to look better.  As this is the seaside garden I am planting a mix of seaside plants – Valerian (a good spreader and so far anti-rabbit), lavender, Santolina, kniphofia, Erigeron and thrift.

No doubt by our next visit it will once again be covered in weeds and maybe bunnies.

Rag, Tag and Bobtail have now been joined by bibbity and bobbity, hippity and hoppity and what seems like many distant cousins.

But the sly old fox is very close on their tails – hiding in the gorse – just waiting his chance. I am still keeping a few bunny cages in place just in case…..

…and a few stones to prevent nibblers from damaging the roots whilst the new plants ‘settle in’ and grow stronger.

At last I have uploaded the photos of our little venture last Thursday.  After climbing the ‘mound’ we set off travelling north on the road to New Luce that runs on the eastern side of the Stair estates at Castle Kennedy just outside Stranraer.  Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a Hen Harrier flew overhead (Lord Stair had mentioned to DH sometime ago that they are nesting on his estate at Castle Kennedy), a beautiful bird and quite a size with a very large wingspan.  It came extremely close to us and swooped past gliding gracefully into the woods.  Apparently, there are not many in the UK so we are lucky to see one.  Sadly it was one picture that I didn’t manage to take.

New Luce is a tiny conservation village part of the Glenluce parish. It is on the road to nowhere and developed as a village through the necessity of having a meeting place for all the local outlying farms of such a large parish.  It is like an oasis in the dessert only here it is a lush oasis in the middle of moorland.  The locals affectionately call it Nineveh.  There are 62 homes and about 90 residents of all ages.   It is positioned where two rivers meet – the Main Waters of Luce and the Cross Waters of Luce.  Like the river the two main streets of the village form a T shape each of which has a bridge over one of the rivers.

Take any of the four roads to New Luce and you will not pass through any other village or hamlet on the way,  save Glenwhilly, which I believe is nothing more than a couple of houses clustered at the old station on the way north to Barhill;  strangely it boasts Scotland’s most remote signal box though goodness knows where the passengers would have come from in such an uninhabited place.   Like New Luce , the station at Glenwhilly closed in 1965.

Glenluce, a small rural village to the South of New Luce has a village shop and is the closest place 5 miles away, and where the younger children now attend school, Stranraer is 9 miles to the South west and Barrhill 13 miles to the North so it feels more isolated than remote;  surrounded on all sides by open moorland (that has not yet fallen to any great swathe of forestry planting) and where sections of the winding road are single track with passing places and cattle grids.  As you descend down from the moors towards the village the scenery changes into a more gentle landscape of farmland with farmsteads dotted here and there….– complete with grazing sheep…. lots of them and on the road too….. and in no hurry. We entered at the lower end of Station Street.Just to the left of the picture stands this old iron bath tub filled with an array of flowers.  Just one of the many repurposed artefacts around this village. At one time this old tub was to be found in one of three Inns as this notice tells me.  That is a lot of drinking establishments for such a small place.  Interestingly in the 1846 census there were not only 3 Inns but several village shops serving 278 villagers and a school attended by 50 children.It is a haven for the red squirrel;  sadly we saw none on our visit but I just love the way the locals in this area make the road signs their own and have added a cheeky little apple sticker – often the cow signs have been adapted to resemble the belted galloways with the white band. And just look at this wonderful play park for the handful of children who live here. Libbie would have loved to play in here for the afternoon.Over the Main Water bridge now and I just had to take a picture of this house with the sun pod in the garden – I have only ever seen them displayed in John Lewis before and wondered who bought them!They had a collection of rare breed sheep wandering about- the one at the back resembling a big teddy bear was so cute.

Opposite is the little village shop and Post Office offering free herbs in the window boxes, beside it is a red telephone box (mobile signal is poor) and a post box – all a good sign of a thriving village.With limited stock and limited opening hours and a bus service only on 3 days of the week and no train link you do not want to run short of anything living out here.At the top of Station Street is the junction with Main Street and what appears to be a little public garden, where a cottage once stood, no doubt lovingly tended by the local villagers.

