Ducks and Daffodils

It's officially the first day of Spring tomorrow, according to the Met Office, but really, the weather has been messing with us so much. Yesterday and Wednesday actually kid us into thinking that maybe Spring is coming. The front garden is a sea of beautiful purple crocuses...well, bar one straggly yellow one that seems to have escaped the meticulously planned theme!

However, today we are watching the rain rush down the road outside the front window again and, on my first day off since half term, the plans I had for sorting out the duck shelter(...oh, we're getting ducks...did I tell you?) and putting up the fence to protect the beehives have been well and truly scuppered.

So yes, ducks! I managed to convince Mr Beehive as he has such a love of duck eggs, that we could house our newest members to our little farmstead in with the hens. Well, okay, so I convinced him whilst lifting a rather large tin bath that I found in a little antique shop for only £25, out of the car! I guess my persuasion tactics tend to be a little fait accompli before I've even really gotten going. I firmly believe in the 'tell it how it is' way of communication! So, I wanted to apply some mastik around the seals to ensure that we kept the water in and also try out my siphon contraption to see if we could easily empty the water rather than having to lift the bath up or use a jug or bucket to empty and refill. But for now, the rain has got the better of me...although there may be a bright side: if the bath retains the rainwater that has fallen in it, then the mastik won't be required...now there's a positive thought!

Half term is over, it went with such a rush as per usual. I never feel I have enough time to do the things I want to do with the kids and miss our homeschooling days for this reason. Still we made it to the Dr Who exhibition in Cardiff and met up with our lovely ex-au pair for a couple of days.

So for lack of outside jobs, I've instead made bread and cake as it is a sort of bread and cake kind of day. Oh and there is one more thing in favour of ducks....they certainly won't mind all this rain!

Itchy Gypsy feet

Half term is upon us - yay! However, yet again the weather is nothing short of hideous - not so yay!

I do have a raft of jobs awaiting me outside in both the barn where the beehives are patiently waiting another coat of paint and in the greenhouse where the seeds are screaming at me to put them in the propagator but I can't stand the thought of either task today, it's just too cold. Not a sharp, snowy type cold as we were used to in Connecticut or Edinburgh but a type of cold that ensnares your bones and chills you to the core. I simply cannot summon sufficient enthusiasm to do more than knit today and fiddle about online.

I'm on a perpetual mission for the perfect crust to my bread:

so I've been researching proving baskets today to see whether or not they are a waste of money or actually worth their outlay to improve my bread. My conclusion to all this is that the jury online is still out, thus Messers Ebay and co have provided me with a supplier of proving baskets that are not too expensive for me to carry out this experimentation for myself, so watch this space.









Yesterday I briefly popped into town. Our town is not one that over excites me unfortunately. It is a very basic market town that has the usual culprits in rather boring mainstream stores and nothing particularly independent or exciting. I do miss Edinburgh for this. Wherever I've lived in the past I've always managed to sniff out one or two really fun places to hang out or visit. In Belgium I loved 'Le Pain Quotidien' (whilst no longer particularly independent after they're springing up all over now!). After dropping the boys off at nursery, a friend or two and I would meet there at their gorgeous rustic trestle tables for breakfast (you will start to note a bread and food theme!). In Wilton in CT there was the Cafe at Cannondale Station as well as Whole foods (okay, so not exactly independent per-se, but heaps better than Tescos!) and Anthropologie. Edinburgh was inundated with vegetarian cafes, unusual shops and ... an Anthropologie - excuse me whilst I moan in pleasure at all the lovely vintage style homewares that they brought over to the UK... oh yes please !

Where I am now however, seems to lack lots...We have no good independent cafes or book stores, there is a knitting shop but my kids refuse to come in with me because it smells of fish...and...there is a certain je ne sais quoi and a surplus of pensioners that's for sure *sigh*. We don't have a particularly fab market...there is a weekly one selling fruit and veg, cheap birthday cards that you get sent by your granny and lots of pop guns...don't ask me!! Every so often we do have a wonderful french, farmers or artisan market. We have recently acquired a health shop, but it's in its infancy and the shelves are still lacking somewhat. Oxford has more vibrancy, but it's too far for a quick trip and needs to be a day planned in somewhere. We do, on the otherhand, have more pound shops than I've ever seen in one place and as the day progresses, the local factory that roasts coffee beans becomes staler and more bitter in the air....I'm not really selling my town am I?

