Happy Hallowe'en

London was fantastic but I'm glad to be back home in time for Hallowe'en (and my husband's birthday)! Several pumpkins and squash have been brought into the house and I've been deliberating for the last couple of weeks on how I wanted to carve mine. I finally settled on the idea of a haunted house for my extra big Pumpkini and for leaving the other uncut and on the table as decoration. My husband's pumpkin was a no-brainer really - he loves the Nightmare before Christmas :)

Hallowe'en is celebrated on the Isle of Man but it has been integrated into the equivalent Manx holiday, called Hop tu Naa (Hop-too-nay). Predating Hallowe'en, Hop tu Naa celebrates the beginning of the Celtic New Year. In the past boys with staffs and jack-o-lanterns made of turnips would jokingly terrorise the neighbours and be rewarded with herring or some other bite to eat. There were other superstitious customs involving a lot of silent eating, walking backwards and prophesying but these days the celebrations are generally fairly tame with the usual fancy dress and candy associated with the American holiday.

Though we've had tons of kids trick-or-treating in years past, we've only lived in our village since February of this year and so weren't quite sure if we'd receive any tonight. Being positive, I did go through the trouble to make nearly two dozen chocolate cupcakes just in case. Sadly, we haven't had a single festively dressed child come to the door! It's a bit of a disappointment but I suppose the plus side is having all those cupcakes to nibble on over the next couple of days. And besides, they might just be a wee bit scary for the little ones anyway ;)

Our 'Jack' and haunted house jack-o'-lanterns

The fun part!

What do you think...too scary?

London calling!

I've been in London since last Wednesday but haven't been able to post anything on here until now. The reason being that I wanted to surprise two friends who are also visiting and arrived only yesterday. Friends from Germany that I haven't seen in years just so happened to 'accidentally' bump into me at a cafe near St Pauls. The look of disbelief on their faces was priceless and definitely worth the radio silence. So far we've had a great time catching up, eating Indian food, disturbing the neighbours with SingStar and now planning a lovely afternoon in the city.

I'll be back on the island tomorrow and just in time for Halloween - see you then :)

Cadeaux Française

Yesterday I met the loveliest lady and her husband who over coffee told me all about their summer home in France. The photograph they brought out was breathtaking - it really was everything you imagine when you picture a rural French cottage. Cute shuttered windows and lush vines growing against a traditional whitewashed façade. Then beyond the cottage were two paved patios and an extensive lawn with peach, apple and walnut trees. And then how lucky was I to be sent home with some walnuts from their own tree and preserves made by their French neighbour? What a generous and personal gift - Merci Beaucoup :)

Mulled White Wine

Mulled wine...I can't think of anything more cheerful to sip on when the weather gets chilly and the nights start drawing in. And while I promised myself I wouldn't make my first pot for at least another few weeks I couldn't help but break the rules. I think I can get away with it though since instead of using a traditional rich red wine I've made it with white - using a bottle of parsnip wine I put down last winter. It's sweet, spicy and the rich aroma of cinnamon and cloves can't help but bring back memories of snowy nights and holiday music.

Mulled wine is a traditional drink that I associate with enjoying outdoors at German Christmas Markets. At the beginning of every December, communities all across the continent decorate their streets with twinkling white lights while vendors and musicians fill the night air with holiday tunes and the sweet scents of sweet toasted almonds, roasted chestnuts and steaming 'Glühwein'. Open everyday in the weeks leading up to Christmas, friends meet regularly at these markets to warm up with a hot drink and chat themselves merry. It's a wonderful way to enjoy the Christmas season.

For me today's mulled white wine is just a taste of holiday fun to come. It's also a great way to use up a bottle of wine I find a bit too sweet to drink chilled. For most people the thought of making wine from parsnips can sound bizarre, but they truly make one of the smoothest and sweetest dessert wines you've ever tasted. Its distinctive flavour is one well known to English country folk and it is still one commonly made by the small producer. But if you don't have a bottle at hand, try this recipe with a more conventional white wine.

Mulled White Wine
Makes 2-3 servings

1 75cl bottle of white wine (Parsnip wine is optional)
2 cinnamon sticks
10 cloves
3 long strips of Orange (or mandarin) peel
3 long strips of Lemon peel
Up to 3 Tbsp of dark brown sugar or molasses (Optional)
Orange slices and additional cinnamon sticks (Optional)

1. Collect all your ingredients together and keep them at hand. You can choose to use a zester to remove the peel from the lemon and orange peel or just use an ordinary peeler to take larger strips as I've done.

