May in the Garden...

 Another sketchy month that we were only around for part of, however also a very productive one indeed once we had finally returned from all our galivanting!

Inevitably we did lose a fair amount of stuff while we were away - my lovely Mum came round and watered things every few days but of course our travels did coincide with some almost unseasonably warm weather down here, and as a result some things struggled a bit. In the few days between trips we ran round like mad things potting on chillies and peppers, and as a result we have been able to plant a few of each on into their final containers. We also re-sowed sunflowers as although we planted about 7 of them out before we headed off the first time, the pesky slugs and snails got in on the act and we only have a few surviving now - even if one of those is a monster that appears to have ambitions to see over the fence to next door sooner rather than later! Although the additional seeds didn't seem to have done much while we were away - and had indeed dried out quite a lot - a good soaking saw them immediately spring into life and there are at least a couple more we'll be able to get into the garden shortly!

Potatoes growing in old compost sacks

Our kale plants also suffered thanks to molluscy appetites - and so a quick re-sow of these in the "between trips" gap was squeezed in - with luck we will have at least a few more plants now! Meanwhile the turnips and beetroot had fallen prey to the four-legged fiends known as next door's kittens using that bed as a toilet/digging spot - so MrEH sowed more in there and then we constructed yet another complicated network of canes which - so far - seems to be working as a deterrent!

The return from our second trip away was when the real activity started - as we got stuck in to sowing our tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, winter squash, assorted salads and herbs and various other things that it had been necessary to delay until then - later than we would ideally have sown, but we can only hope that the warmer temperatures mean that things will catch up, otherwise we are going to have a disappointing harvest! 

The strawberries are showing plenty of fruit forming, and the peas are flowering and starting to produce pods...meanwhile the rhubarb had apparently turned into a triffid with takeover ambitions...and another small harvest has been taken from that, plus a few stalks for Mum too. As it is only the plant's second year, we're not able to go too mad picking the stalks, but it certainly looks like we will be able to take a few more small harvests from it without causing it too much of a problem! (And frankly I'm getting a little nervous about how much of the garden it might want to commandeer next year!) Beans are now starting to reach up to the obelisk they are planted round - and I will need to think about building a frame for a few more of them too!

Rhubarb!

The little Clematis we bought from the supermarket last year is showing plenty of enthusiasm and is currently covered in flowers and making good progress in covering the first fence panel - the rather posher one bought from our favourite nursery is doing well and has given us a few flowers albeit rather oddly in two entirely different colours - so we're not sure what the story is there. Both colours are extremely pretty, so we have no complaints, and it could yet end up being "two for the price of one"! In the front garden it's one of the roses that is the star - absolutely covered with blooms! 

Clematis “Duchess of Cornwall”

In other garden jobs we have also started the task of rubbing down and re-painting the shed and office - this will be ongoing for quite some time we suspect, and it will be a while before we move from a patchwork of the previous dark grey to fully covered in the new shade - called "Cornflower" and a sort of dusty blue. 

Early tasks for June are going to be identifying where we have gaps and need to try for new sowings of various things, getting the courgettes in the ground, and successional sowings of basil and other herbs. 

Robyn

New island alert! 🚨

Regular readers (are there any left?!) will recall that we do like an island or two, and we particularly enjoy the chance to explore new ones, so being able to add two previously unvisited ones to our list recently was a bit excellent!

Appreciating the sunset from the top of the fort…

When our pal Laura mentioned a few years back that she had plans to book the rather incredible Fort Clonque on Alderney for a week for her 50th birthday celebrations, it took us precisely zero minutes to assure her that we were very much in for this plan - even before we looked at the photos of the place it sounded fabulous. Logistically for us it needed to work around our Hebrides trip, but planning that in was fine, and lead us to a 5 week period where I actually only had 6 working days too which was marvellous! The financial planning took some working in - but we were determined and in the end we diverted our usual “joint fun” budget for the last year, plus some extra diverted from monthly surpluses for the last few months to cover spending money as well, and we were all set. Having a good long run-in to the trip was helpful in this regard as it gave us time to ensure that the costs were covered - no nasty post-holiday credit card surprises for this household, thank you very much! 

