Month: Aug 2023

Summer Harvest

I’ve been going through a bit of a rough patch lately, but trying to find little joys everyday, and one place that I can always find a sense of purpose and peace is our garden. As summer is almost over, it seems like a good time to reflect on some of the successes, failures and lessons of the growing season.

We’ve built two new raised bed in the front garden, and filled them with soil from digging out the pond. We had dried peas from ages ago, so decided to use them as a cover crop to improve the soil in one of the new raised beds. Next year, my husband plans to turn this bed into a permanent strawberry and asparagus patch.

I find courgettes and pumpkin will grow almost anywhere so I’m growing some in the other new raised bed in the front garden. The slugs got quite a few of the early yellow courgettes so we’ve only picked a handful that made it to a reasonable size. Next year, I might grow them in the greenhouse.

Our oldest daughter is always an enthusiastic little helper in the garden, we let her plant carrot seeds in some tubs, which turned out to be one of our biggest successes. I’ve never had any luck with root veg, but we were all thrilled when my daughter pulled up the carrots she had grown all by herself.

The biggest disappointment were the brassica, the sprouting broccoli, brussel sprouts and kale that all got devoured by the slugs.

We’ve been gathering handfuls of strawberries through June, then a few blueberries and wine berries. The rhubarb has been disappointing, I suspect it struggled with too much sunlight and heat early in the season.

My husband lost interest in the tomatoes; some become pot bound, the ones in the greenhouse were dehydrated while the ones outside were drenched by the rain. I’ve never grown tomatoes before but I’ve taken charge of the survivors. My husband says we’ll get 10 tomatoes if we’re lucky, and I say challenge accepted!

August often seems like monsoon season in the west of Scotland, hot and wet, but I noticed rowan and elderberries, horse chestnuts and acorns on the trees, and I’m so looking forward to Autumn and hopefully harvesting a few pumpkins and apples too. Have a lovely week. X

July Reading WrapUp

Sharing my reading wrapup very late as we’re all recovering from a bad cold that floored us for a week. July was a slow month for reading but I thoroughly enjoyed the three books I did manage to read.

Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman

Magic Lessons was everything I hoped for in a prequel to Practical Magic (reviewed here) going back to tell the story of Maria the founding matriarch of the Owens family and the curse she cast to protect her descendents that ripples through the generations ever after. I absolutely adored Magic Lessons and found it gripping, heartbreaking and enchanting. Magic Lessons is a story of mothers and daughters, love and heartbreak, witchcraft and witch trials.

No Drama Discipline by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson

I’d struggled a bit with The Whole Brain Child last year but decided to give this a try, and found it so much easier to understand and apply. Complex neuroscience is broken down into easy to grasp concepts about how to shape a child’s developing brain to teach them emotional regulation, morality, empathy and problem solving skills. No Drama Discipline is full of real examples of how to apply the whole brain discipline techniques that takes a contextual but long term approach to parenting, building a loving connection with your child and coaxing collaboration, though my personal favourite example was what to do when you’ve tried everything and none of it works.

The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman

The bittersweet conclusion to the Owens family saga that ties all the threads together as Sally, Gillian, Franny, Jet and Vincent all work together to end the curse that Maria Owens cast over 400 years ago. I have loved this series so much and this was such a wonderful ending reuniting all the characters and introducing some new ones too that kept me hooked from start to finish.

Have a lovely weekend. X

Wildlife Watch in the Garden

One of the highlights of the summer has been watching all the wildlife in our garden, particularly the front garden since we’ve added the pond.

I’d read worrying reports of a lack of insects across the UK leading to chicks starving, but I was so relieved to see our blue tit and sparrow fledglings in the garden in June. In previous years, the blue tits nested in a disused pipe on the side of our house and invariably at least one chick would either shuffle or be pushed off the edge, last year we lost three chicks from either the fall or dehydration before we could return them to the nest, so the birdbox has been a huge success in that regard.

It made my day when I spotted a pair of goldfinches bathing in our pond because we’ve never been able to coax them into our garden before. While chatting with a neighbour, I also spotted a bullfinch in her garden and I’m wondering if I can lure it to our garden just a couple of houses further up.

Many of our most interesting wildlife finds have been in the front garden, my husband spotted a lacewing for the first time and I spent half an hour watching a red damselfly flit around the pond. My husband was beside himself with excitement when he found grasshoppers in our fairly wild front garden, giving him the perfect excuse not to mow the grass for a while longer.

The Kilmarnock Willow was covered in aphids in early summer providing a feast for ladybird larvae, and we also spotted a very hungry and very fat green caterpillar crawling around. None of these insects are particularly rare or unusual but it’s wonderful to see our garden becoming a thriving habitat in an urban environment.

I know one little garden is not enough to stop the rapid decline of so many species across the UK, and I feel so out of sync with my friends and neighbours who are replacing their lawns with artificial grass or paving over front gardens to create driveways, yet I have to try, and I’ll keep trying to create a little safe haven for everything that finds its way here (especially if it eat slugs!). Have a lovely week. X