Scilly narcissi

Alex and I have formed numerous traditions since relocating to England. We toast the shift from autumn to winter with the first mulled wine of the season each Guy Fawkes night. Every December we ice-skate under the night sky in Bath. On New Years Eve we dine at a seafood restaurant and see a film. In mid June, just before midsummer, we visit Badminton House for their charity garden open day.

Perhaps they are less traditions and more patterns of behaviour; things we enjoy doing and so make an effort to repeat each year. Ever since we met, Alex has given me an angel decoration for the tree on Christmas morning. And ever since we moved to England, each winter he has sent me a shipment of narcissi from the Isles of Scilly. This year, two big boxes of erlicheer that filled the cottage with beautiful spring-is-coming scent arrived on a very spring-like Thursday afternoon.

They have now faded, but I took photos of them dotted around the house.
Of course I did.

All gathered together, before I started putting 

them in every room of the house.

My bedside table.

 His bedside table.

The dressing room.

In the bathroom.

The living room (there was also a vase on the dining table 

and another on the sideboard).

Excessive? Perhaps. Much appreciated? Absolutely.

The Isles of Scilly have a long history of shipping the first daffodils and narcissi of the season to the British mainland. I wrote a little about it HERE.

Kate  x

There's pleasure in both

Yesterday, I arrived home after a fortnight away to the first crocus tips emerging from the ground, a garden full of birdsong & sunshine, and the comfort of my own bed. My dear friend had turned on the heating in our cottage a day before I arrived. She had also very kindly put groceries in the fridge and daffodils on the windowsill.

Yesterday, was a day of hot buttered toast, sunlight streaming through the house, and a desperately needed afternoon nap (that dangerously turned into a whole evening and into the night nap thanks to jet-lag).

Today, the wind is gusty and the rain is driven. I've done numerous loads of post-holiday washing and hauled up to the attic the general flotsam and jetsam that accompanies the return from long-haul travel. 

Today, I have run out of almond milk. But there is beauty and simple pleasure in both kinds of days. Sunshine or not. The tapping of rain or the trill of birds. Black tea or milky tea.

It's just so nice to be home.

Kate  x

The beauty in January

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, or perhaps anywhere, you might be forgiven for thinking immediately that 'beauty' and 'January' are oxymoronic terms. I am a pretty committed January basher myself. In England, this month is particularly brutal. I saw it described online the other day as a 'miserable f#*king bastard.' Sorry for the language, but you can't argue with its accuracy. 

Then yesterday something slightly magical happened. The morning looked something like this:

The frost glimmered and sun shimmered and all morning long the countryside glistened. 

When January is endless days of enveloping shades of grey, when the air is damp and thick with mizzle, when the sky feels like it is mere inches above your head and you haven't seen the sun in days, it can all get a little too much. But the frosty mornings, cold and crisp as they are, become a joyous antidote to the seasonal glum. 

This year, somehow, January has felt less glum. It might be the uncharacteristically clear blue days, the early appearance of snowdrops, or it might just be my deep commitment to my pj's/hot water bottle/book. 

Long may the frosts bring sparkle to our January.

Happy New Year.

Kate  x

The month of May

In the British countryside, the month of May is best summed up as abundant.

The verges and laneways are cloaked with dandelions that reach for the sky and lacy cow parsley that grows at a rate of knots. The hedgerows are filled with blossom, bluebells and a dozen more things I still can't name. Woodland undergrowth is a sea of wild garlic flowers and wild anemones. Agricultural crops are inching up, higher and higher each day. The perimeters of the fields are dotted with clouds of hawthorn in mid-blossom. 

After months of dormancy, everything unfurls, climbs and blooms all at once. 

After a long, bleak winter, you easily forget that England could be this green and fertile! 

The sun has drenched the West Country all month long, sending crops and weeds alike hurtling ever skyward. The daylight and the birds softly begin around 4am, our thin linen drapes no match for their early morning enthusiasm. I really don't mind though. I relish the languid nature of this time of the year as British summertime stretches the days to their pinnacle; 17+ hours long. Going for post-supper walks in the warmth of the sinking sun is such a treat. 

I regularly pull on my wellies and squelch up my favourite local bridleway before wandering along a long forgotten cobbled Roman road running alongside lush, sheep dotted farmland. The Fosseway is close by and Roman history is well documented in this rural pocket at the junction of Wiltshire, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset. My route takes me across a Roman footbridge, though I usually eschew it for the opportunity to wade through the crystal clear water of the brook, giving my wellington boots a much-needed wash in the process. I walk home through the village, peering over garden gates to see what will be in flower next.

As May draws to a close, I see roses blooming around cottage windows, foxgloves outstripping dandelions and hot-pink valerian sprouting from the crevices in stone walls. 

Which means only one thing, 

summer is nigh.

Kate  x

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

April showers

If April showers do indeed bring May flowers, the west country should resemble a flower farm come next month. So far April has been a soggy wash out, which feels doubly unfair seeing as March was punctuated by unseasonably cold temperatures and multiple snowfalls.

Despite a slow start, my garden is finally blooming with life. The daffodils and narcissus are opening their cheery smiling faces. An overgrown forsythia has burst with bright sunshine yellow blossom. The flowering currant is heavy with flowers as well as raindrops. And my tulips are not far behind.