The fort from the end of the causeway

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and the long awaited trip was finally upon us - so MrEH and I headed for London City Airport for our first flight - the 1 hour-ish hop down to Guernsey on Aurigny Airline’s ATR 72 aircraft. Being able to fly from City did add to the cost a bit but having never flown from there before we were both keen, and it reduced the travel at the “home” end a lot over the alternative drive down to Southampton too. We were fortunate with having gloriously clear days for the flights at both ends of the trip too - always a bonus and a good chance to play the game of trying to work out where precisely you are as places look very different indeed from the air! I did spot that we flew out over the coast over Beachy Head though - I have spent too much time in Eastbourne for airshow purposes not to recognise its distinctive pier and Martello tower!  A short break between flights on Guernsey so not too much time to explore but we did manage a short walk out to the coast before heading back to meet some of the rest of the gang in departures ahead of the short hop across to Alderney. This was a novelty on several levels - first another new-to-me aircraft type in the shape of the Dornier 228. Broadly similar to my favourite De Havilland Twin Otter in shape and style, this has a cabin head height of just 5’ - and while I could navigate this with barely a need to duck, our 6’7” friend Marc wasn’t quite as comfortable while boarding! This was also the shortest flight I had ever taken at about 12 minutes - and to add to that we departed early so actually taxied up to the terminal at Alderney Airport before we should technically have departed Guernsey! 

Alderney is a superb little island - at around 3.5 miles long and 1.5 across it’s just a great size for exploring on foot, which is a good thing as there isn’t actually any public transport available for the most part - and although you can hire a car, we opted not to. There IS an extremely helpful taxi driver - we made a lot of use of his services during the week, both as transport for those less comfortable with walking long distances and as a way of getting shopping to the Fort as well. There is also - 1 day a week and running just two return journeys - a railway, which of course we had to visit! An added bonus here was the fact that the two passenger carriages are 1959 London Underground Northern Line stock - complete with their maps etc in place! Rather wonderful and amusing to tick off a bit of “Hidden London” style tube geekery! 

Underground overground….and on an island! 

Probably the most notable part of Alderney’s history is that it was occupied by the Germans during WW2 and as a result the vast majority of the island’s residents were evacuated in 1940 for their own safety. The had just a few hours notice of this, and were ordered to arrive at the pier for the boats carrying just a single suitcase each, and pets were to be killed and livestock set free before they left, which must have been an incredible wrench for people already terrified of what was to come. Those evacuees did not get to return until over 5 years later - in December 1945, and when they did return it was to discover that their homes had been ransacked and in some cases destroyed completely. The German occupation has left huge amounts of history all over the island too which includes many of the Victorian forts which are to be found right round the coast bearing more recent (relatively speaking) German additions. There were 4 labour camps on the island too one of which - Lager Sylt - later became a concentration camp. All that remains now are the gateposts, but it was indescribably haunting to stand and look at those gateposts now, all these years later. 

S.S. Lager Sylt

While unquestionably WW2 buffs will love the island, it definitely has something for everyone - the wildlife is amazing - with flowers, birds and other creatures a-plenty. We saw huge numbers of Gannets from the Fort, and Gannets and Puffins from a boat trip round the island. If general history is your thing then the Victorian forts (there are forts EVERYWHERE!) will float your boat, and if you just like exploring then there is so much to see in spite of the small footprint Alderney has. 

If all else fails, fellow 70’s kids will enjoy the Womble connection - Elisabeth Beresford lived on Alderney, and so there are references everywhere which is rather fun. There is a Womble trail, a Womble display in the museum - and even rather fabulously a Womble covered ice cream van, and yes, you’d best believe that Laura, Tony and I did indeed agree that if one sees a Womble ice cream van it is the law that one must have ice cream! 