I'm a closet hippy and more of a nomad that I like to admit; I'd love to live in Portland in Oregon

photo from http://www.midlifepassion.com/tag/world-domination-summit

 or Oxford or perhaps Stroud would float my boat.



 Canterbury was lovely when we went at Christmas.

Edinburgh was awesome but too far north (yeah, I know, not as far as Portland) and San Francisco still has my heart! However I am fairly easy to please: A GOOD coffee shop that brews its own, a good indy bookshop, a wool shop, a cooperative grocery store (not 'The' Coop but a wholefoods coop) and that'll do to start with!

BUT there are somethings to be salvaged. We have a tourist information bureau that also doubles as a cooperative for local craftspeople and some of the gorgeous items in there can make for lovely gifts. So finding these beautiful ceramic bee buttons which will make the perfect addition to my latest WIP did lift my spirits slightly. I have also discovered a large wholefood cooperative in Northampton.

At least I can put today to good use now as I have an excuse to sit on my bum and knit more of her sweater whilst planning a trip to The Daily Bread in Northampton next weekend!

A mini spring clean in February!

I'm not sure quite what this weather is playing at at the moment, but it's giving me whiplash, not to mention the bulbs that are bursting through and the birds that are not eating the seeds from the feeders and building nests frantically because there is some kind of muddled early spring.

It has been a 'glorious' day here today, cold, yes, but no rain, lots of blue sky. However, the forecast is predicting further gales and rain overnight tonight. I'm not sure if we're going to get any snow this year but I sure wish this wet weather would do one!

I don't work outside the home today so it's always nice to be able to use a day to its fullest to catch up on the things that need doing.
I was able to hang washing out on the line which seems to be dry too...This to me, is always a sign that spring is coming when you have days mild enough to dry a load within just a few hours.

I also took the opportunity to install some brushwood fencing over existing wire fencing in order to give our hives a little bit of security from the road and prying eyes. It's bizarre that people do steal beehives, but...they do and I want to try to minimize the risk as much as I can.

I work part time and on my days off I always aim to do around an hour or so in the gym. I then decided today once I'd done the grocery shop, to come home and have a good sort out of our utility area.

We have been granted planning permission (yay!!!) for the old garage/barn/outhouse that we currently have, to be knocked down and a new structure built in its place. We intend for this to be a garage with a kitchen and store at the back to enable us to take all our produce making ie: cider, smoking, honey production etc to a separate kitchen from our one indoors. It will then have an upstairs space with a bathroom which we may use as a studio for Mr Beehive to work from home in, or as a guest room to enable us to have guests over without having to lever three or more kids into the same room. However, with this taking priority and eating most of our finances, storage and organisation in my utility is not and whilst the kids continue to grow, so do not only the amount of shoes, but also the variety too.

Inspired by threads on pinterest I decided I needed to do something that made it look a little more organised, so here is the end result courtesy of an existing piece of Ikea shelving found in the back of the garage.

That's better! Can you spot my new bee jacket?

Tonight I'm going out with some new friends from the beekeeping society, it will be both interesting and probably totally overwhelming, but I figure that to do this properly, I'm going to need friends in the know. A friend from orchestra is a member of this group and she has invited me along, so I am going to have a rare evening out from home and maybe even a sneaky midweek pint as I'm not driving ;-) Dutch courage you know!

Painting Beehives at The Beehive

Today we've been busy constructing our beehives and painting them in the old barn. I ordered these national hives from a seller on ebay last year and it's taken until now to get to this point in the chores list. 

We're hoping that we can finish painting them next weekend and aim to get them out where we want to site them in the next couple of weeks so that the smell of the paint dissipates before the bees arrive. We've ordered a nuc from a breeder in Sussex who expects them to be ready by late May. Plenty more time to read further and panic more!

We should get our planning permission (or refusal) back this week sometime.  We're hoping that there won't be any problems considering we're re-building and slightly modifying something that is already there, but planning permission is a funny animal these days. Keep your fingers crossed for the Beehive this year in both the flying and human varieties!

A Sunny Sunday setting a false sense of security

Okay, okay, so the title for this entry encompasses alliteration but that wasn't really my intention!!

