Treading lightly, one step at a time.
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.
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.
We have entered October and there is a definite change in the garden. All the lush greens of summer are slowly transforming into browns, russets, buttery yellows, we could go on… It is lovely to walk around and experience the slowing down process of nature. All the leaves are turning and falling as the trees and shrubs prepare for the cold in the coming months.
We have always admired and loved the old Rowan tree on the Northwest corner of our land. The lady who lives across the road was born in our house and she says the tree has always been there and was a mature tree already when she was a little girl many years ago. We think it might have been growing there for a hundred years and certainly for over eighty.
The tree in 2014 in the top right corner.
Over the last few days something of a bubbling, exhilarating and wonderful revolution has taken place in our kitchen. Unfamiliar smells, sounds and tactile experiences can now be found in every nook and cranny.
August has been another busy month on the land. There are so many things to harvest and process so that they will keep for the coming months. One unusual and tasty vegetable is the strawberry spinach, Chenopodium capitatum, which we grew from seeds in the spring. The red “berries” taste sweet and fresh in salads and the leaves are good in stir-fries.
We do not have television in our house. It is nice to stay away from the bombardments of adverts and also not to get sucked into a mindless vegetative state, watching programs that might be of limited interest, just because they are there.
If you are a regular reader of our blog you will know that we like mosaics. We have used tiles found in various skips and created a floor in our roundhouse, walls in our bathroom and a surround for our stove among other things.
July was certainly a busy month on the land. We worked quite hard for the first half of the month, weeding, pruning and generally preparing our garden for the open garden weekend on the 14th and 15th. The weather was very warm and dry, right up to the open days, when the rain and wind created a somewhat dampened but very pleasant event. We made some new friends and caught up with old ones.
For the second half of the month the weather has been changeable and we have not spent a lot of time in the garden, apart from when harvesting vegetables. Our cabbages have grown exceptionally well this year, along with our courgettes and raspberries.
