The yard and the yurt at River Cottage HQ

It's been a while since my mad day trip to River Cottage HQ in Devon - and yes, it was a long day - I'm not sure why but I haven't shared more of my photos, but I will today. There's still more to show from the garden, but first I want to start with some from the yard and of the yurt. 

We arrived in the yard by tractor, well in the trailer behind the tractor and it was quite a bumpy ride. And quite a descent. The ride back up later that evening after all the delicious food was equally as bumpy, and nowhere near as welcome, although I wasn't so keen on walking back either.

It's fair to say I was quite excited about my trip to River Cottage as I'm quite a big Hugh F-W fan and have several of his cookbooks and approve of his campaigns.  So arriving in the yard was a bit of a thing, but it wasn't quite how I expected it to be.  I'd seen the garden, and the kitchen in the TV shows so was surprised to find myself looking at these:

And I was intrigued. Clearly part of an old building but full of character and for me adding to the charm of the place. The zinc trough caught my eye and I'd quite happily have taken it home with me, maybe the tractor would come in handy after all?! It was planted up with fennel and wallflowers and while it's not a combination I'd have thought of, it's one I can imagine working well as both grow to similar heights.

My visit was in November - I know, where has the time gone? - so the wallflowers had a little more growing to do before they flowered, but I'm curious to know what colours they were. Yellow would echo the fennel flowers, but the reddy browns would be a great contrast. Ah well, I guess I'll never know.

As I explored the yard I did catch a quick glimpse of the garden and I was oh so tempted to sneak off and explore it on my own. But I thought that would be slightly rude and so for now, it was just this peek.

I rejoined the others back in the barn, still looking wistfully over at the garden. The lights momentarily caught my eye, and then there was the food demonstration, and only after that was I set free into the garden and able to wander around the farmhouse. 

The garden was everything I hoped it would be, but I'm teasing you now as I've still some more photos of the yard, and of the yurt to show you. There was evidence all around that it's very much a working farm, not just the axe and pile of logs, but also the chefs who were hurriedly rushing around cooking my dinner!  All produce, if not grown at River Cottage, is sourced locally as you'd expect.

I'm saying nothing, but there's no guarantee that the photo above and the one below aren't related.

Despite that innocent face, and cheeky tongue. And yes, it's a one-eyed cat.

Elsewhere on the farm, and on the other side of the barn was the yurt, which was totally unexpected and lovely and warm. The fire in the centre of the tent saw to that.

With straw bales around the edge it was a great place to sit down and chat to the other bloggers there that day. Some of whom I knew from online, some I'd met in real life before and others that were friends in the making.

Bunting decorated the edges, and I was reminded then and am again now, that I'm seriously lacking in the bunting department.

I keep promising myself that I'll make some - I have one string, which, sssh!, I bought and don't put up often enough - and with our party in the garden getting ever closer, then I really should move them up my sewing to do list.

There was nothing at River Cottage HQ that changed my view of the whole set-up, the only thing that would have made it better would have been for Hugh himself to be in attendance. And you can bet that if that had happened, you'd have already known about it!

One last photo before I go, and it's another teasing shot of the garden. This time from the farmhouse kitchen window, and it looks just as it does on the TV. That's all the teasing I'm doing for now, I'll share photos from the garden in a future post, and I promise it'll be soon.

But in the meantime, let me know if you're a Hugh fan, and if you've a favourite recipe - or campaign - that you're a fan of.

* With thanks to River Cottage and Flea Enterprises for the invitation and arrangements for my visit.

Dappled sun, lots of weeds and a productive day

Well Saturday was a productive day in the garden. We managed to make the most of the weather and it's just as well as Sunday while still warm was wet here. It was great though to spend a good few hours in the garden, for the first time this year. 

We picked up where we'd left off on adding edging to our circles. That wasn't quite so productive though, we hit a complicated section - for complicated read root-ridden - and it took a fair bit of hacksaw wizardry by MOH to get it to sit properly. And a fair bit of time was needed using the tree saw to carve some of the roots into shape, and even then for some we needed to resort to a chisel. 

Definitely resourceful, but the tricky piece is in. Phew. 

The bad news is we expect the next three or four pieces to be equally as tricky, but I'm hoping with the tools (quite literally) at our disposal we'll make quicker progress, spurred on by an easy stretch near the patio. We've a deadline of mid-June to meet now, so need to get our skates on.

It seems though that everywhere in the garden the weeds had grown. A lot. While MOH was faffing with his hacksaw I filled four trugs with weeds and various sticks that had blown down, and even found time to squeeze in some of my own faffing - taking some pictures.

My hanging basket of succulents hadn't fared well over the winter, unbelievably it had dried out, and so I needed to intervene. I managed to rescue those that were just about clinging onto life and plant them alongside my succulent babies in a more traditional trough.  

It's only a small plastic trough, but if they grow and multiply as succulents do then I think it'll look quite pretty. It's currently in the greenhouse, not because it needs to be, but for its own protection. I've a feeling the local squirrel population is likely to dig these up before they get settled if I leave it outside.  They've been helping themselves to my tulips in the pots on the patio, which I'm none too happy about.  

