June: a month full of life

June 29, 2026 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)6 Comments

There are so many things to love about summer:

The long, long days, with the mid summer sun rising at 4.30am and setting just after 10pm. These 16 ½ hours of daylight (roughly double what our day length is in midwinter) are energising and there seems to be more time to get things done. And being outside in the garden in the evening, watching the sky, sitting with a cool drink and knitting, or pottering around watering plants is such a great pleasure.

The lush and verdant greenery all across the countryside, underfoot across the meadows and overhead in the dense leaf canopy of the woods and lanes. Every imaginable shade of glorious green, and truly beautiful.

The unbelievable speed with which everything grows – early June brought a decent amount of rain and coupled with the more recent sunny days everything is growing fast. The ferns in the wood for instance were only knee high in May, stunted by a dry spring, but after a month of perfect conditions they’re now shoulder height. The grasses too have shot up, and many of our familiar paths are overgrown enough to be unrecognisable.

Butterflies, beetles, bees and all manner of insect life. You only have to walk slowly along a hedgerow or through a meadow and you will spot hundreds of small creatures if you look carefully enough, and you can hear hundreds more chirruping and droning and buzzing away. Every plant seems a haven for some form of life.

Birds. All through the wood there are small dartings within the canopy and thickets, and a chorus of song drifting along the pathways, and a great many fledglings finding their wings and learning how to survive.

All of these things and more make Summer wonderful, but there is one thing that is a deal breaker for me in naming it as a favourite season, and that is the heat.

Last week we had 5 straight days of unbearably hot weather (33-36c) which we are not at all used to, making it hard to sleep, and impossible to knit. We had to choose our walks very carefully too, avoiding open countryside and sticking to the woods where the canopy protected us from the fierce direct sunlight and the temperatures are 8-10 degrees cooler. Poor Toby doesn’t enjoy this level of heat either and has had a few meltdowns, all in all it was a bit of a challenging week.

Yesterday however slightly cooler weather arrived and I gratefully picked up my needles again in the evening. Toby is a little calmer too, so we’re hoping that this weather lingers a good long while or even, dare I say it, cools further and brings rain (wishful thinking I know). I’m looking forward to continuing with the new animal pattern that I’m now working on and in the evenings am knitting several pairs of socks, all blue it seems and all stripes, the obsession continues 🙂 and thankfully there was just enough yarn to finish the pair that I was working on in May.

Hope you’ve had a better time of things where you are, but if life is a little challenging for you too at the moment, then I hope that at least you have some small pleasures to brighten each day.

countryside · crafts & knitting · garden stuff · in the woods · spring · wildlife

May: the fairest month of all

May 22, 2026 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)24 Comments

Peak spring arrives with May, and it’s beautiful out there in the countryside. Although as this spring has been a very dry season many of the trees have noticeably less leaves, so the canopy is currently quite open compared to the full density that you would see after a damp spring. I keep hoping for rain, and we have had a little in May, but not nearly enough.

The lack of rain has also affected the orchard, where there the apple blossom was a lot more sparse than I have seen in some previous years. The hardy hawthorns though have been glorious, and in full bloom from the beginning of the month. The hawthorn tree is woven into folklore and social history, and prevalent in the countryside. Lone hawthorn trees have long been viewed as portals to the fairy realm, and to cut one down was considered to bring bad luck. And the hawthorn also symbolises love, fertility and protection, with medieval May brides often carrying a posy of hawthorn blossom, also called May blossom, or wearing it in their hair, and branches of blossoming hawthorn hung over doorways to invite luck and prosperity in for May day or Beltane at the start of the month.

Hawthorn also has an English traditional rural name of ‘bread and cheese’ as the plentiful and tender new shoots were foraged and eaten by country folk in bygone times when winter food stores were running low. There is a lane near to one of our walks named Bread and Cheese Lane which still has many hawthorns along the hedgerows there.

Although there seem to be less leaves on many trees the oaks have noticeably larger leaves this year, some almost the size of my hand. Last year was a mast year for the oak trees and they produced enormous numbers of acorns, which takes a huge amount of tree energy, so in the year following a mast year they concentrate energy into leaf and branch growth rather than seed production, which is why many oak leaves this year are supersized.

The hornbeam trees however seem to have decided on this year for their peak seed spreading, as most are festooned with delicate samaras, the winged seeds that will disperse on autumn breezes, they look so pretty swinging from the branches.

