Category: garden stuff

crafts & knitting · garden stuff · summer · wildlife

June days

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)52 Comments

There’s been a fair bit of wet and stormy weather around lately but that’s been good news for the garden where everything now has that early summer vibrancy and is growing vigorously. In some cases a little to vigorously as my little veg patch is getting swamped by the herb edging. This year I’m growing beetroot, broccoli, kale, french beans, peas, courgettes and lettuce and I’m looking forward to a green feast in another month or so.

Happily we’ve had a taste of summer too with a few days that have been warm and sunny enough to sit outside. There’s something so very calming and relaxing about an afternoon outside with something nice to eat and drink, a little knitting and a good book (Knitlandia by Clara Parkes is a great read if you are a knitter, though my copy has already lost it’s pretty dust-jacket to Toby’s paper tearing obsession). Hopefully there are more sun-filled summer days to come.

My knitting has been very influenced by the colours of a summer garden too. I was so thrilled when I managed to buy this wonderful skein from Maya at The Wool Barn. Her yarns are exquisitely hand dyed so it’s not surprising that they sell out so very quickly. This colour-way is called Rose Garden and I’m knitting a crescent shawl from it, Helen Stewart’s Spindrift Shawl. I’m almost finished now and just need to choose between pink and green for the edge, as I fancy a contrasting border.

There have been some happy days working on this in the summer sunshine and it’s been lovely to escape some of the stresses of exam time (Amy’s GCSE’s have spanned most of the last month) with a little gentle and undemanding knitting. We’re all looking forward to next Tuesday when Amy has her last exam. She will be so relieved and it will be nice to have a more relaxed atmosphere here. It’s been a bit exhausting trying to keep Toby quiet in his middle-of-the-night-awake periods but essential in order to make sure that Amy has had the sleep she needs to do well in her exams.

Sorry that I’ve not been around much recently, I’ve not felt like I’ve had much of interest to say or to share. Life has been full of ordinary family stuff with it’s ups and downs and we live day to day, which is the best way to approach life with Toby, but so often the day seems to whizz by without much getting done. I do try to take photos when something interesting presents itself (like this wonderfully tender swan family encountered on a walk a few weeks back), but I seem to have lost my blog voice a little. Hopefully I’m just a little hoarse rather than completely voice-less and I’ll be back soon with more words. ‘Til then thanks for visiting x

autumn · foxes in my garden · garden stuff · general stuff · wildlife

Autumny things :: garden

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)31 Comments

‘Ode to Autumn’ by Keats sums up the arrival of Autumn here…

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless, With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells, With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells…

It’s all mellow fruitfulness here and my gourds have swelled nicely 😉  as you can see above. Although I don’t think they are actually as big as the ones I grew last year. Every year I vow to nurture the plants with regular watering and plant feed but my good intentions slip as the weeks fly past. Next year I’ll strive to be a better gardener.

The carrots have done quite well though and we’ve been enjoying them mixed with herbs and shop-bought sweet potatoes, fennel, onions and parsnips and roasted in the oven.

We’ve also had some wonderful cooking apples thanks to having generous and kind neighbours with very productive Bramley trees and so we’ve been enjoying a lot of apple cake, apple crumble and my current favourite ‘apple brown betty’ made with left-over homemade bread, butter and brown sugar.

The chickens are laying well and being rewarded with regular jaunts in the garden for a spot of free-range foraging.

Though I’ve not told them of the recent visitor that has been coming regularly to our front garden, as I think they’d be alarmed!

Seeing this beautiful fox has delighted me though. Last week I was really lucky to have a great view and took these pictures through my bedroom window just after dawn. I watched him for 20 minutes or so as he rooted round in the ruins of our front garden – we’ve had a lot of leylandii conifers taken out as they’d got too big and scraggy so the front garden is a complete mess at the moment but it is obviously the perfect playground for a curious and bold fox. I’d dumped the contents of the compost bin out there ready to be dug in and he was enjoying picking through and finding the egg shells. He didn’t even budge when a car drove by, just pricked up his ears and bristled with caution, ready to run should the need arise. I hope he sticks around because he’s a very handsome chap and is wonderful to watch but I also hope that the run keeps my fluffy ladies safe from becoming his dinner!

That’s all my news from the garden but I’ll pop back soon, hope you have a good week.

crafts & knitting · garden stuff · general stuff · summer

First week

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)52 Comments

When you’ve written a blog for a few years or more a pattern tends to emerge and you find yourself writing annually about the same kind of things at the same times of year. It’s probably because a year has a rhythm, especially for those of us who live with four distinct seasons. Most of us are creatures of habit and whilst we enjoy change and variation many of the things we do are similar year in year out – or maybe that’s just my family! Anyway, the start of this years school summer break has been very much like the one we had last year…

Amy has dyed her hair blue again (with a little help from me) though this year her hair is substantially shorter than it was last year. She decided to say goodbye to long hair a few months back and loves it (I kept her 12 inch pony tail, as I couldn’t bear to see it thrown away).

Toby has been enjoying the garden and helping me tend our tiny patch – he’s become very good at watering the plants though I do have to remind him to point the hose in the right direction and I have been sprayed a few times when his concentration has wavered.

Sadly there will be very few beans and peas to harvest this year – I’ve resolved to start them off inside next year and invest in a beer trap or similar non-chemical slug eradicator, pesky things have ruined my bean and pea plants. The squash are doing well again though, as are the courgettes, kale and broccoli.

The new raspberries that I planted back in winter from bare root canes are yet to ripen but they’re coming on and the herbs have gone a bit wild and overgrown with some going to seed. Which is fine by me, as the bees really like the flowering thyme, hyssop, coriander and marjoram.

The hydrangeas are doing well too – I really love those big frothy white balls of flowers.

Well, that’s it from us for this week. It’s a cool day with heavy rain here today so we’re pottering inside and I’m hoping to get some time for knitting (I’m working on a shawl – Pebble Beach by Helen Stewart in beautiful delicate merino from Walk Collection.)

Hopefully summer will return next week!