Stempster

Photo by  Diego Madrigal  from  Pexels We're away on holiday this week (although we've decided to leave early because we're missing home!) and I have been spending most of my time planning the garden and pricing things up. There is a slight problem... things always seem more expensive than I had initially thought! But, looking on the bright side, finding cheaper alternatives can sometimes lead to an example that would work even better! We have an area of the garden which we ear-marked as a water garden as soon as we saw it, and I have a plan to keep a fish pond there, as we have plans to create a wildlife pond elsewhere in the garden. My hope is to have a Japanese style water garden, with ornamental miniature trees, and plenty of cool grasses. But my hopes of a raised pond were proving to be a bit difficult. I decided to look into getting a raised bed, which I could attach a pond liner to, but I don't know if it would be strong enough to hold water. And, besides, for a ...

While we were exploring the wind farm a few weeks ago, we found a healthy patch of brambles next to a pathway up the hill. We had left the wind farm behind us, and had joined a small footpath that we hoped (and we weren't disappointed) was a shortcut. After that, we have been going back every week to check on the brambles. Every week, we came back empty handed. Perhaps we were being a bit optimistic that they would follow the same seasons as the plants in Lincolnshire, but it wasn't until today that we finally got a harvest of plump blackberries. Taking Orlando for a walk along the wind farm is one of the highlights of my week. My job in Wick means that I'm not the one who walks him from Monday to Friday but weekends are a joy! Today, we decided to be hopeful again and take a few plastic boxes which, as we were wandering along the track through the windfarm, we were imagining filling with those fruity treasures. Of course, when we got to the bushes, our hearts sank. While t...