2. Put everything except for the sugar/molasses into a pan, cover it with a lid and then warm it over medium heat for 15 minutes. Make sure it's steaming but does not reach a boil.

3. Turn the heat off after the 15 minutes is up but leave the pan where it is for an additional 30 minutes. The spices and fruit will further infuse the wine during this time. Taste after this infusion time is up and sweeten to your taste with the sugar and molasses. I didn't actually add any sugar to my own pot since the wine was sweet enough but if you use a dryer wine you'll definitely need it.

4. Ladle into mugs, add a cinnamon stick and slice of orange and serve with a slice of orange on the lip of the mug. Enjoy ~

The required ingredients for Mulled White Wine

Beginning to heat up on the stove

The finished drink

Some great blogs to follow...

One of my favourite things about Blogger is how easy it is to follow other people's blogs. Whether using the dashboard or opening the feed up in Google reader, it's a wonderful way to keep up with the latest posts of sites you follow. With this tool not only can you easily control and gain access to information interesting to you but also get to know other people across the world with similar interests, ideology or professions. It's essentially an ingenious way to create your own personalised newspaper with entries from your favourite blogs as the headlines.

Still, I have gripes with the service... One of the major ones being the absence of any true search capability and the difficulty in discovering other blogs. The ones I've come across so far have been through Google searches, which are sometimes like looking for a needle in a haystack, or by scouring the lists of blogs that my favourite blogs follow. But every now and again one of these favourites will do a post on sites they recommend and I've been able to find so many wonderful articles and bloggers this way. So I thought I'd do a post as well and hope to introduce you to some of the ones I follow. I've chosen ten today but there are so many more that I hope feature in the future.

A Small Holding

I'm incredibly inspired by Mo and Steve and their small holding adventures. Not only do they grow their own veg and raise their own meat and eggs but they also skillfully prepare and preserve their harvests. They're both practical and down to earth and I've enjoyed every post they've put up - especially the ones featuring their rare breed pigs.

Northwest Edible Life

Being born in the Pacific Northwest and having lived in Seattle for five years, I'm captivated by the urban homesteading movement currently happening there. Erica's blog is one among dozens of homesteaders and crafters in Seattle but definitely one of my favourites. She introduces quite a few clever gardening ideas, recipes and thrifty crafts in addition to her posts on the economic and environmental issues in America.

Design*Sponge

I have this site bookmarked under 'Inspiration' and this is definitely the place I come to time and again to be inspired. Posts of beautiful home and furniture make-overs, DIY decorating and even delicious recipes make this one of most popular design blogs of all time. They've also recently come out with a book which is on my Amazon wish-list.

The Cottage Smallholder

Fiona and Danny Nevile's intention with their blog is to: 'share their journey towards their goal of partial self sufficiency. It is such a satisfying, old fashioned endeavour that provides moments of glowing pride alongside the occasional smelly disaster.'

They blog on a variety of topics including chickens and ducks, recipes, their dog, gardening, foraging and their experiences in going back to the land. I find Fiona's casual writing style enjoyable to read and take joy in catching up with their exploits over a morning coffee.

Eco Footprint ~ South Africa

Dani is a keen homesteader and an expert solar oven chef  and offers a variety of recipes to download as well. I love visiting her blog to follow her African adventures and endeavours to become self-sufficient and off-grid.

The Crunchy Chicken

I've only just begun following Deanna Duke but love her writing and her feisty points of view. Another urban farmer from Seattle, she is quite well known in American green circles and is currently writing a book on toxins in the environment, the effects on the body and how to eradicate them. Her blog covers all types of environmental issues as well as her experiences of farming in the city.

The Weaver of Grass

The Weaver describes herself as a farmer's wife living on the Eastern edge of the Yorkshire Dales with her husband and a young border terrier. She shares tales of living on and near working farms, livestock and wildlife, hearty food, her life in the country and her love of literature.

A Woman of the Soil

Elaine is a charming lady who often visits here on Lovely Greens. She is a passionate gardener and the images of her beautiful garden are a feast to the eyes. She often shares growing useful tips as well as her gardening successes and failures, which we can all learn from.

Blomsterverkstad

Blomsterverkstad is a site I visit for a bit of garden design eye-candy and creative inspiration. It's owner, Minna Schmidt, is a blogger turned professional flower photographer who creates beautiful decorations and arrangements with flowers. She writes mainly in Swedish but fortunately for us non-Swedes she always includes a little blip in English. This is what Minna says of her blog:

Wreaths, flower decorations, flea market finding, crafts, creative people - things I'm surrounded by in my everyday life as a professional flowerphotographer and stylist. Welcome to my world! 

