Family Hols 2026

 

I had a lovely week with all 3 of my children coming to stay in my tiny Tavistock cottage. We love being with each other, doing outings and just hanging out together. It is a pity we are all so far away but at least none of them lives in Australia!

We visited Cotele and Killerton House National Trust houses, had a day out in Falmouth and Totnes then an evening watching Beltane Morris dancers. 

We cooked, had many cups of tea, sat around a bonfire and laughed a lot. Nessie and I will really miss them when they all leave but at least it won’t be too long until we meet again at Nella’s Graduation.

A Screwdriver and a Spoon

It was a short, quick week at work and varied with an overlocker lesson, a videography tutorial, customer quilts and everything in between. 

In my garden a naughty dog made a wee hole in the greenhouse playing footie and I planted a row of hollyhocks on the other side of my rotting fence. My trowel broke in the stony ground so I had to resort to using a screwdriver and a spoon. I was advised that slugs might enjoy my new plants so I put pot scourers around them to put them off. Hopefully my neighbourhood hedgehog will eat all of the slugs anyway.

I have 3 beds made up in anticipation of my children visiting. I could really do with a bigger house or shorter visitors!

I considered making a start on the iPad cover that Nella requested then decided I did not have space for that right now as Freya’s tortoise will be taking up residence on my sewing table.

Fed up with how long it was taking me to paint Jo’s wall with a brush, I bought a sprayer which was definitely the way to go. I made an executive decision and got some paint mixed in Farrow & Ball’s brassica colour. I was worried that it would look too grey but there is a violet tinge to it so I think it looks rather nice:)

How Many Tomato Plants are too Many?

I only managed one small customer quilt this week as I was busy doing other jobs, including stock taking many varieties of calico…

It was a bank holiday weekend! I have been helping Jo to jazz up her back yard and we started on painting the walls and fence which always takes far more paint than you can imagine. I watered down the pale lilac masonry paint to get a base on the roughcast walls. There should be a law against those, particularly ones done in black granite. I am hoping that Jo might be able to find a sprayer in the back of her shed because using a brush takes ages.

I did a bit of garden “pot-tering” and have had to relocate some things to the derelict garden next door. I bought a bag of bargain seed potatoes for £1.00 so put some in boxes, some in rough ground and still had some left which I gave to my neighbour. 

I replaced the dead pansies in my baked bean tin garden with marigolds, planted tomatoes, strawberries and runner beans. I still have raspberries, hollyhocks, dwarf beans and tomatoes coming mail order plus the tomato seeds I sowed in my greenhouse have all germinated! If they all grow I will just have to preserve them.

My last chore of the long weekend will be to scrub all of the soil and paint off my hands.