Bumblebees & Swallows

I've been watching out for them for the past couple of weeks, then they arrived on Sunday, one week earlier than last year. Don't you just love it when the swallows arrive? Although they do say one swallow doesn't make a summer......?

My Papa keeps a diary, he has done for as long as I can remember, but not the sort with Dentist and Doctors appointments, nope, he records nature and and it's goings on throughout the year. I must have taken it from him as I've become a bit of a recorder of dates too. We also have lots of House and Sand Martins too, they've been with us for about a month. I love sitting watching them all swooping and diving, filling the sky with their magical dance.



We've also had an abundance of bumblebees this year, has everyone else found that? There's been some huge bumbles bobbing about in the garden, they obviously survived the winter well.


The cherry blossom tree was buzzing with them when in flower over Easter weekend, such a lovely site. So it's not really surprising that they've began popping up in this years designs, don't you just love being inspired by nature? x



P.S. Thank you for all the congratulations on our news, we're both so excited, 2009 is going to be one heck of a year! xxx

Back to it

After a lovely Easter break it's back to the grindstone, sew, sew and a bit of sowing! We had a lovely time with family and friends over the last few days, lots of good fun and some really special moments. So it's back to it in the Studio, Nicola is back helping me again as we're opening for the season on Friday 8th May. This year, due the extension build, we're only opening 2 days a week, Fridays and Saturdays from 11am - 4pm. I'm terrible for biting off more than I can chew and this year I'm having to be a bit more sensible about things, so I think two days a week will be more than enough as I have a feeling builders and customers together could be a bit of a recipe for disaster!!!

So, over the next few weeks you'll get little sneak previews of the new collection for this year, and you never know I might even venture back into the world of wholesale seeing as we're only open two days a week........we'll see how it goes.

I'll leave you with some rather cute photos of the highland cows living up the road from us, they are so adorable.

Hope the sun is shining where ever you are.

L x

Glorious September

Today has been a beautiful day. While walking the dogs at the back of seven this morning there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The promise of a good dry Autumn day, with just a little nip in the air. I am being inspired by the hedgerows just now, rosehips, rowans, seed heads and the promise of brambles to be picked in a few weeks time. The thought of apple and bramble crumble makes my mouth water......

Some local handloomed linen was washed up today and dried on the line so I'm looking forward to using that some time soon. The sewing list is rather huge at the moment as stock is rediculously low, with Christmas just around the corner I'm starting to panic slightly.....

It's just started raining here so I'm off to sit by the fire and sew up hearts!

Some exciting news for tomorrow, but I'll keep you waiting ;)

L xx

Lots of news

Gosh, it's Monday already where does time go?!! Thank you to everyone for their well wishes, I'm feeling a million times better, just need to get rid of the horrible cough now!

Lots to tell today, firstly, a post that has been long overdue! The lovely Marie, over at Marie Chantal sent me a parcel a little while back with lots of her beautiful rose skin care products which are scrumptiously packaged. I at last managed to get my return parcel in the post just before I was hit with the lurgy! Marie received her parcel last week and has very kindly posted about it at the weekend, thanks Marie. Having used Marie's products over the last wee while, they are gorgeous! They smell divine and the rose cream is silky smooth and lovely to use. I've also got the Skin Freshener and the Cleanser, which again are both delicious to use. Here's a picture of some of her products ( Marie, I've pinched the picture from your blog as it looks really good, hope you don't mind!)

Marie has just opened up her fabby on-line shop, so head on over there and get buying girls as, luckily for us, she ships overseas!

Another lovely lady who has inspired me lately is Cherry over at Tales from Pixie Wood. I was catching up with her blog, reading about her trip to Florence last week. This time last year we were in Florence, I looked back at some of our photos from the trip and thought about how happy we both looked, it was such a fab holiday. So, feeling a bit "down in the dumps" last week I promptly went about booking us a holiday. Now, in the Hector house this is generally Mr. H's job, and a grand job he always does! But, I needed something to pick up my spirits and get me back into the swing of things, so holiday hunting I did.

Not one to go down the "let's go to the travel agents and let them do it all" route, not that there's anything wrong with that, and to be honest there's probably not a travel agent that could organise this type of holiday, I got surfing on t'internet!!!!! So, where are we off to I hear you all mutter..............

Here's a clue.......................

stunning beaches.....................

rugged landscapes.................................

Have you guessed yet?

We're off to the Outer Hebrides to do a bit of an Island Hopscotch, and how are we doing it? Well, we're camping, yes, camping!!!!! And the bit I'm looking forward to is this.........

.........sitting on the beach watching the sunset, with a large G&T and then sleeping under the stars!

Most folk that we've told think we're nuts, but hey ho, we were both in the Guides and the Scouts so we at least know how to put up a tent!!! Lets just hope it doesn't blow away in the wind like the last time!!! ( We have bought a new, slightly smaller and cosier tent for this trip!)

