Country pursuits

The warm weather has graced us at long last! Summer may have actually leap frogged spring and arrived early this year. Not that anyone minds. The whole country seems collectively drunk on sunshine and long languid days outdoors sipping Pimms.

We feel especially lucky to have been gifted a bank holiday weekend filled to the brim with uninterrupted sun and temperatures above 23 degrees C! The English summer is punctuated by showers and wholly unfair temperature dips even at the best of times, so this weather is throughly welcome and embraced (pink nose and shoulders attest to that). 

We've been outside almost non-stop. Tea drinking in the garden, Pimms at the village pub, and post-supper walks in the woodland; which are carpeted in frothy wild garlic flowers and that very particular blue hue that belongs entirely to English bluebells. 

It feels like heaven on Earth.

We attended the last day of Badminton Horse Trials yesterday where I was overcome with a sudden urge to curate the perfect country lady wardrobe consisting of all things tweed, forthwith adorning every outfit with pheasant & mallard feathered brooches. The deeper I get into life in rural England the less ridiculous I feel about owning a felt fedora or a third pair of wellington boots.
I have found my bliss in the English countryside, and now I need the wardrobe to match! Or perhaps it's the sunstroke fuelling a sartorial quarter-life crisis. 

However you're enjoying these long and light filled days on the cusp of true British summertime, have a Pimms for me.

Kate  x

Winter snowdrops

After two weeks away from England, 

we've swapped the actual snowflakes of Japan 

for the first snowdrops of the season in our garden.

It is so good to be home.

Of course I had to snip some to bring indoors. 

I admire snowdrops so much. 

Always the first sign of the coming spring 

(even when it is still quite far off), 

they never fail to push up through frosty days and nights. 

So delicate, yet how tough they are to endure gloomy January and frozen February.

Kate  x

Last years snowdrops at Cerney House Gardens.

Advent

I went for a frosty morning walk through the woodland today, the 1st day of December. I came home with frozen toes and nose, but also with a wintry wreath I fashioned along the way. With some fallen branches, complete with little pine cones still attached, and red velvet ribbon, I now have a foraged wreath in our bedroom to mark the season.

Happy Advent.

Kate  x

Bare rose bushes

Summer roses are a very distant memory now. My three rose bushes are in a deep slumber. They were only planted in the spring, so hopefully an autumn and a winter to settle their roots will result in a more prolific flowering period next year.

Kate  x 

Living in an English idyll

Logically, now is about the time I should be sitting down to compose my thoughts on a year living in England. Realistically, I find it hard to reflect on an entire year and translate those feelings into a single blog entry. For the first six months we lived a little like nomads, in three different temporary places, our shipment from Australia frustratingly still in boxes in an Oxford storage shed. But these past six months of being settled in our own space, has allowed for a proper sense of living in England. I feel better able to articulate the last few months, rather than a whole year.

You can recap on the anticipation of moving, here if you like.

As I type, over six months have passed since we moved into this Cotswold cottage next to a brook in what is often described as "the prettiest village in England". We are feeling more and more at home; our neighbours recognise us and chat to us if we pass them on a walk in the woodland. We've volunteered for the village charity car boot sale. And we are very excited to attend the next few Christmas social events organised by the social committee. I am particularly looking forward to Carols by candlelight in the village church. 

As village residents we've seen three seasons, and all the delights that they each have to offer. We moved in at the very beginning of spring, when the daffodils were blooming en masse on roadsides and along the brook, seemingly welcoming us with their endlessly cheery disposition. Primrose carpeted the churchyard, vines unfurled. Wild ramson shoots scented the air, lambs bleated in nearby fields, ducklings appeared on the brook and bluebells in the woodland. I clipped whatever was in the garden to bring spring indoors whenever I could.

Summer swept in with warm breezes that swayed the branches in the towering trees around the cottage, windows were flung open to let in the grassy scent of summer and the rustling noise of the tree canopy. Farm traffic thundered through the village multiple times a day, a frenetic energy took hold of this beautiful agricultural region as farmers used every second of the long days to harvest & bale and plough & sow. Sunlight stretched long into the night and the birds anticipated dawn sometimes as early as 4am.

Autumn has gripped now. Misty mornings are frequent, smoking chimneys the tell-tale sign that fireplaces are being put back into use. And those lush green trees I gazed up at all summer long? Some days I silently curse them as another burst of wind leaves the doorstep inches deep in leaf litter. Again.

A couple of days ago I lit our first fire since moving in. 

Our basket of woollen hats and gloves is back next to the front door for easy reach as we walk outside into crisp morning air. And there is a lovely comfort that comes with walking through the house at dusk drawing the curtains and switching on lamps.

We're still buying pieces for the house to completely make it a home, but I think i'll start sharing pockets of the house as we find items and style rooms. I had intended to photograph and share more of the interior of the cottage- an 18th Century building is interesting after all. In truth, it's been a slower process than I anticipated to find furniture we truly love. But with a few recent, much dreamed of finds, I hope to get some photographs taken before the autumn sunshine is dimmed by winter fog and it becomes too dark to take pictures indoors.


Kate  x