If you asked me my favourite season I'd usually tell you it was autumn. Not this year though. This year autumn is filled with torrential rain and mud. My favourite wellies sprung a leak, and I've done an experimental repair with Sugru. You can see where it's a more shiny yellow across the front. So far they're holding up well. I've been trying to throw myself into the season, and a couple of weeks ago a friend and I visited a little local autumnal event, which was most jolly. We have had the occasional glimpse of sunshine between downpours. But the sun never seems to last long before it starts raining again. Yesterday I'd arranged to meet a friend in a local cafe, and I was determined to walk there. I've been spending so much time either indoors or driving that I felt the need to move. There was a brief break in the showers, and I togged up as much as I could and set off. Hmm, that's a small river running through one of our fields. I did get a bit wet, but the overriding feeling was one of greyness. I took these pictures at lunchtime, and look how dark it is! There was water everywhere, of course, and I was glad my wellies were holding up. The sun did come out eventually (for about five minutes), and we had lunch in the cafe and then a jolly afternoon putting the world to rights over a nice cup of tea. Maybe autumn's not so bad after all.
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A few weeks ago I went on a short beekeeping course. We never had a specific plan to keep bees, but I've been mildly interested, and an hour-long course just a few miles from home seemed the ideal place to learn more. There were about twelve of us, and the beekeepers decked us out in these ludicrous outfits, for which I was of course very grateful. These bees are kept in a small wooded area, quite rural, but near some houses. There are several people who tend bees here and they run regular open days. We were shown the hives, and the bees, and told all kinds of things, and I confess most of it went in one ear and out of the other as I was so busy concentrating on not panicking about the number of bees flying right around my face. Of course they couldn't get at me, but it doesn't feel like that when they're an inch from your nose. Anyway, I think I remained outwardly calm, but I can't now tell you what all the bits of the hive are called, or what the different types of bees do. What I can tell you is that we won't be keeping bees any time soon. I loved the enthusiasm of the beekeepers, but it's not a cheap hobby, especially not when you first start out, and it's pretty time consuming.
I had wondered whether we might offer some of our space to a local beekeeper to keep their hives, but it seems that our high, exposed land would make it quite difficult to keep bees alive over the winter, and I don't want thousands of bee deaths on my hands. So no bees for us, for now at least. We'll see how we feel a few years down the line, maybe when we've planted more trees and have more shelter. Maybe. The builders have left, and while I'm glad to have our house to ourselves again (as cheerful as they were), it does rather mean we're on our own now to turn this space back into a kitchen. It's been pretty exciting to see it develop (slightly nerve wracking at times too). Having all the ceilings ripped out was interesting, but I was relieved to see the new ones going back in. Ceilings do make it rather darker downstairs though. It's all very exciting having ceilings (or rather, having rooms upstairs that we can walk in), but for me the most exciting thing about all this is the new windows in the kitchen. This didn't even require anything structural, as both had had windows in before, a long time ago. The bigger one had been bricked up, and the smaller just had a sheet of ply nailed over the outside, with the kitchen cladding covering the inside (no wonder it was always cold in there). Both are now proper windows, and while this room, nestled within the wings of the house and with low ceilings and thick walls, is never going to be light and airy, they do make quite a difference, and it's nice to be able to see out across the fields. Hmm, possibly not the most picturesque view of our tumbledown barn... The house is quite low compared to the height of the land, and so we're going to have to keep on top of the grass or pretty soon we won't be able to see out.
Anyway, we'll worry about that later. There's plastering to be done first. |
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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