What a glorious weekend we had! This is the view from the little terrace where we eat our breakfast and it has been like being on holiday. A whole weekend of warmth and being outside. Just perfect. I even started mowing the lawn. I say 'started' because I bought a push mower, and the grass is rather too long, so it's taking a while. I'm hoping the arrival of an Austrian scythe today will speed things up considerably. In the meantime, the grass is at appropriate lying-on levels, and that's just what I spent quite a lot of time doing. It wasn't all lying around. One morning we went for a little wander round a nearby village, I even did some work! The people who sold our house hired some people to clear out the garage - which they did by selling what they could and setting fire to everything else. Such a shame - there was so much that we could have used. It seems they started the fire over the top of the overflow to our well (they weren't to realise as it's buried underground), it was polluting the spring feeding the cattle trough in the neighbour's field. It took me quite a while to dig out the debris, as they'd set fire to all kinds - including glass, metal, ceramics and all kinds of nails. But at last I'd got rid of the residue, although it took a fair bit more digging before I found the top of the well itself. Fortunately, the farmer reckons just removing the fire debris is enough so I can stop digging now. Phew. While he was here, the farmer had a look at my dry stone walling efforts and pronounced them 'a good start'. High praise indeed! He's going to come and spend an hour walling with me to give me an idea of what I'm meant to be doing (I'm spending too much time trying to get the perfect stone apparently, which is what the guy running the course said...). My sister was here for a while, and we measured out ready for some veg growing beds, although I'm waiting until I've scythed the field to lay them out properly. This was taken just as the sun was setting behind the hill at about 8.45pm - it really does get a lot more light than this normally. My little seedlings are starting to sprout in the greenhouse, although I've lost most of my kale to the mysterious 'damping off' it seems. It feels like I shoud be further along in my growing, but it was only a couple of weeks ago that it was still snowing! Unhelpfully, the permanent pen I used to label my seedlings has vanished in the sunlight, so now all my seeds are unlabelled mysteries.
This weekend is forecast to be a bit grey and rainy, which is a shame. I'm planning to get some more walling done, plant some more seeds, scythe the field, and lay out my growing beds. Oh, and finally plant out the willow.
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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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February 2024
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