Whilst wistfully daydreaming out of the kitchen window, as I am prone to do from time to time, I noticed the red spectre of our favourite little rodent. I am of course, talking about our neighbourhood red squirrel. It seemed to be an adult, not as large as some I've seen, but much darker than the very brassy-red youngsters. My guess, from 30 paces, is that this is an adult female. I could be wrong, though!


[someone enjoying a nosh on the peanuts left out for them]


[and again...]


[I'm obviously not as important as the peanuts...]


[A charming tail-shot as it runs for the hills... and my camera lens]

After a few minutes of posing gracefully for the camera, she had enough, and dashed through the trees with such simple efficiency. I could see her gaily bounding into the pine trees immediately behind, one final bound and she was gone.

My new job title: wildlife papparazzi-in-training!

Well, lots and lots. The weather has taken a turn for the better, so I've been out in the garden and have, *gasp* mowed our lawn! It was warm enough for that! I have seen two bees today, large bumbles, our first of the season, still sleepily flying into things, like me in the morning ;-) The daffs too, and narcissi are both coming up, the wee nodding heads of the buttercup-yellow narcissi have flowered and are sat out in their trough just like Wordsworth's poem "I Wondered Lonely As A Cloud";

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Then, last weekend, my mother came up and spent a very pleasant 3 days up here, sampling all that Northumberland has to offer (which included local Jersey-milk cheese, rare-breed middle-white sausages - both from the farmers market - and my own home cooking!), although in all the time she was here there was not one sign of a red squirrel anywhere! The little devils were all sat cosy in their dreys, out of the rain, refusing to be looked-at. Of course, the moment mum was gone, they reappeared at the bottom of the garden, a cheeky brassy-red baby and an older, much larger, deep blood-red male (I think) sat in the hawthorn bush and proceeded to scoff peanuts until he probably had a very sore tummy.

Mum didn't come empty-handed either (does she ever?!), she brought us a wonderful wardrobe and chest of drawers (from a friend of hers - recycling in action!), these were important as we really don't have much storage space at all in this house. So part of the weekend was spent assembling those back into their 3D forms, and of course, filling them with stuff. The art room is now much nicer with the addition of the drawers, only a couple of ghastly boxes now! Which has made me feel all the more in the mood to get down and do some arty stuff, yielding one rather nice lino print, and another one in the works, all the while Nag Champa incense was burning, the windows thrown open with wreckless abandon, and the heating turned completely off! This spring malarkey is great, washing is out on the line, it doesn't get dark until after 7pm, and it's starting to warm up a bit. This does, however, highlight a problem, which is, I really must get the veg seeds planted, but I seem to be having gardeners-block and not being able to practice what I preach... I do hope for a remedy soon, in the form of some nice sunny days in which to get it all done. Then I will officially be able to claim that it really is the start of Spring and all's well with the world at last!

The gardener, on the whole, works with the rhythms of nature, in a cycle, and for us gardeners (and members of the Northern Hemisphere) our annual cycle starts right about now. March is the month that things start to really happen in the garden. The lawns grow, trees bud, weeds sprout, bulbs emerge and flower, bird song changes and everything starts to re-animate. In our garden the bulbs are all coming up, some of which I planted myself in the sunny December days we had, things like miniature drumstick alliums and two different types of miniature tulips. The garden came complete with beds full of daffodils, non-native bluebells (I am working on erradicating these) and crocuses, but only when they start to push their spring-green leaves up through the soil can the garden really start to begin its new year.


Spring has come late for us up here, there have been many days of rain, sleet, snow and hail, and still the temperature is much lower than this time last year, when the Fiancé and I spent days on the beach in the warm hazy sunshine. According to our neighbour who has lived on this street (and was born in our house!) all of his life, spring doesn't get here until around the beginning of April. For others it can be earlier, sometimes up to a month and half earlier if you live near Cornwall, Devon and the south-west. The things that we can start to do in the month of March do really depend on where you live and what time the weather starts to get better. Usually you can expect frosts until the middle of May for most places, but in the south it will be considerably earlier. It is worth watching the weather forecast as the old quote says: "the difference between a good gardener is two weeks". So from now on, watch the weather like a hawk, consider getting yourself an outside thermometer and become aware of your surroundings.

