Post-Christmas Garden Procrastination.

Hello there.

I didn't feel inclined to the panic and rush of a New Year's Eve/Day blog post so feel more relaxed to attempt it now. Such is my relaxation I am beginning it on Sunday afternoon and will be hopefully completing it tomorrow. All my men return to school and work tomorrow so as well as starting this I will mostly be ironing so I can have a me day from 8.15am until 3.15pm when I will probably be fetching our youngest from rugby.

FYI, it is now 11.5am on Monday morning. Just had a nice surprise as Jon popped in to get a brew to go whilst collecting some tools for a job, I've done a few jobs around the house and now here I am.

So where to begin? A belated Happy New Year, Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.

...and little about last year.

We had our best Airbnb year to date including hosting family members in all 3 listings over the Christmas period; we received this lovely card from one of the couples on January 4th.

 

and we started preparation for creating a full-blown business out of the listings by having new signage made; very exciting.

I made my first attempt at hanging baskets for the listings and also improved the planters and I was very happy with the results.

The third of our listings had its first visitors in July and from then on was busy right through the year give or take the odd week; we didn't expect that at all. Here is the link.

We are super excited that we already have bookings for the 2020 National Esiteddfod which is taking place in Tregaron, just eight miles away from us from 1-8 August.

In the garden, even though it was neglected slightly due to the first item on this list, I did get a great, continuous harvest of red and green lettuce, my best garlic yield yet, the first very successful growing of Spring cabbage and cauli, although there were harvesting issues with the latter. Here are some other minor treats from the veg patches.

Just before Christmas Jon got round to a little project in the kitchen. We bought a job lot of Laura Ashley tiles and he did a fab job on the sink area.

Now, onto the title of this post. I am so suffering from said title at the moment. I just cannot get myself outside but today I thought I would go out and look at the state of pay. I took a few photos when I went out to feed the chooks; they got a few extra treats over Christmas and although they are in low yield mode just now the eggs are massive.

Here are said chooks; we put down some of the bamboo in the week as they were laying behind it and I had trouble retrieving the eggs; they also have something different on which to chow down.

This is the rather gloomy view of the growing area - not an attractive sight at this time of the year to be honest.

I have fresh compost in the six tyres as well as the other two large ones; there is still some work to be done there. I did manage to cut back the raspberry canes before Christmas but not much else...

Obvs not much sowing and growing happening just now. Here are the onions? These are planted in the right hand side of the bed in the far left of the above photo. They have been constantly brought to the top by the rain and then got at by birds, possibly. I'm leaving as is until I get some February planting sets and then I will sort out the bed; at least one seems to have taken!

Also in the same bed on the left hand side is the garlic; this sort of had the same problem but has taken much better.

Whilst looking for evidence of snowdrops at the far end of the garden, which I found yay, I also spotted some of the garlic cloves which had taken flight, by one means or another, from the bed and across the fence!

Outside the polyhouse (far too embarrassed to show you THAT) are the planters I had nearThe Snug last Spring/Summer; they are happily coming back to life; I have to be very honest and say there are new bulbs which I have not got round to planting yet.....

On the way back up to the house I spied some buds on the Magnolia Strallata. This is my very favourite thing in the garden but I only wish it was in flower for a longer time.

This is how I very much look forward to it showing later in the year.

So that is a little ramble about stuff. 

Last night I began some planning of what will go where in the growing area. Not even THINKING about sowing anything yet but do like to know where things will be. Trying to make sowing and growing easier for me this year, manage my time better along with looking after the Airbnb listings. I don't want the former to fail whilst the other is thriving - just need to be organised which I really am good at normally....

I do need to order the February garlic and decide which spuds I'm growing this year but that is about it for now, despite the seed catalogues regularly flying through the door at a fair rate of knots! 

Jon brought home a mahoosive amount of wood for logging just before Christmas which should keep us in wood beyind next Winter. It came with some lovely composted down wood chips. Hoping to get this on the beds when we have a dry spell in a couple of weeks; we have already given a good few barrow fulls to our next but one neighbours and they are very happy with it.

Along with this I have been going through the multitude of seeds I have collected; I'm ready to give some away to a deserving project somewhere hopefully in Mid-Wales. I've just cancelled both of my gardening magazine subscriptions; it's part of the cutting back on the budget as usual at this time of the year - every little helps - and this is also where most of my seeds come from.

Right, getting on for lunchtime now so hope this reaches you with not too many mistakes and that you enjoy my first ramblings of 2020. I'm also returning to my Slimming World group this evening to deal with the food slump I have found myself in.

Bye for now, Lou.xx

A Big Old Catch Up.

Hi! Well, how good has this weather been, although I did see somebody on social media saying it wasn't right to be this warm in February, meaning that the planet was warming up, I think....

