Blog Archive

Sunday 18 September 2016

Running the gauntlet...

Or, how not to get wiped out when cutting the beech hedge by drivers who seem to think that 30mph is a suggestion, rather than a mandatory maximum!

Yesterday, Kevin and I decided that we needed to give the beech hedge its annual haircut. This hedge forms our boundary with the village road; there is a pavement, but it is very narrow and is even narrower when the beech has had a full summer's growth, not to mention the invasive ash seedlings that pop up here and there, or the brambles that stick out to attack the unwary.

So, armed with the electric hedge trimmer, long handled pruners, a rake, yard broom and snow shovel (the latter makes a great 'dustpan'), we pushed the green wheelie bin out so that it was just over the curb and began the assault.

Almost immediately, three cars came past, going up through the village on our side of the road, and they were definitely not doing 30. Nooo - I reckon that they were doing at least 40mph and the drivers seemed surprised that there were actually people on the pavement. The bend before the cottage makes it difficult to see whether there are people or parked cars but still people gun past us. 

The village road is narrow, and there is a point just before our cottage where two vehicles can only just get past each other - the clash of wing mirrors is one of the sounds that we didn't really expect to hear in a quiet Devon hamlet, but it happens a lot. It has happened to us, when despite pulling the Landrover over so that the passenger side was almost in the hedge, an SUV clipped and broke our driver's side mirror (electric, colour-coded and expensive to replace - thanks so much, that driver!).

Anyway, we became adept at hopping back into the beech hedge at the sound of any approaching vehicle but the point is that we shouldn't HAVE to do this. We were on the pavement, not in the road and yet we still felt incredibly vulnerable.

At the beginning of September, we had a water meter fitted; for two days, there was a Transit van outside the cottage, with plastic barriers to protect the workers. The difference in the speed of passing traffic was incredible - most went past really slowly, others at a modest 25-30mph. A couple had to noisily apply their brakes (N.B. not all would-be racers are kids, I've spotted middle-aged drivers charging past us).

There have been talks at the Parish Council meetings for months about a Community Speedcheck being set up - I'll be the first to volunteer! If the speeders are locals, they should know better - they know that livestock/tractors/cyclists are likely to be around any bend in the road. On a stretch that is de-restricted, just 
outside the village, Kevin was toddling along at 30mph past my friend Helen's cottage; he was going slowly in case she was trying to get her car in or out. Instead of Helen, he had a doe leap across the road in front of him. If he'd been going any faster, he said, there would have been venison all over his bonnet.

Why the need to rush through our pretty little village so quickly? Surely a brief spell of 30mph isn't going to make THAT much difference to your journey!

Monday 12 September 2016

The Beginning of the End...

 Wow - that's possibly a bit too dramatic! The website for my final Open University module has opened and all of my books have arrived...it is starting to look terrifyingly real now.



This is the module that will determine my degree classification - hence the nervous smile!
I'll be studying some wonderful texts:

Three Shakespeare plays: As You Like It, Hamlet and Julius Caesar
Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy
Edmund Spencer's The Faerie Queene
William Wycherley's The Country Wife
Molière's Tartuffe
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments
Rousseau's Confessions
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion

and along with these individual works, there are sections on poetry by John Donne and his contemporaries and, later in the module, an exploration of the Romantic and Nationalist movements in poetry.

I adore Shakespeare and Jane Austen, but have already found a great appreciation for the amazing Lady Mary - what a woman! If you get the chance, I urge you to read her Letters - she was possessed of a wicked turn of phrase and was obviously highly intelligent and independent!

I am also required to undertake a fair amount of independent study - not that daunting, considering that when I studied the Children's Literature module, I did look at other novels that were contemporary with Alcott's Little Women, just to see how different her work was from that of her peers, and used the information in my assignments as well as in my final, externally marked work. I am also able to spend time doing this - there are some advantages in being unemployed, I suppose - I'm not sure how much independent study the OU expects from students who, for the most part, are also working full time.

My study corner is prepared. I am working on all the projects around the house and garden that need to be done before the module officially begins in October. Hopefully, I'll be using this blog as a bit of light relief from university  - after all, all work and no play, and so on...


Wednesday 24 August 2016

Progress in the Garden


Not much, admittedly, but the herb wheelbarrow is doing well - the larger of the two parsley plants went in over a year ago (just goes to show that we didn't exactly have a harsh winter last year) and the rest of the plants are new, all but a rosemary cutting that I didn't expect to root at all; it was one of the bits cut to cook with the roasted root vegetables and didn't get used. I had put them all in a little vase of water in the kitchen, so they were decorative as well as useful and, blow me, when I came to change the water I found little roots growing. I left it a bit longer, then planted it out and it seems to be doing well!