Seeing as March is typically the 'new year' for the garden, it is time to implement the planning from way back in October. You should by now have a good idea of planting arrangements, colour schemes, fruit/vegetable beds (if you're having them) and of jobs that need to be done in the garden. We dug our beds over at the end of last year, hoed them, and left them mainly fallow to allow the soil and worms to do their job, to open the soil up and give it better structure for the coming year's plants. I have divided our beds up into specific areas, to allow them to be practically useful, and to allow ease of movement. The aesthetics of the garden are still important too, so when planting I'll keep everything sympathetic to one another. We have 7 beds in total, and here are my plans for them:

• Top bed, sunny south-facing, gets majority of sun although in one corner it suffers from neighbouring a large hawthorn bush and also an unruly privet hedge. Our compost bins, Elthel (I mean, come on, who doesn't name their compost bins?! She looks like an Elthel, too!) and Florence, live there, as does the leaf-litter pile. Currently the bed is shared also by the purple-sprouting broccoli, which we have decided is probably not going to flower, although we'll give it until the beginning of April before we remove it and give up.
  
  
  
  
• Main veg bed, sunny location, south-facing, gets all the sun. Suffers from a slightly stony soil, which means in order to grow good root vegetables will need a healthy seiving before any seeds can be sown. This is a problem as rain has prevented much work on this level. This bed is split in half, with the other half being devoted to my wonderful herbs. The herb bed doesn't just house herbs, it has some small hardy shrubs like a bright-red geum 'Mrs. Bradshaw', spirea 'Gold Flame' and many native foxgloves and some wallflowers. It has three lavender plants which will form a scented hedge on the eastern side (bordering the path), fennel, thyme, oregano, tricolour sage, blackcurrant bush and lemon balm. The feel for this will be a cottage-garden, with native British wildflowers, poppies, sweet peas, love-in-a-mist 'nigella damascena' and cerynths. But will also retain the practicality for harvesting of the herbs themselves.
  
  
• Shady bed, running alongside the vegetable bed with a path inbetween, it neighbours a greedy privet hedge and is quite shaded. This bed will be home to anything that loves shade, or that can attain height. It isn't shady all of the time, in the morning and early afternoon it will have full sun. The plan for this is a buddleja davidii, a deep purple 'butterfly bush', a sweet pale-cream rhododendron and some roses. I'd like to hide some of that privet hedge and keep the interest focused on the main bed, but give some height, shade and colour to the garden in general.
  
  
• The bed which isn't. This is situated at the top of the lawn and through self-seeding before we bought the house reverted back into lawn. It will be another vegetable bed.
  
  
  
  
• Three semi-circluar beds, one small, one large, one small, in that order down the western side of the lawn. These will be the 'show' beds, full of annuals, bright flowers, just a mass of colour.
  

Planning things out like that enables me to be able to look closely, define the aim of the garden, and work with it. I don't say those plans will be strictly adhered to, but for me it helps greatly. On our wedding list there is a 'garden obelisk' and roses, the plan is to have some height in the garden by having an archway bordered either side by trellis, to give the garden some much-needed privacy.


[the top third of our garden as it is today, it looks barren, cold and rickety but when it is planted it'll come into a world of its own!]

In the garden this month:

• Finish planting roses and give established roses their spring pruning.
  
• Mend lawns, and if you get a dry week with warm temperatures, mow your lawn. Re-cut edges of lawns and re-seed if necessary.
  
• If you have a bare bed fertilise and prepare it for whatever you plan to grow in it.
  
• Get your hoe out and start attacking those perennial weeds before they become rampant. It will save many many hours in the summer if you get in there early.
  
• Scrub paths with a mild detergent and a good strong brush.
  
• Get your hands dirty - re-pot your potted perennials. If you haven't done so already, scrub out plastic pots ready for planting seeds (which should also be done now).
  
• Give some ericaceous fertiliser to your camelia, rhododendron or azealea as it starts to bud. Spent tea-bags, in moderate numbers (there can be too much of a good thing) will give your acid-lovers a boost.
  
