I’m on a roll

There’s quite a lot happening in my life at the moment. Well quite a lot happening in my head anyway. I’m on a roll. My little book is at the printers and about to become a real beautiful touchy feely thing. In the meantime people are actually buying and reading it on kindle and even more wonderful they write and tell me they like it too! I suppose there may be some people that have bought it and don’t like it but at least they are polite enough to keep quiet J

It’s funny how self-publishing is kind of embarrassing – like you simply will not be told you have written a load of rubbish and stubbornly forge ahead anyway. I had some nice feedback from the agent Darley Anderson and the publishers Frances Lincoln but neither wanted to take it on – it is in no way a bestseller. But now I am so glad that I’ve gone it alone because my whole heart and soul is in this book and I feel happier – safer really– having it quietly available to people who want or need to find it. It will remain something special and personal but to be shared with the right special people.

From the book came the idea to set up The Honeysuckle Trust a charity that intends to provide gardening breaks for people coping with bereavement or depression. And from the creation of the charity came the idea of offering Ecotherapy Weekends here for absolutely anyone who wants to come.

In the meantime, I have been helping a friend set up the Herefordshire Horticultural Hub and meeting all sorts of fabulous horticultural types that aren’t at all haughty-culturals. I think many friendships will be made through the Hub.

It feels as though life has been patiently waiting for me to open the right door and it is now welcoming me in and ushering me through to meet more exciting ideas and even more wonderful new people who appear to be in the same room. Synchronicity is happening all over the place!

But possibly the most exciting thing is that I have discovered a new way to instantly improve areas of the garden. I did this while standing in the Blue Garden trying to find some blue. I renamed it The Square Garden. It instantly improved no end! I think this is something that might work elsewhere. The wiggly borders could become the floppy beds. The spring garden could become the snowdrop patch. Like I said, I’m on a roll.

Anyway, lots of good things happening but life will undoubtedly chuck a spanner or two at me soon enough, And lo – I have just remembered that I put some mushrooms on the stove when I started typing this. Burnt mushrooms for supper then.

A little piece about a little peace

What busy lives we all have. We all know that and we're always being told that too. It seems to be accepted that modern life is to be lived at as fast a pace as possible, keeping in touch with as many people as possible, networking, sharing, liking, blogging, following and being pinteresting simultaneously twenty four seven. But I can't do it. I am a failure! What a relief to admit it! I think for me, it is just too much of a conflict with the life I have chosen to live, given the absence of children. A country life of gardening and housekeeping, welcoming guests, having a moment or two to chat to visitors, looking after our animals and caretaking our little piece of England. It sounds like a simple life doesn't it - so why isn't it? I suppose because running a successful B&B and holiday cottages and now having a garden people appear to like to visit, we have created more and more work for ourselves. Being a success is great and we don't mind the work either, but something has to give and it's not going to be the business or the garden so it has to be ....um....my blog? So, is this just a long-winded excuse for not having blogged for so long? Maybe, but it is also a heartfelt plea for a little peace in life. There are so many blogs that I would love to read, so many people I would enjoy chatting with on Twitter and no doubt all sorts of cool things I am missing out on on pinterest, but for now I would just like some peace and quiet please. All those virtual voices can be quite deafening sometimes. Is it OK to pick these things up and put them down again when it suits you? Or does that make me amateur, not really playing the game properly? Does anyone even notice if I don't contribute for a while? OK so enough excuses for the gap between blogs.... Sadly my desire for calm has even affected simple pleasures like visiting gardens. I find myself irritated if I can't go around a garden in a logical way, taking in all that is to be seen and instead have to double back or go in and out of garden rooms the same way. And mazes! Surely life is complicated enough without people going around making mazes. I'm not the only one that's after some silence. Yesterday morning about 4am I heard a tiny little bird voice start his morning song, followed by another sharper older? tweet. It was very much as though mother had said "Not yet you fool, go back to sleep" And there was silence again for a while. Maybe I've become so obsessed with making a relaxed and peaceful country retreat here that I can't see the good in a faster more varied way of life. Maybe in fact I am just becoming very very boring. Perhaps I'd better ask my Twitter friends which it is ........