On Thursday it was my youngest's Ysgol Eisteddfod, school Eisteddfod. He recited a poem, in Welsh, for of the categories and came 2nd; he also won places in two writing classes. Very proud of him.

On Friday I had a delivery of my bare root fruit canes and some blueberry plants and seeds from Thompson & Morgan.

Sorry about the last photo being a bit scew!

At the weekend our Airbnb guests enjoyed the sun. We were really very busy with that as well as jobs around the house and outside.

Jon was doing the first cutting back of trees near to the roadside. 

There is more to do but with help as we'll have to take care of the passing traffic. 

In the afternoon he took the boys down to the river for the first try out in the kayak we bought them for Christmas.

On Sunday I manged to get into the garden. Yay!!! I sowed my February onions, variety Sturton in one of the large tyres. After it being suggested to me I've planted 5 of my existing strawberry plants in a drainpipe.

I may suspend this from the rafters of the poly house. I still have a couple more along with the 12 that came in the fruit order.....!

Last Friday I sowed the following: 

Sweet Romano peppers x 4 pots of 2 seeds
Sunflower Pacino (pots as above), these have been put in the conservatory, one of the Sunflower seeds is showing its face.

I've sown a couple of other things which are in my homemade propagator again, but I'll spare you the details as its early days yet. 

Cornflowers and Field flowers in the chimney outside the poly house and I'm looking forward to those coming up as they were lovely last year.

Yesterday, after the two sets of guests left,  I got myself outside. I discovered the other day that one of my rhubarb crowns have survived when I thought it had been flattened following some work in the garden. This morning I saw signs of the second one; they are very small!

I decided to clear the space properly, which included exposing the Wild Garlic I could smell as I was working, and to build something to protect said rhubarb. The area was a BIT over grown....the crowns were planted somewhere in the bottom left of the photo so was a little tricky to find them.

This is how it looked after a bit of work.

And here is what I am chuffed with. I used branches left from Jon's tree job on Saturday and made pegs to twine them around.

I am ridiculously pleased with myself. I just really hope after all my hard work that the crowns survive. If anybody has any advice for me it would be really appreciated.

The boys were busy too, one helping our elderly neighbour with some logging and the other sorting out some kindling for the store.

That's about it, apart from since I began planning this post I now have three Airbnb bookings for this week, and it is not quite the end of February!

Weather gorgeous again today so after getting both rooms ready this morning I'm having some lunch then going out into the poly house where, about 2 hours ago, it was 29 degrees. I plan on taking up the blueberry bushes from the garden and putting them in planters along with the cranberry I was given at Christmas. I bought ericaceous compost yesterday for this job.

Bye for now.

Three Ingredient Brownie

Good morning. This is a very quick post which I forgot to mention recently. In the Saturday Mail last week was a baking pull out of recipes by Sarah Rainey - here is info about her recent book.

Well I made the 3 ingredient Chocolate Praline Brownies and oh my goodness! I make brownies on a VERY regular basis for the tin but these are off the chart!

Here are mine.

The edges were crispy, the inside was gooey and yummy and they are now a firm favourite. I suggest you try them if you vaguely like chocolate; I'm not a huge fan but oh my lord! I didn't use plain Nutella - other hazelnut spreads are available - but instead used the vanilla and chocolate swirl make you can buy. You could turn them Easter-esque by adding a chocolate egg on top so here is the recipe. (Hope you can make the most of the photo.)

Something else which I thought I might share was my attending the postponed school eisteddfod from St David's Day on Thursday. As part of this celebration the children enter a competition - one prize is given for the best piece of Welsh writing and one for English. This ceremony takes place at the National Eisteddfod and is replicated on St David's Day by many schools. 

Here is information about the Anatomy of The Eisteddfod which you may find interesting.

I was very proud to be there to see Harry win the prize for best English story. When the three placings are announced they use false names, including the winners names, so you don't know right to the end who has won - very exciting!

Here is my boy with his crown made by a local artist in his grand cloak. He gets to keep the paper crown but we have his name engraved on the one he is wearing and give it back to the school in time for next year.

This is a lovely moment for him to take with him through life as there is great competition for this award.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

Catch Up Before The Weekend.

Good afternoon or prnhawn da - always practising my Welsh just now. Was doing so at the village shop yesterday and when I went food shopping today. I choose people who I know will help me and not think it strange that after two and a half years I am suddenly making an effort with the language. Have to say I am loving my lessons!

So I just thought I'd do a little round up of the last few days.

Our weather has been really quite cold of late and mostly wet but we have had wintry showers, too, making the garden look lovely - just for a little while.

The first Eisteddfods which the boys are taking part in are coming up soon with the first I think on St David's Day - March 1. They are both working on poetry to recite as well as some creative projects. Alfie is making a model of Devil's Bridge which is not far from us.