• Give some love to your indoor houseplants. Re-pot if necessary, talk to, water and feed every plant in your house. Wipe leaves to remove dust with either a damp cotton-wool ball or a feather duster if delicate.
  
• Make friends with your compost heap, get one if you haven't already, and start saving all of your fruit scraps, vegetable scraps, shredded and soaked newspaper, spent tea-bags and coffee grounds, grass clippings, weeds, any garden waste except woody cuttings. Add an accelerator like Garotta and within a few months you'll be reaping the rewards of your labours!

Thanks to the most delectable, ever-vivacious Flossy at Amethyst Grove, who gave me the most beautiful fabrics and with the addition of some of my own odds and ends, I patched myself a cushion cover! It took me less than a day's total time to make, and it looks so bright and spring-like! Fantastic!

Yesterday was a tiring day, but very exciting too. I received two things in the post, one of which was a wonderful fabric bundle from Flossy at Amethyst Grove. Thanks ever so much! I plan to get something quilted done soon, I'm not sure quite what at the moment - but when I get started I'll let you know!

The second item to (finally) get here was my wedding dress! We had such a kerfuffle trying to find out why it was being held in the local depot (we were tracking it online) and why it hadn't yet been delivered. Then we found out we were missing a customs charge letter with a magical 18-digit number so that we could pay the charges and have it delivered... But in the end, after many fruitless telephone calls I got through to someone who was very helpful and let me pay. The dress itself is beautiful, much darker than in the photo and a slightly more plummy colour, not so blueish as the one pictured. For now it's going to be kept a secret, because although I am not one for tradition when it comes to weddings, I would like the Fiancé to have a surprise on the day. Now we still have the mammoth task of flowers, cars, honeymoon, shoes, lingerie, suit for sir etc. This is where the stress really piles on!

For the big day itself I'll be wearing my grandmothers wedding ring, which means an awful lot to me because it was hers and because it is a little bit of family history. It is a beautiful square-cut platinum ring which you can tell has been worn for many years with love. I'll also be wearing my grandmothers tiara, a small affair laced with gorgeous pearls, Austrian crystals and the most delicate wax (they didn't have plastic in those days) lilys. It is beautiful. I know on the day I'll be feeling like a princess :-)

After yesterdays nervous wait for the dress, which was spent cleaning downstairs as I daren't go upstairs lest I should miss the delivery man (although his knock on the door was loud enough to raise the dead). Today everywhere is clean, from my usual morning kitchen whip-round to the bathroom, living room and dining room. I say they are all clean, and for the most part tidy, but it does need a good sorting out. At the moment we have two huge compost bins sitting in our dining room looking like the Environmental Sect of Daleks have come to visit. We can't put them out in the garden just yet as they need to be filled, which will involve an awful lot of moving the current compost heap and re-positioning, filling the bins, avoiding treading on the still-growing purple-sprouting broccoli. All I can say is, at 10 months in the soil, that broccoli had better taste good! I am starting to wonder if they don't have enough nitrogen in the soil, brassicas being renowned for loving a heavily-fertilised soil. But they are living very close to the compost heap which should be leeching goodness into the soil, so I am at a blank. I think they are one vegetable that will have to be put on hold this year.

So for the rest of the day I am going to come up with something crafty, dust upstairs and down, and look for the blessed digital camera which has taken itself on a walk... somewhere. That's one thing we could really do with (the little door hiding the CF card is held on tentatively with sellotape!), but I think we'll have to wait until after the wedding for another!

Have a great weekend Ladies and Gents!

You know, at chez VintagePretty, I've been getting a good few hits. Which I am very pleased about, naturally. But quite how people get here has always fascinated me. It's nice to know where people come from, what they are looking for when they come across my blog. Which is why I can't help but gawk when someone gets to my site from searching for something that they are clearly not going to get here!

So, for the (sometimes) mis-guided folks out there, a little list of popular referral terms compiled for ease!

"reading as a pasttime"

Yes, I do read. I do it as a pasttime and I enjoy it immensely. There is seldom a time when I am without a book at my side. Currently, seeing as we're entering spring, it seems to be books to do with gardening and nature.

