Leaving London and downshifting to become a full-time parent and rural homemaker
My poor little head is too full of too many things to do (an exciting dot com project with my beloved, administrative work for our small internet business, a small babe and two little kids on summer holidays to look after, a house to keep in order, tummies to feed, this blog to write AND [...]
Its a new long term project that has just emerged for this family but since Bealers has been Head of Veg Gardening and really enjoying it (having never planted or grown anything before he’s now growing chillis, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, peas, pumpkins, all manner of herbs and salad items, raspberries, strawberries and LOADS of potatoes!), [...]
The Willow Den in the background will get much leafier this summer
Last March we bought the willow withies to make a willow den for the children as our garden has no shade after midday during the summer months. Withies can be bought from November-March in the UK when the wood is dormant.
We followed the instructions [...]
My son really disliked peas. The way to get him to finally after years of cajoling him try some and announce ‘Yum!’ was staightforward but long winded in the extreme. I had to sow peas, grow peas, stake the peas, have the children pick the peas, shell the peas and only then did he feel [...]
Loads of visitors have wondered what we have growing over our willow den to make it look so leafy so I thought I’d post an update to the original post ‘How to make a willow den for under £40′ so that anyone interested in making one next year will see that it GETS LEAFY [...]
Last month my daughter and I decided to create a mini pond in our rented garden with the hope of finding some frogspawn to come and live in it.
We built the pond from an inexpensive ‘tub trug’ and placed loads of rocks in it and around it so the small creatures could get in and [...]
While at the Malvern Spring Show I saw a ’swimming pond’ show garden. My friend Tissy reminded me how we used to go swimming in Hampstead Lido which was an enormous swimming pond.
I really love ponds and would love one day to have a big pond to attract lots of frogs and other watery creatures [...]
My friend Tissy and I had a great day out at the Malvern Spring Garden show last week & amazingly the rain held off for us.
We both love gardening and knew that there would be plenty of opportunity to see lovely planting ideas with the show gardens and chance to spend a day looking at [...]
http://www.wrap.org.uk/caw/index.html
The seventh annual Compost Awareness Week (CAW) will be celebrated nationwide from Sunday 6th to Saturday 12th May 2007.
Compost Awareness Week aims to encourage more people to recognise the benefits of home composting and the great results that can be achieved by using peat-free composts containing recycled materials in the garden. The week [...]
At the beginning of April I planted my ‘early’ potatoes (a variety of spud which is ready to eat early in the season) and ‘main crop’ potatoes (a different sort which is ready later in the season - and bigger? I’m not entirely sure yet) in a couple of trenches (about 20-30cm deep) next to [...]