We have cleaned up, varnished and painted an old and very decrepit Apple Press to use as a quirky planter and at a recent trip to Waitrose for their Essentials Chicken in Jelly cat food (the only one that our fussy lot will eat), we spotted a sedum that we thought would be perfect in it - Sedum 'Rose Carpet'

The grey-green of the leaves goes well with the Hammerite Smooth 'Wild Sage' paint that we used on the apple press and with the Garden Colours used on the bench and small table.




The pond is looking much better now that we have cleared a lot of the duckweed!



Though we haven't got all of it yet!

The 'Scrumptious' apples on our tree are colouring up nicely, though we have had an attack of Apple Scab and, of course, we can't use anything on the tree now as the anti-fungals have been withdrawn. It was a very wet winter and spring, which didn't help; we'll just have to make sure that all of the leaves are swept up in the autumn and hope for less rain next season.


The two hawthorn trees on the boundary are thick with berries - the birds are going to have a feast this year, there was far more blossom this spring and this is the result!


We have measured up for the fencing panels to divide the garden and Kevin started to chop up the last remaining Hebe in what will become the vegetable garden. 



We also have to get rid of the two conifers, but I doubt we'll be able to get those in my little car to take them to the dump - we'll need someone with a trailer!
The Very Vigorous Evergreen Clematis had to be pruned to within an inch of its life as it  had rendered the pergola on which it was draped somewhat unstable. It looks awful at the moment but the pergola has been mended and repainted and hopefully the clematis will stop sulking and return next year, all invigorated. I hope so, it has the most beautiful fragrance that fills the whole garden with perfume in the mornings.


We've also done a Feed and Weed on the lawn - it will never be a beautiful bowling green sward (it is far too uneven for that) but it looks a lot happier now and we'll reseed the odd patches in September. Considering how awful it looked the year after we moved in, what with all the to-ing and fro-ing, installation of the oil tank and so on, it has recovered remarkably well.


New from old.

I have in my stash, some curtains that my husband tells me hung in his and his first wife's kitchen many years ago. The fabric is called 'Arden' and it was made in Britain by a firm called Textra.

I know that Janet is an accomplished knitter but I don't believe that she sews and Kevin can't remember who made them but at a guess, I would have said that they were made by his mother - Kathleen - who was an excellent seamstress. These curtains were lined and french seams were used to join the widths of the cream lining fabric, an impressive step that I will freely confess that I'm not sure I would have been bothered to take.

The colours are as bright as they were when the fabric was first printed - there was no fading to be seen when I let down the hems - and the weakest part of the whole construction was in the cotton used to stitch them, which broke easily.





I have only unpicked one curtain and there is easily enough fabric for me to make the apron that I am planning; September sees the first of the Soup and Sweet Lunches at the Village Hall and I always help out there when possible. An apron is essential! I'm also a messy cook, but currently I only have one pinny, so I found a pattern for a substantial pinafore and when the bias binding arrives on Friday, I can get to work.



I love the fact that I can create something new from something old, and I love the fact that this fabric, though it is around forty years old, is still as strong, bright and useful as the day that Textra printed and sent the bolts out for sale.

Tuesday 23 August 2016

Of Yurts, Tractor Rides and Wine-Tasting.

Yesterday, Kevin and I drove to Goathurst in Somerset where his daughter Kate and our grandson Fin were spending a few days with her friend Jodie and her son, 'glamping' in a yurt. We hadn't seen Kate and Fin since last October, though we speak often and keep in touch through Facebook, so it was lovely to get together with them and to meet up with Jodie and Matt.

Once off the motorway, we had a pleasant drive through some pretty villages, finally arriving at the  Secret Valley, 400 acres of farmland, some of which is devoted to various 'glamping' accommodations (I rather fancy the Shepherd's Hut - very romantic) and met up with Kate and Jodie (the boys were racing their radio-controlled cars in the Play Barn).

After lunch, we went on the tractor tour of the site, passing donkeys, alpacas and free-range chickens on the way. They grow Christmas Trees here and apparently hares like living in the plantations so I kept my eyes peeled but no hares came out to watch us rattle past, sadly.




