Snapdragon's garden

Morris

I am here blogging away- glass of wine at my side - while the rest of the household watches Top Gear.  This is a big thing in my house - the girls are curled up with hot chocolates under a duvet on the sofa - time with their Dad. Personally I believe Top Gear is a children's programme - a very well made children's programme.; For me it is a chance on a Sunday evening to answer e-mails, do a bit of surfing - have some peace. This may be surprising as I am the person who is instrumental in initiating the scrap yard accessories that litter our land - first the Citroen H-Van; then the Morris Ambulance and then the Airstream. But then of course these were all bought for their design and not for their speed or torque (?)
The H-van is my flower stall and the Airstream my workroom which just leaves the Morris ambulance - originally this was earmarked as my office but with one thing and another (most paperwork being done at night) this never really took off. Instead it is to become a really cool den for the girls - so they have been sanding (Zoe) Priming (Katie)

and putting together a design.At the moment Morris looks like this

but I gather that we are going for a Hippy traveler look with lots of flowers. . . and then they want to borrow my sewing machine to make curtains - with the state of the house at the moment I may just move in.

A time to plan . . . please!

We are now into the second week of the School Holidays and the "I'm bored . . .What can I do . . .I don't want to help with deliveries" has begun.
I love the school holidays - I love the fact that we don't have to rush about in the morning and I appreciate so much that my job allows me to be at home with the children and means that I don't have to cobble together childcare for them over the holidays.
But I do have a job.  And I do need to have some quiet, uninterrupted time to plan what needs to be done in the next 6 months, and I am just getting absolutely none of that at the moment.
An important part of my business is letting the children know that I do work - I learned a lot from my Mother working at home - it is an important part of the process.  I am also very lucky that I can scale down aspects of my job to fit around the children - and lots of things - seed sowing, flower picking, packaging can be done alongside their playing.  The need to spend at least part of the day at home working also stops me from cramming their holiday with "activities" and in theory gives them some much needed self starting down time.
This week we have had the house full with a joyful throng of visiting children - playing schools, painting banners, baking and whining about watching tv.  I have loved it but now I just want to go and curl up somewhere quiet and write some to-do lists.
What a BAD Mummy.

Birthdays and bluebells

It is my birthday today.
Exactly five years ago Euan and I viewed a house in Balfron - it looked perfect in the schedule.
There was a lot riding on it - we had been looking for ages, a friend had thought about and then decided against selling us a barn to convert and nothing else suitable seemed to come on the market.   
This property was old (bonus), had  a big garden and an outbuilding that could be converted into a workshop/ studio/shop just off the main street.
Mum looked after the children and we made a day of it - we needn't have bothered.  The house that looked so promising in the schedule was just all wrong, irreparably and bizarrely connected into its neighbour in a way that guaranteed a complete lack of privacy.
The ensuing rather bad silent pub meal is the worst birthday meal I have ever had.

Three days later Euan phoned me to tell me to get the paper, that there was a property he thought would be ideal.  I looked it up - a squat, brown pebble dashed, aluminium windowed bungalow. Hmmm.

And then we came and viewed - we spent 10 minutes in the house - we spent a lot longer in the gardens - this bluebell wood is why we live here - it flowers every year for my birthday (and anyone who knows me knows what a big deal I make about my birthday).

The house is still pretty awful - to be honest it is in a worse state that when we bought it as we wait for a building warrant - but the wood is magnificent.

Photos all by Jane Robertson.

Country mice and city cousins

I don't tend to re-read books all that often but one book that I come back to time and again is a memoir by the French writer Colette - two memoirs in fact - Sido and My Mother's House.
In these Colette reminisces about her rural French childhood - idyllic days spent roaming the countryside climbing trees and foraging for berries - returning to a family dinner, summoned by her mother's bell.
This is the exact childhood that I would like for my girls. We moved here partly so that it would be more possible - I have the summoning bell.
This week, playing with their cousins, they have been absorbed in making dens, playing on the rope swing down by the river, collecting eggs (poor hens, their eggs are carted away as soon as they hit the straw)and walking Jasmine down to the field along the road to take photos of horses.
I suspect that it is having town visitors that has made my little country mice appreciate what they have - as I speak they are cleaning out the guinea pig, a job that usually takes a 3 day build up of nagging.
I am very glad that they have been keeping themselves amused as it is increasingly apparent that there are very good practical reasons why I stopped at 2 children.  Having four turns out to be an awful lot of work and a lot of washing.  My hat goes off to all who manage millions of children.
We give Christine and Jayde back to their Grandma on Monday - they will be missed (until their Summer visit).

#Photo of bees on hellebore by Jane Robertson

In memoriam

Bix was buried under the hazel tree in the back garden.  This is the only mature tree in our whole garden, not counting the hawthorns along the boundary as they are meant to be a hedge.  Yesterday we planted the hazel's skirts with hundreds of snowdrops.
My friend Nadja has a house perched high above the entrance to Drymen. It is an old house - it used to be the manse - and has an established garden.   Each spring the garden looks like a waterfall of snowdrops flowing down the wooded banking to the road.  It is a beautiful sight and there is such a variety of snowdrops that the flowering lasts a long time.
Nadja was kind enough to invite me to dig up as many snowdrops as I liked to plant as Bix's memoriam - so Katie and I went there yesterday morning and filled our basket.  Snowdrops like to be transplanted in flower - "in the green" - so it was just a case of digging the bulbs out of their soft leafy loam and replanting them here.
There seem to be 5 different varieties in the bulbs that we brought back - I am no snowdrop specialist - a mix of singles and doubles, some with long petals, some with petals which flick at the ends like a 1970s Farrah hairstyle.
Planting them in the green means that they will seed this year - spreading the carpet of blooms further and further.  I hope that eventually they will colonize under the silver birches that we have planted.

