sense of place

116 days later

I'd been warned that I might be needing to hang a 'normal service will be resumed shortly' sign on the metaphorical front door during the first few months of parenthood. Whoops. To be fair it's not really Emily's fault. She's delightful. A heavy work schedule, a winter of snow drifts and freezing pipes and good old Christmas haven't helped either. Anyway, it's nice to be back. Happy 2011. 

Baby daughter

 

There's a new member of the team here at Hollow Barn. Got me a daughter. I'd been warned that the emotional bond can feel quite overwhelming. And yes. I'm smitten. She is utterly, unconditionally adorable and lovely and I suspect will be running rings round me in not very many years time. Welcome to the world Emily Grace. I think we'll have some fun together. 

The colour purple

From the loud white notes played by the cow parsley earlier this year purple has become the accent colour round the garden. From beetroots to potato flowers, it's pretty hard to piss off god by not noticing.

it.

#bakeoff #cookbook

Cookbooks are splendid and precious things. So (and more so) are sisters. And cakes. And biscuits. And buns. So this is a bit of a treasure trove really. My clever sister (who has just started a clever blog about beautiful baking) is a contestant in the Great British Bake Off. The next few Tuesday evenings are going to involve hanging off the edge of the sofa watching the ups and downs of her pitching her considerable talents against 9 (now 7) other contestants who are all themselves clearly pretty handy when it comes to making tasty cakes. In tonight's episode her signature chocolate brownie meringue cake got dissed by judge Paul Hollywood on the basis of having pink cream. hmm. It looks delicious. And the recipe's in the book. With lots of others. Which you can buy here. I fear that Miranda got most of the family DNA when it comes to meringue making. I suspect my efforts will be like writing her signature left handed. But it looks delicious. A shiny new copy is on the way. 

Lucky

 

We're lucky living here. It's an amazing place. Today Mrs SenseofPlace found a 4 leaf clover behind the woodshed. Hope, faith, love and luck.

Growing

The reclaimed cottage garden is now a rich landscape of courgettes, sweetcorn, potatoes, bolting rocket, odd shaped lettuces, giant beetroots, rambling peas, tangled beans, florence fennel, celeriac, a flowering leek, lots of marigolds, sunflowers and comfrey, broccoli, onions and a few globe artichokes. Oh and some rocks. And the reclamation continues. The previously head height jungle of raspberries, roses, nettles and bramble run wild is now a near fully dug extension to the cottage garden awaiting some paths, some asparagus, rhubarb, more artichokes and a few other more permanent fixtures. Not to mention a blueberry hill.   

Urban oases

Just around the corner from Molly Sugden's Hairdressing in E2 in London are these little oases of garden splendour. The former is a spectacular 'wall garden'. The latter a tiny corner plot which transforms a very ordinary and very urban road into a place to stop and marvel. A heavily pruned tree makes a perfect framework for a vertical garden of lovingly created hanging baskets surrounded by lush tropical greenery. It genuinely surprises and delights. Where space is limited, go up.  

Visitors

 

We had some visitors. They made a nest on the light fixture. Four swallows. Now flown. You ain't seen me, right?

Strawberry summer

We got the train down through France and stayed in a villa located slap bang in the middle of a strawberry farm near Perigueux. Judging by the proliferation of signs promoting Fraises de Perigueux strawberries rank alongside walnuts, foie gras and truffles as a delicacy Perigordians pretty proud of. Our friendly villa owner clearly decided that our GCSE French and her non existent English was a language barrier best overcome with gifts of fruit. So we ate a lot of strawberries. And returned to our own crops. Our humble patch has been delivering up tasty red berries for the last few weeks. We've had them fresh from the garden and made jam and ice cream and there are more still to come. A strawberry summer.

Anthriscus sylvestris

We've not counted, its not a competition and in terms of sheer numbers there are no doubt more blades of grass. Or nettles. But in terms of sheer presence cow parsley is a fairly dominant character round our way right now. And it has character. It adds dashes of white to the swathes of green. Stands tall in the dry and slouches in the rain, drooping sulkily in the pathways with an "if I'm fed up you're gonna need to be fed up too" attitude.