Just Humans Being...

  More pics of our wild garden. We are going with the flow and creating little pockets of growing areas without getting concerned about timings; happy to just see what happens. Sweetpeas along the path to the cabin. We have around 30 tomato plants, which we have repotted for now and they continue to live in the workshop until the posts for the polytunnel/greenhouse come to us...which they will! Creating another no dig area. We have lots of fruit vines, which we are gradually getting tied up. The bees are loving the wild flowers, so we are leaving them in place. Floober Toobs overseeing everything in his most regal way. Not easy to see on this photo, but the Globe Artichoke is looking quite magnificent and is already over 6 feet tall.  We have lots of raspberries and red campions fast taking over the chard and kale area, but we seem to be still getting some nice edible greens, so we are happy. Yesterday was very hot and having a south facing garden means there is only shade ear...

Taming some of the wilderness! We have started clearing little areas and putting in a variety of plants we have very gratefully received. (Thank you Sadie and Amy!) We haven't pruned the raspberries, but Sime was eager to get them tied up. We are using some scraps of recycled fabric as ties...I think seams and cuffs from our friend, Kath who makes fabulous patchwork quilts and all sorts of beautiful fabric art from recycled material.  Compost Corner. Inside our bin...we started this one 7 months ago and we are already getting some lovely compost. We only put in raw vegetable and fruit waste, which we layer with brown paper, newspaper and cardboard. Garden waste is put into a separate open heap and seems to rot down pretty fast. Making progress in what will become our hybrid greenhouse/polytunnel... We have the side panels and hoops ready to go on and the roof will be made from the old polytunnel plastic sheet - just need the supporting posts to hold it all together. Some views from...

 Holidaymakers are swarming down to Cornwall, so we are enjoying a couple of days being homebased and it's finally warm and dry... instead of the cold, wet and windy weather we have had over the last weeks or is it months? We have much to do in the garden  jungle, and after being crazily busy for what seems like forever - we were dreaming of spending some quality time at home with the kitties, pottering about outside...and now we have exactly what we have been craving. Yesterday we visited our local farm shop and for the first time we bought some Green Wheat Freekeh from Palestinian company  Zaytoun  and we love it! We cooked up some spicy veggies and added the soaked Freekeh at the end and served on a bed of salad and topped with chopped coriander. We have also been experimenting and decided to have a go at making our own version of a vegan frittata using silken tofu and buckwheat - it was delicious! We'll make it again and share the recipe soon. The weekend wouldn'...

There are several growing areas on our plot, so we have decided that the veg bed directly outside the cabin will eventually become a flower bed and picnic area.  The kitties love this space and we have the bird feeders here too.  Our French windows need fixing and then they will open out on to what we hope will be a pretty little space for us all to chill out. We think the bin lid may make a nice bird bath, which Sime wants to set up on a plinth. Our plan for the old polytunnel space is to make a greenhouse, using recycled panels. We are a bit late with getting our seeds going, but so far we have tomatoes which will go into the greenhouse plot and leeks which we plan to put amongst the rather overgrown plot of raspberries and assortment of greens... We are spending a lot of time away at the moment; caring for one of our clients; giving his family a break...it's not quite how we imagined this year to be, but as always, we go with the flow - the garden isn't going anywhere and w...

Who needs a TV when you have several bird feeders? The cabin is a bit like a bird hide and we get hours of entertainment watching our feathery friends flying around and chomping. They have already gone through a large bag of peanuts and are now on some mixed seed and sunflower hearts we picked up from the local garden centre. We have also made our own fat balls – which are probably a lot healthier than the ones you can buy and the birds love them. We put all the ingredients in the food processor...Peanuts, sunflower seeds, ground flax (linseeds), oats, polenta and water. Whizzed it up and left the mush to stand for about 30 minutes, then separated the mixture and rolled into balls. We didn’t weigh anything out, just whizzed it all up until the right consistency. It’s really easy to do and probably much cheaper. In the garden each day, we have mostly Great tits, a couple of Blue tits and this morning we have seen our first Coal tit. We also have Greenfinches, Goldfinches and Chaffin...

Thursday we enjoyed some time in the garden... The Clematis is thriving again, we're training it to grow around the front door & the bluebells are just incredible this year. The lilies are coming out too - we see lots of folks taking photos of them every spring... And the little fruit bush we planted a few years ago has started to spread (we thought it had died). We can't remember if it's loganberry or boysenberry, but we're very happy that it's survived.   The lemon balm is looking great too, we've made beer with it a few times & it makes a lovely subtle tasting herb tea. We spent an hour in the back garden playing with our new toy - Something we have wanted for a long time... A stainless steel  Kelly Kettle . We filled the kettle with water & the pan with a little newspaper & twigs. It's so easy to use... And we soon had boiling water for our cuppa. Lupe enjoyed the last of the rays... ...