Bix the cat

Last night my beautiful Bixie cat died.  She lay in a box that Kate had decorated for her, she ate three titbits of steak, fell asleep and didn't wake up.  It was a dignified death for a dignified cat.
We have known that it was coming - a few weeks ago she began to drag her legs and tail, everything became an effort.  She was disorientated, she lost weight, she became clingy and burnt her whiskers on the fire.
I fed her on gravy, washed her face with a flannel and cuddled her every evening.  We all knew.

Bix was the first cat that we got as a couple - Euan wasn't that keen, but to me a house without animals isn't a home so we went to the animal rescue shelter and there she was  - somersaulting around her cage to attract our attention.  Our beautiful, beautiful cat.  I can't write any more.

I shall miss her so much.  I am so grateful that we didn't have to take her to the vet to be put to sleep.

Team cats.

We get our cats in team colours.

Every cat we have ever had has been black and white.

Every cat we have ever had has been wonderfully affectionate and tolerant.

This is Bix and Phoebe asleep on our bed this morning, lying in a pile of discarded magazine supplements while we drink coffee and wake up.

Bix, on the left here, was our first cat - rescued as a great concession to me when Euan and I moved in together in 1992.  Euan was supposedly allergic to cats.  I felt that a house wasn't a home without animals.  We went to the cat and dog home and there Bix was - turning somersaults in her cage - she melted our hearts and has been a fantastic friend - putting up with all sorts of indignities post children with good grace.

Phoebe was got to keep Bix company - we lived in a flat and Bix spent her days climbing the door jambs, riddling them with claw marks.  Sometimes I would come back unexpectedly early from work and there she would be clinging to the  wood, six feet in the air.  Euan brought back Phoebe as a surprise, she was tiny - far to young to have left her mother but motherless all the same.  Bix loathed her, she was mewly, she was smelly - there had been no-one to teach her the basics. 

Then one day I came back from work and Bix had her pinned down and was forcibly cleaning her -  Bix taught her to wash herself, to eat properly, to use a litter tray.  She turnined into one of those soft cats, prepared to allow children to dress her up - she hasn't missed a bedtime story in 10 years.

Now Phoebe, our baby and most babyish cat, is suddenly getting old - she seems far older than Bix - creaky joints, losing weight, problem skin.  There is nothing I can put my finger on but something is not right.

If I pick her up after Bix or Minou (our youngest cat) she feels as though there is nothing under the fluff.  It is frightening.

Stacking the wood

What is it about a well stocked woodpile that is just so comforting?
Over the past few months Euan has been building a shed from some reclaimed wood and corrugated iron that we bought on Ebay (in the form of a barn that needed to be dismantled).  Now the basic structure is finished and there is so much metal left over that he was able to build a woodshed on the side.  This is wonderful as it hides the very ugly gas tank and with its recycled functionality looks like something out of Little House on the Prairie.

Last night Euan rigged up lights and we ferried our very sad log pile from the front of the house and stacked them neatly in their new shelter.  I love stacking wood - the interlocking shapes, the rough lichens, the squdgy moss (for you see our log pile has not been well housed whilewaiting for its shed) the transformation from a sloping heap to a neat wall.  In our previous house we made walls between the garden out of stacked wood -a poor man's dry stone wall.

We called it a day when it got too cold.  Then we put on the wood burning stove in the living room, lit all the candles, opened a bottle of wine and basked in the feeling of a job well done.

Today I keep looking out of the kitchen window at our beautiful log store and smiling.

When the house is extended at the beginning of next year we are getting a massive woodburning stove called the Sumo for our heating and hot water -  the idea is to rely as little as possible on the more and more expensive LPG.  I can't wait.

A New Year

One of the things that has changed most since leaving office work is the way that I see this time of year.
When I worked in the city, toiling away in a basement office under fluorescent light I felt like Persephone - half my year was spent out of the light - it was gloomy when I walked to work, it was gloomy when I walked home, I had no way of knowing what was happening outside the building and no sense of the seasons.  November to March was a time to be endured.
Now - now that I work for myself - this time of year is the start of my year - the harvest is in, and I am buzzing with plans for orchards and herb patches.  Next week I dig the trenches for the tulips, my favourite job of the year.  Everything is humming underground.
So now that I am outside in the seasons my New Year has become Samhainn - the  Celtic end of summer - (merged through the centuries into Halloween), the beginning of dreams for the Spring.
We shall build fires and light candles, we shall make plans and look forward.
And the children will go guising for sweets!
On Snapdragon's Chat we are discussing how to move from off the peg to bespoke crafting 

Doing the flowers for the wedding of the year

Well my year that is.  This weekend my "little" brother got married to his fiancee Helen - The little has to be in inverted commas as, despite the fact that he is 5 years younger than me, he has been taller than me since he was 8.

It was a really lovely wedding day - the sun shone, the bride looked radiant, the bridegroom proud and lucky (as he is), the church service was moving, the bridesmaids angelic and the party afterwards great fun.

Helen is a nursery nurse, children are at the centre of her life and it was a gloriously happy wedding thronged with children from 5 days old upwards, everyone under 13 and over 30 whooped it up on the dance floor while those too cool to dance lingered outside drinking under the stars.

Stephen and Helen just married (and about time too)

Helen wishing that she hadn't had quite so many bridesmaids and that they hadn't made quite so much confetti.

Katie with the confetti - trying to prolong the fun be seeing how many times you can throw it.

Zoe and me outside the church .