All Hands On Deck

So it’s all happening down here on the farm. Not lambing like the proper farm over the road who now have their lambs bouncing about in the field opposite our kitchen windows (poor little unsuspecting mites) – but we are busy spring cleaning, repainting and creating new bits of the place for visitors (and us) to enjoy this year.

I returned from Australia in mid March where I spent time with my downunder family and felt very loved, did some lone bushwalking and felt very intrepid, and did some abseiling in the Blue Mountains and felt quite sick. I also spent two weeks as a workawayer at a fabulous house near a beach north of Sydney. As a workawayer I got my bed and board free with my own room and balcony overlooking the ocean, in exchange for a morning’s work, so after a few hours cleaning each day I was able to laze around on the beach watching the surfers in the afternoons. One day, as I contemplated my return to the UK, it occurred to me that I could do with a workawayer myself so I signed up to the website www.workaway.info and fairly quickly found a willing volunteer.

Heiko has been with us nearly three weeks now and has been a great success. Not only is he a good worker, he has been great company, his English is near perfect (he is German), he has a lovely sense of humour and an interest in, and encyclopaedic knowledge of, everything. He has cleaned all the windows and repainted the front window frames of the main house a lovely dark blue (I get the fun bit of choosing the colour, he does the painting which is marvellous) He’s repainted the front of the Hen House weatherboarding as well as the windows and doors. He has scrubbed all the algae off the picket fence, dug out a new path that runs alongside the brook and shifted four tons of soil and four tons of gravel in preparation for the garden for the newly converted Hoppickers House.

When I was in Oz my friend Margaret came to stay to look after the animals and while she was here she drew up the perfect design for the new Hoppickers garden – splitting an awkward area into three different raised beds. By the time I got back Willy had installed the old wooden sleepers and the garden was already taking shape and he’d also built the raised beds for the herb garden that I had asked for before I left.

The Hoppickers itself has been transformed in my absence from old travelling hoppickers quarters and latterly pig pens, to a really beautiful holiday cottage by our wonderful builder Tony Whitney. Everyone who has seen it so far has gasped at how lovely it is – and I haven’t even done all my pretty bits and pieces yet! Tony has a feel for these places and totally gets my desire not to over-smarten it, though he will step in and say “No Sarah that is not lovely and old, it is just rubbish and falling apart.” He now just needs to finish the fireplace for us and then we can get the woodburner in and start letting it at the beginning of May, although it is so nice in there I am seriously considering moving in myself and letting the main house as a holiday let. However, this may cause problems with B&B guests expecting self-caterers to share their beds and make them breakfast so I guess I will have to stay put for now.

Heiko’s wife Hannah has now joined us for the Easter holidays. She is studying fine art at Newcastle University so for her bed and board she is doing some painting for me and creating a builder’s mark in the Hoppickers to commemorate the year it was rebuilt and who ‘fecit’ it.

So, all in all, great progress has and is being made and I’m feeling very lucky to be surrounded by such helpful and talented people. Delegation is a wonderful thing.

(You can contact me if you would like more info about the workaway organisation or if you need a good garden designer or a builder!)

Here is a pic of Heiko and the new brook path he has made.

Here is a pic of Hannah’s builder’s mark on the stairs incorporating the Olympic rings

A short note to the Pet-Sitter

Guests are often interested to learn about my many animals so I thought I’d share my short note to the Pet-Sitter who is looking after them all while I am away in Australia visiting my brother this February…..She should be fine shouldn’t she?

Dear Maggy,

Just a quick note to explain who is who. It really is simplicity itself…

Firstly my beloved dogs Harry and Dixter. Dixter is the friendliest easiest going dog you are every likely to meet though sometimes a little embarrassed by too much cuddling. On the other hand if you are not paying him enough attention he will chase his tail until you tell him he is the cleverest dog in the world.

Harry is gorgeous but getting on – he is now 14 so really very old. If you translate that into human years he would be saying “I’m 98 you know” to anyone who was listening - or not. Which reminds me he is also deaf so there is very little point in calling for him. The trick is to catch his eye and do an exaggerated beckon with your arm and hand Barbarba Woodhouse style.

The dogs have a walk in the morning and the evening just around our bit of land. Harry is too rickety to go further and Dixie is just happy to be with you and Harry. If there is some distance between you and Harry, Dixie will stand somewhere between the two of you, not wanting to leave either one. Loyal little dog.

