We woke yesterday to a thin layer of Frost on the car windscreen, the first of the season. We’re in the middle of autumn here in Scotland, always a season of contrasts: beginnings and endings, the last of the sun’s warmth and the first frosts, the glorious colour and texture of the leaves, and of course death and decay as leaves, flowers and insects all die back before winter.
There are still a few hardy geraniums (Rozanne just doesn’t stop), roses, nasturtiums and calendula all stubbornly blooming in our garden, though Storm Amy battered the sunflowers. There are also pots of cabbage, kale, chard and pak choi seedlings in the greenhouse that may or may not come to anything. I’m planting Meteor peas in the raised beds which are apparently hardy enough to overwinter. There are still daffodil bulbs to plant, as well as finding space in the long border for anenomes and michaelmas daisies, but I’m starting to feel the pressure now as winter is on its way.
We had lots of Red Admirals visiting the garden and feasting on our plums all through September, but this month we’ve found lots of Caterpillars in the garden much to the children’s fascination.
While most people are looking up at the trees, there’s lots to see at ground level too. Our little street is hidden beneath a carpet of beech tree leaves at the moment, and I’ve spotted a few Aminita Muscaria (or fly agaric toadstools) at the base of the trees. It seems like the world is full of reds, ambers, golds at the moment, all the fiery shades for the “ember” months.
As we move through the autumn months, life still feels hectic with no signs of slowing down and there are some big changes ahead, but I’m trying to ground myself in nature, enjoying pottering around our little garden and taking time to notice all the little wonders of nature at this time of year. Have a lovely week. X
Despite being the most urban-dwelling of our families, we are still a very outdoorsy family and the garden has always felt like an extension of our home. The kids love their slide, swings and the little mud kitchen we set up under the pergola on the patio, but our little garden offers so many other opportunities for play, learning and discovery too.
As a child, I remember the delight of picking fresh strawberries from my mum’s garden every June, and I started my own strawberry patch to share that simple joy with my own daughters. I find peas will grow almost anywhere so I plant them everywhere, and the girls love picking them fresh from the pod as a snack. We grow cherry tomatoes in the green house, which our girls also love picking as soon as they turn red. We’ll never be self-sufficient but growing some of our own fruit and vegetables is a great way of teaching our children about food production.
I’ve tried to make our garden as child and wildlife friendly as possible, and we’re always delighted to see bees bumbling and butterflies fluttering around the garden, as well as worms wriggling, caterpillars crawling and so many other insects just going about their daily business. At time when there is increasing alarm about the decline of insects, I like to feel we are doing our bit to help the insect population, offering them food, water and shelter, and my kids already understand that we need pollinators if we want to keep eating so many of their favourite foods like strawberries, raspberries and apples. My kids often help filling up the little trays of water we leave out for insects and birds in hot weather, as well as the bird feeders, combining their scooping and pouring skills with another lesson in taking care of nature. We’ve had lots of butterflies in the garden this year from small whites nibbling my kale and red admirals feasting on our plums.
Over the years, we’ve had a few hedgehogs visiting the garden much to everyone’s delight. Last year we helped fatten up a little hoglet that found his way in over the summer before he moved on elsewhere for the winter. We haven’t seen any hedgehogs this year, but I hope they’ll find their way in again.
I know that one small garden can’t save the world, but when so many young people are struggling with climate anxiety, our garden reminds us that it’s not as hopeless as the headlines make out, that nature is abundant and generous, and that humans can live in harmony with nature. Our garden is a little sanctuary in the city where we can escape from the hustle and bustle to play, learn and grow in every sense, a place where we can enjoy the sweetness of strawberries, chase butterflies, count bees and marvel at how tiny seeds grow into tall sunflowers.
Summer has been such a whirl this year that I’ve ended up with a folder of drafts about the garden I didn’t find time to post. Now as summer crosses into autumn, I’m starting to tidy up the garden and tackling a few plants that have become triffids.
I had grown some teasels in the flower bed to try to attract gold finches to the garden (without success) and I’ve enjoyed watching them grow through the seasons from leafy rosettes in the ground to tall shoots with a hazy purple petals, and finally the spiky seed heads. Ladybirds and bees have absolutely loved the teasels, but they had become total thugs dominating the bed and pushing the other plants out. I pulled them out, and the roses are looking elegant and airy again, and hopefully the hardy geraniums will rebound next year.
The other triffid in the flower bed is the Crocosmia Lucifer, which always looks fabulous but never lasts very long, and has collapsed under it’s own weight. I’m considering digging it out, or at least thinning it.