It's a glorious day outside today, what with all the rain we've been having yet again, one should be filled with gladness, rather than that rather cynical sense of doom that this delightful mock March day will soon be underneath a few centimetres of snow or, at the very least, the carpet of green shoots appearing in my front garden will be shocked to death or burnt brown through a late cold snap.

However, rather than dwelling in this frame, we have taken advantage of the warmth and sunshine to get outside and do some desperate tidying and sorting out after a good long walk over the fields with the dog this morning.

The chooks have been recipients of their annual rake over ;-)  We rake the top layer of muck off their run area and then re-lay it with fresh bark and wood chippings from a local horse yard. We've also decided to lift some of their run off the ground because they've been living in a quagmire since the rain began and I feel desperately sorry for them. We have put a couple of pallets in to give them an island higher than the swamp and the other is for them to have their waterer on so that it doesn't continually get crap kicked into it.

Mr Beehive has been smashing up various parts of the patio and back path still on the search for where various drains go. We 'think' we've finally found the majority of outlets, many of which were just hidden over with a patio slab and sand. This could well have been partially to blame to our flood in 2012.

We're currently awaiting the return of our planning permission to see whether or not we get the go ahead for knocking down our old garage/barn before it falls down and rebuilding a new garage/studio/annexe. Hopefully, if we do, we should start on this over the summer. It will give us a spare bedroom alongside a studio area that Mr Beehive could use when he works from home and where I will take my sewing. We might have to evict the drum kit there too!

Other new things this year will are the fact I'm now back playing my clarinet again on a regular basis. I'm currently playing with a local wind ensemble. Interestingly I was asked to play through a lady I met on a beekeeping course, who I'm hoping will mentor me when we get our bees...which are still on the horizon. We now have our hives, but they need painting and assembling. They will go right in the far corner of this picture:

I think we'll either need another one of these sunny days for this...or a new garage that isn't going to leak all over newly painted hives!

2014 and a calm and peaceable end to our year (thank you!)

A very Happy New Year to you all!

I hope you've had a great holiday period with family and friends.

Ours has been filled with relatives and friends and we've had a great time.

I like this time of year to hunker down in front of the fire, to talk long leisurely walks with the dogs, catch up with pals and generally border on hibernation.

The weather has been intermittently kind, although the children have been disappointed that this is pretty much their first Christmas without snow. We have had some glorious days with blue skies that have enabled us to walk through frost hardened fields and enjoy the beauty of the stark bare landscape in winter.

Then there have been days like today whereupon we had to dress up in all our waterproofs for a shortish walk around the fields. These walks tend to be military style hikes as there is less ability to talk to each other as we concentrate on staying upright in the mud or struggle to hear any sounds other than the rain beating on the outsides of our hoods. It is days like this that make us grateful for where we are a year on from last Christmas where we were all living in one room for six months after our flood and also that make us jittery and check the level of the well at least once a day to ensure the pump is working.

I have given up making New Year's resolutions because I strongly feel that they just set you up to fail during the first few months of a new year, I prefer to have one or two goals: things I'd like to achieve, do or places I'd like to go.

I have finally joined the gym so I'm going to at least take stock of my fitness levels what with our 5 peaks hike looming very fast on the horizon. I also want to feel comfortable swimming with the kids on holiday this summer rather than a beached whale underneath a shroud.
I have two big fortieth birthdays this year, one belonging to my sister and the other a friend and I'd like to feel good in a nice dress for both of these occasions.

I'm going to slowly work through the house and have a really, really big de-clutter over the next month. I started this morning on my drawers in the kitchen and am gradually boxing things into clear plastic boxes so I can see at a glance what I have where. Once I've done the kitchen I'll start on wardrobes and bedrooms.

Another thing I want to make more time for this year is crafting again. I want to get my sewing machine out more and also spend more time knitting.

One thing we are going to do is open our Good Times Jar tomorrow evening and take delight in recalling the memories of 2013 that we put inside it and we will then start a new one for 2014.

Other than that, the diary is currently  light for the year, which I'm kind of relishing at the moment. I know it will soon begin to fill up and the joys of watching this season fade into the next will soon begin hurtling me through the year once more.

