Woodland walks, seed planting, bright blooms, spring spotting, muddy paws, garden mulching, and bread making. A few favourite spring things that we have managed to fit around our working life this March. Every spare moment has been spent outdoors putting up fences to keep wild animals and loose dogs out of our front garden, planting bountiful hedges to feed the birds and tempt the bees and planning what seeds to sow to fill the gaps in our freshly mulched flower beds later in the season.
These two have been hibernating in the days and trotting in and out of the house in the evenings leaving muddy paw prints along the windowsills and tops of cupboards – while we shoehorn primulas and primroses, hellebores and cyclamens into every bare gap of earth out in the front yard. Pouring all our love and energy into the place we love the most – home.
As you can see above, our garden is open to a quiet road but we have lots of dog walkers up here and that means lots of dogs on the loose, running in to say hello or chasing the cats, so we are putting in a rustic fence and trellis. Hopefully a rugged and wild looking creation with lots of opportunty to grow honeysuckle, roses and sweet peas up!
Small details from indoors – a vintage sari curtain in a dark corner and teeny scented pelargonium petals resting on the windowsills. I love to discover these tiny petals when they drop. So fragile.
Grasses and seed heads for decoration are a staple around here, I am sure you noticed! Our borage has been blooming for weeks now so we have been using their blue jewel petals to decorate home baked pitas, filled with every Deliciously Ella falafel recipe we can try. I bought this book a few months ago and every recipe is a winner. Some of the cakes are a bit of a shopping budget blower, but well worth it – I often make a half batch as it’s just us two here – or take extras round to family :)
A big jar of joyful tulips on the table and out in the garden some of my bulbs from last year survived too. A mini miracle as they were very badly neglected and mistreated. I found them hatching in a pile where they had been abandoned in a pot last May – underneath a pile of newly grown grass. I am afraid my gardening style can be a tad lackadaisical.
This week we are planting up seeds (we still have Grace Alexander’s lovely ones for sale over in the shop), a bit later than I hoped but it is still chilly and earlier than last year, our lean-to will hopefully become a little seedling factory. A new table has been built to accommodate our new green family and fingers crossed the cats won’t walk on them all – like they did our pita bread below? Don’t worry, there was a linen cloth between the paws and the dough as you can see by the print haha!
Along with enjoying all the awakenings in our own garden, we have been out in the woods, soaking up the magic of the woodland floor covered with anemones and all the green sprigs of bluebell leaves popping up to replace them in the next wave of colour. We did spot one blue stem, so will be back and checking up on them again soon.
So much is coming to life and unfurling and peeking out into the early sunshine. I must admit I am so happy it is raining this week, everything was looking a little thirsty with all the lovely weather we have been having down here on the South coast.
Pink primroses hiding under out of control grasses and dusky droopy hellebores down by the Tea Shed.
We seem to have a bumper comfrey crop that has sprung up down by our bonfire area, so we’ll be out gathering leaves and stewing some stinky comfrey tea to feed the garden this summer. When they first popped up I was so excited because I thought they were foxgloves. But somehow comfrey is almost as pretty and definitely better for our plants! ;)
