This my dear friends, will almost definitely be my final post before the wedding (eep), and most likely before we return from our two weeks away in the glorious South West. Things have started to get pretty busy around here! Nearly all of the shopping for the reception has been done, glass hire has been booked, our gazebo is ready and I'm left in the middle of it all wondering just what has happened! Tomorrow the majority of the guests arrive and book into their hotels, having travelled many miles. My mother herself is driving a good distance to pick up some elderly relations who can't get here any other way. Everyone has been so good and kind to us - it's really touching.

The garden is starting to look absolutely stunning - just as we're leaving it! Many of the wildflowers that we planted - California poppies, red dead-nettles and the like are just coming into flower, the rest with big buds just waiting to bloom. Although I'll be missing the best of the flowers, I'm hoping my neighbour will watch over the garden for me!

Thanks to all the well-wishers and good-luck-givers, it's nice to know that I can share this time with others who have been where I am right now (or somewhere similar!).

I am slightly nervous, as all brides-to-be are, but all I have to do is look around me to see so many men and women happy in their decision to spend their lives together. So far this relationship has definitely had its ups and downs, but there is love, respect and caring, as well as the more tumultuous sides, which every relationship experiences.

So on that note, and whilst humming "Love and Marriage", I will bid you adieu! Have a good two-weeks, whatever you may be doing!

We're both recovering from this bug that's been around - I'm feeling better but the poor Fiancé is off today feeling very icky. Just as well we got all of this stuff over before the wedding, eh? Talking about that, it is now a mere 6 days until the big day. Someone from my side of the family can't come, another dear family friend had to pull out too because she is now too unwell to travel and a mutual friend to both of us also doesn't think he'll be able to come. But on the upside we've had others telling us that they now will be able to come when previously they couldn't.

And when I know there will be people in the house, I go into a manic house-cleaning frenzy. Today alone I've shifted every piece of furniture downstairs, hoovered everywhere, and mopped all the floors. I've dusted, smashed a pretty glass bowl, sat down, stood up, and then felt like I'm ready for the mental hospital. My head is spinning - there is so much to do, how on earth am I going to do it all? I know it'll all be fine in the end (at least that's what I've been saying every sixty seconds - if I believe it then it might come true, non?), but right now everything seems a bit frantic.

Thankfully tomorrow my mother will arrive to soothe my worries, or at least provide a shoulder to scream on when I've just about had enough! On saturday the rest of the ménagerie arrive, including Fiancé's parents, brother, brother's girlfriend, and grandmother (and breathe).

I drove my car (after having it jump-started) to the local garage and said "here - fix it!". A weight off my shoulders, I'd just like it back here in one piece, having not been charged the earth for a new battery and a service, and everything working again.

My only sanctuary from the stress has been the garden. The pure bliss of seeing bees coming and going from the foxgloves, our roses full of leaves, the cornflowers about to burst and the orange heads of the Californian poppies. It's really magical, and the perfect antidote to thoughts of menus, receptions, shopping and wedding planning in general! I am so pleased with this little bit of land that we take care of, it's never really ours, because nature isn't ours, she is just there for us to take care of and pass down.







This year I panicked that there would be no foxgloves at all. Since we moved in we've cleared so much land that was just fallow with various grasses, I feared the foxgloves would desert us, but no, they have come and stayed. I take pains to broadcast their seed as far as I can in the autumn, carefully weeding around all of the new plants as they are biennial and flower on their second year. Originally I think they had a cultivated variety, which is how we have some cream ones, but with time they have cross-pollinated and have become a mish-mash, some bright magenta, some the palest ice-cream pink. Most of them are or will be as tall as I am - 5 foot 7 inches. The bees think they've died and gone to nectar heaven, and so do I, they're such a stunning addition to our garden, I'll never be without my favourite of all wayside plants.



Although I don't find my legs particularly attractive, I find bodily curves pleasing to the eye - but that is beside the point. This picture sums up all that I love about summer, how I love to go barefoot (I was and always have been like this), and how sitting in the garden watching the sun go down is just the escape that I need. If you've got a garden, or access to a park, I urge you to sit down in it and forget life. Don't take your iPod, your phone or your child, just go down and sit in silence - it's better than any drug, food or television program. The best thing in the world. Definitely.

Mary Poppins said "A thing of beauty is a joy forever", if only she knew how right she was.