And those poor tulips, their start in life wasn't so good anyway, let alone with any squirrel interference. 

Soon though I distracted by the lime green flowers of the euphorbias, which at this time of year are dazzling bright and dotted around the garden. They're not a favourite of MOH's and annoy him  just by being there and right now for being more visible than normal. I like them though, because of the colour they bring, so they're staying. And he knows this. 

They're joined under one of our large plane trees by the pink flowering hostas, which so far don't seem that nibbled. There is quite a bit of colour in our garden at the moment which is good - even the lime green counts as colour, you'll know that MOH has a long standing wish for there to be more colour in our garden of large trees and bushes. So when he walked onto the patio and said our garden looked quite colourful, I felt like it was almost mission accomplished. 

I'd left the sedum heads over winter, partly because I'm a bit of a lazy gardener and mostly for the birds. But they're done now and needed clearing away. When they're like this it's easy to twist them away from the base where new plants are already growing, and looking a bit like brussels sprouts. I pulled a couple of new plants up as I went about this task a little too enthusiastically it seems, so found a pot and stuck them, hoping for the best.

I'm sure they'll come through and I'll have another clump to plant in the garden some time soon. I think using the same plant in several spots throughout the garden is a good policy to have, it brings continuation and it's even better if you've got the extra clumps for free from existing plants.

Just in front of the greenhouse the currant berry was basking in the sun and looked to be enjoying it as much as we were. In the sun it really was quite warm, the temperature in the greenhouse was nineteen degrees, but it's already been as high as twenty eight. 

The hellebores are continuing to flower, but their colour has deepened and more are setting seed. I've already spotted a few tiny plants growing so I'm hopeful that there'll be more plants for free here, now I just need to find a way to stop MOH stepping on them or pulling them out as weeds.

The yellow primulas continue to flower, and are now joined by this pretty white version among one of the many aquilegias already growing. For now I'll leave all the aquilegias, or granny's bonnet, but as they finish flowering I'll pull them up as they are prolific self-seeders, and well, even for me there's only so many you can have.

My yellow daffodils have been joined by the more delicate coloured almost cream and pale yellow daffodils, and there's many of their cheery heads dotted around the garden. These two growing through the pastel phormium looked both pretty and interested in the work that MOH was doing. He was working alongside them and in front of the yucca, who was clearly less impressed with being interfered with and so got its own back by stabbing MOH's forehead several times, drawing blood.

Gardening's not for the faint-hearted, not where the yucca's concerned anyway. I'm just hoping for all its stubbornness that this year it'll flower again, I think we're due some payback for the pain it dishes out.

With the single - but tricky - piece of edging in place, and the rugby close to starting a decision needed to be made - carry on, give the grass its first cut, or give up completely. It was too nice to be inside, so the TV was paused and out came the lawnmower. The grass is MOH's pride and joy and I knew that however pretty these iris-like flowers are, they wouldn't stand a chance of being saved once grass cutting season arrived. I'll never be one to have a naturalised lawn, well not this lawn anyway.

So it's just as well I got a picture hey? But it was oh so nice to get out into the garden, I'd planned to do more on Sunday, but the weather said not. Maybe that's a good thing and was nature's way of easing me back in gently, who knows? 

A quick quilt update: cutting is underway

It's been a while since I've mentioned my patchwork quilt here, and that's mostly because not much has happened since I sorted out the materials from my stash back in January.  That's partly because life has been busy (when isn't it?) but also because I always find it hard to make the first cut. 

When I chose my materials I thought I probably had enough of each material, but I wasn't sure. Because I'm using a mix of materials, including some old clothes I've cut up, it wasn't that simple. But with a couple of hours, renewed purpose and weather that encouraged me to stay inside, this weekend my well used rotary cutter and mat and I became reacquainted.

I've started to cut the 2.5 inch strips, from which I'll cut thirty squares. And yes, I'm using the floor which has been tough going on my knees even with a cushion.  I've also learnt, or reminded myself that:

• there's a lot more cutting to do,

• I have plenty of material for this project, even from the clothes I cut up,

• sewing projects require ironing, and that's before I've even started on any seams,

• purpose bought material is easier to cut than repurposed clothes, mainly because it's already square.

I know that last one is pretty obvious, but using old clothes has meant more finickity cutting. I'm glad that when I arranged the materials in the basket by colours to see how they worked together, that somehow I also instinctively knew to mix them up so the upcycled fabric was interspersed with the purpose bought material. That's helped as after every more complicated cutting I know there's an easier one to come.

I'm about halfway through cutting the materials and my next task is to iron these ready for cutting them into the thirty 2.5 inch squares I need. I'm not a big fan of ironing and it comes to something when I iron more for sewing projects than for clothes to wear, although in my defence I purposefully choose clothes that need less ironing, I mean if you can, why wouldn't you?

Once I have the squares then it'll be a case of working out how to place them - the interesting bit - and cutting out the plain, background squares and I've a feeling there's a lot of those. I'm not focusing on that number right now though and I'm hoping it won't be quite so tricky as I've an old duvet cover to use for that.

But first, back to the ironing, and more cutting...