And finally, our Victoria plum deserves a mention here too. We planted our plum tree in 2021, and it has spent the last few years growing and sprawling. This spring it was covered in white blossom, which grew into so many plums that several branches snapped under the weight, and I’ve had to prune it quite harshly to try to save it from further damage. I’ve also had to remove lots of fruit that had developed a fungal disease, though we have still harvested enough to make cakes and give to our neighbours after the kids informed us they don’t like plums.
Our sprawling plum tree
We’ve spent so much time outside in the sunshine this summer, but it’s also been very busy and I’m hoping the next few months will be a bit slower and I’ll have time to start on some of our winter gardening projects. Have a lovely week! X
A whole season seems to have passed since I last found time to update my old blog. Spring has been exceptionally sunny and warm this year, and we’ve spent so much time outside.
I’ve been delighted to see the first bumble bees in the garden, the first peacock butterfly, hoverflies, blossom on the apple and plum trees, and daffodils bringing the first colour to our garden after winter months of dreary grey skies and brown earth.
I sowed the first tomato seeds at the start of March, and the seedlings have now been planted in a raised bed my husband built inside our new polycarbonate greenhouse. We said farewell to our old glass greenhouse after Storm Eowyn smashed several panes of glass, putting it back on Gumtree where we found it a few years back and gave it free to a couple who will hopefully appreciate it as much as we did.
Tomato and courgette plants in the greenhouse
In the raised beds outside, we have peas, spinach, radish, lettuce, beetroot and carrots sprouting. My husband is also growing potatoes in sacks. Inside our home, the windowsills are full of sunflower, nasturtium and courgette seedlings not quite ready to go out yet.
The kids have been out on the swings and slide or making pine cone soup or washing shells at their mud kitchen, or riding scooters and bikes around our quiet cul-de-sac almost every day. I’ve loved spending so much time in the outside, especially in our own wee garden as it is such a restorative place and I always feel better for an hour or two pottering around or just watching the wildlife. Our little garden is such an antidote to all the gloomy headlines in the news.
Last weekend, the rain brought an end to the prolonged stretch of sunny weather, bringing much needed water to all the plants in our garden, and to our rivers and reservoirs further afield.
Life has felt fairly hectic lately and I’ve felt out of sync with the natural world that is only just starting to emerge from hibernation. A little bit of light has crept into our mornings and evenings, and snowdrops and crocuses have pushed up through the ground bringing some much needed colour to these dreary, grey winter days.
Over the last few weeks, my husband and I’ve been trying to get fitter, he recently invested in an exercise bike so we’ve both enjoyed cycling virtually through downtown Tokyo and Kyoto (where we spent our honeymoon almost a decade ago), and we’ve been doing yoga together most evenings before bed. I’ve joined a weekly fitness class at our local gym, which has been a fun way to increase my activity. It’s been tricky finding time to exercise between work and parenting, but we want to get a bit fitter if only to keep up with our two young, energetic daughters.
I’ve struggled a bit with the winter blues but I’m finding such comfort in little glimmers like building elaborate train tracks and magnetic tile towns on the living room floor with the girls or family games of pop up pirate, hungry hippos, dobble and bingo, lots of messy kinetic sand and play dough fun too. This month there have been parties for our oldest daughter’s fifth birthday, and my mother in law’s too. My husband has also gone full-time self employed for the first time, we’re still adjusting to the new rhythm of his work but will hopefully be less stressful and more flexible than his previous role.
We’ve been getting on with little jobs in the garden too, mostly tidying up but also planting a silver birch and pear tree. Winter hasn’t quite surrendered to Spring here yet, it’s still pretty cold, dark, wet and wild, but the first little daffodils in our border have flowered. Have a lovely week. X
January is often a quiet time for us, settling back into our routines and slowing down after all the excitement and excess of Christmas.
There isn’t much growing in the garden at this time of year, but there are still lots of little jobs and tidying up to do. There’s a silver birch and Concorde pear tree waiting to be planted where the bamboo used to be. While the bamboo was a bit of a deadzone for wildlife, I’m hoping the birds and insects will appreciate more native trees and shrubs.
One of the other big changes is the double swing my husband built for our daughters, which they absolutely love and has proven to be reassuringly sturdy so far. In the winter months, we often feel cooped up so swings and the slide give us something to do in the garden when it’s too cold or wet to go the park.
My husband also built a compost box out of pallets and wood leftover from other projects, and we’ve already starting putting our tree clippings, cardboard, fruit and vegetable peel in there to rot down and turn back into nutritious soil.