But for now, I'm going to begin 2014 in front of a fire, listening to the snoring of the dogs, the laughing of the children playing in the den, the turning pages of my brother in law's book as he sits and reads and the clattering of Mr Beehive setting about a new batch of cider making in the kitchen. Ah...bliss!

Christmas time 2013

It's nearly that time of year again.
Term ended for myself and the older two last Friday and for the Little Miss, this week.

We started our Winter with a short weekend near Dover... some Christmas shopping in Canterbury, lattes in coffee shops and walks along the beach and cliffs. Sea air and some time away was a lovely, gentle start.

The holidays began for me with a weekend with my best friend in London. We had such a blast, not really doing anything other than catching up, laughing, eating and drinking...we might have sneaked a small amount of retail therapy in there too.

However, the frivolity was followed for me by a week of sinusitus, which has had me fairly miserable until late this week when finally my head decided to give me space again and the pain subsided.












































It didn't stop us putting up our trees last week though, as long as I didn't bend down.

 I love unwrapping the Christmas decoration box each year. My trees may not be 'Home and Garden' but they hold a huge amount of memories amongst those decorations: places we've travelled, places we've lived, decorations to represent each of my children and their hobbies or talents.

We have also caught up with other friends and their children last night and are expecting the cousins to arrive sometime tomorrow as long as the threat of bad weather keeps away until after they arrive...


Mincepies are made, biscuits crafted, store cupboards stocked, stockings dug out from the attic, fires lit, singing voices prepped and ready...

Have a wonderful Christmas and I'll be back in the New Year.

Instilling a spirit of giving

This is something that I struggle with year on year, trying to instill a spirit of giving in my children at Christmas time. Don't get me wrong here, I feel we should be doing this throughout the year, hence the fact that Mr Beehive and I do things as many others do such as sponsor a child and give to our favourite charities and we try to encourage the children to participate in charity events or collections.

In previous years the children have made shoeboxes of gifts to donate to other children who have less, but I'm not always happy with some of these bigger organisations' underlying messages that seem to be a part of the receiver getting the gift.

We have, in the past, made boxes of needed clothes up to send to families who have less, we did this through an American forum called Mothering, for several years. However, we can't find anything similar in this country.

We've made secret gifts that we've mailed to someone we know has had a rough year and sent them anonymously.

We've drawn and framed pictures or given cookies to residential homes and donated toys to other appeals.

We have also used places like the Oxfam gifts whereupon we've bought chickens for a family as a gift for friends or we've knitted hats for newborn babies in Malawi.

But I'm sure that there is much giving that can be done at home throughout the year and not just at Christmas time. One of the ideas that tickles my fancy at the moment is buying the coffee for the person behind me in the queue and then just leaving.

So the big question I have to ask is, am I doing this in order to instill a spirit of giving in myself and my children or am I doing this because if feels nice for me to walk away knowing I've done this? Oh I feel a Phoebe-quandry coming on but you'd better hurry up because for the next few weeks I may be that person in front of you in the Costa queue ;-)

Perhaps though, if we all just chose one or two nice things to do for the person in front or behind us, that we don't normally do, perhaps help them load their shopping in the car, let them go in front of us in the queue if we have more time than them, sweep the leaves of our elderly neighbours' lawn whilst we're out there doing our own? Offer to put our neighbours' bins out or put them back in once the dustcart has gone? I'm sure there are endless ideas.

Please share your giving.

Good things come to those who try hard

It's been a pretty miserable week for the eldest Beehive. Following a rough night on Monday we went to the doctor on Tuesday only to be sent up to the children's ward at the hospital. We didn't leave again (or rather he didn't) until Thursday afternoon.

At first the doc thought he may have a pneumothorax, so wanted a chest x-ray, however, the docs on the ward decided that they'd reassess after putting him on a nebuliser.

Long story,  cut short, he eventually got his sats above 94% and kept them there and, by Thursday was able to go four hours between inhaler sessions and now we have our boy back home. He's on some preventative meds now and still has his inhaler, but, with luck, we hope we can try to keep him well.

He's doing so much better now.

However, he has also learned that patience and doing your best will pay off in the end having received a wonderful opportunity this morning.