At the top of a steep hill, we arrived at the Wine Tasting Hut, where we tried a White, a Rosé, two very nice Reds and a sparkling Pinot Noir, while the children on the tour played Quoits. Then we were off again to view the vineyard




and down to the stream to have a Duck Race - Kevin was appointed Chief Duck Pusher, with a long pole designed to persuade any reluctant rubber ducks off the shallows and into the clear, fast-running water. I was too busy watching my own, highly reluctant, duck to take photos though.

They have rare breed turkeys here - the Narragansett Turkeys which are apparently pretty close to the wild turkeys that the Pilgrim Fathers would have hunted for their Thanksgiving Suppers - according to Farmer John, who conducted the tour, they have a 'gamier' taste than commercial breed turkeys and there is less meat on them. I didn't manage to get a photo, but this is what the cock bird would look like!



They have also introduced South African Boer Goats for meat production - the little flock of does came hurtling down the hill to their pen at the sound of the Land Rover, bells jingling merrily. Boer Goats are friendly and docile - the buck wasn't with them, for obvious reasons, but he apparently gets  to visit his harem next month!

When we got back to the drop-off point, we trotted into the communal kitchen, where Kate had all the makings for a cream tea, after which we went to look at their yurt.




The doorway is extremely low and you definitely have to stoop to get in, but it looked very cosy. Kate did say that she and Jodie found it very hot on Sunday night, but I think they were chillier on Monday night, given Kate's Facebook status!

The prices for the three nights look very reasonable, especially given the excellent facilities and standard of accommodation - it'd be great if the whole family could get together there, even if we weren't all in the yurts (don't think Kevin's or my back would be happy on a futon!).

We left them planning to light the firepit and toast marshmallows, and we got back home around 7pm - the Secret Valley is about one and three quarter hours from us. Have to say that I'd highly recommend it as a venue for couples AND families.

#SomersetsGreatEscape.


Thursday 11 August 2016

Yogurt-making Part 2 and a visit to Knightshayes.



My second batch of yogurt used UHT skimmed milk, dried milk powder and some of my earlier batch of yogurt as a starter. I don't think it worked as well in the slow cooker, sadly, as it turned out to be rather runny and no amount of straining was going to change that. It did, however, taste more 'yogurty'!

Cost-wise, the UHT and skimmed milk powder is the better recipe, so I decided to look for a yogurt maker, thinking that perhaps the fact that the slow cooker was a bit hit-and-miss regarding temperature maintenance was the problem. An online buddy pointed me in the direction of the Easiyo maker and although Easiyo promotes the use of their own yogurt mixes, my friend uses hers to make UHT method yogurt successfully.

I found one online from Easiyo at a reduced price (because it had no box - WHY would I even want the box?) and it arrived on Tuesday, so before we went out to Knightshayes Court (more of which later), I started a batch of yogurt in my new toy!

Kevin and I became National Trust members last year and we do try to get to a Trust property as often as we can. I had been wanting to visit Knightshayes as a fellow Open University student works there - of course, we had picked her day off!

We left home around 10.15 and after a long but pretty drive cross-country, arrived at Knightshayes a little after mid-day. The house is spectacularly Gothic, the interiors by Crace are typical of the style (and reminded me much of Pugin's and William Morris's work). It was, however, the garden and more specifically, the kitchen garden that inspired me. I wish we had the space for a cutting garden as well as veggies - the flowers that are grown specifically for the house are breathtakingly lovely. The veggies looked gorgeous too - french and runner beans, heirloom peas, onions, spinach, pumpkins, courgettes and squash all in season and oh, the globe artichokes - past their best for eating but so beautiful for cutting for flower arrangements. We must certainly plant artichokes!


Knightshayes

The Cutting Borders in the Walled Kitchen Garden

Artichoke in flower.
Onions - aren't these beauties?

Pumpkin - these take up so much room, though!

Knightshayes even has a vineyard!

This visit will be the first of many - the atmosphere in the house is warm and inviting and I could spend hours in those gardens.

Anyway, back to the yogurt...

We left it until 10pm (it had then had 12 hours) and had a quick taste - the texture was much better and it was nicely yogurty. It tasted a lot better on Wednesday morning, after it had been chilled in the fridge overnight. So, a success then - looks like I'll be making our yogurt from now on and it works out at £0.66p per litre, so a saving as well.

Saturday 30 July 2016

Making yogurt in a slow cooker.

