It’s been a busy July, and time has flown by and felt in short supply. So much so that I’m writing this post a day later than I usually would, but sometimes life just happens doesn’t it?
This month we’ve celebrated three years in our new home, and that too has just flown by. I’ve spent a week cat sitting for our neighbour’s two beautiful kitties who rather obligingly made themselves available for tickles, conversations and extra treats every time I visited, which was much appreciated.
It’s continued to be hot - parts of the UK are on its fourth heatwave, but it’s just three for us - and that’s three too many in my book. Watering the pots in the garden has become a nightly thing, and I’m now resolved more than ever to get things out of pots and into the ground - but of course it’s still too hot, and the ground too hard, to dig any new beds so my genius plan, hatched way back in May is still on hold. But I am starting to harvest a some tomatoes, with more to come and a few strawberries too so it’s not all bad.
We’ve celebrated MOH’s birthday and this year he chose to cook picanha steak (also known as top or rump cap) on the barbecue. Our favourite farm shop butchered the steak for him and we knew it’d be good, and it was. Sadly though the gas on the barbecue ran out just as MOH started cooking, so everything had to move indoors instead. New gas was bought very soon afterwards too!
We’ve been watching the World Cup - I’d say we enjoyed England’s last game against France but perhaps that’s not quite the word, it was definitely nail biting and probably the best game of the competition, and at least we ended up on the right side of the unusually high 6-4 scoreline.
July is also the month of the Tour de France and so that’s also been on our screens, sometimes during the day when we’ve been avoiding the high temperatures outside. In cycling news closer to home MOH is back cycling with his club after his recent health scare and he achieved his next target on his personal recovery plan to complete the annual London to Dunwich overnight cycle, which at just over a hundred miles is no mean feat.
And with it being July, there was another update to dad’s birthday bunting - he had the best birthday present ever he told me, along with his drill and new shirts, and that was me taking him to the tip so he could get rid of the glass from the greenhouse which he’d removed after we’d been encouraging him not to use it anymore. It’s the small things, it seems.
At the start of the month even I dusted off my bike and we cycled to two nearby villages. In Elston we had a look around the allotments at their open day, and then we cycled onto nearby Sibthorpe for the last weekend in their open gardens series raising money for the church bells. They’d opened every month for five months, and it’s been great to see how their gardens progressed over the month, and quite honestly to see in some local back gardens. There’s a lot to be said of learning from your neighbours, especially which plants work well and it’s been great to meet the villagers opening up their gardens too. And there was huge slices of cake available in the church too, well, it would have been rude not to.
ON THE PLOT AT ELSTON
SIBTHORPE OPEN GARDENS
The logistics for MOH’s epic cycle ride were obviously more tricky than when we lived in London, and so we combined it a few nights in Suffolk, staying in Framlingham which is a pretty little town, and probably most well known for its famous resident, Ed Sheeran. So while we were there we took a stroll to see the infamous ‘castle on the hill’ but opted not to go in, and instead visited Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh and on the way home Ickworth House.
THE CASTLE ON THE HILL, FRAMLINGTON
SNAPE MALTINGS
We hadn’t been to Snape Maltings for a while - since 2014 it turned out - and it was good to revisit to see what was new, and like the sculpture above what remained in place. We stopped at Ickworth House on our journey home, which appeared to break our journey into two equal sections, it too was a place we’d been before on a couple of occasions, the last time though was in 2017 when I expect the gardens, the grass especially, were a lot greener than on this visit.
ICKWORTH HOUSE
At my various sewing group meetings this month I’ve spent some time ‘playing’ with some of the pre-cut squares and sewn flying geese I picked up from someone else’s stash - though still need to finish those, and I’ve added to the number of completed houses for my villages, so village quilts 2 and 3 should be completed soon I hope. My aim is to finish them by the Linus Project sewing day at the start of September, so that they too can be donated with the more slowly growing this year pile of charity quilts that I have. It was great to take mum along with me to the Saturday morning sewing group, and even better when she offered to iron my blocks - she knows I’m not an ironing fan.
To end the month I spent the day at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham with my SIL and we saw so many beautiful quilts, more than I could photograph to be honest. But so much inspiration and talent on show, and of course there were a few purchases made throughout the day, as well as the workshop to create our own appliquéd guinea fowl.
Mine still has a way to go before it remotely resembles the gaggle of guinea fowl it’s supposed to, but with two irons between around twenty of us there was always going to be a queue. But I’ve relearnt and refreshed the technique from my rustic barn at a previous craft show, and so it’s something that I’ll finish at home.
NOT QUITE A GAGGLE OF GUINEA FOWL YET
Soon hopefully - and before I lose all the beaks!
And maybe time might slow down a little in August to give me a fighting chance…