But the mud!!! The mud is never ending. Oh, what i'd give for a lovely boot room to contain wet coats and muddy wellies in...

Even a porch would suffice. Unfortunately for my floors, we step straight from outdoors into the kitchen in our home. With no where dry or covered to remove shoes and coats other than the kitchen, it has been quite a long winter trying to keep the floors clean. I shouldn't moan. I wouldn't swap countryside living for (almost) anything. I adore being able to pull on wellies and seconds later be stomping through the woodland or splashing up the lane to get eggs at the farm gate. 

Mud is simply a close companion to country life. 

I know this very well. 

Now. 

But the first time after we moved here and my new friend asked if I wanted to go for a walk, I stupidly pulled on my active wear and laced up my trainers. I really did think she would be similarly attired. Moments before she arrived at my front door I came to my senses and changed into jeans & wellies. Context is everything. I wasn't going for walks around the leafy suburban streets of the lower north shore in Sydney anymore. No! The paths I now walked were made entirely of mud. A couple of minutes later she knocked on my front door wearing Le Cheameau's and I knew I'd come very close to looking like a clueless townie playing at country pursuits.

Jeans + wool jumper + wellies. 

That's my uniform now. Such is living in the English countryside.

Kate  x

Muddy wellies and lent lilies

My wellies might be the muddiest they've been since first treading on English soil, 

but yesterday I spotted daffodils in the dappled light of School Lane.

The European wild daffodil is also called the lent lily as it blooms concurrently with the lenten season. The smiling yellow faces of daffodils are such a welcome sight each year. Here in our village they cling to the damp banks of the brook, tall and proud, gazing at their reflection in the swirling water below them. I remember when we first moved here I really appreciated the great number of daffodils planted throughout this corner of Wiltshire. In just about every village we drove through, dense clumps of daffodils greeted us along the roadsides. To have the bright canary yellow colour spreading their cheer after a winter devoid of colour was such a joy to see. 

Spring is starting to creep in, tinging the air with warmth and sunshine, unhurried, but growing in strength with each passing week. Even the chickens agree.

More and more often my wanders up the lane to the farm gate are rewarded with fresh speckled eggs. Never uniform, but always eliciting a smile from me.

Kate  x

A secret garden

A garden unfurls its secrets month by month, 

as the seasons blossom, then ebb away.


“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed 
and every morning revealed new miracles.” 
 Frances Hodgson Burnett

February is the last unknown month in our little patch of earth- a courtyard garden enclosed by a Cotswold stone wall, nestled deep within the By Brook Valley, and overlooked by soaring beech trees. From March, we'll start to cycle through the seasons again, this time with a year of knowledge behind us.

So, what has appeared this month?

Hundreds and hundreds of snowdrops. 

Defying the freezing nights and harsh frosts, they began to emerge before the new year had even begun. Now, with a touch of weak winter sun on their pure white faces, they sit gently nodding in unison in the frigid breeze. All around them signs of spring are following suit- the tips of bluebells, daffodils, narcissus and tulips are likewise pushing up through frozen ground and decaying leaf litter to greet the sunshine. A few aconites have popped their canary-yellow heads up amongst the bare branches of a fuchsia bush. Buds are appearing on the rose bushes and the snowball viburnum. Leaves are tentatively unfurling, slowly, but they're definitely there.

Next month I know the garden and the countryside will become a riot of bright yellows. Daffodils, forsythia, primrose and gorse will take centre stage, and the agricultural land around us will be awash with sunshine-yellow rapeseed. For now though, the snowdrops sit in their thousands, bobbing in the breeze.


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.

2018

Yesterday, the eve of the new year, Alex and I went for a walk along the road to see the swollen brook and consider how likely it might be to flood- it is looking alarmingly high! 

What I was not expecting to see was our neighbours farm-gate stall stocked with eggs! I haven't been able to buy their eggs since August. And yet, here in the bleak midwinter on the cusp of a new year, sat a dozen brown speckled eggs for purchase. 

Not much is growing in the hedgerows at the moment, as you'd expect, so I snapped this pic with a piece of broken pottery that I unearthed in our garden when I was planting out bulbs in the autumn. 

You can see the farm fresh eggs I've managed to buy throughout 2017 HERE and HERE. They became a sort of seasonal study as the months went by and the seasons unfurled all their treasures.

Happy and bountiful New Year blessings.

Kate  x

The Derbyshire Dales

The Derbyshire Dales are pretty indeed, but not in a way that is wholly unbelievable like some of England's southern areas of reputed natural beauty. Derbyshire is real.

The rolling emerald green hills, intersected with miles upon miles of grey stone walls, are dotted with very attractive stone barns and outbuildings, their pleasing aesthetic a happy accident of their utilitarian use and design. The barns, and the machinery they house, are very much for function. And on the horizon you will see the silhouette of chimney stacks, their trailing smoke plumes indicative of a long industrial history. The North is the birthplace of industry. From the peak of the industrial revolution in the 19th Century to the manufacturing heydays of the 20th, the timeline of modern industry is woven through England's North.

The natural landscape is wild and weather beaten in places. But its rugged and exposed beauty is no to obstacle to the people who live and farm here.

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