I do so love looking around other people's gardens, and so I was delighted when our local open gardens came around last weekend. A friend and I bought a map, and sat in a cafe planning our route. There were over 30 gardens open in total, and we would never get round them all, so we chose five to start with that had elements that we liked the sound of. We ended up seeing seven, as a couple of them were right next door to others that were open, and we were practically ushered from one to the next. We didn't regret it. We both came away with several ideas for our own gardens. I liked the idea of having several permanent seating places (we tend to drag the same chairs around to different garden spots at the minute). I was also very taken with the idea of a wildlife pond - this has been in the back of my mind since we moved here, but is now definitely on my list of projects for next year. Several gardens had little solar water features, not connected to a pond, and I think this might be something I end up having near the house as well - I do love the sound of running water. There were some lovely flower beds too, and one particularly epic greenhouse that I didn't get a good picture of - it had lighting and heating and a proper plumbed in sink (I don't think I'd go that far myself, but it was glorious to look at). Interestingly, I didn't see any garden that I would have just adopted exactly how it was. There were plenty of elements that I liked, but others I wasn't bothered about at all. I'm looking forward to shaping our garden over the next few years to get it just how we want it - there's still a long way to go yet.
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We've had quite a lot of visitors over the past couple of weeks, and we were meant to have some more yesterday, but plans changed and we had the day to ourselves. Breakfast in our favourite cafe (of course), a trip to the tip, and then an afternoon in the garden. I decided to tackle the edible windbreak, where the fruit bushes were being lost in a sea of nettles and weeds, and the rhubarb had vanished altogether. I covered this whole area with hay at the end of last year, and it kept the weeds down for a while, and then gave them enough nutrients to grow wild. It's impossible to get in this space with a scythe or a strimmer (we did attempt a strimmer once, and lost a sloe bush). So it was hands and knees and a pair of secateurs, and Bunty the chicken. I filled several trugs of weeds, and eventually got to the top of the compost bay. I tend to move my compost from right to left, but there was some lovely well-rotted compost in the middle bay that I wanted to remove first. The finest stuff ended up in pots down by the house, waiting for flowers, and the more bulky stuff went round the fruit trees and under the squash. Eventually there was enough space to turn the compost into the middle bay, helped by the younger chickens. Finally, after all that distraction, I got back to the windbreak. I didn't get loads of it done, but I did manage to clear around the gooseberry bush enough to see that they're going to need harvesting within the next week or so. All that digging and crawling round on the floor quite wore me out, but I'm going to try and do an hour each evening this week which will hopefully get me to the end of the windbreak. And then it'll be time to start on the hay meadow, so everything will get mulched again.
There are no damsons this year, but the damson tree is growing and the elders are filling out nicely. At the minute it doesn't block much more wind than the wall behind it, but I'm hopeful that next year we'll start to feel the benefit. I do need to think about the ground cover a bit better though - I'm sure there's something useful I could be growing under the fruit bushes. A project for next year... I've been off work for almost a fortnight now, and the weather has been glorious. A little too glorious in fact - far too hot to be doing many of the things I'd planned to do in the garden. We have made some progress, largely thanks to other people coming over and helping us, but we've also spent an awful lot of time sitting around in cafes, trying to cool down. We do have a favourite cafe which we go to regularly, but we have a few back-up cafes that we like too, and we've made good use of all of them these past two weeks. Sitting in a cafe with a crossword or a book is one of our favourite activities, so we do budget for it, and we very rarely eat anything other than toast, scone or flapjack in a cafe, so it's far less expensive than they could be. It's still a complete indulgence, I admit - but not one we'll be giving up any time soon. Some cafes are better for outside space, some for inside. Some do better flapjack, others are open earlier in the morning, or later in the afternoon. They're all characterful in their own way. We often think fondly back to cafes we've loved in the past which have closed down. There was one near our old house which did the best almond croissants - it only had four seats so you had to be lucky to get a spot, but we spent many happy hours there. Sadly it closed not long after we moved (had we been keeping it afloat??) There was one in our local village near our new house, which was a bit of a home from home when we first moved, and which has now sadly gone too.
