We got our lovely hens, and they’ve been making themselves at home in their new des res. They love dandelions and mealworms - and so far have laid 9 gorgeous eggs for us.

 

 

 

I’ve watched our Hawthorn or May tree burst into bloom and scent the garden with its lovely sweet smell…

 

 

I’ve watched time go slowly, and disappear on the breeze…

 

 

And our new tree, a Snowy Mespilus spring into bloom…

 

 

Tiny little bulbs transform into flowers before my eyes, without my realising…

 

 

Appreciation for every colour under the sun - the reds, yellows and oranges of the flower borders coming together to complement each other perfectly…

 

 

The syrupy smell of the wallflowers on the breeze…

 

 

And 12 Hispi cabbages all in a row…

 

 

Our blackbird singing on a pine tree, singing to his mate and to anyone who’ll listen…

 

 

And the first, delicate blue cornflower of the season - forever marking the beginning of Summer and the beginning of a new season of delights.

 

I haven’t done one of these for what seems like ages, even though my husband keeps sending me links that he thinks I’d like to share. Isn’t he lovely? Ok, so on with the show!

• Firstly my husband sent me a link to a really stunning exhibition going on in San Francisco, which I’d absolutely love to go to, but sadly the airfare would send us completely out of pocket - and I don’t have a current passport. But if I did have those things, I’d be off to see Catherine Wagner’s exhibition of artwork dedicated to antique lightbulbs.
• If you’re in the UK and looking for a lovely place to do your ecological shopping, then look no further than the Ethical Superstore. Whilst I haven’t bought anything from them yet, I am incredibly tempted by their solar-powered water features and organic fairtrade cotton t-shirts!
• Could you live on £465 (US$927 / AU$1,114 / NZ$1250) a year? That’s what David Maclement took to doing. A NewZealand resident he created a webpage detailing his dietary needs per day, and as a man of 61 he manages to live rather well - if a tad sparsely on marmite, brown bread and a lot of milk! It shows how little we can live on, and how much we do eat that maybe we don’t need to.
• On the Eco front - to make one cotton t-shirt it takes 100 litres of water and 40g of toxic pesticides. Not to mention the toll it takes on the countryside, and those who work it - the child labourers and the poverty-stricken farm workers. Once collected it will be dyed with chemicals known as Azoic dyes, harsh and carcinogenic they will be rubbing up against your skin daily - without you thinking about it. Anyone in England will remember a food scare a couple of years ago regarding Sudan 1, an Azo dye that had mistakenly got into chilli powder and caused a media fuoré. And if cotton’s not being sprayed with pesticides, it’s being genetically modified. Fantastic. So from now on I will try my hardest not to buy any cotton that isn’t organic. Hemp is a really good alternative to cotton (and no, not that sort!), and the market for bamboo is growing too.
• But luckily there are now lots of places selling the most gorgeous organic cotton, hemp and bamboo very reasonably! A quick Google search yielded lots of results, these are just a few of them!
• Seasalt Organic Cotton Clothing, AllThingsGreen.net, and buyorganics.co.uk.
• On the old iPod at the moment are The National - gorgeous songs with lots of instrumentation, a bit Calexico and a bit Lambchop, but lighter. Songs to watch out for are 90-Mile Water Wall, Daughters of the Soho Riots and It Never Happened. It’s rare that I enjoy a band this much, instantly. Or even that a song will be on repeat non-stop! So top marks to really enjoyable music that will make a Summer lovely.
• And also on the music front, The Cinematic Orchestra have been at the top of all my playlists for ages now - their new LP ‘Ma Fleur‘ sounds as if it’s going to be one of my all-time favourite records. They’ve done all sorts over the years, from chillout electronica (All That You Give) to pared-down haunting songs like To Build A Home and Breathe (on the new LP). As soon as it comes out, one copy will be winging its way to me!

That just about rounds my Friday Walk Around the Web up for today - enjoy browsing!

Can you guess what I’ve been upto?

Jam making is a blissful way to spend an afternoon. The rhubarb became jam and also a cobbler (with real homemade custard - eggs, milk, cream and sugar), made with our very own…

and the larger one? It contained these…!

I spent some of the day weeding in the sun and getting rather sweaty as well, it was so warm! The washing dried within an hour and the flowers were filled with bees. Today has been an introspective day, very peaceful and thoughtful.

Today was a trying day in the coop, I found a freshly laid egg early this morning, identical to the other two, with Indy sitting on it - I presume it’s hers, as she’s the one who crows about it afterwards. Then it came the turn of Gooseberry, who has been quieter than usual - now I know why. She laid her first egg today - it took quite a while, looked incredibly sore (and come on, we all know what ‘lady pains’ are like!) but came out perfectly, with me pacing worriedly.

She re-emerged and in the nestbox was a gorgeous speckeldy egg, warm to the touch. There was a sigh of relief on my part and a really loud crow from Gooseberry, letting the world know just what she’d done. A trying day, but a two-egg day nonetheless - and therefore a very good day indeed.

You’d be wrong if you thought I spent today entirely watching chickens (although it did form a large part…)! Spring is turning so effortlessly into Summer, at a pace that the plants and the garden isn’t accustomed to. Everything is in flower, from our neighbour’s poppies to the scarlet saxifrage above.

Our neighbours very kindly gave us a whole bag of rhubarb (over 4lbs!), going unwanted she knew I’d find something to do with it - tomorrow I’ll be making rhubarb and ginger jam and with what’s left, a hearty rhubarb tart from Nigella’s ‘Domestic Goddess’ book.

I think Spring is the season of hope, of new beginnings and the start of something good. Hope springs eternal, and everywhere I see the promise of things to come.  Early mornings with only me and the blackbirds, the chickens in their coop and the sun on the horizon.  Bliss.

Apart from the madness that is this weather we’ve been having of late - tropical temperatures, humid and cloudy - the garden is a lovely place to be. The early flowers are coming to the end of their flowering lives, tulips looking a bit bedraggled and cherry blossom carpeting the floor. The alpine rock-gardens are all coming into bloom now - and how gorgeous they are! This is our little oxalis depressa, how can one fail to be happy when faced with those flowers?

Summer has come early with the blooming of the Hawthorn in April - it even feels like May, warm nights and bright mornings a sure indicator of the lovely summer to come. Hawthorn is my favourite tree, and we love its beautiful bowers of heady-scented flowers in May, the edible leaves in Summer, the yummy red berries in Autumn and the protection it provides in Winter. Faeries or not, it’s a magical tree. It was the first and only thing in our garden (apart from the dandelions) to flower when we first moved in and the garden was nothing more than a sea of wild grasses and oats.

Whatever happened to yesterday’s egg?  It was ceremoniously fried and eaten with a slice of homemade bread and a shared bottle of Fentimans Dandelion & Burdock. It tasted amazing, we loved every mouthful and thanked the chickens profusely for their efforts with some mealworms.

The hens are like a garden television, providing constant amusement, entertainment and laughter. They are such loveable, friendly creatures, I’m so glad we got them. And I’m learning to stop worrying (thanks Katie!) about their various habits. Today I cleaned them out (they would spill their water all over their house, wouldn’t they) and spent a long time chatting to them. They obviously like being talked to, and as a thank-you, one laid an egg shortly after. It was very warm when I found it, just laid.

It was not destined for the frying pan this time, though. Today it was to be included in Peabody’s Cranberry Orange Cookies, the perfect way to show-off our beautiful eggs.

They tasted lovely, and gave me a much-needed mood-booster from the exhausting hours at work yesterday! If this is a taste of things to come, I’m a happy gal.