We get through an awful lot of fat-free greek yogurt in our house - I can scarf my way through a kilo of the stuff all by myself with fruit for breakfast and it is so useful in cooking too.

We prefer the thicker Total version but it is expensive, so when I spotted a recipe for 0% Greek Yogurt using a slow cooker, rather than the usual wide-mouth flask (which I don't have) or a yogurt-maker (which I don't really want to buy as I have no room in the Little White Devon Cottage's Tiny Kitchen), I decided to try it out,using a small pot of 0% Total Greek Yogurt as the starter.

Starting with two litres of skimmed milk, I poured this into the slow cooker, switched it on to the High setting, put the lid on and waited for the temperature of the milk to reach 180o F. Once the milk was at temperature (this took about two hours), I switched off the slow cooker and allowed the milk to reach 110o F. This is important, as the live bacteria in the starter will be killed around 120o F.
The cooling took a little over two and a half hours and at this point, I made sure that the yogurt that I was using as a starter was out of the fridge, so that it would be at room temperature to add to the cooled milk.
When the milk had cooled sufficiently, I added 120g of 0% Greek Yogurt to the milk and whisked it in. Then I took the ceramic slow cooker pot out and swaddled it in towels, to be left like this overnight.

This morning, the yogurt had set, with whey floating on the top, so I decided to strain it - this is messy and takes FOREVER. I scalded some butter muslin, lined my sieve with it and left a 500g pot-full of yogurt dripping through while I got on with other things. Eventually, the drips of whey stopped, so I transferred the yogurt back into a clean pot and started on the next batch. By the time that I have finished, I should have a reasonable quantity of yogurt - it may not be as thick as the greek original, but I'm quite proud of my efforts.



Wednesday 29 June 2016

What happens when you redecorate...

while your wife is writing her End of Module Assignment?

Well, it had to be done sometime and although I was dreading the disruption, I was able to escape to the conservatory and the sitting room does look much fresher now! With my University work finished for the summer break,  I'm finally getting around to posting pictures.

When we moved in, it was enough just to get the boxes sorted out so that we could:

  • Find things
  • Actually get into the rooms, instead of having to clamber over boxes
  • Locate the cats before bed-time, in case one had decided to stay in the outside run and then wail at 2 a.m. because they wanted to Come In and Couldn't.
So furniture was put in place and that was that! We left things for two years and then decided it was time for a rethink. The layout in the sitting room worked, but the room did feel a little cramped and in any case, it was in dire need of repainting.

So after much deliberation and several sample pots, we chose a paint colour (Dulux White Mist in a matt finish) and I took a break from studying to help Kevin pack up the contents of the dresser so that it could be moved away from the wall. We bought another wall-light to complement the one that we had fitted last year and Kevin got to work.

This is the result - the room looks much larger now that the dresser is on the wall facing the windows. 




This means that Kevin finally gets to enjoy a spot by the wood burner!

The cats are happy because they now have two vantage points from which they can launch themselves on to the bookshelves (an unintended consequence and naturally not something that we had planned!) and they are also able to get closer to that wood burner when it is lit!





Tuesday 28 June 2016

Here there be rocks...

We have spent the last few days clearing the ground at the end of the garden, in preparation for moving the shed and building the raised beds for our vegetable garden project.

It seems that many years ago (and certainly before the last owners of our cottage), there was a sort-of rockery at the back of the pond, probably planted with a couple of little conifers. The conifers are no longer small, as you can see!


As we started to clear the area behind the conifers, we came across these fabulous slabs of stone.


and there are far more hidden in the undergrowth! The plan is to clear this entire area and then construct at least four reasonable sized raised beds. The soil here is heavy clay, and I swear that every snail and slug in the South West has moved here  - I have never seen so many! We may have to invest in nematodes, though I have read that a hefty garlic solution is also effective. It's either that, or lay in some cheap beer for them!


This is the area where the shed will go; the pine tree shades the ground here, so it makes sense to have the growing beds on the side of the garden that gets the most sun. We keep finding old slates here - can only assume that they were used to mark the edge of the lawn and probably came from our roof when it was re-done some years back.

Behind the conifers were two elderly hebes (see above); I took cuttings before we started to cut them down, so hopefully they will root and then I can grow them on. When we moved here, there were two massive hebes near the drive, but they had to go when we had the oil tank and boiler installed. Be nice to be able to put one or two back in the garden if I can.

Once we have cleared the ground behind the conifers, we will put up a fence right across the garden to divide the areas, probably without a gate for ease of access, then use the stones to build a rock feature. Nothing gets wasted around here!

