A Time of Hope ..... and Sowing

It's that deliciously hand rubbing together, gleeful time of year when I get all my seeds out and start to make the plans of what we will grow, harvest and eat in the months ahead.  

The packets of free seeds gathered together each month from the copies of my subscription magazine have been mixed with all the seed packets leftover from last year and from years previous.  Some packets go as far back as 2011 and are the ones inherited from Mum and Dad's seed collection, I know which ones these are as they have Mum and Dad's handwriting on them.  Bearing little snippets of descriptions and information.  

It links me with my past, anchors me in the present and gives me hope for the future.  There's a lot of hope in a tiny seed.

Some packs that didn't germinate last year and were seriously old have been thrown away, the small selection in the basket have picked out for planting next week, a smaller handful of things I have no intention of growing have been popped into the car boot sale box and my great big wooden drawer is on standby for the coming weeks.

Spring is on it's way .... I can feel it in the air.  It's time to throw off the blanket of Winter, time to dip my fingers in the compost and set to, we have earth to tend, seeds to sow, food to grow  :-)

Sue xx

Staring Mavis ......

I was sat watching television last night and I felt eyes on me, like you do when you feel you are being watched.  Looking across I saw Mavis sat looking at me .... staring and staring.  I picked up my phone and took these photos, yes these are two different pictures, not one cropped from the other, although I would not be able to tell them apart as she wasn't moving a muscle.

I even checked in the mirror, did I look different was my hair sticking up ....

... no it wasn't but she kept staring.

What was going through her mind I wonder!!

Sue xx

Wasting ACTUAL Money

A Rant.

I'm getting seriously annoyed by various charities again at the moment.  Over the course of this week I have received TWO mailings from the same cat charity each enclosing free notelets, pens, fridge magnets and bookmarks asking me for a donation to help their starving cats, and then this arrived yesterday ... free notelets and ACTUAL money stuck to the begging letter!!

All I could think of was some little child dropping their pennies in a collection tin somewhere thinking they were making a difference and then the damn charity sending them out to all and sundry with begging letters.

Well know this for sure all you 'charities' out there .... if you send me any sort of plea for money you won't get a penny .... because if I sent you one you would most likely use it in something daft like this instead of helping the very people you are purporting to help.

And breathe ......

Rant over ..... thank you ... back to what you were doing ;-)

Sue xx

Keeping the Temperature Up

As you can see we don't have our central heating temperature thing set very high, 17.5 degrees suits me just fine, if it drops below that I do feel the cold ... but it rarely does, and I'm always wearing layers that get added to or peeled off depending on how active I am around the house.

The dogs sleep in the kitchen near the Aga and we keep the kitchen door closed overnight so that if we need to come downstairs to the bathroom (it's just off the living room) we don't disturb the dogs or Ginger.  So the heat from the Aga is trapped in the kitchen and conservatory overnight, it only takes an hour of the door being opened again in the morning and the houses Winter overnight temperature of about 15.5 creeps once again back up to the 17 degree mark.  The central heating clicks on for an hour in the morning taking us to a barmy 18 or so degrees.

This is where our thermostat sits ( I just remembered what it's called), on a little ledge over the stairs, I find this gives us a good overall marker for the house temperature.

If I go into other folk homes I am often amazed by the tropical temperatures with windows being opened to cool the house down if it's deemed 'too hot' and the occupants in bare feet and T shirts. 

Well each to their own I guess but 'you pays your money and makes your choice'.

At the moment my poor Mum is feeling the cold even in her heated little bungalow, but sensibly each afternoon when she gets chilly she dons her dressing gown, makes herself a hot drink and cosies up in front of the tele .... now that's a very good choice in my opinion.

The sun will hopefully soon be back and the heating will be off for the Summer and we, like the chickens the other day, will be basking in a free warmth once again.

Sue xx

The Chickens Have the Right Idea

The chickens have the right idea at the moment, at the first sign of any sunshine they stop what they are doing and all rush over to the sunny areas of Chicken World.  

As Spring gets closer the sun hits their little part of our hillside much sooner in the day, and then later on in the Summer they benefit from it all day long and then they have the choice to either bask in it's luxurious warmth or make for the shadier areas behind the henhouse or into the edge of the woods when it gets too much.

It's nice to see them mooching about, chunnering away to each other as if they are putting the world to rights, with the odd crowing session from Jack the cockerel, who is sat just at the edge of the Eglu in this photo.

Little Enid stood at the fence looks a sorry sight .... but she is just sulking!   

She had a little escape hatch where a squirrel had chewed through a couple of the strands of the fence and whenever she saw me she would dash out of it and come over to see if I had any nibbles, but as she could never find her way back in by herself I had to repair it .... now there is no escape and she sulks ... oh well at least she is sulking in the sunshine  :-)

Sue xx

Jobs at the Weekend

It's been a good weekend, we've managed to get lots of little jobs done.  Grease bands have been put on the on the fruit trees to try and stop insect damage to this years crop of eating apples, cooking apples, plums and cherries.  Wood has been chopped, the house cleaned, seeds sorted and a basic idea gained of what needs planting first as soon as the days start to warm a little.

But the main job out on the hillside for Lovely Hubby was work in what will shortly become Chicken-land, an alternative to Chicken World.  A new spot on the  hillside in our baby orchard (full of young fruit trees not babies!!), where the chooks will be re-located  while we re-grass and do some alterations to Chicken World.  This Winter and all it's rain has been hard on the ground in Chicken World and it needs some serious repair work and improvements.

So over the weekend new fence posts have been hammered in, which highlighted the one good side to all the rain, it's meant getting posts in has been half the work it usually is for my big strong man, rain and mud mean nice soft ground to bash them into.  He's made a nice level spot at the top of the slope where the alternative house will sit, the Fig trees have been given wire enclosures, which will hopefully discourage the chickens from pecking at them while they are there.

This will then become our second chicken area, by giving the ground a rest in each location a couple of times a year we will make it better for the chooks and safer for us.

Sue xx

Freebies for the Weekend

Both of my subscription magazines arrived this morning, this one with £8.18 worth of seeds in the packet it came in ....

... and this one with £2.65 worth.

They are proving to be a really good subscriptions, the initial offer of freebies more than covered the cost of the year long subscription to both of them, and the free seeds just keep on rolling in.  I intend to have a sort of of all my seeds this coming week and decide which I will keep for planting and which will go into a box to be sold a our first car boot sale of the season.  Any money made from the sale of the seeds will go into a 'growing fund' to purchase anything I need for growing more food for us.

Also last night on our first visit to the cinema of the weekend, we did what we nearly always do and came home with some popcorn for the chickens.  We don't buy any for ourselves, we take drinks in with us and rarely buy anything on offer at the snack counters to eat, unlike some folk who seem to think they are in imminent danger of starvation during the course of a two hour film and buy drinks, crisps, sweets and icecreams.  I know it can be a treat to visit the cinema but do you really need to munch your way noisily through a three course 'meal' while you watch your chosen film!!

And don't get me started on the rubbish they leave  strewn on the floor when they leave ...... and this is where our bags of popcorn for the chickens come from.  We stay in our seats reading the credits until the cinema is almost empty and then as we walk down the steps glance down the lines of seats, nine times out of ten there will be at least one almost full bag of popcorn.

Better in our chicken tummies as a little weekend treat than in the bin and on the way to landfill.

Final freebie of the weekend ..... another elastic band that came holding the packets of seeds together .... every little helps  :-)

Have a good weekend.

Sue xx