The sheep are Soays and are the easiest of all the animals to deal with….simply give them something to eat in the morning and evening and check they are alive. There should be three.

The hens are pretty easy too. There are five. They are fed in the morning and evening and roam freely around the place in between. Their stable needs to be cleaned out once a week which is not such a bad job as it might be so long as they are getting their Bokashi mash which miraculously prevents a horrid stink.

The donkeys are bundles of gorgeousness. Don’t be afraid of them – just pretend they are large dogs ( but don’t feed them meat or let them off the lead) Alfie the grey is the more inquisitive of the two and likes to push the boundaries a bit. Sometimes he will rush up to looking decidedly menacing with his head down and ears back. You must stand your ground and he will skid to a halt right next to you, his ears will come forward and he will know you are not in the slightest bit affected by his silly sabre rattling. Talking to the donkeys is a good way of making them relax around you and convinces them nothing scary is about to happen to them. Truly if you treat them as you would a dog you will be well away.

Queenie is the quieter of the two, personality-wise, though she is the only one who can bray properly noisily. (Alfie is still learning and sounds like a teenage boy whose voice is just breaking- his bray is very sweet and funny.) Queenie is the boss of the two and she can give Alfie a really hard time when she is in season. You will know if she is in season by the way she snips at Alfie and generally looks pissed off. Neither of them have ever hurt me but I do take a little more care around Queenie when she is like this. Standing too long behind her back legs would simply be asking for trouble. If either of them bites or kicks you (which they won’t I am certain) you must not waste time writhing around on the floor in pain, but return a swift boot to the bum (or whatever bit of you can easiest reach whatever bit of them ) within three seconds of the attack. After three seconds they won’t associate the two things and just think you are horrid. Shouting loudly works just as well with bad behaviour so if you find you cannot rise to return the thump, do make sure you yell at them.

The donks get fed morning and night, go out in the field during the day and come into the barn at night. This is the most pleasurable part for me – seeing them bedding down happily in their straw, munching on their hay in a nice big dry barn. They will come to the gate to be taken in – don’t go and collect them from the top. They will take their time about it which can be frustrating if you have a million other things to do, but hopefully you will be in roughly the same state of mind as them – perfectly relaxed and not seeing what there is to hurry about. Alternatively you might decide that it is quite true that donkeys are indeed the stubbornest of animals. If they don’t come, go away and come back when they start yelling.

The barn needs mucking out every morning but I am doing a deep litter system which means you only need remove the poo and not the pee-soaked straw. There is a rather dubious idea that this creates extra warmth for them over the winter but I use it because I don’t have the time to completely muck out everything every day and prefer to put off the day in spring when the whole lot needs to come out. Lucky for you you will be well away by then.

So that only leaves the cats. Well, there’s just the thirteen of them.. Eleven are fed in the utility room but Twinkle (small black & white) and Holly (named because she was very prickly as a kitten but is a sweetie now) are fed in the barn.

Willow (tabby with white socks and bad breath) will welcome lots of cuddles. Dilly (tabby with only one eye) will also welcome cuddles and likes to nibble your fingers. Brookie (ginger and white) would love a cuddle but will probably be too shy to ask for one til the day before you leave.

The others will probably only come near you at feeding time in the utility room. Fast movements, noise and normal speech alarms them. Spotty is a tortoiseshell with an orange spot on her forehead, wide round eyes and a kink in the end of her tail. Scally cat is similar to Spotty smaller, thinner, shyer. Keep an eye on her as she is very shy and prone to illness so you need to be sure she is actually getting some food. Albie is the floppy pretty all over ginger, Smithy is the less pretty solid looking ginger. Albie has just discovered the delights of being stroked so you may have some luck making friends with him. Rosie and Molly are the fat multicoloured ones, mother and daughter, Molly (mum to Rosie, Brookie and Willow) is the enormous one, Rosie is the simply large one. Bella is the large tabby and mum to Dilly, Scally, Spot and Albie.