All in all we had an amazing week - we walked, we cycled (shout out to the fabulous Cycle and Surf Alderney crew who sorted us out with e-bikes for a brilliant day exploring!) we ate and drank, we enjoyed sunsets and relatively little rain (yes, what did fall did it as we were heading back to the fort one day and we got soaked, no I do not have photos of this!) and frankly we are all already planning when we are returning! 

Robyn

April in the garden...

 A "better late than never" post...April was mostly about trying to get stuff done that just might survive while we were away - first in the Hebrides for a couple of weeks, and then in the Channel Islands for a further week. It was also about starting to enjoy seeing the garden wake up into spring, of course - with more of the the bulbs we had planted previously bursting into flower.

The currants started showing signs of flowering and fruit began forming on the Gooseberries which was great news - unsurprisingly we didn't get any fruit last year as it was the first year for all the plants - the Gooseberries having been moved from the flat and the black & redcurrants being in their first year of planting all told. The strawberries we planted up in troughs last month also began flowering, and to add to all that we took our first small harvest from the rhubarb as well - so a fruity month all round! 

Those peas I also mentioned we had sown last month pretty much all germinated which we were both delighted and slightly alarmed about - although quite honestly it's not possible to have too many peas is it! A garden centre visit also lead to the discovery of some extremely economically priced packs pf pea and bean netting being sold off on clearance too, so a few boxes of that were grabbed and now we are well set up for pea supports for the  next few years with luck. 

In terms of other things sown we had mixed fortunes with those - the Bishop's Crown chillies did extremely well almost all germinating as said previously, and although we did lose some to dry conditions while we were away some clung on. Sweet peppers too were surprisingly good on the germination front, while none of either the Hungarian Black or Bhut Jolokia chillies ever showed any signs of germination unfortunately. We may yet try for a re-sow on those, on the "nothing to lose" basis, and perhaps they simply required more warmth to germinate.

Finally - and yes, this is a bit of a sketchy post, but it was a bit of a sketchy month as we were only around for half of it - those Ranunculus I commented on last month burst into flower just a matter of days before we went to the Hebrides - lovely to see even though we didn't get as much chance to appreciate them as we should have done, and sadly they too fell victim to lack of water. 

Robyn 

Frugal Friday…

At the beginning of  the month we were able to celebrate the first big milestone in our “Clear the mortgage early” adventure this time round as we dipped under the £100k barrier. The celebration wasn’t huge, fancy or expensive - just a Chinese takeaway from our favourite place, with a toast drunk in a nice beer (that we were given free by the brewery when we placed our usual order with them for beer at Christmas - just to make it all the more frugal-Friday suitable!) 

To recap, we took our original mortgage for the flat in 2003- one of those Northern Rock offerings for those who had no deposit and needed to borrow the full value of the property or - to clear other debt - even more. In our case it was 110% - clearing some graduate debt of MrEH’s at the same time - starting at £103,500 on the then traditional 25 year term. Initially we just paid the required amount, but then a few years in thanks to a conversation with a friend the lightbulb flickered on and we started overpaying in 2007. That mortgage was cleared in 2016 - 12 years early, and those overpayments saved us in excess of £30k in interest! Because of the point we took it out, and when our product renewals occurred, we never got the benefit of the super low interest rates that were being enjoyed for a few years either - our lowest rate that time round was 4.34% - although as we both remembered the highs of 15% during our childhoods that still felt pretty low to us! 

This time round the figures aren’t altogether different - £115,000 borrowed with an interest rate of 4.03% - the term this time though is just 16 years, and we are aiming to be done with it a long time before THAT point I can tell you! The key thing I was looking for when we were searching for our mortgage product was that it allowed overpayments, at least the standard 10% of the capital amount per year, and ideally more, but still when I happened on the deal we eventually plumped for - a 5 year fix with unlimited OPs allowed - I did slightly worry it seemed too good to be true! It’s not though, and while we are a long way off the 10% OP level right now, it’s good to know we can OP without limit right to the end of the term.