NieNie Dialogues

NieNie is Stephanie Aurora Clark Nielson, a lovely lady who survived a plane crash and burns to 80% of her body. If you ever need a pick-me up or have a bad day just read her blog. Her positive and uplifting posts on her marriage, her gorgeous kids and her life in general can't help but put a smile on your face.

Though mainly secular in her posts she does sometimes write about her Mormon faith. It's helped her through her health and family struggles and it's clear that it's a major part of her life. It's not in your face though so please don't be put off if you're not of the LDS-persuasion.




I hope you enjoy these blog-picks and I'd love to hear what you think of them. And if you could pick just one blog that you would like to share with the world, what would it be?

October in the Allotment...

Preparing the allotment for winter has been on my mind these past few weeks but it seemed that something else always came up: bad weather, poorly kittens, or other items on my lengthy to-do list. So when yesterday dawned bright and sunny I hopped into some old jeans and wellies and struck off to get some work done - neverminding the gale force winds!

It was a great day to be out - puffy white clouds whipped by at hypersonic speeds and the crisp wind dried the grass enough to sit on during my few coffee breaks. Though some might find it lonely being the only person at the allotment, I enjoy being out in the fresh air with the only sounds and movement being the grass and trees rustling in the wind.

I haven't spent much time at my plot lately other than occasionally popping up to dig Jerusalem artichokes or to harvest kohlrabi or kale. And as a result my allotment has been steadily going the way of ancient ruins with weeds popping up in the beds and grass taking over the stone pathways. Seeds that may have lain dormant for months or years are making use of these last sunny days to establish themselves before winter and it's a never-ending battle to keep them down to a manageable level. Another worry of mine is soil erosion over the wet and stormy days ahead - with my plot situated on a slope in a natural wind funnel means that all the goodness I've put into the earth can easily be washed down the hill and into the glen below.

Fortunately, my allotment-pal Steve came to the rescue with several trailer loads of seaweed. Using it as a mulch will not only help keep weeds at bay but will keep much of the soil from eroding away. And if that wasn't enough, the seaweed will break down over the winter and replenish the soil with micro-nutrients and organic matter. Mulching with seaweed is a great way to create a more balanced growing medium, especially if it's not quite time to manure it.

Working the soil and then applying seaweed
Using seaweed as mulch couldn't be easier - there's no need to wash it and if there are only annual weeds in your beds you simply spread the seaweed on top and the lack of sunlight will eventually kill them off. Unfortunately my plot is afflicted with both dock and new zealand flatworm which means that some seedlings must be dug out and disposed of and the soil must be manually turned to aerate it. A bit more work on my part but I'd much rather get my exercise that way than heading to a gym.

By the end of the afternoon I'd hoed, dug and raked three beds and spread seaweed over them about four inches deep. Any plants still growing in the beds have simply been mulched around for now but when they've finished I'll simply pull them out and tuck the surrounding seaweed over the bare spot.

Three beds sorted...
After the hard labour was finished I had a bit of a walk around the site to see how everyone else was doing. There's still a lot growing, including lettuces, cabbages and even dalias and sweet peas. But much has already died down and brown withered stems or dark earth have replaced the crisp greenery of summer. An exception to this is the wildflower meadow which seems to be humming along. The sprouts of grass are now about an inch tall and the tiny wildflower seedlings have also put on a bit of mass in the last week. But I really hope that they put on a bit more before the cold comes a-biting.

There's still tons to do at the allotment in the coming weeks but a sense of quiet has taken over the site and there's no doubt that the season is coming to a close. Yet while some gardeners might feel a bit of a loss at this time of the year I'm quite happy to enjoy these days of squirreling up inside by the fire and tucking into hearty food. All good things must come to an end but sitting here enjoying my steaming cuppa I'm content in the knowledge that warmer days will be back soon.

Seedlings popping up from the wildflower meadow

Spicy Green Tomato Chutney

I took advantage of the sunshine yesterday to do a bit of yard work - raking up fallen leaves, moving container plants and tidying up what veg and herbs I have at home. It's sad to see the end of the growing season here already and especially after such a grey and wet summer. But deny it or not the last of my courgettes and tomatoes have been picked and the plants have been tossed onto the top of the compost pile.

