The fourth (and last) of our black and white pictures

Here’s the final post in this series, which follows more details on why we chose the first, second and third photos as part our series of four black and white pictures. As you know the first two images were of holiday memories, and the third was prompted by where we used to live, so it seems only right that the final image was of our new location. It’s also the only photo not taken by me in the series too.

MOH took this photo of one of his regular bike rides, it’s a place we drive past often and so it was a bit of a shock to see the field full of water that first winter we were here. We were already a little bit more shocked than we thought we would be by the weather and its impact on the area around us, and I remember thinking how much hardier these country folk were, much more than us townies and questioning if we’d made the right decision to move.

But to give you an indication of how grim it was, and how much of an eye opener it was, there’s very little difference colour wise between the colour and black and white photo. There’s definitely some mileage in the ‘it’s grim up north’ saying, but it’s also true we’re glad we moved here as there is so much more it offers us.

The black and white photo loses the place names on the sign, but I think accentuates the pot hole - which like many places is sadly a way of life right now. We’ve learnt that here though they draw a yellow circle around them, we’re not convinced this is to highlight where repairs are needed though as often the yellow circle wears off and needs replacing too! You’ve got to laugh though…

So the final image is a good reminder of our first winter in our new house, and I think complements the other images in our series of four black and white pictures, each of which includes an element of nature. Together they make a great and impactful display in our bedroom of our now not quite so new house!

My garden in April

Last month it was all about the bulbs in my garden, this month they’ve been and gone. The tulips were a bit of a let down really, and so I think they need some attention once they’ve died back. My plan is to repot them so they’ll have some fresh soil for next spring, and while I’m at it some of my daffodils would probably also benefit from the same treatment.

This month it’s been about the shrubs coming back to life, though not all of them are there yet disappointingly. There’s been a first visit to a garden show - more on what we saw there in a future post, but carry on reading to see what I left with and my plans for those.

With nice weather it’s surprising how quickly things - and specifically plants - change. At the start of the month this acer was only just coming into bud, a fortnight later it was in full leaf and looking really healthy. These past few hot days has seen it drop a few leaves, so plenty of water when it cools down in the evening has, I think, been helping.

Likewise our crab apple tree started to develop the red buds of blossom in the middle of month, so for our family barbecue, it glistened jewel-like in the background, and then boom - the blossom was out in all its gloriousness a week or so later. I’ve many more photos of it than I’m sharing here, but please indulge me a bit of home grown blossom love!

Yes, you can see how it’s quite addictive!

Elsewhere in the garden the dogwoods also started to flower, and yes they’re still in the pots we moved them in. Over the winter I’ve been trying them out in a new spot - one that we can see from the house, so when their stems are at their vibrant best we can enjoy them from inside. We’re happy with the spot they’re in now, so they are earmarked for planting out when the conditions are right.

The peach tree has shed all its blossom now, and there are a few tiny, tiny fruits starting to develop. It’s shot up too, so I think I’ll be able to train one, maybe two more horizontal branches - though I do need to get some more canes (or shackle enough together) to do this.

It’s also developed what I’m pretty sure is peach leaf curl, a fungal disease which causes red patches - and while they in themselves are quite stunning, they can’t be doing the plant any good. The advice is to remove the affected leaves as quickly as possible and before the fungus blooms, which I’ve done, and hopefully this will reduce the risk of reoccurrence.

I’ll be keeping my eye out for any more leaves, and removing those too. The solution is apparently to cover them with plastic over the winter months, which clearly is a bit late to know about now. Anyway, let’s hope it’s just a blip and it continues to grow and produce at least a couple of fruit.

Our longer term plan is to plant it at the base of the wall (which will make it easy to cover in plastic sheeting in future) but exactly where is still unknown. If planting it out is its next step then I could probably make a call, but if it’s happy to continue in a pot then I have one - and a much bigger one - on standby. We bought this at the Newark Garden Show, and while it looks like terracotta it’s actually plastic, and it’s one of the best I’ve seen. It’s much lighter than a terracotta pot (obviously) and a bit more resilient too, and if the peach tree is ready to move then it also gives me a bit more decision-making time!

