Leaving London and downshifting to become a full-time parent and rural homemaker
One of my kids really enjoys planting things, learning the names of flowers, watering, digging, weeding and generally being out in the fresh air helping me in the garden. Her brother is more interested in books and films but now we live here in the countryside with a large garden, he is becoming interested in [...]
You’d think that having watched Gardener’s World every friday night for the past decade from various London dwellings I’d know exactly how to seperate the little baby plants from each other in their small pots and transplant to larger individual pots where they will have space and nourishment to grow bigger BUT I was really [...]
Cripes. Nobody told me how much extra work sowing a vegetable garden from scratch is or how much space you need to put the little seeds/seedlings if you haven’t got a greenhouse (we haven’t, and we haven’t got deep windowsills either) OR how you’d have to find a babysitter for the sproutlings to water them [...]
A lot of lucky kids have playhouses in the garden which are smashing but they do cost a fortune. This new structure in the garden for our kids to play in cost £40 for materials (willow ‘withy wood’, twine and weed-free membrane) plus a half-day of labour. It looks quite pretty already but it should [...]
I’ve not put much energy into writing as every spare moment seems to be spent at my new potting table getting more little pots filled with seed compost, adding some seeds, labelling, watering and finding another bit of space in the lounge which now even smells like a greenhouse! So far we have planted tomatoes [...]
Blimey what a heavenly weekend - all four of us spent it in the garden doing loads of work to our rented house’s garden.
We moved into this house last summer just as the heat wave began and had lots of unpacking and getting settled to be done. Last year we simply enjoyed the huge [...]
This evening I watched a really great television proramme called ‘Christine’s Garden‘ (great website too with lots of basic gardening tips) about a northern woman who is 100% into her garden and her job as a horticulturalist. She LOVES gardening and she especially loves spring time as things are changing every day, sprouting, growing and [...]
I divided my compost heap into two at the weekend by piling all that had not rotted sufficiently to use yet, into a taller, narrower pile and kept the other half free to start a new pile while the bigger stack (fingers crossed) really does become useful compost over the next couple of months.
It seemed [...]
I’m absolutely chomping at the bit to get sprouting and keep rifling through the huge seed collection we have amassed since aquiring the vegetable garden plot at the rear of our house in the Autumn. Trouble is I don’t know where to start. When do I start planting the little darlings? Do I sow them [...]
Our friend Janet popped in to see us yesterday which was lovely as we hadn’t seen her since before the Christmas holidays. As usual she passed on all manner of fabulous gardening and cooking knowledge and before long had the children outside ‘helping her’ take down a wire fence from our vegetable garden to use [...]