Treading lightly, one step at a time.
My name is Maria. Many of my earliest memories are to do with nature and plants. I remember travelling along a road through a forest in the middle of winter in Sweden and every time the moon glimpsed through the trees I would shout out in wonder “Look at the moon”. This annoyed my big … Read more About the author.
Over the last few years we have extended our old cottage, built a conservatory and are now in the process of renovating and improving our shed to use as a workshop and storage facility. Our aim is for our buildings to have as little negative impact as possible on the environment. We have used reclaimed … Read more Building our sustainable home.
Even before we bought our cottage and piece of land four year ago, we were planning our forest garden. Forest gardens exist all over the world and their history goes back for thousands of years. It is a way of growing mostly perennial vegetables, shrubs, trees, vines and other useful plants in a way that … Read more Gardening in harmony.
Sometimes things just work out. We have a good friend who is a blacksmith and he has taken the youngest member of our family under his wing. We are delighted that Finley can spend time with him, learning the trade and enjoying the company of a truly great craftsman.
After a couple of weeks in Sweden we are now back home with our feet firmly planted on Irish soil. Before we left it was unusually cold but in our absence quite a remarkable transformation has taken place.
As long as I can remember I have been fascinated and enthralled by the botanical garden in the town where I was born. Visby lies on the Island of Gotland, in the middle of the Baltic Sea.
As some of you know, half of our family comes from Sweden. This week we traveled back to the Island of Gotland, in the middle of the Baltic Sea and today we had the opportunity to visit the small Island of Fårö, where we all lived as children.
As most of our regular readers know, we like to recycle as much as possible and incorporate found and salvaged materials into our home and garden.
March has arrived and with it the promise of the heaviest snowy weather Ireland has seen for over 35 years. We have stocked up on food, candles and other necessities, filled up the bird-feeders, brought in firewood and covered some our vulnerable plants with fleeces. We are ready for the storm.