This is the basis which he took to Wednesday's Craft Club at school to do more work on. I think it will involve papier mache and modelling clay! Harry is working on something like a commemorative sword out of wood which will have pyrography on it; I look forward to sharing their finished efforts. 

I am trying to use up some things out of the downstairs freezer so brought up two boxes of stewed apple with cinnamon and as I had some sweet pastry upstairs leftover from Christmas I made an apple pie.

There is not too much going on outside in the garden just now but a bit of prep has started in doors which means the potatoes are chitting in the conservatory.

Altogether I have 73 tubers in total so really hope I get a good harvest; this of course does not include the Christmas spuds that will be planted later in the year. I do hope I'm not blighted by blight again this year!

This weekend we hope to get the top soil for the new bigger tyres that came last week and we'll be able to fill up some of the other areas, too. Very exciting that prep is coming along well and as long as we get some dry, and I have to say not so cold, weather soon as there are other jobs to be done in readiness for Spring.These include strimming, pruning and covering the fruit patch, cutting the laurel back at the front of the house and weeding behind said wall and covering so weeds do not return. 

Also there are a couple of areas in the chicken enclosure that need filling in as we get some puddles when there is a lot of rain. Talking of chooks we lost one this week; it had been looking a little out of sorts for a few days and had kept an eye on it but I went to collect eggs on Wednesday afternoon and she was sitting in the hen house and when Jon went to look a hour or so later she has died. I have to say that the white chickens we have are definitely quite a bit more sensitive than the brown ones. Ah well nature doing its thing, but laying is definitely on the up and sold a second box of eggs yesterday.  

Ok, I have to do a few jobs and be ready for when the boys plus a pal from school are home later to have tea together then go to Youth club.

Happy Friday to everybody and, as ever, I look forward to seeing what you get up to over the weekend.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

Such A Weekend!

Hi!

Saturday was a day and a half here, although I did not get a lot done at all! My boys, because they were placed in a couple of categories at the Area Eisteddfod in Tregaron, were at the County event which luckily for us was held at the pavilion in Bont where the boys go to school. We were there all day - yes all day!

Harry came away with third place for his recital and the Ymgom, which was a group dramatic piece performed by my two and two of their friends, brought us third place. We were so proud and our headmistress was chuffed to bits for all their effort and the results.

I do wish on the other hand that we could all have been at home as the weather was GLORIOUS! but never mind. We don't go onto the next one as we were not placed first in any of the programme.

I managed to pop back home a couple of times to see how Jon was getting on with the pizza oven - obviously still a work in progress! 

He'd planned to have a fire Friday and maybe Saturday but we had a very late Airbnb booking on Friday afternoon so the fire had to be put on hold. He also managed to finish the little house from where we can now sell our eggs - I LOVE it! 

Due to the lateness of getting back from the eisteddfod I was unable to get my food shopping done so we had a cheeky Chinese takeaway for tea.

Sunday morning brought Mothering Sunday and I was greeted with a cup of coffee and I received these lovely cards...

and this lovely new spade and fork. Eeeek!

I quickly made a lemon cake, packed it up with some berries and got everybody fed breakfast then we had to wait until the Airbnb guests left, which was a little later than we had hoped, before we headed off to visit Dawn and Martin over at Doing It For Ourselves In Wales. We had all been looking forward to the visit and it was a lovely drive as, again, the weather was glorious; when we arrived we were met by the lovely Sol and Tess. 

We had a great time; the boys had been excited about seeing the Alpacas so we collected some branches for the goats as the same time as walking up the land to find them. 

We had hoped the goat kids might have arrived by the time we did but not yet, though not long by all accounts! We had a walk around the Poly Tunnels so see what Dawn has going on then we had a most delicious homemade soup of Wild Garlic with Dawn's flatbread and home raised ham for lunch. Mmmmm!

Just before we left I took a look at Dawn's cabin and afterwards told Jon he should be grateful I don't have a stash like that! There was time for a photo with the dogs before we left to get home for Alfie's piano lesson. We had a really lovely time, and no need for wellies!

When home we were very chuffed to find that the four boxes of eggs we left had all been taken and paid for. Yay! Just in time to pay for the next sack of laying pellets - I love it when a plan comes together as we had no outlay to make the house with the wood coming from the sawmill and the roof slates we acquired for another project! I had just about 20 minutes to do a bit of work on the new veg patch we have created alongside the fruit area before taking Alfie and I used my new fork! I have sown 20 kernels because I have decided to use the patch for that and carrots as we have more room here than the patch I used last year for the corn let alone the carrots.

After tea Jon and I settled down and later on really enjoyed the beginning of the new series of Line Of Duty - just fab!

Right, I have a big basket of clothes to fold up so I'm going to get a brew and do that. I go to Slimming World this evening and I hope, this week to have good news on my progress.

Bye for now.

Lou.x