This year the outdoor tomatoes were fairly unsuccessful with the plants putting on a good show of green leaf and stem but very few ripe fruits. Instead I'm left with a sizable bowl of green tomatoes and a question of what to do with them. But not all is lost - green tomatoes can be delicious, whether they're fried up American style or made into a sweet yet sharp chutney. But it's the latter that I've chosen to make - not only will the chutney be preserved for up to a year but a Ploughman's lunch of warm homemade bread, cheddar cheese, pickled onions and green tomato chutney is one of the tastiest ways to enjoy a cold winter's afternoon. The below recipe is one of my own and includes garlic and dashes of black and cayenne peppers to add a wee kick!

Green Tomato Chutney
Makes about three 450g jars

500g Green Tomatoes, chopped (skinning is optional)
500g Red Onions, chopped
75g Raisins (or Sultanas), chopped
2 cloves Garlic, minced
1/8 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1/8 tsp Black Pepper
1 Tbsp Sea Salt
250g Dark Brown Sugar
500ml Malt Vinegar

1. Place all ingredients into a stainless steel pan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and then simmer uncovered for an hour.

2. Spoon the chutney into warm, sterilised jars and seal the lids on. Label them when cool and store in a dark cupboard. Refrigerate the jars once opened and try to use it within twelve months.

Chopping the tomatoes

Mix all the ingredients together and bring to a boil

Chutney after an hour of simmering

Rose-hip Hairs...aka Itching Powder

I gathered another load of rose-hips on Friday and processed them into tea over the weekend. When making tea it's not such a big deal to leave the seeds in so it took me a lot less time than when making rose-hip powder a couple of weeks ago. What I wanted to point out this time though is the amount of itchy hairs that have been removed versus how much tea you'll end up with.

Rose-hips have a delicate fruity taste that I find delicious on a cold day. But when making it yourself you really have to beware of the tiny hairs that line the inside of the fruit and often times cover the seeds. These hairs are literally itching powder and let me tell you that they're uncomfortable enough when they come into contact with your skin, let alone ingesting them!

Fortunately they're quite easy to remove once the rose-hips have been thoroughly dried - simply pulse the rosehips to a coarse texture and then sieve them out using a fine-mesh strainer. Tossing and rolling the pulse around for about a minute or so will allow the hairs to easily slip through the mesh, leaving the majority of your tea inside.

Rose-hip hairs

For the Love of Books

During yesterday's blog-reads I came across a post on a DIY decor project which I'm still feeling a bit thrown off by. The 'Book-end' project entailed gluing together old books, attaching them to existing metal book-ends and then spray-painting them black. But though the project was a clever idea and resulted in attractive objects, it came at the expense of crossing the line between style and substance. It's one thing to give an unused product a second life but another to in the process destroy all its original purpose. It makes me sad to think that someone would sacrifice good old classics such as Treasure Island and The Yearling simply for the sake of stylish decoration.

I think the blog post really hit home because of a recent save on my part of several classic books found down at the local amenity site. I loved them immediately and was amazed that anyone would toss out gems like Alice in Wonderland, Quest under Capricorn and that previously mentioned title, Treasure Island. I scooped them up as soon as I saw them and have to say it never crossed my mind to do anything with my 'new' books other than to read and display them in the bookshelf.

Cicero once said that 'He who has a garden and a library wants for nothing'. Though I think that there might be a few other things to add to that list I understand what he was trying to say. Together they bestow sustenance to the body as well as the soul and where one provides fuel for life, the other helps grow the seeds of imagination. A respect for books can only come of that - both for their contents as well as their physical form.

Creating an Allotment Wildflower Meadow

The first sprouts of our future allotment wildflower meadow popped their heads out of the soil over the weekend. Tiny and perfect with their fragile baby green leaves and representing more than sixty varieties of flowers and grasses, these tiny seedlings will germinate and grow for the next month or so and then bunk down over the winter as small plants. Once the warmer days of spring arrive they'll shoot up like rockets and if all goes to plan we'll have an insect-friendly patch of willowy grass and cheerful blossoms by next summer.

Wildflower meadows are becoming quite the rage these days with both gardeners and farmers the world over. Delightful in their sweet-shop-like variety of colour and scent, they are low-maintenance, attract beneficial insects, and help promote plant diversity. They can also be an eco-friendly yet practical way to seed fields used as pasture or left fallow. Being that their only essential care factor is that they are grazed or mown a couple of times a year makes them ideal for grazing animals or for harvesting as hay. And with so many varieties of grass, clover and succulent petals they must make for contented livestock as well as healthy wildlife.

