Recycled Eco Buildings and Wildlife Friendly Food Forest Garden. Mosaics and Glass Bottle Walls.
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.
We are long time admirers of Mary Reynolds and were delighted when she created her ARK movement. ARK stands for Acts of Restorative Kindness. You can read all about it on the ARK website HERE. People all over the world are now creating ARKS on the land that they have available. It is time to … Read more Let’s build an ARK
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.
Early in the year we decided to cover our entire vegetable patch with a thick mulch of barley straw. If you plan to do this, it is advisable to look for organic straw as it will not contain any chemical and pesticide residue. We put on a good foot across the whole area.
April was an exciting month in the garden. We had snow and hail showers, brilliant warm sunshine and everything in between.
We moved into our cottage in January 2013. Even before we bought it, we had decided that we would add a round house extension to it, with a reciprocal roof. These types of houses have been built for thousands of years, mainly in China and Japan. It is a very economical and environmentally sound way of building, and can be adapted to suit many climates and site conditions. We would like to share our experience of the build with our readers here, in case someone would like to embark on a similar project.
Last year we were given some lovely Pelargonium cuttings from a friend to add to our pelargonium collection. They all spent the summer outside, but when it got too cold they had to move indoors. They have been stored all winter in some plastic crates and were looking a bit worse for wear due to poor light and cramped conditions.
As we have been busy building, tiling, gardening and painting for the last year or so, it was a very exciting time this week when we finally had a chance to get the sewing machine out.
Two of our teenage daughters are sharing a room and they had a wish for some bunting to decorate their curtains and windows.
It is the first of April and time to sum up the garden developments in March. We had a few lovely warm days but also some cold spells with rain and a few frosty nights. It has in many ways been an ideal gardening month and we planted a few things we still had in pots and moved around some of our perennial plants and grasses. Hear is our main circle in March, still looking a bit drab but teaming with life.
We have long been wishing for more storage space in our tiny kitchen. For three years it has been a struggle to fit our groceries into the limited amount of drawers and cupboards. When we moved our dinner table into our new extension, we were left with some space in the kitchen and decided to build a small island with a worktop and lots of storage. We found a base cabinet in IKEA with four pull out drawers, big enough to accommodate tins and jars.
Last year we made some improvements to our main garden circle. Around the edge we have many half-moon shaped borders and the lawn bit in the middle kept spreading into them and made it very tedious to weed. So we decided to make a stone border all around the circle to combat that problem and get an edge that is easy to mow at the same time. You can read all about it here. It has worked very well apart from one small problem. After we set the stones in cement we used hypertufa as an infill between them. Sadly the mixture was not strong enough and over the year most of it has crumbled away. Grass and weeds have taken hold between the stones. We needed to do something about this before the new growing season as the problem would have gotten completely out of hand.
We are almost a week into March and it is time to sum up the highlights of gardening in February. We like this time of year a lot and it is probably because there is so much promise in nature now. Thousands of buds are ready to burst open, the pond is full of frogspawn and the daffodils look very cheerful and bright.
This time of year it is easy to feel a bit jaded and tired. There are lots of colds and flu’s moving around and quite a few rainy days. We felt it was time for a vitamin injection into our daily lives. About a week ago we went out and bought a high power smoothie mixer and we are so glad we did. Since then we have had so much fun, making up recipes for tasty and energy packed juices and smoothies. It has made all of us feel more energetic and happy. This type of mixer is different from a juicer in that it makes a drink from all the parts of the fruit or vegetable you put in. It crushes seeds, nuts, berries and peels into a smooth drink. We have been experimenting with adding things like; almonds, kale, avocado, hemp seeds, goji berries, cacao nibs, frozen berries from the garden, apricot kernels, dried mulberries and sunflower seeds. The list of possible ingredients is endless. If you add seeds, berries and nuts that are dried it is good to soak then for a while before mixing for an even smoother drink.
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