Overpayments are happening much the same as before - first thing was to round the monthly payment up to a nice round figure - in this case just an odd pound and pennies, although that might yet get tweaked up a bit more. Then there is the “money we didn’t know we had” - so savings on bills we haggle down for example, or better deals being offered on things. Recent examples there are cancelling our satellite TV deal in favour of watching streamed (and currently just free) content, and a better deal being offered on broadband in return for us signing up for a new 2 year deal early. Fine by us when they are offering a £7 a month saving on what we were paying! Those bits and bobs get transferred into the overpayments pot (a savings account attached to one of the current accounts) and when that hits £100 I transfer that to the mortgage. At the end of the month I usually make an additional overpayment of the odd pounds and pence plus £100 - although that depends a little on what surplus we have in the joint account for the month. We still pay our council tax on the old 10 months payment schedule, so for the two months that’s not payable that money also gets thrown at the mortgage - a nice boost in the early part of the year. Finally there is any unexpected financial gains - so the tax rebates MrEH got last year for sorting out some stuff around his pension payments for example, and the payments our building society makes to account holders from time to time get transferred to reduce the mortgage figure too. 

So - what difference is all this making, you might ask? Well - some figures, a bit rough and ready as I don’t have the spreadsheet (well yes, of COURSE there are spreadsheets!) to hand, but monthly interest payments have already been reduced by a noticeable chunk - and of course that in itself means that the payments we make are having more effect. Had we just made our standard payments we would have roughly £106k still outstanding, and around 14 and a half years still to pay. Instead the figure stands at £99,400, give or take a few pounds, and the term has been reduced by a year - even if we stopped overpaying right now, that change is locked in. Down the line of course this also creates a big saving in interest - yes, even on a relatively small mortgage! 

If you currently have a mortgage, even if you can only spare enough per month to round your monthly payments up to the next £10, overpaying is well worth doing. Just a small amount every month can mount up - and for a lot of people now their mortgage interest rate is higher than anything that £10, £20 or £50 would be earning in savings too - so it’s a bit of a no-brainer! If you’re fortunate enough to still be on one of those super-low rates then a better approach is to stash those small amounts into a savings account earning a good rate of interest, then make a lump sum overpayment once your rate increases. If you check and your mortgage alows overpayments, then why not just make a start and see how you go?

Robyn

Hebrides Countdown…

 

Sunset at the “Kettle” rock arch - Tigharry

Oh yes - it’s time for one of these posts as we anticipate returning to our cosy little Island “home” on North Uist again! 

We’re returning to an old route up this time - using the ferry from Uig on Skye to get across to Uist. We prefer going from Mallaig to Lochboisdale - a longer sailing but far less time and distance driving on the mainland - but sadly the ferry company serving the Western Isles  (Caledonian MacBrayne or “Calmac”)  simply cannot be trusted to provide a service on that route these days, indeed, we have booked that route for our return and have already seen one change to the booked tickets, with another more tricky to manage one far from unexpected.  The compromise on the way across is to get the ferry from Mallaig across to Armadale at the bottom end of Skye, then drive up through the island to get to Uig - we still get the benefit of less  mainland driving for the relatively low cost of the short hop on the little boat.

There is something comfortable about reflecting on a return to a place you have visited so many times previously - you know the main routes, the good places to grab a coffee and a cake, the best supermarkets for yellow sticker reductions, and the times you need to be somewhere to avoid a crowd straight off a ferry or to ensure that the latest delivery has been unloaded. Even some of the people - over the years we have met a number of folk who even if we may not know them by name always greet us with recognition and “ahh - back again then!” plus others who we do know a little better and who will pause for a chat and a catch up on our respective news.  Then there is the cottage itself too - although it’s fun staying somewhere new of course, returning to somewhere we know means less time needs to be taken to work out how things will function for you there - we just unpack, shove things where we know they live, and we’re settled and ready to properly start our holiday! 