Baking chocolate cookies for the Fiancé, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon in my kitchen, feeling pleased that I was finally done cleaning and preparing for today. I saw a gang of youths, probably around 12 of them, dressed in Adidas tracksuits, all similar looking. Baseball caps pulled over faces, one on a bike, turned to look at me before they did it. Smiling as they did so, running through our garden, trampling with ease what it has taken a year to produce. Effortlessly over herbs they flew, through the chard and on top of the carrots. For the fun of it. To get to the bottom of the garden, running away from their crimes, whatever they were. They wanted to run. Over the fence panel already broken from their escapes before, to the fields and away. Thankfully others saw what I saw.

We'll ring the police and be told that there's nothing they can do. Nothing at all. How angry I am, my hands are shaking and a ball of anger swirls in the pit of my stomach. Now I'm scared. I also feel angry, how could they do something like that? There will be a fence put up, a deep fence, with trellis too and thorny roses. Beautiful but thorny nonetheless. I don't want this to happen again, the same youths who last week set a fire on the heathland and watched it burn, using our garden as an escape route.

Is there a wedding going on around here? What is this you speak of? Who? Me? Never! Nah, really. Couldn't be me, could it?! Yeah.

If you're reading my blog in the conventional way (i.e. not through an aggregator), then you can't help but notice that in less than 2 weeks I will no longer be a Miss, but a Mrs. But, before I go whooping it up, I'm going to mention that I'm also trying to forget it - sort of like a distant relative's marriage, rather than my own. Not to say that I'm not excited, happy and gleeful, but I am also pretending, that just for now, it's not actually happening to me. Of course I want to get married, I am just sort of dreading the actual process, the manic hassles that have suddenly dawned upon me. It doesn't help that I'm sat here with runny eyes, sore ears and a blotchy, raw and snotty nose. I have the most hated of all phenomena - a summer cold. I look like death warmed up - hardly a radiant young bride-to-be. If I carry on at this rate I'll be croaking my vows.

On top of this, my car simply refuses to start. It's something electrical, either the alternator or the battery as far as I can tell (and that's not much), but it's more stress. The Fiancé's car is also making horrid squeaking noises, which isn't good when we're headed on a very very long honeymoon trip. My mother, very kindly, has offered us the use of her large 4x4, but that means me driving the whole way, which is just scary.

So that means us both selling our cars, and buying a new one, newer and slightly larger than our cars.

Did I mention that it's less than 2 weeks away now?!?!?! Ugh. So I am holding up, but struggling at times - thanks for all the lovely comments that you've been leaving, I will get around to commenting at some point in the proceedings (fingers crossed). However yesterday, not only was I struggling with a runny nose and a sore throat, I was being driven half mad by the urge to bake a blackberry and apple pie, to use some of the frozen glut from last year. I am a big fan of hedgerow eating (free, organic, local!), and with the help of a very soft hankie and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Cookbook, I got to work on his 'Blackberry and apple crumble tart', which mixes tart and crumble, two things I adore, and uses proper paté sucrée (sweet, rich pastry). Just what I needed when I was feeling such a poorly bunny.



Right, off to wait for a call from the florist, do more washing, weed the garden and reply to some letters. Have a great weekend :)

If you take a stroll down our garden, in the cooler evening breeze, before the sun has set and is bright enough to illuminate everything for you, there will be something waiting there that makes life seem ok - however desperate you may feel. Hop over the garden fence, through the snicket, between the land where the squirrels play, and onto a field and a hill. These hills are man-made, the remnants of a previous age, part of this place's industrial heritage. So long they have been earthed-over, covered up, and left to go wild. In between each of these fields, separating them, are pine forests with a mix of cherry, beech, hawthorn, rowan and blackthorn.

In the heart of these woods live the wood spirits, they protect the forest and those who pass through it. If you carry on through the fields which are now knee-deep in long feathery grasses, you'll come across something magical. If you're lucky, there will be a little orchid peeping through amongst rambling cats-ear, ribwort plantain, sheep's fescue and daisies. If you did not know what it was, you might think it was nothing more than a wayside weed, unobtrusive is this little gem, but no! It's a wild, beautiful thing, as are all the wayside flowers.