About three months ago he went on a selection weekend with the scouts for a one in a lifetime chance to go to Japan for a Jamboree in 2015.
Despite being riddled with eczema and again, being in hospital for treatment, he decided he had to go and push through it.
Unfortunately he wasn't selected, but he did really well, missing out by only a few points. He had to go through some grieving, disappointment, a sense of failure and all the other emotions that come with really wanting something but it being out of your grasp and, because my child is normal, the green eyed monster because two other members of your troupe were selected and you weren't, but still, a maturity lesson.

This morning he was invited by one of the original selection committee to take a place on the Icelandic Jamboree next year. We are all so excited for him.
He has a year of hard work ahead of him as he has to fund raise a considerable amount of the travel but it's going to be a fantastic opportunity with lots of other learning curves!

The younger boy beehive has also done fantastically well this week. He yet again secured a silver medal in his age group at the APTI national tae qwon do competition and then three days later managed to get his blue belt with a grade A pass.

The littlest is singing her heart out with a solo spot coming up in her Stagecoach cabaret and she's entering the local young musician in her age group this year.

All I can do is sit back and watch them with my heart exploding with pride. We are just loaned our children to help them on their journeys and I am reminded this more than ever, not only when they disagree with me or each other, or make completely different choices to me, but when I see them try and succeed, or try and not succeed in things that mean so much to them.

A cowboy cookout

What a glorious evening, that started as a very, very dubious day. On the tail winds of the St Jude Day Storm we thought that we were doomed for LMB's very early Cowboy Cookout party. Armed with stacks of indoor crafts that we could do inside the yurt should the weather decide to turn on us, we headed over to a very new Yurt site that is close to us. We'd hired this fantastic yurt for the night and invited several cowboys and cowgirls to help us celebrate.

All cowboys were encouraged to chip in and peel things that they most definitely would not be eating!!

Older cowboys were assigned to the fire pit and the making of hot dogs, baked beans and corn on the cob. You can only see by the look on his face the sheer delight he gets in the simple things in life! The hat made an appearance too.

This photo was just too amazing to miss. Are we in Oxfordshire or are we in Montana? The clouds give the illusion of mountains in the background.

I was unable to take pictures of the birthday girl blowing out her candles as the wind did it for her everytime, but as this was an early party, she has another opportunity to do this on her actual birthday in a couple of weeks time.

After the guests had left, the cousins settled down for a movie and an overnighter in the yurt.

The sisters celebrated the end of another successful birthday party with some well deserved  bubbles!

Finally, the yurt glowed in all it's Hobbiton glory in the failing sunlight....

Snuggled under layers and layers of duvets, sleeping bags, cowboy ponchos, gloves, hats and each other, we all lay down on futons for the night to dream of cattle rustling and lasso knots....

Well, until the ruddy Carbon Monoxide alarm went off this morning at 4am! In all seriousness, it could have been a very different story, in fact, maybe not even one that I would have been telling, but we are all fine.

The wood burner had been out for over 5.5 hours by the time the alarm sounded, so we are all somewhat confused, but perhaps the vents weren't completely closed on the fire, maybe there needs to be ventilation panels in the doors, however, the CM alarm worked successfully and woke us all. If there is one thing it has taught us, it is that carbon monoxide is EVIL and an alarm a necessity as there was no smell, no headaches, no funny tastes, nothing visually evident. If you don't have one and have an open fire or woodburner, GET ONE! I think new legislation states that all woodburners fitted by a professional have to have an alarm installed with them, but if yours precedes this or you just don't have one, please get one.

However, with an intermittent monotone voice and shrieking alarm telling us there was a 'Carbon Monoxide Warning', this little band of cowboys had to pack their things, saddle up and climb aboard their noble steeds to head the 3 miles home to beds that didn't consist of small children, hard slats and the need to wear the whole contents of their winter wardrobes. Glamping is apparently what it's called...I'm not entirely convinced !!

Today, to clear our lungs of any possible nastiness, we have been at the allotment making a path. I'm debating whether to invest in two or three small maiden bare root apple trees to run along one side. I would train them as espaliers. My neighbour allotmenteer (is that a word? Well, it is now!) has a polytunnel that runs alongside where I'd put these trees, so I don't want anything tall to take away any of her light, but equally I think that this area is going to be better suited to a higher fruit tree rather than veg. However, another part of me thinks that this is rather an investment to put onto an allotment. Hmmm, what would you do?

Anyway, I'm off to learn how to make proper bread now with the GB Bakeoff masterclass...