We spent a couple of hours pottering around in the garden last week, and it was so peaceful without any of the pressure I often feel during summer. Then at the weekend, everything shut down when Storm Eowyn arrived, and we spent a whole day inside watching the storm rage outside and trying to keep two small kids entertained without any of our usual activities. The wind smashed a few panes of glass in our green house, but we were extremely lucky that we didn’t lose any tiles from our roof or fence panels.
As always, very grateful for our little patch, and so looking forward to spring. Have a lovely week. X
After a week of warmth and sunshine, there’s a nip in the air and the garden has definitely gone over. As today is the autumn Equinox, it seems like a good time to share a long overdue update on our garden.
It’s been a patchy summer here in the West of Scotland, seems like we never had more than a couple of days of sunshine and warmth before being soaked by another deluge of rain. Most of the veg I sowed struggled in the cool, wet weather, though the kids have enjoyed eating peas fresh from the pod, and I’m still hopeful the tomatoes will ripen before the first frost.
Growing fruit has been much more successful. We picked bowlfuls of strawberries all through June, a handful of cherries from a dwarf tree, we got about twelve sweet and juicy plums from the Victoria plum tree, and we had enough rhubarb and apples to bake a pie (with lots of apples still to pick).
This year, we’ve let the ground along the fence grow wild, while the climbing roses, clematis and apple trees establish themselves. The long border pretty much takes care of itself, though I want to divide the geraniums and move some to the front garden. It’s been my best year for sunflowers, they grew tall and flowered despite the weather.
It’s not all been good in the garden as we’ve only seen sparrow and starling fledglings, and after noticing that we hadn’t seen the Robin or Blue Tits around for a while, we checked their nests and found both abandoned. I fear one of the neighbourhood cats either got one of the parents or scared them off as all the Tits and Robins stopped visiting the garden for a while. This loss was counterbalanced somewhat by the arrival of a hoglet that has moved in and built a nest inside the little brick house we put together for it, and appears every evening for his supper of wet cat food and hedgehog food. Watching our resident hedgehog scurry around in the evenings is more entertaining than TV.
The biggest change was removing the bamboo, which provided an excellent screen but was an environmental deadzone with nothing but a few spiders inhabiting it, and I’m planning to plant a couple of trees there instead.
Our garden is such a wild clash of ideas, but it is also the best antidote I know to the almost constant climate doomism that pervades the news. I really love seeing how excited the kids are when picking fresh food from the garden, and it’s an easy way of helping them to connect with nature and learn about so many environmental issues. It is our little haven, surprisingly calm and private, in the bustling city. Have a lovely week. X
It felt like we only had a handful of sunny days, and August was a dark and stormy month which was reflected in my reading as I found myself drawn to the mysteries, magical realism, romances and children’s adventures I normally reserve for the long, dark evenings of autumn and winter. I also thoroughly enjoyed listening to two non-fiction audiobooks last month.
Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
This book was inspired by people frequently confusing Naomi Klein (No Logo and This Changes Everything) with Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth), like all doppelgangers there are similarities between them, but also significant differences. Doppelganger is a fascinating snapshot in time about personal branding, influencers and authenticity, and starts with Naomi Klein reflecting on her own evolution from No Logo to present, the choices and experiences that led her down one path as she tries to understand why her doppelganger took opposite paths. I was really interested in the exploration of political diagonialism when different groups find common ground that diverge from the traditional left-right political wings, and how the right has increasingly welcomed exiles from the left, combined with the persistent failure of the left to engage with fears and suspicion around vaccinations, social media and privacy, climate change, and other divisive topics. This is such a book full of big ideas that I thoroughly enjoyed listening to on audiobook.
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
I have a soft spot for stories about witches and magic set in the real world like Chocolat, Practical Magic and The Once and Future Witches, and this is historical fiction with a dash of magical realism. Loosely inspired by Leigh Bardugo’s Spanish Jewish ancestors who converted to Christianity to escape the Inquisition and then disappeared, the story follows a scullion, Luzia, who has a just a little bit of magic that draws the attention of ambitious patrons who use her to further their own ends. Leigh Bardugo is one of my favourite writers and while this isn’t her best work, it’s an enjoyable tale with lots of tension, a bit of romance and a couple of clever twists.
The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
I’ve read a few Inspector Poirot mysteries but decided to try Christie’s other famous sleuth, Miss Marple. When the dead body of a young woman is found in Colonel Bantry’s library, while he calls the police, his wife calls Miss Marple to help them solve the mystery of who the victim is, who killed her and how she ended up in their library. This is a clever little mystery with plenty of suspects, a few red herrings and a reveal that I didn’t see coming but wrapped up the story very neatly.
