Early Summer in the Garden

According to good gardening wisdom, one should wait a full year in a new garden before doing anything to it. I am not sure that this advice extends to avoiding weeding, but so far my erratic health and the dreary weather have created a sense of inertia that has meant the poor garden has had […]

May Highlights

It seems that the weekends have flown by this month. Summer is not really making much of an appearance. Though from last year, we are not expecting too much! But we have managed the odd outing, including a trip to the bird reserve with friends (which involved some batman antics on the beach and […]

Easter Antics

Easter is a magical time for me. Just like Christmas, I took quite a bit of pleasure in introducing Kaz to the wonderful delights of poking about in the garden looking for chocolatey treats from the Easter Rabbit, eating toasty hot cross buns (this year I made them myself for the first time) and popping […]

Springing Again

Lately I have been making a habit of taking an early morning stroll over the hill to the nearest town and this little fellow often kept me company on my way through the woods: Since then, we have spent more and more time outdoors as the chill that had settled over the winter began to […]

Whiling Away the Winter Days

The winter days are lengthening finally. We no longer leave for work and drive home in the dark. But there is an icy grip on the land still, and whilst darling little buds are appearing in the garden (pinch me, I have a garden, with buds in it!) we are still cosying up for the […]

Christmas Countdown

Only eight more sleeps to go…This year I really wanted to initiate Kazuo into the counting down to Christmas that was such a cherished part of my childhood. He is still acquiring the capacity to deal with delayed gratification, so this has been an interesting lesson. I did feel that having a tiny treat each […]

Finally At Home

It has been a rather lengthy hiatus of painting, re-insulating, packing, unpacking, getting a hundred colds and flus and trying to juggle the minutiae of daily life with the desire to prettify and make homely…but I can finally report that we have made ourselves well and truly At Home. I mentioned some months back (in […]

Henny Hen Hen…

After the Fearsome Mr Fox encounter a few weeks ago, we really had to find the enduring little Naynaynay Number Four some company. By all accounts, chickens do not fare so well alone, being social creatures. Nay was looking a little nervy (well, a little more than her usual nervy self) and was tucking herself away in […]

We’re Have I Been All This Time…

Longest break I’ve taken in a while…somehow, at the end of a week at the keyboard, it is kinda hard to make time to pop in here. Silly me. Weekends have taken on a new measure of quality family life now that our time all together is really limited to breakfast and dinner/bath/stories/bed. We ALL […]

How Are Those Chickens Getting On?

Eleven weeks ago we brought our little brood of rescued battery chickens home to roost in our yard. Since then they have thrived in ways I never imagined – though we did hope, from the British Hen Welfare Trust paraphernalia that we had read that they would eventually do so. Akira is faithfully waking earlier […]