Mincie is the black and white one with wobbly legs. He is a law unto himself and will in the space of five seconds come for a cuddle and then swipe the nose off your face – so watch out! However, it appears he saves most of his aggression for me and has now also started sabotaging my business by doing unmentionable things on the floor in front of potential guests. (This has actually happened just the once and he has been left in no doubt about the error of his ways.)

The cats will eat a box of Felix pouches and two or three tins of food a day. The dogs will push them off and eat it themselves if they get the chance. The cats and dogs will eat the hens’ evening feed of sweetcorn and sardines. The hens will eat the cat food in the barn and everyone will eat the bread put out for the birds. The donkeys will eat the sheep food and the hens’ breakfast corn. All such sharing of feed is to be discouraged as much as possible…..(good luck with that)

And that’s it ! As I said, it is simplicity itself ………………………….(*Heads off to the airport whistling*)

A Guest Blog – featuring Me as The Guest

This was a Guest Blog I wrote for Tree to My Door www.tree2mydoor.com where you will find the loveliest of Christmas presents!

‘How to Make A Cottage Garden’

First buy your cottage in the country, then plant lots of roses, lavender, foxgloves, aquilegia, hollyhocks, pinks and delphiniums and Hey Presto, Bob’s Your Uncle, Simples – you’ve got your cottage garden!

Well OK maybe it takes a bit more than that. For a start on slug infested wet clay soil delphiniums are going to struggle and that’s why we don’t have them. Hollyhocks like it dry too, so it’s taken a long time to encourage them, foxgloves that grow all over the old vegetable garden refuse to do the same in the cottage garden, and no matter how many pretty different aquilegia we buy, the same old blue and pink ones dominate. I have no idea why the pinks are unhappy.

But roses, we can do roses, they love our clay and we’ve chosen varieties such as Felicia Buff Beauty, Ellen Poulsen and The Fairy which go on and on and on and on all through the summer into the autumn. And if there is one flower everyone thinks of when they think ‘cottage garden’ it’s the rose.

So, with a good selection of roses happily flourishing, we have had to find other plants that while perhaps not immediately obvious as cottage garden plants are giving a very convincing performance as cottagey. Shrub potentillas, for example, like the roses flower all through the season. Being shrubs they stand up properly and are useful for propping up their floppy cousins the perennial potentillas and the equally lax but deeply gorgeous geums.

Santolinas and box balls give a little structure and act as good supporting acts for the flimsier plants either side and behind them. The santolinas can be cut into smart balls if you sacrifice the flowers, (which we actually don’t as it just seems mean).

Mingling a few herbs amongst the flowers also works well. We have lovely grey leaved sages and a lot of marjoram which, though quite good at collapsing, flowers late and insects love it. Sadly we are too cold and wet for rosemary and have killed off I think at least a dozen before finally accepting the fact.

Lavender struggles here too but I cannot have a garden without lavender so I now have it in pots down the front path which keep it drier in the winter and will also be rescue-able if the weather drops down to -18 as it did last winter.

The main thing I think is to get as much in there as you can, repeat the plants often, get some spring bulbs in early for spring colour and also for later on - a favourite of mine is the drumstick allium which flowers mid to late season and whose seedheads look presentable for a long time after too They do have a habit of ducking around a shrub rather than growing through it which is what I would prefer them to do, but nature will have her way. And she’s generous with it too providing desirable ‘weeds’ like poppies, campion and cowparsley – all of which are welcome in our garden.

A cottage garden should be billowing, frothy, lively. Have a little patience – fill in the time and gaps with annuals if you’re any good at them (I’m not) and deadhead like mad. Pinks, blues and mauves are my favourite colours in this garden, although the rose Evelyn May is bright orange and is one of the best performers we have. Make some rules, then break them! Have fun!

My Cheerful Little Town In The Orchards

I thought, dear reader, that you might like a little look around my local market town, Tenbury Wells. It’s where I get all the food for the B&B and the Hen House and is the friendliest local town I’ve ever lived near.  Some days it's a bucolic reminder of times past with many of us tromping around in our wellies and tractors pulling trailer loads of potatoes or apples or hops, and other days it is a bustling modern country town serving its widespread community with things as exotic as sunblushed tomatoes, polenta and the interweb.

So approaching from the Berrington end of town my first stop would be the fabulous and ever busy Farm Barn Shop where I buy local tomatoes and mushrooms, free range eggs if my hens are being slack and butter.