We also bought a new, but aged and distressed, iron sculpture at the show - it’s currently still in its black plastic wrapping but has moved inside the garage for the time being. Getting it into the car was fun, but we managed it with the seats rearranged and MOH sitting in the back holding it in place.

Last year I only left the show with a couple of lupins, as our new garden was still very new to us and my plans were completely unknown. This year my appetite for plants has returned a little, and we did make some purchases including these Southern Globe Thistles which are perennials that like full/part sun and should flower in July/August with blue spherical flower heads.

This unusual Iris caught my eye - its flowers are a copper bronze and mahogany and it’d normally flower in May/June and once again it’s one that will return each year. Then there were a couple of dark flowered and purple leaved Penstemons, which along with those pictured will look great in a cottage garden type setting, which is lucky as that’s something I have in mind, but in the meantime I’ll continue to grow them in pots, potting them on as I need to.

I also succumbed to a fatsia, we had one in our previous garden which was huuuge but also very forgiving and very structural. This one is quite a bit smaller, and since seeing the white fatsia at last year’s Gardeners’ World Live it’s clearly been playing on my mind. I didn’t even know you could get white fatsias, but a variegated one seems like an even better option to me.

It has a bit of growing to do though, and I’ll be potting it on through a variety of ever increasing pots I’m sure.

Then I picked up a couple of tomato plants, this year opting for something a little more unusual than the Gardener’s Delight which I picked up from a garden centre late-on last year. There’s a red Honeycomb cherry tomato plant on the right, and a black skinned variety on the left.

It’s the tomatoes that have made me realise how much I miss having a greenhouse, and that not having a greenhouse makes seed growing quite hard work! That means it makes sense to stick to buying some plants for the time being, and that planning a greenhouse really should move up my priority list. And so it seemed right that my final purchase from the show was these tiny vintage terracotta pots, to add to my growing collection - and which will have pride of place in my new greenhouse one day!

Aren’t these just fab? And that one with PINK written on the rim, well I couldn’t leave that one there now could I?!

This April...

Well April’s weather is certainly ending the month with a bang, and a steamy hot sizzling one at that. All of sudden we’re experiencing prolonged temperatures in the mid twenties, and while we’ve been lucky enough to have the odd lovely sunny day throughout the month they haven’t been quite as warm as this. Of course though with a bank holiday on the horizon it won’t be long before things are back to normal. It is what it is.

Our family weekends have continued this month. I’ve shared a separate post about the joy the blossom brought after lunch out in West Sussex with MOH’s side of the family. Then the following weekend we hosted a barbecue for my side of the family - and we were lucky with the weather that day too; we’d said a few weeks before that if it looked like it would be nice enough to sit in the garden then to bring garden chairs - and it was, and they did. It was a lovely and relaxed afternoon with all the usual, and a visit to see the lambs too. My great niece, who’s four, was impressed with our house and stated she could live here - she’s so much like her mum it’s scary, though her mum was probably twice that age when she had a similar if not bolder request!

Cute lambs and cats

I’ve had plenty of opportunity to keep my eye on the lambs - and them me - this month as I’ve had a week of cat feeding duties for one of our neighbours, which of course I was more than happy to do. Every time though that I walked past the lamb field they all stopped to look - probably for food - before bleating a bit and going back to whatever they were doing. They really are rather cute.

Feeding the cats was ok too, though one of them did a bit of a disappearing trick from late one evening to late afternoon the following day causing a bit of concern. But she came back - phew, and was unscathed by her big adventure - double phew! Though both of us were happy that she was milking the attention and fussing when she returned, and of course the other one didn’t want to miss out either - but mostly it was a ‘no see just leave the food’ kind of arrangement!

The Barbican and The Workhouse

The month started with a solo trip to London for me, strangely the first where I’ve travelled both ways on my own. I was in London to celebrate a friend’s retirement - and it was great to see everyone - but was there early enough to visit the Citra Sasmita exhibition at the Barbican, and also to stumble across the Moor Lane Community Garden, which was a fascinating place and had plenty of quotes, like this one, hung in the space.