In spite of the above and the amount of time we’ve spent up there over the years, we aways seem to find new stuff - even bizarrely roads we didn’t know existed or have never explored! Sometimes it’s turnings we had assumed just went to somebody’s home, but then we see a mention of a particular bird being sighted from “X” location and realise that no, it’s just a rather less made-up bit of road, and so ripe for exploring. Other times it might be a turning that we knew was there but didn’t think went far enough to be worth looking at - but a bit of a wander proves otherwise, or throws up something interesting at the end. 

Loch Skipport

There are also the places we return to again and again - obviously the old Pier at Loch Skipport, which yes, is still just standing, or at least it was the last time we visited! Traditions like a wander on the Airport Beach on the first full day we are there, assuming the tides allow, while waiting to collect a Chinese takeaway, bizarrely! The circular walk at Loch Sandary - suited to less good weather - where you inevitably see some interesting birds and sometimes something a bit different - like an Eagle on a stick…

Yes, that IS a Golden Eagle casually minding it’s own business on a fence post, and no, I did not have my camera with me…just the phone and a pair of binoculars… 🙄 Of course there is also the walk around the headland that the cottage is situated on - that will get done at all sorts of times of day and in whatever conditions the weather gods throw at us, and is an endless source of fabulous waves and incredible sunsets… 

All in all, it’s safe to say that this year’s trip is being eagerly anticipated - who knows, I may even manage a post or two while we are there, this time! 

Robyn 

March in the Garden…

 

Spring colour in the flower bed

No doubt gardeners everywhere will be enjoying the flourishing of spring in their gardens at this stage - and we’re certainly no exception! It’s quite fascinating looking back just a few weeks to last months post and seeing how much things have come on in that short time - from crocuses then we now have daffodils, grape hyacinths and even some tulips on the brink of flowering too. My favourite Aquilegias have sprung into life and even have buds on, and to my delight the three Ranunculus that we paid £1 each for last summer have not only survived through the winter well swaddled in horticultural fleece, but also appear to be about to flower any time! 

A satisfying row of peas…

On the veg front the first things to go in were first early potatoes (“Rocket”)  and a row of peas (“Kelvedon Wonder”) in the new strip of bed we dug last month - and indeed the peas have already popped their heads up. Those are being protected from the attentions of the local cats and the pigeons by means of a complicated arrangement of canes and garden twine, efforts to protect them from slugs might be slightly more challenging. Hopefully once the potatoes appear as well, that should deter the bigger pests freeing up the canes to make a slightly more traditional pea support!  MrEH also sowed a bed with a mix of turnips and beetroot - the turnips being the small round ones we grew years ago on the allotment, and we’ve popped in a row of Kale “Scarlet” At the back of the main veg bed - this should both look attractive and help to fill the “hungry gap” from autumn into winter as well. 

Gooseberry flower buds

Mid month we decided that it was possible that the rhubarb was breaking through, and just a week later it was actually looking like rhubarb - my goodness when it grows it REALLY grows, doesn’t it! We won’t be able to take too much off it this year as it needs another season to get to full strength - we will be making a couple of small harvests though so that’s one to look forward to. Also on the fruit-front the gooseberries are covered in leaf and are even beginning to show their first flower buds, the blackcurrant also has plenty of leaf and while the redcurrant is lagging behind at the moment, it’s got plenty of buds. We’ve also gained several raspberry canes, a loganberry and a wineberry plus some strawberry plants - so if all that lot get going we will be well supplied with fruit through the summer and into autumn! 

Rhubarb!