Wildflower and grass seedlings

Though pastures surround our allotment and cows are frequently seen eye-balling our cabbages from over the fence, there is no intention on our side to ever invite them in to our own meadow. Our goal is to instead create a habitat for wildlife, especially insects beneficial to organic gardening. Restricting the use of pesticides and herbicides in our allotment makes for healthy produce but much more work on the gardener's part. Fortunately, having insects such as ladybirds, hoverflies and honey-bees about can help take the load off. Their munching of aphids and other free-loaders as well as pollination of crops makes them a welcome addition to any garden. It's also our intention to begin introducing bee-hives to our site next year and providing them with a source of nectar rich forage has been a driving factor to the creation of a wildflower meadow.

We began our project last autumn with a visit from Andree Dubbeldam, the Project Manager for the Wildflowers of Mann division of the Manx Wildlife Trust. I and another allotment committee member met him at our site to give him a tour around the areas we were considering planting up and to try to absorb as much of his knowledge as possible. It was really helpful having him there in person and he provided us with much needed and specific advice such as instruction on how to go about preparing the land, sowing the seeds, and aftercare for the mature meadow.

It can take anywhere from 1.5-2.5 years to achieve a successful meadow so we began early this year with digging over the first of hopefully many such plantings. The trick to making sure that the seeds get off to the right start is to sow them in nutrient-poor soil - this is so they have a fighting chance at out-competing whatever was growing there before. Seeing as the best time to sow a wildflower meadow is the autumn, we took Andree's advice and planted the entire area with potatoes in April. Not only did they break up the soil and shade out weeds but they are such hungry feeders that they definitely helped in leeching nutrients from the soil. Using this method we were also rewarded with loads of spuds to take home.

Sowing our wildflower mixes into quadrants

After the potato harvest we dug the site over again, broke up any large clods and then raked the soil to a fairly fine tilth. Then one warm evening in the last week of September the three of us who helped with the project met and sowed the seeds into quadrants. After quite a bit of research and deliberation with other committee members I ended up ordering four different meadow mixes from Nicky's Nursery in the UK: 'Old English Country Meadow', 'Butterfly Meadow', 'Cultivated and Wild Flower Butterfly Nectar Plants' and 'Clay Soils Mixture'. The 'Old English Country Meadow' mix we sowed as-is in two of the quadrants and the other three were mixed together and sown into the rest. The ratio of flower to grass seed was different in the two final mixes and it will be interesting to see if it grows differently next year.

In the distance...Steve and Mark raking the soil

I'm probably over-optimistic at this point but I can already imagine bumble bees flitting from blossom to blossom and the many textures of grass moving in a light breeze. I also haven't failed to notice that there are some interesting herbs and flowers in the mixes which might be interesting to take small samples of to try myself. In any case I'm glad the hard work of digging and raking is finished and now it's just a matter of waiting for nature to work her magic. Whether all the seedlings make it through the winter or not, I'm sure that next year will bring with it a colourful wildlife oasis to our Laxey allotment.

Our wildflower meadow mixes include seeds for:

Wildflowers: Ladys Bedstraw, Birds-foot-trefoil, Burnet Salad, Wild Carrot, Cats-ear, Cowslip, Meadow Cranes-bill, Oxeye daisy, Rough Hawkbit, Common and Greater Knapweed, Hoary and Ribwort Plantain, Selfheal, Common Sorrel, Yellow-Rattle/Field Scabious, Black Knapweed, Meadow Buttercup, Red and White Clover, Red & White Campion, Chicory, Dames-violet, Dandelion, Hemp Agrimony, Wild Marjoram, Black Medic, Yellow Melilot, Wild Migonette, Garlic Mustard, Field & Small Devils-Bit, Soapwort, Wild Teasel, Red Valerian, Common Horseshoe and Kidney Vetch, Vipers-bugloss, Bulbous Buttercup, Wild (annual and perennial) Cornflowers, Feverfew, Lady's Mantle, Corn marigold, Ragged-Robin, Sheeps-bit, Melancholy Thistle, and Yarrow.

Cultivated garden flowers:Mixed Calliopsis, Mixed annual Chrysanthemum, Coreopsis, Evening-primrose, Goldenrod, Mixed Heliotrope, mixed Honesty, Hyssop, Lavender, Mignonette, Mixed Scabious, Brompton and night scented Stock, Mixed Sweet Rocket, Annual and single mixed Sweet William, Wallflower.

