After work wandering…

 I’ve been reading through the blog of a friend of mine recently. A lot of it I’ve read before - but a fair bit of it I haven’t for various reasons, so it’s nice to go back and catch up on her life a bit more. (For those wondering - it’s the lovely “Not Quite a farm” blog). One of the things I utterly adore about her blogging style is that she posts with masses of photos attached from her various adventures - it makes reading through such a treat! Anyway - this inspired me to take some photos on my glorious after work amble today - and let’s be honest, anything that encourages photo taking also encourages us to really look at our surroundings which is a good thing, agreed?!

First thing to catch my eye was these lovely Ox Eye Daisies. I love these - they seem quite content to grow in all sorts of places - alongside railway lines; in great drifts on motorway embankments; and here - on a patch of scrubby land just yards from the busy A12 dual carriageway. 

Next was this Vetch - another tenacious little plant, this grows everywhere in the area I was walking although it’s right at the beginning of its flowering season.

Comfrey is also growing in profusion- a useful plant this as it can be grown as part of a green manure system for veg growing. The leaves can be steeped in water to make Comfrey tea - a nutritious fertiliser (and a stinky one!) or they can be chopped up and dug into beds for future veggie planting. We may well be searching out some leaves later in the year! 

The area I had chosen to walk is Wanstead Flats - an area of parkland/scrubland which is also part of the corporation of London’s Epping Forest. It’s lovely to have it so close to work and a great place for walking or indeed running. It’s finally drying out a bit from our very wet winter and this was the first time I’d braved the mud so far this year. 

Gorgeous, isn’t it! You can see the mix of woodland and more open space - almost heathland I guess as the soil underfoot always feels quite sandy, although with enough London Clay to make it stick to your boots when wet! 

As you walk through the woods every now and again you come across a lovely shady little glade like this - with the trees through here now in full leaf it just felt unbelievably green and lush - and really brought it home that yes, finally, spring is here! 

In case a reminder of the proximity of Central London itself is required, look carefully at the shot above and you will just see the Shard way off on the horizon! 

Finally, after a couple of miles of gentle meandering, I found myself back close to where the car was parked. And as the sun was still shining, I was able to settle down at a bench in a nearby park to write this and then read my book while waiting for MrEH to get back from his working day, so we could head home. 

Not a bad end to a working day! 

Robyn 

Hebrides Countdown...

Well, we've not had one of these for a while, have we? I always used to do them, then stopped because I wasn't blogging regularly while we were actually away any more, and so the countdown felt a bit redundant. then I (mostly) stopped blogging much at all, but now I'm back to trying to blog at least semi regularly again anyway, and blogging with photos, at that, so actually, it felt like a nice thing to resurrect! 

So - we're off again shortly - staying in the gorgeous little Kettle Cottage up on North Uist. We missed out of booking Kettle last year as the timings didn't work for our "usual" slot, and there wasn't availability at another time we could make, so we made sure we were able to book it again for 2024 (and have actually already booked 2025 as well - we're not being caught out again, oh no!) As has been the case for a few years now, we are also stretching the trip out for a bit above a straight fortnight too - booking for a ferry over on the Thursday of our trip, and not returning until the Sunday at the end too - this is something we've managed to do for a few years now, and while no doubt there will come a year when it's not so practical, this isn't that year. (Hurrah!) So our first two nights will be spent in one of the glamping pods at our favourite campsite, and the final night of the trip will be there, too. 

As always, we've made NO definite plans for things to do while we're there - we don't, generally. There are things we undoubtedly will do of course - lots of walks on the headland where the Cottage is located and elsewhere. Lots of wandering about looking at birds of course, and time on various beaches too. Cafe trips, cake eaten, at least one stroll up our favourite little hill with the amazing views - Rueval. We'll probably book a boat trip again, and I will be hoping to get some photos of the beautiful White Tailed Eagles as well - it's always a treat seeing them. Whatever we see, and wherever we go though, just being up there, with no specific plans, and time to just relax, sit and enjoy the views, listen to the silence...those are the things that we go for, after all! 

Robyn

Here we go again...!

The "Suffolk Spitfire"

 The 2024 Airshow season started for me over the weekend with a lovely afternoon at IWM Duxford, and some new-to-me aircraft to photograph. It's always great when show organisers make a real effort to get "different" stuff displaying - and hats off to Duxford, they do a good job here. This was their first "Flying day" of the season - a shorter than full airshow programme with just 2 - 3 hours of flying, but they packed plenty in. Members also get free admission to these which is a nice bonus - and is definitely something which guarantees I will renew my membership each year. 

I was probably most excited about seeing the lovely "Suffolk Spitfire" - pictured above, this beauty is unusually seen in a US Air Force scheme and in usual US fashion flies bearing a name and nose-art - "Porky II" in this case - although she also bears a more normal-for-the-UK designation of RW382 as well. I'd seen her on the ground before but not flying so this was a really nice treat. 