It must be one of the best kept villages I have seen in ages and I love the way they reuse, repurpose and recycle so many discarded objects, turning them into planters and sculptures as you will see on our little walk around.

At the back of the garden was a flight of gravel steps leading up to this monument – we couldn’t quite read the inscription on the stone but given its position here it must be quite important to the village.The gravelled path continued along what seemed to be a little lane running high above Main Street at the back of the row of cottages.  Here we found some very curious allotment style gardens with sheds…..I have never seen so many sheds in such a tiny village….everyone had a shed, or two or three! The Ferrets Nest certainly appeared to be more of a weekend chalet than a shed.  And one or two had a caravan – possibly in use!And whichever wall you looked over everyone had a display of household artefacts and recycled objects …..or even an old ruin in their back gardens.Eventually the little lane came out onto the main street again.

Some of the cottages had quaint window displays inside and out….

and fancy wall plaques… sadly not all were delightful – this window is displaying a notice announcing a closure –It appears that the last of the Inns, the Kenmuir Arms Hotel, is also now ‘closed until further notice’ – the owners having closed up in the winter of 2018, gone abroad and as yet not returned.  Though noticing a skip outside the back with mattresses dumped in it I am thinking perhaps they are not reopening.  It was a popular Hotel – especially with walkers… and campers who could pitch their tents down at the bottom of the Hotel garden by the water ….with the midges. Going further along Main Street and over the second of the bridges (Main Bridge) I came across this cute little cottage with a recent extension… It is possible it might have been a Toll house.This garden outside this chalet caught my eye – where else in the world would you come across a scene like this on the road side where there is an open invitation to passers by to play with the little toy cars…….and no one steals them! There were so many unusual things to see in this village I will take a break here and continue in part two a few steps away at the church and village memorial hall.

Apologies if there are spelling mistakes, it is late, I am tired and WordPress spellcheck has disappeared off the editing toolbar.

Back soon x

 

 

 

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bEAching ~ bordering on the edge

Another sunny day today but a little windy; rather more than a breeze and less than a gale.  I thought the trellis border looked quite calm from the caravan window.  I thought wrong.  But decided to carry on with it anyway wrapped up in a woolly hat, and my trusty fleece lined gardening coat ( with the hood up of course as I hate wind on the back of my neck it gives me a bad neck for days).

I actually got quite a bit more done and have nearly removed all the stone edging and re-edged the grass trying to give the border a nice flowing curve – not an easy thing to do as the curves look better or worse depending on your viewpoint in the garden.  I didn’t take any pictures today (other than the one of the plants I bought and are still waiting to be planted) – I will surprise you another day.

DH was on hedge maintenance all morning but at 11.30 precisely calamity struck when he discovered he had a slightly flat rear tyre (well the car had).  It was a slow puncture from a nail that had embedded itself in the rubber.  He went to change it for the spare but with limited tools here he couldn’t get the nuts off the wheel – he decided he would need help from a local garage.

Oh no…as you might know it was already lunchtime by now there is no garage in the village and when we checked most of the garages in town had closed for the weekend and the bank holiday on Monday.  We didn’t want to wait until Tuesday or we would be stuck without and car over the long weekend which is not a good idea in case we had an emergency on our hands.  We searched around on the internet and eventually found an MOT station open until 3pm  – so he pumped the tyre up a bit and drove carefully into town and they kindly changed the wheel for him but would not accept any payment and DH had to force a few pounds onto the old guy.  People are so helpful up here.

Whilst he was gone I put the tray of apricot Violas I had bought into the planter and then made some mushroom soup, just an excuse to use the new blender really.  The instruction leaflet gives the speed settings for different foods – soup or sauce, milkshakes and ‘carrots with water’.  Can anyone enlighten me on the ‘carrots with water’ – is this a new drink maybe?

I mentioned yesterday that after going to see (and climb) the mound we headed off up to New Luce.  The pictures for this are far more exciting than my garden but I am still in the middle of preparing them so as bedtime is beckoning I will have to have a go at finishing the post tomorrow. x