♥ you my brown-eyed girl ♥

Where does the time go?

I absolutely can't believe that my little girl, who was only a wrinkly pink newborn 5 minutes ago, has already finished her first year of school and is so full of confidence and kindness. There isn't a day that goes by when I'm not swelling with pride at her achievements or marvelling at her hitting her next milestone. In just over one year little Flora has dealt with the anxiety of moving over 100 miles from everything familiar, taking it all in her stride and settling straight into our new 'hood better than either of us grown-ups.


She has learned to read, work out sums and has an infectious curiosity for the natural world and any minibeast going. She has been completely fascinated by our vegetables and loves nothing more than helping me in the garden and harvesting our bounty. She has an army of adorable friends and has had the most fabulous school report- confirming my rather biased suspicions that she is, in fact, a perfect genius in every possible way.


Tomorrow is the last day of term and as a small, thrifty token of our gratitude to her wonderful teachers, Flora and I have decorated some little pots of our gooseberry jam.


The summer break has really crept up on me- can't believe we're off on our holiday to the magical Hope Cove next week, hurrah!

strange fruit

Of all the plants I have this year the two I had the least faith in producing fruit were my cucumber plant and peppers. But this week I have watched in amazement as these very plants have come up trumps, with fruit that actually looks like it's going to be perfectly edible.

The cucumbers are growing thick and fast- one will be ready to pick very soon, and there are about six others not far behind.


And I have a pepper! Granted, it's only one solitary rather small pepper (probably not much to shout about when I have been nurturing two pepper plants since April) but a pepper, none the less.

I have also sown the last of my peas to eat as pea-shoot salad..

and am watching the sprout plants getting very large, but a little nibbled by the hatchling cabbage-white caterpillars I keep having to remove from the underside of the leaves.


I hope they don't eat them all- I am looking forward to home grown sprouts on Christmas day!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

PS we have a very exciting new gardening venture in its early stages of planning- news about this will follow tomorrow......

shake your money-maker

I haven't yet mastered the skill of staggering produce and we've had a bit of a hungry couple of weeks. All the lovely peas have finished and died away and our courgette plants were looking a bit sad in their pots, with their fruits all going a bit yellow and squashy at one end, so we've planted them down at the allotment instead in the hope that the extra root space will give them a new lease of life.

Not everything is going wrong though- my cucumber plant, which had been badly scorched back in May's heat wave, has really picked back up again over the last two weeks and now has its first flower. I'm religiously watering it at least twice a day in the desperate hope that we might have a home-grown cucumber soon.


The 'Money Maker' tomatoes are looking pretty good too- I have been picking up all sorts of tips to help them along and have been loyally pinching out the side-shoots and gently shaking the plants at dusk to pollinate them. Hopefully my hard work and slightly eccentric behaviour is going to pay off.


I've spotted our first runner bean- it looks a bit stringy at the moment, so I'm hoping it will fatten up as it grows.


Some of the runner bean plants aren't looking so happy. I keep removing these funny little black bugs off the underside of the leaves.


Just look at the beautiful purple flowers on the dwarf beans though, who'd have thought so many brilliant colours would appear in a vegetable garden.


I'm looking forward to more vivid hues when the rainbow chard shoots up over the coming weeks- even the seedlings look pretty!

young farmers

We're rapidly running out of planting space in our garden, but I had a brain wave and thought an old wooden CD rack I had lying around empty would make a great home for some salad leaves. Luckily I had an eager helper and we had it planted up in no time!

We then headed over to Millets Farm where we had a lovely time looking at all the animals and I picked up a couple of pepper plants and a cucumber plant (heaven knows where I will fit them).

This afternoon we went for another walk and I found the most stunning allotment right by the river, complete with chickens. Chickens have been a topic of much debate in our house over recent months, I'd dearly love a couple of our own chooks to lay fresh eggs every day. Sadly we realistically don't have enough space and we are in such close proximity to our neighbours, it really isn't practical. One day though....