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Winter and Spring

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The winter has been a long one. We really enjoyed the snow and the clear sky's. Now the garden spring clean has started. We have been cutting back a lot of shrubs and getting rid of dead leaves. We have also been putting plenty of muck on the veg gardens, I'm just about to start my tomato and pepper seeds off inside. The onions and garlic have been in a while, although I'm not sure if they have suffered.

The poultry have done really well and have continued to lay lots of eggs being kept warm by the straw in their houses. The worst thing that happened this winter is, the water supply to the cottage froze under the flags, what a job we had to put an above ground supply and stop it freezing by surrouding it with straw. I will try to put some pictures on to show what the place looked like

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It's an awful long time since I have had time to bring my news up to date. The cottage has had a really good year and the bookings are coming in for 2011. We had open gardens for the church last year, that was big success and the guests in the cottage enjoyed it as well. We served afternoon tea we were able to divide the taking's between the Air Ambulance and the Lifeboats.

We also managed to sell all our surplus fruit.

We've bought a bit of land adjacent to the garden so anything can happen now more hens! some new animals! who knows.

We also hosted a wine tasting evening for the Whitechapel Players a vey good night John and Dee Laker from the Isle O Wight really enjoyed themselves it's a good job they had been before.

What a beautiful weekend. The daffs are almost out, the snowdrops are really a great show this year. One of our rescue fowl (a small bantam) has been bullied by the hens so we have moved her and on Sunday so that she wouldn't be lonely we bought three more bantams and a bantam cockrell, he's so handsome. They all laid today magic! We are thinking about all the work we need to do in the garden, it will be open for a weekend in July. More about that later.All the bird boxes are back in place and being inspected by prospective tennants. We're also keeping an eye out for the return of the frogs and toads

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Spring

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Well at last the snowdrops are through. We have just finished cleaning all the bird boxes out and soaked them in jeyes fluid. They've been dried and put back up. By the way some of the birds are acting not a moment to soon!

We've been getting all the raised beds ready for planting and the hens are laying again, yippee.

I couldn't believe my eyes yesterday there was a Sparrow Hawk on the bird table it hadn,t caught a bird but as soon as I went for the camera it flew away

winter snows

The top picture was taken from our bedroom window one frosty night in December 2009

The middle one was taken of our two visitors that were staying over the Christmas period. Gareth played Prince charming at the Guild Hall

The last picture is of the garden during Christmas when we were snow bound. We lived in our own little world. It was lovely

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Autunm

Well at last hopefully this blog space is sorted. It's been a funny old year, we have either been melting or drowning. The garden doesn't seem to have suffered to much. We have had lots of visitors of the fur and feathered type,and oh yes humans as well.

Just now we are busy cutting back, everything seems to have put on a lot of growth this year. Like everyone else we have had a heaps of fruit, the vegetables, all did well as have the greenhouse brigade. Lots of our guests were able to share all of these things with us.

We had a very successful coffee morning raising lots of money to sponsor Mark our son and Donna our niece who both completed the Great North Run and raised between them around £2000,00 for Prostate Cancer Research.

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