Wild garlic and bluebells

April was a mixed month: a great start, with the Easter holidays and all the fun that comes with that, and then endlessly cold, wet and windy days when it seemed like spring would never come. The fire was lit, the heating remained on and there was no chance any summer clothes were coming out of the wardrobe.

We went to Brighton for the day in the holidays. It was so windy that it was hard to stand up straight at the pier, but we still had a lovely time. A browse around the shops (I bought a stripy jug), burgers for lunch, playing the games in the arcades. Basketball is their favourite.

Another day out, but closer to home, was the D-Day museum. It was bitterly cold that day (and windy, again) so we didn't hang around outside that much.

John and Angus were in their element inside the museum.

However, it was the Overlord Embroidery which I enjoyed. 83 metres of hand-sewn applique telling the story of the D-Day invasion.

Some of the panels are based on real photos from the time, like the photo above and picture below.

The quality of embroidery and level of detail was quite amazing. 

Traditionally female past times, such as embroidery (always craft, never art) are often associated with decorative images of flowers, birds, animals and other wildlife. It's interesting - and challenging - when you see the representation of death and destruction rendered in fabric and thread; the actions of men, sewn by women. 

I was in there for hours. John had to drag me away. But don't worry, I bought a book in the gift shop.

And we had lunch afterwards. The teenagers did put down their phones, don't worry.

Other highlights included a few trips to Chichester, a always a favourite place, and the most incredible brunch of sweetcorn fritters with poached eggs. I dream about these now.

Lovely as the days out are, it is the quiet home days I love the most in the school holidays. Time to just be in our house and potter and be quietly productive. Spring bedding was (rather optimistically, in hindsight) put on the bed and shelves refreshed with seasonal objects.

Floors were mopped, windows cleaned and skirting boards wiped.

Washing, always washing.

I took every single house plant outside and gave them a bit of love. I re-potted plants that were root bound, or just looking sad, and took cuttings from some others.

I set up a propagation station on the kitchen windowsill and have already planted some new ones.

I spent many, many hours - days even - in the garden over the Easter holidays. I planted seeds and bought plugs in case the seeds don't work out. I weeded and dug over and trimmed and swept.

Things were jet washed and pots were planted up.

My reward was a posy of spring flowers, all from the garden, which looked beautiful in my new jug.

I did try to carve out some quiet moments to myself over the holidays. These take the form of reading (some new favourites below) and listening to audio books (None of This is True by Lisa Jewell was particularly good). I always have my headphones in when I'm gardening - either music or a book or a podcast. 

Other lovely things include haircuts, manicures, picking up my patchwork quilt and feeding myself nice, nourishing food - breakfasts of granola, yogurt and fruit, lunches of minestrone soup packed with vegetables.

So many beautiful walks lately, and all of them in the woods because they are just lovely at this time of year.

The bluebells and wild garlic are two spring highlights I always like to savour. I picked a bunch of the garlic this year and took it home.

I carefully sorted it, composting the odd stray plant and putting the flowers in a jug, then washed and weighed the leaves. 

I followed this recipe and made pesto.

It keeps well in the fridge if you keep a layer of olive oil over the top of the pesto. It's amazing with cheese on toast, as well a stirred into an omelette and with pasta, of course.

We walked in ancient yew woodland...

...spotted the first cow parsley.....

....enjoyed rare glimpses of blue skies....

...and admired pretty washing lines.

Lots of beautiful spring things, despite all the horrible weather. However, it seems that finally spring is with us, with some warmer temperatures and settled dry weather. My next seasonal goal is to sit on the outdoor sofa with a coffee this weekend and, maybe, eat a meal outside if it's warm enough.

Small home improvements

Hello! First of all, can I say thank you for all the lovely comments you leave me on this blog. It means so much and I really appreciate it.

I wanted to share a few small-ish home improvements that we have finished this winter and spring. Most of these have taken months and months to actually be completed but it is nice to tick some jobs off the list. (I love a list.) We have lived in this house for nine years now and still have not done much of the work we would like to do. Rooms constantly need to be decorated, leaks mended, plumbers and roofers phoned.

I'll start with the airing cupboard. This deep cupboard goes into the eaves from Angus's bedroom and goes back a surprisingly long way. It used to house a huge hot water tank which took up most of the space, and was really good for drying washing. However, a year ago, maybe longer, we replaced our very old boiler with a new combi-boiler, which was re-sited down in the garage. The upside to this was instantly improved water pressure, hotter radiators and cheaper gas bills, but the downside was no more hot water tank. When it was removed it left lots of holes in the walls and floorboards which we ignored for many, many months. 

We pulled up and threw out the scrap of carpet and John filled all the holes in the walls. My Dad repaired some of the broken and damaged floorboards and then Mum and I painted the whole space, walls, ceiling and woodwork, with white paint. 

John laid some ply boards on the floor, over the floorboards, and attached a plug-in wall light. Then my Dad built us some slatted (for air flow) shelves and put up a pole for hanging clothes. A team effort.

The storage is brilliant.

Shelves for towels on one side and bedding on the other, and everything clean and dust free. Handily, some hot water pipes still run through the cupboard helping to air everything. 

Next, the bathroom. Now, we had no intentions to do anything at all with the bathroom, We had a new shower, sink and toilet installed in December 2019 and as far as we were concerned, it was finished. However, we had been noticing damp appear in the bathroom and realised we had a slow leak which had been leaking into the wall between the bathroom and kitchen for a very long time.

John chiselled out the pipework, got a plumber in to fix the pipes and then left it to dry out. This is what our bathroom looked like from October to February. I stopped noticing it after a while.

Finally it was filled and sanded by John and then painted by my lovely mum and I. The final joy was the reinstallation of the towel rail - not more cold towels! 

While we were doing work, John added some more tiles to the foot of the shower - that wall gets much more splashed than we thought it would when we had the bathroom fitted - and we decided to change the paint colour since we were going to have to re-paint anyway.

The final step was to add a couple of shelves to the wall above the toilet for extra storage, something our bathroom is always lacking.

Next, the kitchen. I think I already showed you the wooden strips we added to the end panel in the kitchen.

(Can you see the water damage from the leak on the wooden floor? It will fade as it drys out.)

You can see where Ziggy chewed the panel when he was a puppy. We've looked at it like that for about seven years then finally, over February half term, I had the idea to cover it up with some strips of wood. We used pine (cheaper) which we stained with oak oil.

I liked it so much that I persuaded John to add some more to another corner of the kitchen.

We have had these shelves by the window for years. I thought they were going to solve all my storage problems but sadly they just became a dust trap and dumping ground, plus the veneer was going all yellow round the edge.

We took down the shelves, filled the holes and painted. Then, we set to work fixing more pine strips to this white, shiny end panel. We stained the pine strips beforehand, then cut them to size before attaching them. We used tile spacers to keep the spacing consistent. 

 

Finally I added a little lobster decoration from here. 

I love the warmth the wooden tones bring to the kitchen. When we had it fitted we wanted everything clean and white. I don't regret choosing the kitchen but would certainly choose something completely different (warmer, a softer colour, less clinical) today.