Our orchid is a pyramidal orchid, with deep magenta flowers and an apparent musky smell attracting moths at night. I can't attest to this attribute - I'm not that supple, but I will believe my book. It is all the more beautiful because it's there naturally. No one has bought it, planted it out there, cultivated it, it's there by nature alone, and that is perfection.

But I won't dwell soley on orchids; I've recently taken my knowledge regarding wildflowers up a notch, I can recognise hundreds of flowers thanks to dilligent reading, and have found lots on our little heathland itself. From cats-ear to silverweed, red clover to perennial rye grass the list is endless. Every plant on that heath competes with its neighbour, and manages to hold its own, the balance is kept perfectly.

Every day I go out I find something new, like these sloes, the fruit of the blackthorn 'prunus spinosa', will make gorgeous sloe gin if we get to some of them before the birds!



Or the tiny common vetch, a member of the pea family, its cerise flowers can be found in small drifts throughout the heath, usually neighbouring a buttercup.



The last push of the beautiful hawthorn, changing from the cleanest white, to cream, to a blush of pink before the petals fall to the floor. The fruit of which will be collected and eaten, served with pheasant, when the game season comes around. But for now I will enjoy their last few days of flower, and will be sad when they're gone.



There are some plants that are harder to identify. Is this a hop trefoil, or is it a lesser trefoil? The only really noticeable difference is whether the petals are pinched or not, this I believe is a hop trefoil, but I'll get down on my hands and knees amongst the grass and have a look for myself.



Then there are some which I can't seem to identify at all, it's not bindweed or nightshade - does anyone have any ideas? I thought it might be butterbur, but I'm not sure.



Nigella once said about food "if you can find so much pleasure in such small things, then your life is made alot easier", this is how I feel about nature. I get all of my pleasure from seeing the earth carry on, flowers growing, seasons changing, and living as close to nature as possible.

It's a simple fact that as the season progresses, all that I need to do in the garden is weed, mow and adore. The plants that were planted, the seeds sown, have all done their thing and have taken over the beds and borders in complete confidence. Peas, poppies and wildflowers are everywhere. Spinach, lettuce and Jerusalem artichokes are growing, waiting to be eaten.

When the washing goes out on the line in the morning, there is a perfect chance to get out into the garden and spend little more than 10 minutes alone there. Before household tasks, worries and thoughts invade my head, and I must move on.





Where patience is a virtue, as one waits for a flower to open, a leaf to unfurl or a plant to change.





I bake a cake so that my sweet tooth can be sated. Lemon drizzle cake with sunken chocolate pieces. Served with tea, nothing is more soothing (and heaven only knows I need some soothing at the moment).



Our squirrel visits. He thinks the same way as me, he has a family and worries of his own to contend with, a wife and children to feed, a home to make. He says 'hi', then runs on his way.



In the evening I take Madam on a walk, with Fiancé in tow, we wander through long grass and through short. We meander slowly, and run with nary a thought for anything but the immediate, the rush of air through our clothes, into our bodies.



Vegetables are sliced into slivers, thrown into a pan and eaten with glee. A quick, hearty meal.



When the sun is beginning to set, after a long day's work in the garden, we take a step back, with a chair in our arms, wander into our yard. I light a host of flickering candles, and lay them around us, enveloping us in a circle of light. A sea fret comes in, and lays over us and the house, stilling the world around.



Our thoughts of thankfulness are amplified and made real, when we look to the sky and find the most beautiful thing in the world. It is there, and so close we could touch it.

I mentioned that I make my own washing-powder for our laundry - and I also mentioned posting the recipe, so without further ado, here it is, with lots of other 'green' tips thrown in for good measure. I am actually sort of qualified to ramble on about this, as I have run my own cleaning business in the past, and was absolutely shocked when one woman gave the orders for me to bleach the lot. Another lady telling me in which order to use the 5 separate toilet cleansers, her children constantly suffered from bouts of diarrhoea and vomiting.

Washing powder, not dissimilar from that mentioned by Suzie, from the recipe by Snowdrift Farm. I don't have borax, not because I wouldn't use it, but purely because up until now I haven't found anywhere that sells it. My method is simple, and only uses four ingredients: household soda (not the baking variety), soap flakes, water and some drops of essential oil (I use lavender, but many citrusy/floral scents work wonders too). In a food processor add the soap flakes, and add a couple of teaspoons of water. This is important, if you don't, you'll be sneezing for the rest of the day as the soap flakes become a very fine powder. Whiz. Add the rest of the ingredients, shaking vigorously, pop into a large jar (kilner jars look good and are reusable). For an average load, four tablespoons will suffice, using more for jeans/cottons and less for thinner fabrics. Don't use with delicates; make up a batch without the soda for those.