Grasses: Browntop Bent, Red Fescue, Crested Dogstail, Meadow Fescue, Smooth Stalk Meadow Grass and Yorkshire Fog. Rye grass is already present on the site and will come up again as well.

Courkin-Pumpkini Jack-o'-Lantern

I let a couple of my pumpkin-courgette(zucchini)-crosses grow large over the summer so that they could be used for Halloween decoration. But I never expected them to get this big! And amazingly enough they are ripening into as vibrant an orange as any ordinary pumpkin would. Now I only need to find some scary Jack'o'-Lantern faces appropriate for cylindrical pumpkins - any suggestions?

A Walk around Conrhenny Community Woodland

Last Saturday we decided to make the most of the break in the weather and have a walk around the fairly new Conrhenny Community Woodland. Near the Creg ny Baa Pub on the outskirts of Onchan, the woodland is open to the public and currently offers a good sized carpark, graveled walking paths and even a couple of picnicking areas in addition to its grounds, which are work-in-progress. The park is on the site of a former tree plantation but large areas which were once planted with close-set pines have now been cleared and stand open to sun and rain. DEFA (Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture) along with their sponsors and children from fourteen of the island's schools have since managed to replant it with 300 broad-leaf tree seedlings with the goal to create a "family-friendly wildlife habitat with the potential to benefit generations to come."

But when it comes down to it, I have to admit that it takes creativity to imagine how this devastated looking land could one day be green and lush. Some of the land is still planted with factory-style tree blocks and the rest has been clear-cut with a great deal of logging byproduct left where it lay. But in as little as five to ten years the organic material will break down into a soft forest floor and small trees will arise from the hundreds of seedlings.

Illustration of how the above view could look in years to come

It's easy to disregard the life-cycle of a park when visiting one at the peak of its maturity. Often seen as just a setting in which you play football or meet up with friends, the large trees and manicured landscapes of our communal green spaces are sometimes taken for granted. But to see a park in its early stages makes you so much more aware of what type of place it will become, what its purpose will be and why it is being built in the first place. Looking around Conrhenny today it's evident that this is not going to be your run of the mill grassy field and cultivated trees. This is an attempt to recreate an environment long missing from most of the Isle of Man - natural woodland.

The contrast between what will hopefully be created here in the future with what exists currently couldn't be better expressed than with a tromp through the park's residual plantation forest. You can't help but notice the eerie silence and deep shadow cast by the overhanging branches. Nothing really lives in there with those neatly planted trees, probably because they are so packed together that little light actually reaches the forest floor. It's only when you come to the tree line that light filtering in has made it possible for first moss to appear, then ferns and lastly small shrubs and greens. Walking through this remnant of a tree plantation makes me realise how alien they are and how important a variety of trees and natural planting is for life.

The darkness of closely planted trees and life at the forest's edge

It will be years yet before the newly planted natural forest reaches maturity but all along the edges of the current tree-line as well as out in the clear-cut fields, green life on a smaller scale has already taken off. Without beautiful trees to distract, the modest plants that make their living at your feet have a chance to shine.

A bumble bee on a thistle, raindrops on a velvety leaf, cheerful mushrooms popping up from the forest floor and even tiny heather sprouts growing from an old stump. It really was a change of perspective that gave me so much enjoyment on this visit and I began spotting such lovely things once I stopped looking out in front of me and instead focused on the ground. If there was ever a wonderful time to get lost in the details this was it.

(CW from top left) Blackberries, Mushroom, Lady's Mantle and Thistle

But it wasn't just the beauty of my finds that intrigued me, though it would surely be enough to keep anyone interested. I also enjoy learning about the edible and medicinal properties of wild plants and am always keen to learn more. Though I found plenty of greens, flowers and fungi I could identify on our walk around Conrhenny, there were still many I'd never seen before or wasn't quite sure of. I probably could have spent another couple of hours wandering around taking pictures but a cosy afternoon cream-tea called.

(CW from top left) Unknown, Oxeye Daisies, Leycesteria Formosa, Evening Primrose

(CW from top left) Montbretia, Unknown, Heather and Yarrow

I'm looking forward to visiting in the years ahead and watching this woodland develop into a truly special place. As the seasons pass more wild plants and animals will make Conrhenny their home and as the trees regrow the environment will become even more complex. I hope others who visit will also see past the obviousness of its current stage and become just as delighted as I am by its hidden beauty.

Ribwort Plantain and Greater Plantain

Wild mushrooms