Sunday 26 June 2016

Patiently waiting...

Rumour has it that the results for my latest module (EA300, Children's Literature) may be released earlier than 15th July. This happened last year and I got the results on my birthday (9th July) which this year also happens to be my 60th!

I wish that I could say that I am quietly confident, but since this module could have quite an impact on my overall degree classification, the nerves have kicked in and I'm finding it hard to concentrate on the books for my final module (A334 - Shakespeare to Austen).

The books are, on the whole, interesting; three Shakespeare plays (As You Like It, Hamlet and Julius Caesar), Spenser's The Faery Queene, Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, Moliere's Tartuffe, Wycherley's The Country Wife, then we have Arabian Night's Entertainment, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's incomparable Turkish Embassy Letters (she's a hoot, loving that one!), Rousseau's Confessions (not looking forward to that so much), Swift's Gulliver's Travels and finally two Jane Austen novels - Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice. Once I get the module books, there will be reading there as well (poetry, mostly).

The main downer is that my lovely tutor, Beth, who has mentored me through A230 and EA300, will not be tutoring A334. She has always given incredibly detailed feedback on all our work, with great pointers for improvement and I will really miss her!

As for my 60th, we haven't got anything planned - if the weather is nice, we have a lot of beautiful places that we can visit; we are National Trust members and there are several lovely properties with inspiring gardens and we are also very close to  RHS Rosemoor

In the meantime, our own garden could do with a bit of TLC - watch this space!

The pond needs a bit of work and that conifer has GOT to go!

This is our 'Family Apple Tree', carrying three varieties:Christmas Cox, Scrumptious and Bramley apples.

A job a day...

This will be something of an update post, since I haven't written anything on my blog for almost nine months (!)
I've decided to get back to writing again, inspired by some lovely blogs that I have been reading, so here goes:

July - September 2015

While I was hammering away at Open University End of Module Assignments and exam revision, Kevin had been plugging away at a 'job a day' on the cottage.

We  had new work surfaces fitted in the kitchen by the lovely John Baker, while the new ceramic sink unit was installed by Steve Martin (the neatest plumber and heating engineer that I have ever come across!).
Once this was done, Kevin re-tiled the kitchen and painted the units in 'Old English White' eggshell paint. He then used window film to create a frosted glass effect on the glazed cupboard doors and I am thrilled to bits!
Being on a tight budget meant that ripping out the kitchen and starting over was never going to be an option, but when I see what we have been able to create, I couldn't be happier.

This was the start of it, after the work surfaces had been installed and before
tiling over the old tiles (necessary, as we could never have got the old ones off the wall!).


A close-up of the new tiles, and before Kevin painted the units
and put the frosted film on the glazed doors.
Finished! Cabinets painted and frosted film on the doors.

My lovely new sink - I'd lusted after a butler's sink but
there really wasn't room.


Another change was to rip out the truly-tiny shower cubicle and build a dividing wall to create a much smaller combined downstairs loo and laundry room with a neat sliding door.



Note the little hole instead of a handle!

Tiny utility room - just enough space for the washer-dryer, lavatory and washbasin.

The ironing board is a bit small for anything other
than occasional use, but the cover is pretty .

Replacing this surface and the basin, and
re-tiling will be our next big project, along with the
installation of a space-saver lavatory.


This enabled us to bring the fridge-freezer in from the garage and install it where the shower cubicle used to stand. One thing that we did discover was that the 18th Century cob outside wall extends into the 1960s addition, leading us to think that perhaps there was a lean-to of some kind that, over time, became absorbed into the main cottage (the rest of the two storey kitchen and bathroom extension is constructed of rendered concrete block).

Other, harder decisions were also made, I  finally recognised that I was unlikely ever to revive Green Witch Crafts - the kitchen here is too small to make the quantities of soap that I used to produce - and the oils and butters that I brought from Surrey were out of date, so I  had a massive clear-out.
I also had a (very painful) book cull - Oxfam will be thrilled, I'm sure, as everything went into the Book Bank in Bideford - but at least the books that are left are ones that I will read again and again.

It had been too wet to do anything more - I needed to pull everything out and rearrange it and I couldn't do that when it was drizzling, but the weather eased up and I was finally able to make it into the sewing and writing studio that I had been dreaming of, ever since I first saw the cottage.



It's small but I managed to get all of my wool and fabric sash in!
Now to write my best-seller, LOL!