Currently filling our front room windowsill under the propagator lids are an array of chillies - from my favoured “Hungarian Black” - those using saved seed from the single plant I managed to get to grow last year, to the distinctly more fiery “Bhut Jolokia” - MrEH uses those for concocting various mad versions of flavoured vodka, gin etc for post-rugby match shenanigans so being able to grow them would make life easier for him….however we’re not seeing any success with either of those so far sadly. More optimistic are the “Bishop’s Crown” variety - from a packet of seeds got free with our Kitchen Garden magazine - nearly all I sowed of those are now up and looking sturdy. Also on there are aubergines - with a couple of those having popped their heads up too - and some sweet peppers as well. Meanwhile in the garden the mini greenhouse is standing by ready for duty again - and already contains sowings of some soft herbs and flowers - notably mini sunflowers and calendulas, both of which will get used as companion planting  if they germinate OK. 

Coldframe with herbs

Further acquisitions this month include some more cover for bringing on tender plants while there is still any risk of the temperature dropping in the form of two small cold frame/giant cloche arrangements, plus a larger polycarbonate style cold frame which now houses herbs and will work well for more hardy sowings of other plants and hardening off. Joining our metal arches are four narrow trellis frameworks - two of those are already in place against the fence to support a couple of Clematis - the one I bought last year has been joined by a new purchase - and currently we think the other two will be placed alongside the arches to increase the spread area for beans and squashes. 

Strawberries settling into their troughs

It still feels like SUCH a novelty to actually have the privilege of this space - even though we’ve been here over a year and a half now, I’m not sure that feeling will ever wear off!

Robyn 

February in the garden…

 Well, who foresaw one of THESE posts appearing so early in the year? Not me for sure, but then we got cracking on a small project we have been discussing for a while…

You’ll recall that increasing growing space has been right at the top of our garden agenda since we moved in. We made a start by stripping various shrubs out of the raised beds along one side, and of course the addition of the new veg bed. We’ve been discussing what other options there were though - there isn’t really any more options for adding anything at ground level so the next logical move was to add scope for things to grown upwards instead. A couple of cheap metal arches were acquired from a well known online store named after a big river, and last weekend we set about building and placing them. 

Once they were in place we turned our attention to the best way of really maximising the space there - and decided that sacrificing a strip of lawn on that side was the way forwards. That would mean that we could plant stuff for climbing up on both sides, and have a narrow strip available for other planting too - and a strip which gets a reasonable amount of sun, at that! My Mum has one of those useful half-moon edging tools, and we talked about popping over to borrow that, but then it was remembered that I also have some form for being able to actually do a remarkably straight tidy line with just a digging spade… 

There - what do you think? It might ideally want a bit of tidying up at some stage, but right now it ticks the box for “good enough” which is what was needed. Of course a bit like the other side, we did encounter a LOT of concrete and rubble that needed dealing with - indeed we have a whole compost sack of rubble to go to the tip (this feels familiar!) and several bags of dug out turfs as well. I suspect as we continue digging it over there will be more rubble appearing as well - but we are expecting that! 

That’s how it looks now - oddly enough the arches have completely changed the look of the whole garden, it’s very strange! There is still some tinkering to do on that side - we want to reduce the height of those raised beds by another level ideally to give less areas for slugs and snails to hide, the wood is beginning to rot quite badly anyway - eventually they will probably come out altogether. The new strip needs an addition of plenty of compost dug in to get it ready for planting as well. 

Elsewhere our efforts at getting spring bulbs planted in have paid off - we have crocuses all over the place…

…and lots of other things appearing too, most of which we can’t quite remember what they were - quite a lot of various tulips I think? And there were also a lot of alliums of various colours and sizes - you may remember from last year that those are a real favourite of mine and something I always knew I wanted plenty of! 

Auntie D’s Pulmonaria is flowering away cheerfully there as well as you can see - the ridiculous thing seems to have no concept of seasons as it started flowering around Christmas! 

The next month will be about buying any additional seeds we think we might want, and then making a start of getting things sown that can be I reckon, once again the front room windowsill will be pressed into action with the cheap and cheerful propagator lids we bought for seed trays to encourage things along.  We’re already starting to plan our growing for the year - with several different types of tomato in the mix and definitely some different squash as well - I have a fancy for having a go at some proper winter squash this year as it’s something we buy fairly regularly so that could be an excellent money saver!

Robyn