Christmas At the Little Paris Hotel by Rebecca Raisin
A bit early for Christmas stories, but couldn’t resist this when I saw it on Netgalley. This is a romance novel about Anais, a recently divorced novelist with writer’s block and a delapidated hotel she got as part of her divorce settlement. With the help of her loyal cousin, Manon, she sets about renovating the hotel in time for its Christmas opening but soon discovers that the hotel has its own secrets and a mystery to solve. I really enjoyed the strong female friendship through this, the slow burn romance and learning about French Christmas traditions along the way. This is a lighthearted and escapist romance perfect to curl up with as the evenings draw in and the countdown to Christmas begins. Christmas At the Little Paris Hotel is out on 26th September, thanks to Netgalley, Boldwood Books and Rebecca Raisin for the advanced reading copy.
The Island at the Edge of Night by Lucy Strange
A heart pounding, nail bitingly tense middlegrade thriller, the story follows 12 year old Faye Fitzgerald when she’s sent to a reform school for wicked children on a remote and desolate island for a crime she can’t remember. This is absolutely gripping, full of mystery, twists and turns. At times, this was so tense and foreboding, it could have been written by Daphne du Maurier, and other times it reminded me of classic adventures like The Wolves of Willoughby Chase with brave children outwitting devious and cruel adults.
One Garden Against the World by Kate Bradbury
This is such a love letter to nature, and Kate Bradbury is such an inspiration to me. One Garden Against the World is about the many ways gardeners can help nature, and maybe even mitigate climate change. This is poignant and disheartening as she battles other people’s indifference, denial and cruelty, frets about the lack of rain during record breaking heatwaves and recites grim statistics about the collapse of bird, insect and hedgehog populations, yet is also so informative and inspiring. Kate Bradbury is so full of useful advice and her reverence for nature really shines through it all. I loved all the audacious and eccentric anecdotes she shares from rescuing caterpillars before the local council gardeners mowed down nettles in the park to fattening up hedgehogs from the local rescue centre in her garden.
I’ve always been delighted by how much wildlife there is in our urban garden from bees and hover flies to sparrows and blue tits, but nothing causes quite as much excitement as spotting a hedgehog. Just over a week ago, we drew the living room curtains to find a little hedgehog hastily gathering leaves to make a nest under the pallet woodshed.
The very same day, I took the girls to the pet shop to buy some hedgehog food and my husband built a little hedgehog house out of spare bricks and a paving slab, and we were delighted to see the hedgehog shuffle inside just as dawn broke the next day. We also set up a little motion sensor camera to watch him without disturbing him, and spotted the mouse that also lives in the woodshed nabbing some food.
Our hedgehog house
Small, shy and very skittish, catching a glimpse of our little Tiggywinks has been the highlight of my evening every night for the last week. We think it’s a male and probably born this year judging by his size, so I’m hoping between the food we leave out and all the insects in our garden, he’ll put on enough weight to survive the winter. Given the decline in hedgehog numbers across Britain, I’m happy to help any that find their way into our garden, but we try not to disturb him too much.
Leaving food and water for the hedgehog has quickly become part of our little daughters’ bedtime routine even though they’re both fast asleep by the time he emerges, and he’s usually in his own bed just before our early risers wake.
View from the window and night camera
I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of watching hedgehogs snuffle and shuffle around the garden, perhaps because they’re nocturnal and increasingly rare, there is almost something magical about them. Have a lovely week. X
I haven’t much time to write lately as we’ve had a run of back to back illnesses which floored us all, but we’ve enjoyed a fun, chocolate and family filled Easter holiday weekend.
We celebrated our oldest daughter’s fourth birthday in February with a little birthday party with all her cousins and best friends from nursery. Meanwhile our youngest is now 18 months old, she’s settled in to nursery, learned a handful of words (Mara, shoes, yeah, no, baby) and is climbing everything.
It’s been a long winter, but buds on the apple trees, blossom on the plum tree and daffodils in the border are the most welcome signs that spring is here at last. There are trays of tomato and teasel seedlings on the windowsills inside, and blue tits flittering and twittering outside the kitchen window as they choose one of our bird boxes to nest in. Growing a little bit of our food and watching the wildlife in our garden always helps me to feel connected to nature and to slow down.
This weekend, while the girls took turns on their slide, my husband scooped leaves and blanketweed out of the pond, and I spent some time in the greenhouse sowing cucumber, celery and melon seeds, before the sky darkened and we were pelted by hail stones trying to rescue the washing drying on the line. Then there was the excitement of pulling on wellies over our pyjamas for an Easter egg hunt in the garden yesterday morning and chocolate for breakfast afterwards.
Very much looking forward to spending more time in the garden and beyond after a long winter cooped up inside. Happy Easter all! X
Lovely and Grateful 
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