Right next door is the lovely little fish shop which is a rare thing in many a town so we are very lucky indeed.

And opposite is Caldicotts builders merchants and funeral directors, a family firm who have seriously got it sussed because everyone needs somewhere to live before they die.

Further along is the lovely Spotty Dog Café & Gallery which has local art, crafts and jewellery and serves a very nice latte too – and lovely cakes.

You can also get jolly nice cakes from Swifts the bakers on the corner and opposite them is Country Flowers where I buy flowers when I can’t bear to cut my own.

Heading up Teme Street towards the river there is a dress shop, a jeweller, an optician, an electrical goods shop, a book shop (for which I have 10% off vouchers if you come and stay!)

And then after the library, The Food Hall which supplies all my free range meat (well all your free range meat if you stay cos I don’t eat it but am happy to support ethical producers and cook it for you).

Then there’s the proper little sweet shop and the newsagent and a shoe shop and the dentist (opposite the doctors) and then the fabulous Banfields where you can buy anything from fork handles to four candles and where they have lovely old drawers behind the counters.

Then you get to the girly end of town where you will find Soap Opera my hairdressers and Pure Beauty Salon where all my beauty secrets are kept! (Actually that might not be a very good advertisement for Jules the owner – but she is really very good, she can’t help what she’s given to work with.)

And up this end there are the banks too and the Spar, which of course we couldn’t live without because they never seem to shut and any B&B landlady will tell you how essential that can be at times…..

Pop over the bridge and you’re in Shropshire, drive along to the left a bit and you’re in Herefordshire, but this is Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire. It’s not fancy, but I love it and I can absolutely guarantee you will receive a very friendly welcome when you come to visit.

And I haven’t even mentioned the pubs yet…….

Summer

Forgive me readers, it has been several weeks since my last blog. A little round up of life here in the summer might be in order….

In between hosting lots of lovely guests (I truly think there must be some divine intervention on the interweb thingy that sends me only nice people to stay) there actually isn’t that much spare time when you run a B&B. Happily I have my garden on the doorstep (obv) so as soon as I’ve finished breakfasts and cleaning and tidying I can get straight out there and play with the flowers. But we actually shut the B&B for a couple of days before our charity garden opening so that I could devote all my time to trimming the grass edges with nail scissors and other such important tasks. (Meanwhile Willy managed to break the big lawnmower and had to do it all with the little one which was only what he deserved really.). It took three versions of the “Please Don’t Feed The Donkeys” sign before we managed to place it somewhere the donkeys wouldn’t eat it.

So the day came, the signs went up, friends and family came to help (and supplied enough cake to feed the whole of Worcestershire) and the gates were opened. And the people actually came! And they seemed to like it! Embarrassingly, some wanted to know the names of roses that I had long forgotten so I felt a complete fraud. But they enjoyed smelling them so that’s the main thing (I think someone from Stratford might have put that better once upon a time)

We had chosen to open on a Friday for our first time to see how it went. We had heard from others that we might expect 200 people – and we had the cake to prove it – but we had 80. Eighty is good, we raised £400 for charity, but it’s not as good as 200 so I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. Next year we will open on a Sunday and expect a stampede.

After the open day we felt we could legitimately venture out of the property when we had a moment and one lovely Sunday we found ourselves looking around the village gardens of Whitton. The tickets were being sold from the church and it was this that turned out to be the real find because not only is the graveyard covered in wild flowers but there is a William Morris stained glass window in the small old timber raftered church. When I popped back up there recently they were clearing some of the wild grass and flowers to make way for a small tent for the annual blessing of the medieval preaching stone which was to be followed by the christening of a local farmer’s baby – a small community church doing the same thing it’s been doing for hundreds of years. I’m not at all churchy but it is now one of my favourite places in the area.

And then for something completely different….The Richards Castle Soap Box Derby. Set high up in the hills, an amazing venue for a mad event where gravity fuelled carts race down the hill against the clock. Some built for speed, some built for fun. Locals and visitors picnicked on the hill, the Tenbury Brass Band played and some classic and kit cars showed off their polish too. A little eccentricity in the beautiful English countryside – a perfect Sunday.