I'm hoping our current crop of favourites will last a good long time. We do occasionally find a new one, of course, but it takes a while to settle in, get a feel for the best snack option, the best seat, the best time of day to visit. I'm happy to put in the effort trying to figure it all out though. Ah June. The weather has been glorious, and everything else has been chaos. A new car (and a new battery the next day), two teeth removed (one for each of us), three vet trips (and the loss of poor old Beaky), kitchen designers galore, on top of work and the normal day-to-day rumble of life, have all conspired to make June feel far from calm. As usual though, progress has been made here on the homestead, and it's so nice to look back, because on a day to day level I usually feel like we're getting nowhere fast at all. So let's take a look. Chicken run extension First up is the extension to the chicken run. We started planning this last year, before the avian flu housing restrictions, but it only became a reality in the last few weeks, when a couple of friends helped us make a start. The chickens themselves had a month of mixed fortunes - Rusty had a new hormonal implant, and we discovered poor old Beaky had a tumour, and had to let her go towards the end of the month. They all spent a lot of time lazing around in the sunshine though, which I'm very grateful for. They also spent a bit of time dust bathing in my veg patch, and I don't begrudge them that one little bit. While they lay around in the sunshine, we slowly got on with making their extension. First up, levelling - my least favourite job in the whole world (although it turns out it's easier when your spirit level is actually level). Then Peter made a couple of sides, and once they were on the whole thing started to feel like it might one day get finished. The new chickens took every opportunity to have a dust bathe in the construction site - very helpful. Now the garden looks like a building site, as well as the house, but the end is in sight, and we're hopeful it will have a roof in July, preferably before the builders arrive, as the chickens will need to be shut in while they're here. The veg patch Finally in June I planted most of the seedlings out of the greenhouse - well, those that hadn't died of neglect, that is. Several different types of beans, some squash, peas (which swiftly shrivelled to nothing), kale, and sprouts. They were all starting to look ok by the end of June, but not as far as I'd like. Let's see what July brings. Meadows The grass started to shoot up in June. I don't know why this always takes me by surprise. I looked back at my post from May today and laughed - it seems I thought the grass was out of control then, and now some of it is up nearly my waist! The woodland fields are full of wildflower, and I'm wondering whether I should be doing something to stop the new trees from getting overwhelmed... but they seem to be doing ok, and I have enough to do. I've had both the scythe and the strimmer out, tidying up various bits of the garden (mostly to get at other bits of the garden) but I won't start hay making until near the end of July. I don't think there's much else to report from June. Free time has been taken up liaising with kitchen designers (a thing I thought I'd never do, but here we are), trips to look at potential cars, and visits to the vets and the dentist. And a sneaky bit of working in the garden, of course. July's weather hasn't been great so far, but I've got a couple of weeks off work coming up and I hope the sun will be shining. I'd like to get the chicken run extension finished, and the final decisions made for the kitchen, and a firm date booked in for the builders to arrive. I'm hoping the veg patch will start producing, and maybe we'll have our first harvests. And the end of July should see the start of hay making. I'd love to manage the whole field this year.
As usual though, we'll see. Last Monday we had to have Beaky put to sleep. We are devastated. Beaky came to us in February 2019. She was a rescue from the British Hen Welfare Trust, and had spent the first 18 months of her life in a cage. She was a scruffy little thing, missing loads of feathers, one foot ever so slightly bigger than the other. Like Mildred, the scruffiest of our previous bunch, she made up for her lack of feathers by bossing everyone around. Together with Bessie, one of our other new hens, she scaled the fence to pick a fight with our existing chickens, Mildred and Maud. She soon learned her way around, and learned who gave out the best treats. About 18 months ago, Beaky got quite ill. The vet gave her antibiotic and calcium, but didn't know what was wrong, and didn't know whether she'd get better (we've since found a different vet, who is far more knowledgeable about chickens). It was the middle of winter, and we kept her in our house for eleven nights, hand feeding her and willing her to pull through. Eventually she did, and went on to be strong and healthy, with a fine red comb. Beaky was always up to something. Always sticking her beak in, always willing to give the others a peck if they stepped out of line. When we lost Mildred and Maud last year, she stepped up to become the leader of our little flock. Beaky was NOT impressed when we got the young chickens last year, and never lost an opportunity to show them who was boss. She was also not impressed about the avian flu restrictions over the winter. Like her old lady pals, she slowed down in recent months, and the three of them spent a lot of time napping in the hay under the swing (although of course they still made time to stand in our porch demanding treats). We realised a couple of weeks ago that she wasn't well, and the vet diagnosed a tumour. We gave her antibiotics and steroids, and did our best, but after just a week it had grown so much it was starting to block her vent, and she'd stopped eating much.
We'd got a vets appointment for a check up on Monday, but over the weekend she slowed down a lot, and we realised it was probably time to let her go. On Monday morning, the sun was shining, and we left her to potter around the garden with the others. They spent a while under the swing, dug up a bit of my veg garden, and then the three old ladies went to hang out in their old favourite dust baths. Finally, the others wandered off, and Beaky didn't follow. We gave her all her favourite treats, and she made her little excited-about-cheese noise (although didn't eat anything), and we took her on one final road trip. We've never had to make this decision before. We had Mildred put to sleep, but she was so ill she wouldn't have lasted the day, whereas Beaky was still walking around. It was the right decision, but definitely not an easy one. She'd been with us for over two years, and I'll always be grateful she had longer with us than in a cage. I'm grateful that the sun shone in her final weeks, and she spent so much time lounging round in the garden. Miss you little Beaky-o. |
Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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