"been gone at a wedding"

I don't quite follow, perhaps it's just me? I have been to a wedding once, when I was a wee thing of three, but I don't think I've 'been gone at a wedding'... Anyone else?

"pretty nips"

The mind really does boggle, how that person found my site I'm not sure. I refuse to comment on the state of my nips, pretty or otherwise! I mean, the cheek!

"roses tasha"

Yes, I love roses, and my name is Natasha. As for roses named 'tasha' I don't think that variety exists (if anyone knows different, let me know!) but feel free to grow a nice rose and name it after me!

"fluffy tits"

'Nuff said... The long-tailed tits aren't fluffy, although when very young fledglings, some of their nest-down might still show. I presume that was what was meant?!

"wedding tasha pictures"

Isn't that jumping the gun just a tad? I'm not yet married! Patience is a virtue and all... ;-)

"vintage housework rituals"

Ahhh, this is a good one. Very simple too. Two words for you, elbow grease. No! Not literally! Figuratively speaking of course. Get rid of every cleaning product you own and get down and clean with soap flakes, bicarb of soda, vinegar, lemon juice, salt and hand-knitted dishcloths! It takes longer, but it gets things cleaner, without killing you and your family in the process. I really do recommend it.

"natasha naked"

All I can say to that is: dream on, hon.

"nice pretty tits"

Yes, my coal tits, long-tailed tits, great tits and blue tits are all pretty and nice! I really will have to get some pictures up soon to show everyone!

"dig for victory"

I applaud the soul who searched for that, because it is something that we should all know about, understand and perhaps learn from. If we all became even slightly self-sufficient then the world would be an infinitely nicer place, don't you think?

A drumroll for my favourite of all...

"best season to sow lawn in "east anglia""

Now, this I can't really give much information on. But when it comes to sowing lawns I can fathom these basic rules... Sow when warm in moist soil. If it doesn't rain then you'll need to irrigate your lawn. Remove stones. Rake to a fine tilth, roughly level. Fertilise beforehand. Sow seeds, and get your best good-weather-praying-lawn-fertility hat on!

Next week? VintagePretty solves the age-old question; how to sow a lawn in the east midlands!! See, I've got you all excited now!

Wow, it's been too long since my last post, and from now on I promise to update a bit more. I have had a few ideas which I'm sure I'll throw out there over the coming weeks. Anyway, I'll give you an update of what's been happening here. The main theme? Spring cleaning. It's been handy having the Fiancé around so much, he's been an angel when it comes to helping 'round the house. I know men on the whole aren't so good at the housework-y side of things, but he is fabulous from washing up to... pinning voile curtains when my head is pounding too much to do it. I am a lucky girl.

The wedding invites have gone out, finally, it has taken me ages to write and address them all, and the Fiancé and I to decide upon a wedding list. Something that neither of us were very cheery about compiling, but have come up with a list of things that is neither cheeky, expensive or large.

On Saturday we decided to nip down to see my mother, and come back on the Sunday, which despite the mammoth drive was really nice. I haven't been back for 3 months, so it was good to just kick back for a while and get to see Amber as well!

On our journey we found some lovely voile-y stuff to replace the overly-bright Ikea net curtains left up in our bedroom by the previous occupants. This lady (who was maybe around 27-ish) had absolutely no idea about two things. The first (and most important, in my book) was cleaning, the second was how to sew. Now, it doesn't take much to be able to sew, it's easy and can be done by hand when a machine is not available. But she decided to hem the bottoms and tops of the nets with wundaweb. This meant that when I washed them they fell apart. Having suffered with falley-down voile curtains for long enough we decided to do away with them and put a much more tasteful affair up (photos will follow once the camera has been located and the batteries charged, I promise!).

