I’ve long agreed with William Morris when he said that “…have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” When I say agree, I mean in a theoretical sense of course. The amount of clutter we appear to own boggles the mind. But I digress. Most of what […]
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Hello, my name is Catherine and I’m a topiary addict. After planting our six foot topiary rabbit for the children, I just keep thinking of different things in our garden that should, if possible, be made of living materials. We really want to make our smallholding a haven for wildlife and one of the easiest […]
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Life in the UK has recently been brought to a standstill by the revelation that we on this Northern European island have had some snow fall on us. It was admittedly something of a shock for us ex-Londoners to see just how deep snow falls out in the rural countryside and we woke yesterday to […]
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Today we made a start on re-stocking our little smallholding with that most versatile of creatures, the chicken. Or rather, four chickens (despite the ardent lobbying of the toddler son who for some reason had the figure of twenty stuck firmly in his head). We had decided to offer a genteel home county retirement to some […]
Read MoreGarlic towers is ready for our first feathery patrons A rainy weekday afternoon and an overexcited toddler with energy to burn combine brilliantly to mean one thing – bird feeders! We had a birdfeeder outside our sitting room window before we embarked on our harebrained scheme to gut and refurbish our entire house last year. […]
Read MoreMy tiny front garden has always been a problem, not least because it’s been paved over and used as a driveway. Parking in London is a problem, and so having our own driveway does make life much easier. I’ve planted bulbs and wildflowers in large troughs lining the driveway and finally moved the birdfeeder from […]
Read MoreI don’t blog much about my front garden, although I have replanted it recently (more details soon) but today I was able to snatch a couple of minutes for a quick project where the GarlicBaby agreed to play in his travel cot. The Scandis have some very good ideas, chief amongst them swaddling a baby […]
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London to Land Girl 