To make your windows sparkle, how about mixing a little water (about 1:3) and a little vinegar (2:3 - malt will do fine) in a spray-bottle and get shining. Newspaper works best when cleaning windows, as you get far less smears.

To clean a toilet, what about borax? Sprinkle liberally around the toilet bowl, leave overnight, then wipe 'round in the morning. All should be gorgeously shiny. Household soda crystals work wonders too.

Talking of household soda crystals (one of my favourite cleaners), they de-grease like nothing else. If you've got a greasy sink, a fatty hob, or soapy scum in the shower, mix a few tablespoons of soda into some hot water and get to work. Remember to rinse well, as soda does leave a white film if you don't. Adding lavender (or essential oil of your choosing) makes it smell beautiful.

Smelly carpets? Often a problem in houses that have pets, the best thing you can do is put down whatever you're using curently as they are almost always bad for the animals, and of course, you. Shake'n'vac is the most common cause of eye and respiratory problems in dogs, because they are so close to the ground all the time. To make a pet-friendly alternative, take a small tub of bicarb. of soda (the baking variety), add plenty of your chosen essential oil, and some salt. Leave for a couple of days, shaking often, then either shake out of the tub or seive it over the problem area, leaving it down for as long as possible. All the while keeping pets out of the room (overnight is good). Vacuum the mixture up, and your carpet should smell like new. This can be repeated often for pernicious smells.

If you have rugs, find a carpet-beater or a tennis racket and get beating. Pin your rug to the washing line or over a hedge. It's great for PMS, an argument with your significant other, and also gets the rug smelling fab and dust-free.

Musty smell in your house? The best air freshner, is fresh air (logical thinking to me). Put down all of your noxious apricot and bilberry room odourisers, lay to waste your electricity-burning, evil-causers of false freesia-ness, and positively hurl into the dustbin your bright-pink, lewd-smelling bowls of chemical pot pourri, and make a promise to yourself: there will never be another one of [insert product name] these in my house, ever again. Now, feeling very pleased with yourself, fling open your windows (not with the heating on, think green here!), pay a visit to Adrian, and spread a little relaxing, soothing Nag Champa around your house. We love incense over here, can't get enough of the stuff in fact - so much so that I think we're going to have to become fully paid-up members of Incense Anonymous. On a more serious note though, there are risks associated with using aerosols and other types of air freshners. There was a marked increase in headaches in mothers, who regularly used air fresheners, and babies were found to experience more ear aches and diarrhoea than those who didn't. If that alone doesn't have you running to your cupboard to commit aerosol hari kari, then I'm not sure will. For me, air fresheners are a quick-fix to a simple problem. A house doesn't smell if it's kept clean, with regular ventilation all through the year. Opening the windows immediately upon waking (remembering to shut them if you're going to leave the house unattended), and letting the house 'breathe' is the only way to defeat smells. As for air freshners that promise that they'll kill all bacteria, just remember, we are made up of bacteria - really good, beneficial bacteria, which could be why so many people seem to suffer from allergies. Plus, there's just something more tangible and spiritual about burning incense than simply spraying a spray; fresh-cut roses or not!

To take care of wooden furniture, what about using good old-fashioned beeswax? You can buy it in bar-form and melt it to make your own blend, or buy it in a tin which has had turps added, it should be applied sparingly and with a soft cloth, making sure you wash your hands afterwards.

To wash glassware, I've found that a bowl of hot water (only just bearable to put your hands in, cooler for more delicate items), with some eco-friendly washing-up liquid works wonders. Nooks and crannies can be attacked with a toothbrush. Rinse well, drying immediately with a good glass-towel.

Got hard floors? A bucket of scalding-water (much cooler if dealing with any floors other than laminate, tile or linoleum), with some of Ecover's multi-purpose cleaner makes your floors sparkle. Make sure your mop-head is clean and in good working order, don't put too much water on the floor, and if needs-be, do it by hand (a very satisfying, if time-consuming occupation).

I hope this helps!