I made J a birthday cake. It is small but perfectly formed as he is always complaining I feed him up too much and he is getting fat. On a somewhat related note, R and I are on a diet at the moment – so I deliberately made a coffee and walnut as J likes […]

Apparently 58% of people in UK regularly do not make their bed in the morning. I almost always do – but yesterday I put clean sheets on the bed and also washed my dressing gown. I put the newly laundered garment on the bed while I looked for my clothes, and turned round to see […]

I knew this would happen but unfortunately the weather turned nasty just in time for the village Gala Day. It seems to do this every single year. In fact the year I helped out with a stall they decided to hold it in the field next to the school, it poured with rain and the […]

Came back from a walk the other day and all the way down the hill I could hear the loud noise of distressed sheep. When I got to the bottom I saw the reason. All the adult ewes had been separated from their (now very large) lambs so they could be sheared. The lambs were […]

Sad to say, although I am a keen cook, I have never made a curry completely from scratch before. That is not to say that I use cook-in sauces or buy the whole thing is a packet (1970’s Vesta style), but rather that I use fresh ingredients, but Patak’s curry paste rather than grinding my […]

Thursday was the most idyllic day since we have lived here (R says I claim this for several days every year). I knocked off work at 3pm and walked up to the waterfalls. It was sunny and warm (about 75) on the way up, but once I was in the woods it was delightfully cool, […]

At this time of year Tora goes all the way down to the village at least three times a week. There is one particular garden which exerts a fascination I don’t understand because he is nearly always there. He will then follow us back through the arboretum and all the way home (if we haven’t […]

As I may have mentioned before, we have 3.5 acres of garden, surrounded by the Donich Water to the right and rear, with forest to the left and a rough track leading to the house at the front. Thankfully, not all of it is laid out to grass, but about an acre of it is […]

I’ve just spent every spare minute for the last few days doing up my bedroom – hence not many blog posts. Here are some of the results – completely finished now apart from a new rug I am still waiting for. Plus a local craftsman is not only going to repair our summerhouse door which […]

I’ve been closely observing our cherry tree over the last few days as it is getting round to the right time for it delivering some fruit. Yesterday there were four large cherries at the front of the tree which were very nearly ripe, and many more just coming up for being ready for picking. I […]