Cold, wet and windy day.

Well, not a great start to British Summer Time, here!

After yesterday's fine, warm weather, today is cold, overcast and windy.

I always find clock changes upset my sleep, even when they go forward in the Autumn and we get an extra hour of sleep.

It's not stopping our resident front garden Cock pheasant from wandering around  nipping off the blooms on the Fritillaries, as you can see! 

(Apologies for the blurry images, I was watching him from the Porch as he wandered around in the rain.)

Trip to Botanica plant centre

I've been up the road to The Nest and to the adjacent Botanica, formerly the Newent Plant Centre. This is an independent plant centre, run by very knowledgeable people.

I love looking around there, at the way they display their plants, as if it were a real garden with plants in beds, rather than all on staging grouped by plant variety.

Lots of plants in the huge polytunnels there,

 herbs and all sorts of more tender plants, just waiting to go outside in a day or two.              

The plants are very good there, and I bought 3 bags of peat free growing medium and English lavenders to replace the two on the patio that got so woody they were beyond saving, so Compostman dug them out last autumn.

But I miss the scent and the bees on them, so have got two more to replace them. Plus a couple of smaller ones to go in patio pots

Then we went to Ledbury Aldi and we got a few bits and bobs of shopping. Lots of empty shelf spaces though , and prices seem to be rising every time we go shopping, anywhere.

Finally, the front garden with the Celendines in bloom, and some of the Fritillary bed.

However, our resident front garden Cock pheasant keeps annoyingly nipping off the blooms, and has now shown his wives how to do it, so buds appear but never get to open. I have *no* idea why he does it, as he doesn't eat them. He does it to the yellow crocus blooms as well, in the same bed.

I

Wild bees documentary

Watching "My garden of a 1000 bees" on BBC Four just now.

Absolutely amazing footage, do watch it , if you can!

We have some of the solitary bee species here, but I didn't know about a lot of the ones featured in this programme.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002t686

Cleaning the Gabriel Ash mini greenhouse

Some of you may remember I was given a lovely  Gabriel Ash wall standing mini greenhouse to review, back in 2014

Sadlly due to   being bitten by a Blandford fly   and having to be hospitalised, the mini greenhouse didn't get put together until 2015.

It's been   moved around the patio  a couple of times, but settled into it's current position about 10 years ago.

I've found it invaluable to be a half way house between seedlings that need to be in the porch and plants that can go into the cold frames inside the polytunnel, before being finally planted out in the polytunnel.

It's also a good greenhouse for herbs and overwintering plants.

Anyway, it gets used as a bit of a dumping ground for stuff overwinter, and hasn't had a good clean inside and out for several years so, as today has been bright and sunny I got cleaning.

I emptied out various pots and trays last night and put them in the polytunnel.

(Which is one of the next big jobs for me to do , giving it a good tidy up, and washing the cover!)

Today, Compostman took out the top panes of glass, which were absolutely filthy, and with them out I could get inside the greenhouse to scrub all the glass.

I scrubbed inside and out, as well as cleaning the wooden shelves.

I got VERY wet and splattered with dirty water!

All back together, nice and clean , ready for plants 😀

Grass mown yesterday, and when I'd finished getting wet and dirty  I sat in the sun and listened to the birdsong.

I do so love it here.

Bright Blessings to all

Spring Equinox blessings to all!

Pruning the Cider mill

This is what the front Cider mill looked like, the little branches used to grow berries for the birds, but no longer and the branches are looking increasingly sick.

So , after checking very very carefully for nesting birds, I , one branch at a time, cut off the diseased branches.

Looks much better now, hoping it will rejuvenate the ivy to sprout new growth.

Picking daffodils

The gales and hard rain we had on Thursday knocked down a lot of daffodils in the garden (the wild ones in the wood, being short stemmed, didn't get flattened )

So I went and picked an armful of the knocked down ones, to bring inside.

 Better me enjoying them, than the slugs munching on them (there's still plenty for them to eat, though 😉)

more Gluten free bread experiments

Gluten free seeded loaf made in breadmaker, plus 6 small crust rolls and two bap sized rolls proved and then baked in oven.

 (from Dove's Farm Freee bread mix)

Think I might have over baked the small rolls, but they smell delish.

Have beef stew for dinner tomorrow so might try one then.

Bumblebees!

First Bumblebees seen today on these flowers. It's been so dull and wet for weeks, I suspect the poor things had no flowers open to feed from.

At least today the flowers were open!

Fruit Vodka sampling

My Damson vodka is delish! It's 7 months old and I have just sampled some.

Will leave it on the Damsons for another 5 months or so.

The Cherry Brandy is ready to strain off the cherries, but I need to do it on a day when I've got time to do something with the tipsy cherries!

Happy Valentine's Day

Have a (still growing) bunch of flowers from me!

Bringing the sunshine, indoors

Went for a short walk in the garden and wood, beautiful Wild daffodils blooming in our wood in the sunshine so I brought some sunshine indoors