welsh hills again

I expect heat in summer.  That is daft really.  I don't live in the South of France or Italy, I live in North Wales, but somehow an adolescence spent in New Zealand where the sky is reliably blue for months and the natural colour of everyone's skin is a light tan has left me with an expectation that in summer the sun will shine and I will eat breakfast outside and walk in bare feet and seek the shade.  The last few summers have been so wet and grey and cold as to be non existent.  I don't think I had realised quite how much the absence of sun had got to me until the temperature soared and the sun was hot on my skin and every morning I woke to sunshine and warm wind.  I find I have relaxed deep down inside myself.  The brightness of the light has made me smile.  Walking around with bare feet has made me feel young again although the green valley is bleaching with the sun. Our house is great when it is really hot.  The old stone walls create a ...

The tiling is just about done, only the grouting to go.  Then I can use the kitchen properly!  Then it might not look quite as empty and lovely as it does just now, so now could be the time to show it off. Here is where we started. And this is probably about as bad as it got with the cupboards out and the ceiling down. Here we have come a long way but there is still a lot to do.  The electrics are in, the new plastering is done and the slate floor is underway. The slate floor is down and grouted and Ian starts work on the framework which will make new shelving down one side of the kitchen. And in the blink of an eye (he may throw something at me when he reads this) here are the shelves, ready and raring to go. Then there was a small hiatus while we waited for the Ikea delivery.  When it came it was an exciting day.  The delivery lorry was huge and was reversed down our drive excrutiatingly slowly by the skilful dr...

I haven't really turned my back on the garden.  I made the mistake of wandering around in yesterday's sunshine and it clamoured at me about all the things that still need doing.  But before I get out there and try to sort things out a bit I thought you might like to have an update about the kitchen.  If nothing else, seeing how truly vile it used to be might make you feel better about your own house! This is really as close as I get to a "before" picture, as shown in house and garden magazines.  The main reason for the absence of "befores" is that it was so dingy, mouldy and generally dreadful that I couldn't bring myself to take pictures in it.  So in this picture the horrible eighties cupboards and the marked and stained worktops have come out, but you get the general idea. Here we are with the ceiling coming down so that Steve, the wonder electrician, could put in the new electrics. Here is the ceiling, decorating the floor.  We are in ...

The dog went home and I raised my head from the world of dogfood, chewsticks and the downstay.  The cat came in again, somewhat crossly, and made its displeasure at its exile clear by sleeping in my chair instead of on the sofa. At the beginning of the week the garden was glowing in summer heat.  Even the roses were throwing a last glorious party.  By the end of it, the temperature had dropped ten degrees and the wind had flattened the cosmos, still flowering their hearts out in the cutting garden. Inside the stripy little Welsummer chicks were beginning to show their first true feathers. As the dog's owner returned, I disappeared off for a weekend with elder daughter, son in law and nearly two year old grandson.  Grandson makes me laugh all the time.  He is obsessed with cars and trains and all kind of vehicles and rides everywhere on his little trike, beeping slowly and carefully every time he goes backwards to show that he is reversing. ...

I didn't appreciate before I started to grow food on a reasonably large scale - domestic scale still, but lots of it - that there is no stage between the one where you get excited about the three real pears on your little pear tree, bring them inside to a bowl on the kitchen table, feel them gently every day as they ripen (pears ripen much better inside than on the tree), finally eat one in ecstacy, the juice running deliriously down your chin, and the stage where you are bringing them inside in buckets. How can this be?  It was the same with the damsons and the plums so I suspect our gloriously warm and dry spring (do you remember?) was just what the fruit crop wanted.  The same holds true for vegetable crops of course.  One day you are cutting your first beans and eating them simply dressed with butter and drooling at their deliciousness.  The next you are wilting slightly in the face of trugs full of the things marching into the kitchen, each bean as long and...

Arum bought as a tiny plant at Great Dixter's nursery is now slowly beginning to spread and grow.  I love it. In the curve of the fallen wild cherry, the native daffodils are starting to push up amongst the fallen leaves. Frosty morning as the mist lifts and the sun comes through.  The front roof is looking good. And inside, marmalade. So that's what's been happening here. Any questions?