Today . . .

• bread baked
• house cleaned and tidied
• two more chairs recovered - a joint effort
• more seeds sowed (carrots and sprouts)
• vegetables cropped for dinner (carrots, beetroot and assorted leaves)
• four sweetcorn germinated
• parsley potted on
• weeding in the sun
• reading
• sewing
• washing all dried outside and put away
• blackbirds feasting on worms in the lawn
• 'love-in-a-mist' (Nigella) flowering

It's been a lovely, simple day.

Goodies from the garden

Note:  I typed this post on Friday but the technical gremlins struck and the laptop went into a loop :((     After several attempts, things seem to have cleared for the moment.  I'm thinking I may need to invest in some new hardware; I've been coaxing and cajoling this one for some time now and I know at some point I'm not going to get it going again.  *sigh*

Yesterday we thought summer might finally have arrived.  Clear blue skies, wall-to-wall sunshine and temperatures warm enough for a spot of sun-bathing.  Today has been ominously still and humid, and eventually, and inevitably, this evening the heavens opened.  It was always going to rain at some point this weekend as thousands of revellers have descended on the Island for the annual Festival.  Oh dear, are they getting wet right now!  I hope they remembered their wellie-boots, 'cos they will be needing them :(   Fingers crossed for dry weather for the rest of the weekend so everyone has a chance to dry out.

The Elephant garlic has lived up to it's name - a 50p piece for comparison

The rain won't go amiss in the garden, especially with the dry windy weather we've had recently.  And we're harvesting daily.  Spinach (the second crop), lettuce, rocket, and basil are all appearing regularly on the kitchen table and on our dinner plates.  The garlic has been pulled up - one or two were showing signs of onion rot so N didn't want to risk losing any more - and the first crop of carrots have been pulled.  As space is made, so more seeds are planted.  This is the first time we have been in a position to have second sowings and we are trying to make the most of this opportunity.  We are learning lessons as we go, making note of what works well and what needs to be changed next time around.  A bigger greenhouse seems to be creeping to the top of the list!  We may be a very long way from growing all our own vegetables, but what we are able to grow gives such satisfaction and pleasure.

An early morning walk in the woods

An early start today to take the car in for it's MOT.  Rather than hanging around the garage waiting, we took ourselves off for a walk through the woods.  It was such a lovely way to spend an hour, quiet and reflective.  

We spotted a greenfinch on the telegraph wires, and then watched a couple of swallows skimming across the field.  We've been watching 'Springwatch' each evening for the past couple of weeks, and there was a piece on the programme a few days ago about how to differentiate between swallows, swifts and housemartins, and that was how we identified these swallows, by the low flight across fields as they hunted for insects.  We were quite pleased with ourselves!  As the birds turned in flight, we caught sight of their forked tails and white underbody so we were certain of our identification.

On our return home, I dug out our little book of wild flowers (excellent charity shop find at Christmas) to identify this plant:

 

It is the Common Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) which was growing along the paths in the woods.  My knowledge of wild flowers is sadly limited, so I am keen to learn a few more.

We've had another productive day in the garden, moving veg bags around, tying up trailing plants and potting up some annuals I sowed from seed in early Spring.  We're on the look-out for the sweetcorn, but it's a bit difficult to tell seedlings from weeds!

Chairs re-covered for free

The first carrot

I think June is going to be one of those 'busy' months, with lots going on, planned and unplanned.  The weather is finally getting more summery (if we could lose the breeze, which is decidedly chilly, I might manage to stay in short sleeves and skirt all day) and there is always plenty to do in the garden.  The greenhouse is bulging - I think next time we may have to invest in a larger one to accommodate all the plants - and there are tomato plants on every spare inch.  We are both diligently weeding whenever we have a spare few minutes, and I do believe we are beginning to win the battle - hooray!

Before and after 

The dining-room chairs have been recovered with a remnant of curtaining fabric from when I altered some curtains a while ago, so that's a great big tick off the list for this month.  As is so often the case, a job I had been putting off doing actually took me far less time to accomplish that I thought it would - another example of that new mantra, "doing it gets it done".  I had to call in N to finish off with the staple-gun (it scares me, I'll be honest) and a couple of hours' work sees us with bright new chair covers that haven't cost a penny.  Little projects like that are so satisfying.  And surprisingly simple.

It was bright, sunny and breezy today, ideal conditions to get the patchwork quilts washed and dried (ooh, another tick!).  Those quilts proved very useful during the winter, providing a snuggly extra layer to wrap up in on cold afternoons and evenings.  They are well over twenty years old now, made when my children were little, and wash up so well, time after time.  You can definitely never have too many quilts around the house ;-)

We've had a couple of trips to the mainland in the past few days, specifically for me to make some sewing purchases which weren't possible on the island.  We did our homework before we travelled, and made full use of travel deals and discount vouchers to cut the cost.  I came back with exactly what I was after so I was very happy.  

