Tag Archives: flowers

A pet bee

2 May

On 24 August 2021 I wrote:

One of our pet bees, having a snack.

Some days you get to just sit back and enjoy life. I feel enormously lucky that I live somewhere I have such easy access to the life enhancing properties of nature.

In the late summer of 2021 the flowers on our terrace were glorious and we were regularly entranced by the gentle hum of the bees that hopped from flower to flower, drinking in all that nectar. Whichever bee was nearest us was called our Pet Bee. Just recalling this, I can feel the heat of the sun on my skin, and feel I’m blinking with the sunlight. And the bees, I can hear the bees, gently buzzing in my background. Such a happy wee sound.

And, we are selling this lovely haven, so if you or someone you know would like this lifestyle for yourself, here’s the details. Mauldslie Kennels, for sale.

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Hope. And love in a jar.

1 Feb

Snowdrops are my absolute best and favourite flower. I love how they battle through the cold, and poke their delicate wee heads up, often through snow, and wind and rain. But always COLD. I love their soft gentle colours, their crushable petals, their amazing scent, and how they look just perfect in a wee vase with an ivy leaf.

I love how the represent hope. Hope that Spring will come, that life goes on.

But most of all I love how, for me, they represent so much more. They mean love, and kindness, and knowing I am loved.

I left home at 18, and moved to London, where I lived for over 20 years. Every year I received a small cardboard box, containing scrunched up newspapers (for padding). Carefully, carefully I would open that box and then gently remove the newspaper… to reveal a bunch of snowdrops with a couple of ivy leaves (a plastic bag over the flowers and another secured tightly around the stems, which were wrapped in wet newspaper). The scent of snowdrops still takes me back to that homesick longing to be where they grow, under Mum’s magnolia tree in her ‘winter garden’.

Today I have picked snowdrops from Mum’s winter garden and will take them down to her this afternoon. I hope she recognises the love they represent.

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Let the growing begin….

8 Feb

Chitting my seed potatoes

Chitting my seed potatoes

Spring might be round the corner. Or it might not. Today was the first day since 16 January when the garden wasn’t covered in snow – it has finally melted. And of course it looks a right old mess. But never mind, we’ll get it tidied up, and nature will help soon, with things beginning to grow, and bud and a general coming back to life.

I headed into the greenhouse this afternoon, and set out the potatoes for chitting. I bought a ‘chef’s collection’ with three varieties: International Kidney (salad/second early); Anya (also salad/second early) and Ratte (maincrop). I think we’ll grow most of them in bags or tubs this year.

I also sowed some seeds in one wee seed tray: cosmos, rudbeckia and basil finissimo.

I know, flowers! But if we’re thinking of having bees, we’d better grow them some flowers to enjoy.

 

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