Back at home there has of course been knitting, some work on patterns, and more socks. The pair I’m currently working on are knitted in precious stashed yarn from the Wool Barn (sadly Maya is no longer producing hand-dyed yarn) and I’m leaning into my slight obsession for simple stripes. I am playing yarn chicken and hoping that I have enough of the soft blue colour to finish the second sock, it seems to be running out more quickly that anticipated

Most of the rest of my free time is still taken up with rebuilding this blog, though I am now only a single years worth of posts away from completing the task. You may remember that my former blogging service typepad closed with very little warning last October and although I was able to import all of the written posts into this new blog here I have had to manually go through and add in all of the images to those posts. There are over 900 posts, and thousands of images so as you might imagine it has been a very time consuming task. But it has also been a rewarding one and I have greatly enjoyed looking back over the last 19 years worth of images. Something that hit me quite hard though was how much life has changed since Toby left school and looking back at images of how family life used to be brought into sharp focus how much less time I have these days to spend on the things that I used to enjoy such as baking and gardening and just pottering around, but I am now trying to weave those small pleasures back into my days again.

Seeing the pictures of how our garden used to look here and here, full of plants and small creatures, made me realise just how much I have missed having a pretty outdoor space that is helpful to nature. Gardening has been absent from my days for quite a few years now and the garden has become a little neglected, so a few new plants have now been added, along with a small bed of herbs, it is a modest start but it will hopefully continue.

Our neighbourhood has suffered greatly from habitat loss over the last 10 years. When we moved here 30 years ago every garden had several small trees and lots of shrubs and most had vegetable patches and varied flower beds. As the older generation have died or moved away these mature and wildlife rich gardens, sometimes lovingly tended for 40 years or more, have been completely decimated by the new neighbours in favour of fence-to-fence lawn (in some cases even the plastic kind) and decking and one neighbour has entirely paved over the whole of their back garden. Gardens are such a vital habitat and source of food for all manner of insect, amphibian and small mammal life, and although our garden is small, I hope to make a better space for nature to flourish a little here at our home. There is at least one wild creature that does enjoy spending time in our garden, Katsue the fox is still a regular visitor and continues doing well after her injury earlier in the year,

Well, I’m off to water the new plants, they need it with this lack of rain, until next time keep well and happy, J x

countryside · crafts & knitting · in the woods · spring

April: the greening month

April 29, 2026April 29, 2026 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)22 Comments

After the dull, drab, cold and wet winter months the arrival of April is a breath of fresh and delicately scented spring air.

Everywhere you look there is new growth. Suddenly the grass in the meadows is inches tall, and the canopy above the woodland is changing from a high vaulted ceiling of interlaced bare branches to a softly dappled, shimmering green layer. And there are so many more shades of beautifully fresh green splashed across the woodland floor, and along the hedgerows and the roadside verges.

The absolute highlight of April around here is the annual emerging of the bluebells. Their small flower spikes develop quickly over a few weeks, racing upwards to have their moment in the sun before the tree leaves unfurl and the woodland canopy closes over for the summer. En masse their wonderful scent is strong, but individually is beautifully delicate and so redolent of spring. It is such a privilege to sit quietly alone in a bluebell woodland, and already knowing this truth I took a snack and my knitting with me and spent the morning there, listening to the birds singing in the thickets and the tree tops and to the drone of the bees, busy making their way from one flower to the next, I had it all to myself and it was utter peaceful bliss.

At home there has been knitting too. There are always several different pairs of socks on my needles at any one time, and I often switch between them as the mood takes me, but unusually for me I have finished a full pair from start to finish this month. The pattern is Truleigh Socks by The Knitting Shed knitted in three shades of Ainsworth and Prin classic sock yarn also from The Knitting Shed. I’m also busy knitting up new samples of my rabbits, foxes, and seasonal dress and sweaters patterns as I would like to refresh the front covers of those patterns. I think I mentioned that before, but gosh it is a long slow process these days so I will no doubt be mentioning it several times more before there is anything to show for my efforts. I have however now finished and wet blocked most of the sweaters, so progress is gradually being made.

Well, here we are on the cusp of May – my most favourite month of the year (though I do often say that of October too), so I will hopefully be out and about with my camera at the orchard, to admire and adore the apple and pear blossoms, and also along the riverbank where the best cow parsley grows. So, see you again in a few weeks, until then I hope you have plenty of small pleasures to season your days with hope and happiness, J x