Walking East Stoke's lanes: May 2026

After a busy and unexpected end to April, it took us a while to get out and about in the lanes around us. It wasn’t until the middle of the month that we headed down Moor Lane and out of the village, taking a chance with the April like showers that were turning up on a whim. We were lucky though and dodged the rain - well, when I say dodged, it looked like it might rain, and then it didn’t and then it did, but actually didn’t, so perhaps more correctly we dodged the chance of rain!

What was clear though since last month was that the cow parsley was out in force, not that I’m complaining, and the plants had a definite spring-like feel to them, which was also very welcome.

It’s a great sight to turn the corner and see the froth that is cow parsley, and here it was only just starting to come in to its own.

We walked perhaps more slowly than usual but reached our usual turning point of the bridge, a familiar shot in these posts and one where it’s looking quite verdant.

Turning back - as is our custom - we noticed that this tree was much later to leaf than others in the area. There were signs of leaf, but it too was taking things more easy it seems.

Our second amble of the month was a much earlier in the day than normal for us, but after the heat of the bank holiday (yes, who knew the forecasters were correct!) and much socialising I felt the need to move rather than hide from the thirty plus degree heat in the house.

We took the same route down Moor Lane, but this time on leaving the village we were rewarded with this beauty of a poppy growing as they do between a building and the boundary. It reminded me that I still have some seeds from my FIL’s garden which I really should do something with - I seem to remember that poppy seeds can be dormant for quite a while before springing back to life, so I’m hoping that’s in my favour!

But anyway, hasn’t the cow parsley grown from my photo earlier in this post - and in just a couple of weeks, but with sporadic rain and then plenty of sunshine it’s what you’d expect. What I wasn’t quite so prepared for were all the wild roses being in bloom, and their gloriously sweet scent in the early morning sun.

We’d hoped for more shade than there was on the road out of the village, and so instead decided to walk on the bridlepath towards Elston - it’s a path we’ve walked and shared here before, most usually when we’re off to the pub - but not today. It wouldn’t have been open anyway…

There were an array of plants to look at including this young oak tree edging the path, the dogwood in flower, the early fruits of the blackthorn, and yes more wild roses.

With no pub visit we reached the end of the path having achieved some shade and some dappled shade and so we turned and retraced our steps. This time as we headed towards the village a clump of oxeye daisies caught my eye - they’re beautiful and there’s plenty here as we head home, which reminded me I have some of those in a pot, which will definitely benefit from being divided as they get planted into our garden, or maybe even before.

I hadn’t expected there to be such a difference in just the two weeks between our two walks - but the weather had changed drastically, and so had the plants and hedgerows. Isn’t nature wonderful?

Thanks for joining me for this update, if you enjoyed this post you may also like to see all of the posts in this series.

This May...

Thankfully May has gone more to plan than last month, although the high temperatures towards the end of the month have thrown a spanner in the works slightly; while it’s been nice to see the sun having temperatures in the thirties on quite a few consecutive days it has meant I haven’t achieved as much as I’d hoped to. But then again it’s my birthday month and if you can’t take your birthday month more easy, then when can you?

I’ll share more next week about the genius plan for my garden, which was necessitated by the influx of quite a few unplanned plant purchases - some were for charity, and others were just too gorgeous to leave behind! But my plans are on hold until the warmer weather subsides a bit, as digging a new bed isn’t going to happen, not least because the ground is harder than it was!

The warmer weather has meant plenty more barbecues though, so that is definitely good news. Even though MOH is on what he’s called ‘light duties’ by the end of the month he was definitely up for barbecuing, and back to washing up. Result!

At the start of the month it was all about MOH taking it easy, which meant I had a lot more chores on my plate - obviously I didn’t mind and I know he’d do the same for me, but it was a lot. I learnt some new life skills this month, nothing too spectacular - well apart from cutting the grass which I haven’t done in over 20 years, but there was also charging the Ring doorbell (and the treasure hunt for the screwdriver), plus lifting everything because MOH couldn’t. But as I said by the end of the month he’s doing so much better - I know I’m being vague, but as I said before it’s not my story to share, but also I can’t write my blog completely ignoring it. So this is where we are right now, maybe another time I’ll share more.

My self imposed plant buying ban has well and truly been broken since our visit to the Newark Garden Show last month. I’ve bought some dahlias and cosmos on our visit to Flintham Hall which opened its Walled Garden as part of the National Garden Scheme for charity.

We also went along to the monthly Gardener’s Market at relatively nearby West Bridgford - and worked out afterwards we could get the bus next time, which would definitely help with my plant influx! We’d not been to West Bridgford before and it was great - it reminded us of a London village, full of the hubbub a Saturday morning brings and we stopped for brunch in Cote, something I’m sure we’ll be doing again. So discovering the Gardener’s Market on social media was a very good thing!