Several things on the horizon at the moment, some visiting to do, lots of gardening and plenty of sewing and DIY.  The green woodpecker has been back feeding on the front lawn, and the house-martins are flitting about over the rooftops.  Our little tail-less blackbird has finally grown some tail feathers and found his voice, and a robin uses our washing-line as a stop-over early each morning, often with a worm in its beak.  Little things, and maybe quite ordinary and everyday, but it is a pleasure to just stop and watch.

Is it summer yet?

Hello, June!  Cold, wet and very windy - so not quite summer yet.  We still have the winter-weight duvet and a quilt on the bed, and last night someone was even heard muttering about a hot-water bottle!  It really has been a bit of a strange time, weather-wise.  

A quick reflection on May; it's interesting to look back over the previous month to see what progress has been made.  The garden was our priority and we have pretty much achieved what we set out to do (edging beds, a bit of planting and beginning work on the lawn).  The veg plot/greenhouse is the main focus, and we continue to learn as we go, dealing with the inevitable blips along the way. A start has been made on the snagging projects in the house, odd bits of finishing off that somehow got overlooked (deliberately left!) in the renovation last year.  And I met the challenge of walking the Wight - yay for me!  May has also been a month for mulling things over, discussing and deliberating over what may be in the months to come, talking over possibilities and probabilities.  

And so to June.  As usual, I have made myself a list to act as a guide, to keep me focussed when all I really want to do is knit and sew - making things is such a distraction ;)  I have found there is much more likelihood of tasks being completed if they are on my list, primarily, I confess, because I do like to be able to cross things off!  Anyway, I will state here that I will recover the dining-room chairs (using a remnant of curtaining, so that's a freebie), I will finish a knitting project, and I will give the hallway a second coat of emulsion (we were a bit slapdash with our original painting there).  There are several other jobs to do, and most of them will get done or at least started, but those are ones that I shall make a real effort to achieve.

We will potter along, keeping things as simple as we can, enjoying the very real pleasures that simplicity brings with it.  Life has a habit of throwing up complications along the way - that's the way of things - but there's no point, IMHO, in making life more complicated than it needs to be.  

Don't forget to stop sometimes

Calm waters at Gurnard earlier this week - very tranquil

I have a few days 'home alone' while N visits family on the mainland.  To stop myself from mooching about and wasting time while he was away (as if I would) I drew up a very comprehensive list of things to do while I had the sole run of the house and garden.  Ahem, I think I may have been somewhat over-ambitious.  I haven't stopped the whole time, I've been so keen to get things done.  I have again been reminded that this isn't a race, not a competition to get as much done as I can, and that it's OK - indeed, it's usually a pretty good idea - to stop from time to time.   A cup of tea (and homemade cake, of course!), a bit of knitting, even, dare I say, the odd bit of TV.  

I've started on those odd little snaggings that were left over from the renovation last year, those silly little tasks that often only take a few minutes to do, like cleaning off the ceiling roses and light switches and sockets - no matter how carefully I painted around the fittings, the paint inevitably ended up on them.  They have all now been cleaned off, and the paint touched up in one or two places.  Just a little job, but now it's done.  

I'm continuing my daily fight with the weeds, working on the principle that 'a little and often' is the best way to tackle them.  I don't really mind weeding, it's a good opportunity to see how the plants are doing.  And I often have company as I work; a male blackbird often comes within a couple of feet, seemingly unfazed by my proximity.  He's so close I could touch him.  It's a very calming moment.

  

Lawn workout

This azalea has been glorious - such a splash of vivid pink

I spend all winter looking forward to the long days of summer, forgetting just how long those days can be.  It's light just after 5 o'clock, and still light long past 9 o'clock at night, that 16 hours of daylight and at the moment I seem to be up and on the go for almost all of the time!  It's a question of pacing myself in these long days, not trying to do everything in one day.  That's the idea, anyway.  

Today I made the most of a lovely day to tackle the back lawn again.  It's more moss and weeds than grass, but I know that with a bit of time and effort (actually, quite a bit of time and effort) I could get it into better shape - and indeed it's quite a good workout for me, too ;)  Armed with my trusty sprung-tine rake, I have scarified the lawn to within an inch of it's life and now have two garden sacks full of dead moss and thatch to dispose of.  Raking the lawn in this way raises all those long grass stalks that have been flattened over time, and mowing straightaway cuts them all off short.  There are still big patches of creeping weeds and I shall just have to persevere with those, digging them up by hand.  I suppose it seems a lot of effort but just half an hour a day will get the job done eventually.  We've spent very little on the garden (not including the veg plot, and even that hasn't cost us much), making the most of what was already here.  Watching the Chelsea Flower Show programmes last week reminded us how much we enjoy plant-and-flower gardening - as always, there were so many wonderful ideas to store away for the next garden.

Quite a bit going on at the moment, and I don't always seem to find the time to record the comings and goings.  My mind is full of ideas and plans and at times life seems anything but simple, so just being able to walk around the garden, pull some lettuce leaves for a sandwich, see the first little green tomatoes forming, and the peas start to scramble up the netting is all I need to appreciate everything we have here.