I’m planning to share more about both of these, but they haven’t quite made it here yet - but will do soon, hopefully.

Over Easter with family visiting we headed out to our nearest National Trust property - the Workhouse and Infirmary at Southwell. It was our first visit there and we weren’t quite sure what to expect, but it probably wasn’t what we experienced. It was a really insightful glimpse into life at a workhouse, and there was a lot to take in - it covered the life of those in the workhouse and their daily tasks, but also the history since the workhouse closed, and was brought to life by volunteers in costume.

It really was very well done and incredibly educational - we also discovered that the cellars were lovely and cool, worth noting for future hot spells!

And last weekend we popped along to the Newark Garden Show again - we loved it last year, and so went back again. This time though we left with a few more purchases including a large garden sculpture (wrapped in black plastic in the photo below), which we just about got in the car, and a new large plastic pot which I plan to move the peach tree into at some point. And plants, more plants than last year too!

Lights, wands and customer service

There’s been some other new additions to our home this month too; the replacement light I mentioned at the end of last month’s post turned into a bit of a drama. After receiving the returned item we were told that the replacement wouldn’t be in stock until June at the earliest. June! So I was straight on the phone and email to cancel our order and request a full refund, including the hefty delivery charge - thankfully they agreed to do this pretty easily, but after a week or so no refund had arrived. When I phoned again it seems they were waiting for me to provide my credit card details, but as they hadn’t asked for these or even mentioned it I’m not sure how it was ever going to progress. This is the second thing we’ve attempted to buy from this company (we had delays on the first item too), and it’s the last - we won’t use this company again, ever.

Which is a shame though as I really liked the light - but not enough to be messed around, or to have a substandard lamp - so our search continued, and while it’s not the same a new light was ordered. That has arrived and even though that took longer to arrive than first indicated, it’s a keeper.

I’ve also had a replacement wand for my Shark - and I’m still impressed with it, probably more so as their customer service is fantastic. It’s a shame they don’t sell lights tbh! With family visiting we were cleaning, as you do. We even cleaned the cobwebs off the highest skylight, which involved the garden ladder at it’s full extension and a rigged up cobweb buster boosted with our extended skylight pole. Clearly MOH was up the ladder and I was directing from the ground!

But cleaning at ground level also gave us an issue as the pivot joint on the Shark sheared and so it wouldn’t open to full height. It was still usable but to use it we had to bend double, so it wasn’t ideal. I thought I’d give them a call even though it was a Saturday morning to try to source a replacement, and sure enough they sorted it there and then and the replacement part arrived on the Tuesday. Given my other customer services experiences this month, this was the total other end of the scale and quite frankly all customer service should be like this.

We’ve welcomed new neighbours in the last barn to be completed on our development, and enjoyed their hospitality along with our other close neighbours one evening. A productive evening too it would seem as remember last month I said there was more traffic coming through the village (at speed) following the roadworks, well it seems having a car parked in the main thoroughfare slows things down, though it does at time encourage more beeping, but hey ho!

My sewing group held a stash sale, and while I could have easily hosted a table I didn’t - I went along with a small amount of cash to spend and left with more than I expected, including some fat quarters and some large pieces which I’ll be able to use in future charity quilts, some fabulous vintage Vogue pattern catalogue pages which I’ll share more of later in the week and a random selection of old haberdashery items, including threads ‘for darning all kinds of hosiery etc’ - clearly I won’t be using them for that!

And finally, in house news our main thermostat for our heating system is working again - yay! The issue (which didn’t affect how the heating system worked) was a wiring one, which thankfully was easy for the right engineer to fix. I’m glad it’s sorted though.

We’ve a busy month ahead of us in May, and it could finally be the month where we get at least some more of the garage sorted out - mostly because from the end of next month it’s likely that I’ll be restricting what’s allowed in my very new car, which I test drove and ordered last week. And yes, for those of you that know me in real life - it’s another Renault, I’m nothing if not a creature of habit where my cars are concerned!

If you want to read my previous monthly updates in my ‘This is’ series you’re very welcome.