Also out to play was a Hawker Sea Fury that I don't believe I've seen before - indeed I have a feeling this a newly restored to airworthiness aircraft. As you can see we had an utterly glorious day for photographing aircraft - and my combination of mirrorless camera with it's new lens was a real joy to use coping well with all the changes in light that occurred during the afternoon...

Hawker Sea Fury

I like the Fury/Sea Fury - in the UK it "just" has WWII heritage, and indeed it has the distinction of being the final propeller driven fighter to see action with the Royal Navy. Because it was developed during the war years you can really see the influence of other aircraft from outside the Hawker "stable" with the streamlined shape being more reminiscent of a Spitfire than a Hurricane. 

Hawker Nimrod

My records suggest that I'd not photographed the Nimrod before, either - another Naval aircraft, and from an earlier time period as this one predates WWII by quite a few years. Compared with the sleek Fury it's a whole world apart, isn't it! Indeed, this one never quite even made it to the beginning of WWII, being replaced by the Gladiator before the conflict began. 

There were a couple more "new to me" aircraft at the show as well - but I haven't yet got to the photos of those, and will be processing those through the week no doubt, aiming to get them completed ahead of show No 2 next weekend at Shuttleworth. Here's hoping it's another lovely sunny day!

April in the garden…

 I like the idea of a monthly round-up type post to remind myself of what we’ve done in the garden, but have a suspicion that like so many of these things (on here, certainly!) this might end up being a one-off! Shall we see though?

Aquilegia- a clump transplanted from outside the flat.

It’s been the first month we’ve been able to make really solid progress outside since we’ve been in the house - partly due to the weather being too uncertain until this point. Obviously the big news here was our lovely new veg bed being dug out finally - a mammoth task which I have already blogged about. Since completing the work on that at the beginning of the month we’ve been making good progress with getting it planted and it now has a couple more herb plants (bronze fennel, and winter savoury) plus potatoes to add to the bits we put in that first weekend. Just space now for the Rainbow Chard once that’s ready to plant out, and then some companion planting (we’ve got calendula to go in around the place plus some sunflowers and other bee-friendly stuff) and I will probably use the very front for a row of Pak-Choi I think as well. The aim is that it will be a nice mix of practical and pretty. 

Patio rose in salvaged pot…

Good progress has also been made elsewhere with getting more herbs to add to our collection  - a second lot of basil and some coriander have been sown  and a rescued (supermarket) parsley plant plus a second sage - a purple one this time - have been obtained. I’m really keen to maximise the amount of herbs we can grow as I do use a lot in cooking - and would normally regularly buy things like parsley and coriander, so those are a particular focus. 

Pulmonaria - also from the flat.

I’m delighted with the way the few bits we brought with us from the flat have flourished - the aquilegia at the top is without question one of my favourite plants, not least because they self-seed so beautifully, they were all over the place at the flat just from my two original plants. The pulmonaria above has even more of a story to it - it was part of several clumps that were originally in Auntie D’s garden - she gave us some of it for the garden at the flat when we first moved in and it spread nicely until the building works in 2009 when the builders trampled it almost to nothing. We lavished it with love and attention and it sprang back to life, before being weedkillered by the council a couple of summers ago (no, we have no idea why they would weedkiller a clearly well  looked after bit of ground either, but there you go!) thankfully we spotted it fairly swiftly, and although a lot of it was clearly past saving there was one small area which we flooded with water repeatedly for days to try to flush the worst of the nasty stuff away…and it somehow battled back to life. I brought one big clump of it here with us, and split it into two, and both now look as happy as they have ever done and are flowering away cheerfully! 

Pretty “spinner” bought by a lovely pal! 

We’ve continued to do well on gaining more big pots too - our across the road neighbour has given us several that they weren’t using - those have been situated out the front so that we can all enjoy them. Then on one of our many tip visits across the last few weeks MrEH happened to notice a couple of smaller ceramic pots in a sort of sagey green colour. He managed to hoike them out of the big dumpster skip they were in, found them to be intact, and so brought them home to continue their lives - one now has a small but pretty patio rose in it (a budget supermarket bargain at £2.49) and the other ironically enough allowing for its colour has the original sage we bought in it. We’ll continue to keep our eyes open for any possibility of more pots, as we’ll always find somewhere for them to go! 

Ranunculus 

The front too is also doing well - my hydrangea has finally sprung into leaf, and all the gifted pots have now been planted up with another aquilegia, miniature pansies, some lovely bright cheerful Ranunculus, a Fuchsia, and another rose, all of which look to be doing well. I’ve done a liberal scattering of mixed flower seeds out there too and it appears that at least some of those will germinate and help to fill the space. 

All in all I’m pretty pleased with our efforts to date - the front now feels a lot more “us” than the entirely slate-and-slab covered area we started with, while still being practical and easy to look after. The longer term plan for that area will be to let it flourish into very much a cottage-garden type feel with some form of interest all year round, although that of course will take time. The back is well on its way to being the productive space we wanted - indeed it has already started contributing to meals with salad leaves, herbs and spinach. Our to-do list for May is written already - so off we go! 

Robyn