Our holiday plans have progressed and we are off to the Loire to stay in a chateau or two, breaking the journey with an overnight stop in Paris each way. There won’t be any cycling but we’re hoping for some walking, plenty of relaxing and temperatures that aren’t in the thirties!

We’re restricting ourselves to one large sized case, and a hand luggage size case as between as that’s as much as we can manage, so that’s made planning what to take more focussed than normal. Usually my packing ethos is ‘put it in, just in case’ but not this time, although I fully expect still to take too much. The more challenging thing is my shoe choices will be limited, which for anyone that knows me knows this will be hard - I’m better than I used to be, but then again I am the girl that took seven pairs of shoes (plus trainers) for a two week netball tour to South Africa, and I wore the lot of them!

It won’t surprise you that while I don’t know exactly what clothes I’m taking, I do know exactly what my holiday sewing project will be - that’s all packed!

I’ve mostly been slow stitching this month, and really enjoying it. I haven’t made too much progress on the dream birds pouch from last month as I decided I needed a new pouch for my holiday, as you do. And the pouch kit in my Advent Calendar seemed to be just the thing, though I was missing a piece of material, but sourcing another from my stash wasn’t an issue.

All was going well until the instructions said ‘quilt how you want’ which my brain took to mean use hand sewing to embellish the fabric and quilt it at the same time, so that’s what I did (see below), and once I’d done that the newly-substituted fabric looked plain by comparison, so that got a similar treatment.

I’m sure I’ll manage to complete it in time though…

I have managed to complete my mystery block of the month quilt top, and it’s looking great. I ummed and ahhed about the borders and how wide they should be and eventually made a decision to increase each one by an inch. I finished it at patchwork group this month, which was a really sensible thing to do as the village hall floor is way more spacious than mine!

Though now I’ll be putting pressure on myself to baste, quilt and bind it so it is really finished. But that means a temporary rearrangement of my craft room as that’s a lot of quilt and once it’s through the machine it needs to go somewhere, and the ten inches or so I have behind my sewing machine isn’t going to be enough!

But that’s at least next month’s problem.

A blue chandelier

It’s been up a while now, but it still makes me smile every time I see it. So I think we chose well - but it did take us a while to decide. When we moved in a light for the stairwell wasn’t our priority, but we knew it would need - and could take - something pretty spectacular. Our stairs double back on themselves, and so have a half landing - so while it’s not a big space because it is the full height of the house, it’s a very tall space, and our choice needed to do the space justice.

When we moved in there was the standard white fitting with a lightbulb on the tiniest length of cable. The electricians were here soon after we moved in and we said to them about it and they admitted they were waiting for us to call them to fit a light. So that was good to know, but it was a while before we called them back.

I’m not sure why though as I’d pinned the light we actually ending up buying soon after we started to think about what would work, though to be fair it was one of many coloured chandelier type lights and I’d originally opted for the jade version, as that’s much more our usual colour scheme.

Our final choice was helped by the large artwork we spontaneously bought on a trip to Nottingham, when we intended to look at a new sofa - oops. Anyway we had the picture hung by experts (and it was well worth it) and they also helped us plan its position in relation for the likely chandelier we knew we’d have at some point.

In January I was on the Dunelm site and thought I’d look at the chandelier I’d pinned so long ago again. It was THIRTY PERCENT OFF. I hadn’t expected that, but it was worth pursuing, and quickly as there were only a few days left of the sale. We tried to find a shop that had it on display, and I went all Beattie from BT calling shops but it wasn’t in our local and local(ish) branches. So we took the plunge and ordered it, hoping that if we really didn’t like it then Dunelm would come good on their promise of hassle free returns.

Thankfully we didn’t need to test that, as it arrived and it was gorgeous. Phew.

But it needed putting together, and there were many, many parts. The parts were labelled and there was a diagram, but it wasn’t always obvious.

But I got home from yoga one week, and with the electricians scheduled to come later in the week, to find MOH already making good progress with the blue crystal jigsaw we’d bought. And between us we got it all in mostly the right place.

With it successfully assembled it lived on our dining table, propped up by packing materials until the electrician’s arrival.

It made quite the centre piece!

And then it was up - with MOH assisting the electrician in the final stages - and thankfully without any ‘Only Fools and Horses’ moments, and it looks great.

No doubt it’s clear now why blue was the obvious choice.

It’s a stunning light, and works well in our space which is always likely to stay white. It was also a great price - even better with the sale discount, and despite looking like it probably isn’t, it’s just about reachable from a tall stepladder for any bulb changes, but hopefully that’s a long way off!