Tea Leaves....

Hmmmmm... Lou at Larches is a teensy-weensy bit cross...

The Larches barns are filled with accumulated clutter. Some items are required and some items really need a new home or depositing at the dump.... Oh, ‘scuse me, it's not called the dump anymore is it? It's the recycling centre or, worse still, the sustainability centre!!?? .....Anyhoo back to the point of this ramble...

I was rooting about in the barns, climbing over the sproglets’ bikes, the builders' stash and the leftover rabbit entrails kindly discarded by the cats, when I came upon a particularly nice example of twentieth century design; an MFI cabinet in that delicious wood effect veneer with sliding glass doors, c. 1970. Lov-erly.

Knowing full well what the local auction house would think of my latest piece of period furniture... [...our Ikea phase has recently been disposed of in this manner and I’m fairly sure that the auctioneer did a 'smell' face when he saw it. Subsequently it took several sales before a gullible discerning bidder was found.] I decided against this route this time.

Eureka! Thought I, bearing in mind that I am now top totty authority (numero 24 y’know) on Gardening matters, according to ebuzzing The Global Platform for Social Media Advertising. Oh yeah...

I thought, I know, I shall have a retail outlet for The Larches.....

It’s an honesty cabinet and so far Wyevale Nurseries or indeed any other garden centre need not fear for their livelihood... Situated at the bottom of the bridlepath, I started out by stocking it with some rather delightful strawberry plants, then I added some pots of herbs and then some rather delectable perennials.

In the beginning the children were thrilled to note that a pot of perennials had been removed only to be replaced by a shiny 50p and having made at least £2.50 in three weeks.... wit-ta-woo, I decided to expand production into jam.... [and yes, I have had an Environmental Health visit to pass my kitchen actually... and he was mightily impressed. Smug.]

Within a week, five jars of jam had been stolen! Out-bloody-rageous!

Last week someone took two huge pots filled with flowering strawberry plants. In return they left me some Spanish coins dating from before the Euro!

Yesterday two good sized lupins, raised from seed by me, were also nicked. Sheesh...

It’s a flipping honesty table, not a free for all!

Fortunately I know some lovely army chaps and their wives have very kindly volunteered them to lie in the ditch for the foreseeable future with their gorgeous foliage hats. They will then muller the tea leaves who feel my MFI cabinet is like Tesco but without the paying bit! Marvelous what your taxes will pay for.......

I saw something wicked in the strawberry patch....

7yo and Snowy

It is verging on bonkers here.

Thirty months ago we four, Hubby, the two sprogs and me, arrived to The Larches, catless, sheepless, chickenless, penniless.... (oh hang on, the last one has happened since we've been here.)

Yesterday I had a few pals and their children over for coffee. The Easter holidays have commenced and the sun was belting. According to Postie, as she sat sorting my mail, (bills and junk mostly) it was registering 26° in the van, in March!

‘We’ll pay for this,’ she predicted. An ominous statement. Bearing in mind that several parts of the country are already on hose pipe ban, I think the monthly instalments have already begun....

In the walled garden the mothers’ meeting was called to order over a slice of my coffee and several hunks of home-made Madeira cake... Yes you did read that right, I never really know how much ground coffee to put in the cafetiere. Still, it keeps you on your toes.

Although there were six, variously sized children in the vicinity, they seemed to prefer the privacy of the den, (a straw filled animal shelter in the field near the stables,) rather than the designed order of my raised beds. Now and again they popped back to display a wound, pilfer a cake or down a glass of juice.  Mothers took this opportunity to apply coconut smelling sun cream, heedless of yelps. 

‘There’s a chicken in the house,’ the smallest girl child pointed out as she waited in line to be basted.

She was right. The young white bantam is fearless, determined to seek out food where she isn’t welcome. Chickens are banned from the walled garden and, of course, the house. We temporarily evicted her but out of the corner of my eye I noticed Archie Archer, a black hen with attitude, had flown up and over the wall at the far end of the garden. While we fussed over the small bantam, she was checking out all the edible bits in the delphinium and lupin nursery bed.

Archie

Meanwhile the two lambs bombed up and down the pathways between the raised beds, checking out everything with their soft nibbly mouths. I was bemused to note that the children paid little heed to them while the lambs felt sure they were included in some huge chasing game. The two cats watched the madness from the top of the Shropshire stone wall, bathing in the sun.

Naughty Nibblers

Having just finished Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, I found it all highly amusing.

*

The building work is progressing well. The old porch is being replaced by another within the same footprint, though with marginally less woodworm and damp. Finally we will have a front door and a door bell! No longer will guests wander round and round the property, unsure of how to penetrate the gothic fortress, powerless to alert us to their presence, (as most mobile phones don’t work within 2 miles of the place.)

Old Porch

New Entrance

Coat and Welly Land...Yipeee!

The mums were fairly pleased with the vista, (of the builders I fear.) The smallest girl child was less keen and came to tell tales on the three men working on the house.

‘Those builders have taken their shirts off.’ She said looking stern.

We were restrained. We didn’t rush to look.

‘Come back and tell us if they take their trousers off,’ I advised. She nodded and toddled off.