Today after doing the monotonous weekly shop, finding a lovely sage-green washing up bowl ('twas a choice between sage green and navy blue...) to replace the one that had mysteriously cracked (?) and decided to leak profusely. Then we came home and I set about measuring voile curtains, pinning them and sewing hems onto them (and cursing) when I managed to hem the wrong side. I then baked Jane's lovely rock buns with little success, as for the first time in all the times I've made them (they are a popular choice in this household) I added a teeny bit too much milk and they turned out to be less rocks and more molten lava in mid-flow. At that point, the air turned somewhat blue, and I just gave up. I didn't even mention the hideous task of putting lining paper up in the living room (one wall was more than enough for me), or deciding to dismantle the kitchen in a rather sprightly attempt to give it a spring clean. The spring cleaning did work a treat though, and our kitchen (as small and as cold as it is) is now as clean as a freshly-scrubbed daisy. Ahh, sometimes it is just a great time to give in and give up.

Hello Ladies and Gents, sorry it's been so long. Things have been more than hectic here and, truth be told, I have gone for days without venturing out into the world of the interweb. The Fiancé is still on his break, and during these long dreamy days together we've been having great fun. Just getting to do things that we don't get to do.

On the wedding front, the invitations are all done and dusted, addressed, named and the awful job of wedding-list compiling has also been done. I'm not one for wedding lists, but plenty of people have asked about what we'd like for gifts, so we decided to compile our own. Things that would mean alot to us, nothing hideously expensive, and we don't expect the guests to get anything for us from there, but heck it's been a job and a half writing the whole thing!

Another semi-circular bed has been excavated, with the next one hopefully to come out soon. We're about to plant the carrot 'Early Nantes 2', but first we have to remove all of the random bits of debris from the beds as carrots and most root-veg don't like stony soils. This is a long and very tiresome job indeed. In March lots more plants will be able to be planted, onion sets at the end of the month, although we are still waiting for the purple sprouting brocolli that we planted in May last year! Talk about slow-growing.

So this is a quick update before I dive into a freshly made bed, if I'm not around for the next few days, I've either fallen into a wonderful warm and comfy coma or I have dug myself such a big hole in the garden that I've hit oil and have become a multi-millionaress overnight! Either way, I'll be a much better blogger given some time! Take care girlies :-)

A happy (belated) Saint David's day to everyone! I am Welsh, and so celebrated in the best way that I know, which is a bunch of Daffs on the windowsill (thanks to the Fiancé whose romanticism knows no bounds), taking in the bracing spring air, and eating my wonderful, deliriously gorgeous leek, spinach and potato soup with freshly baked cheesy scones straight from the oven!

Please excuse my lack of posting/commenting, these few days have been spent doing much-necessary catching up between myself and The Fiancé, during these long winter days that he has been working his socks off, it has been hard just getting time to chat and have a cuppa together, let alone have breakfast in a civil way. So this is what we have been doing, getting up later than usual (at a respectable 7.30am!), having breakfast together, shared dog-walks through the spring countryside and lots of just enjoying each others company. It has been really nice (and much-deserved!).

On Tuesday, I recieved the most wonderful gift from Robyn, which was not only a complete surprise, but has made my week - so this is a thanks to you, you darling! It was the most unexpected thing to pop through my postbox, but it has made a soppy girl very happy indeed, thanks!

The crocuses are up, and just waiting to unfurl their petals, I am feeling better than I have done for a long time, the wedding invites are sat on my dining room table waiting to be addressed and posted, and life at the moment is really nice! The next week or so the Fiancé and I are planning to get out more into the garden, finish lots of small jobs around the house (decorating, sanding, cleaning etc) so that when the wedding time comes, it will be in perfect order!


I'm now off to get cosy in a nice hot bath courtesy of Lush, but before I go, I'll leave you with a poem, from a book I found in the local Oxfam shop, entitled 'Poems for Gardeners' edited by Germaine Greer, famous thigh-slapping feminist and witty writer, she is also an avid gardener.

"The almond flourisheth, the birch-trees flow,
The sad mezereon cheerfully doth blow,
The flowery sons before their fathers seen.
The snails begin to crop the mandrake green;
The vernal sun with crocus garden fills,
With hyacinths, anemones, and daffodils.
The hazel catkins now dilate and fall,
And paronychions peep upon each wall."

Early Spring by Anon [Sir Thomas Browne?]