So the plan is, we sail over from Uig on Skye to Tarbert on Harris, spend a couple of days discovering Lewis and Harris and then sail over to North Uist, to do a whistlewind tour of the Uists and Benbecula. We are booked into two B&B's, the first night and the middle night, just in case the weather really is awful!! And if it's just not good enough weather for camping we can hopefully stay in some of these cute little places that are dotted around the islands........

We have both always wanted to visit Lewis and Harris, the thought of being able to camp on those amazing beaches just fills me with excitement. The opportunities to spot some of the wildlife that surrounds the islands is another huge spine tingler for me, imagine being sat quietly on the beach and then suddenly seing an otter in the wild? You can't get much better than that can you...? The camera will be at the ready........!!

On the nature front, I witnessed an amazing scene in the garden this morning. I was busy sewing away in my workroom, looking out over the garden, when I saw the familiar flash of the woodpecker fleeting over to the peanut feeder. A couple of seconds later another woodpecker joiner her, a fledgling woodpecker! She pecked away at the nuts and then fed them to her baby, it was like a scene from Springwatch but in our own garden! I shall try and get some photos but I can't promise anything...............

See you all soon,

L x

P.S. the photos are thanks to the visit hebrides site.

Nature notes

Today has been one of those days that makes me realise just how much I love living in the countryside. It was such a glorious morning, sun shining, not a breath of wind and the birds twittering away. I took Chrissie out for her usual early morning walk, along the burnside, up the farm road. I've noticed over the last couple of days that the fish are visible again up at the little bridge, I spend hours in the summer just watching them dart about in the pool under the bridge. There are little dippers darting around from stones to banking, just a flash of white breast as they disappear, and yellow pied wagtails bobbing about too.

I often hear woodpeckers both pecking away in the surrounding trees and making the distinctive chitting noise that is their call. As I was wondering back along to the cottage this morning I could hear a real birdie ding-dong going on in the trees, I thought as soon as I get close it'll fly away. But to my amazement here were two beautiful Great Spotted woodpeckers flitting about in the tree up above me, totally unaware of me and an audience of finches, blue tits, coal tits and others spectating! Wether it was a male and a female flirting or two males fighting over a tree I'm not sure but it was certainly entertaining!

Living the life we lead now constantly takes me back to my childhood, I was a real little nature boffin, always out pottering in the garden, bringing in poorly birds and animals to try and nurse them back to health. I was always in my element when we had pet lambs to feed, I often got up in the morning to find a lamb in the bottom oven of the Rayburn thawing out! Today I went back to being about eight years old again, I had come across a drying up puddle of tadpoles, a writhing mass of black jelly about to bake in the sun. So I returned with my bucket to rescue the tadpoles, putting some into our neighbours pond and some into my makeshift pond, a big blue plastic trug with rocks in the bottom and some pond weed will be gathered tomorrow for them to feed on. Fingers crossed they all turn into little frogs, but they'll need to stay out of the way of the chickens as they have a bit of a liking for fresh frog! Why is it that a supposedly grown up 30 year old can turn into a child for the day so easily? hmmmm......

I'm also going to let you into a little secret I have with my ducks, although I don't think they know that I know...............

One of the female apricot call ducks has gone off and made herself a little nest just up from the ford at the bottom of our garden. As of tonight there are 9 eggs in the nest and she has started to line it with feathers! It's close enough to the water so she can go and wet her feathers to keep the eggs moist while incubating them. The only problem is we don't want to leave her out overnight or she'll end up fox fodder. So, the plan is, once she starts to sit on them we will try moving her and the nest into our little broody coop, but to be honest I'm really not sure if she'll like us disturbing her and it may well put her off. If this is the case we've got a couple of broody hens waiting in the wings to take over, one of the French Cuckoo Marans and a Blue Laced Wyandotte. Hatching little duckings would be superb so watch this space........

I ended the evening planting some more seeds in the greenhouse, lettuce and rocket into some old guttering that we found behind the stables, another one of Sarah Ravens ideas!

Ooh, we also had our first customer today, a lovely lady who lives up the road from us on the next estate, she came and bought two dozen eggs! I managed to contain my excitement and refrained from asking if I could take a photo of her for on the blog, I am thankful for having a little bit of sanity every now and then.......................

L xx

The wild flower garden

As you all know, when we moved up here to what we now refer to as "the shack", it was a bit of a tip. Certain parts of the house needed gutting as the smell of dogs and other nasties was pretty horrendous. The outside of the cottage was just as bad, if not worse. The garden had been left unattanded for probably 6 weeks or more in the height of the summer, this left us to tackle a rather rampant wilderness as well as getting the inside of the cottage livable - not a task for the feint hearted! Dealing with 7 ft high nettles and dockings meant that Gregg would go armed with strimmer into areas of the garden and not be seen for a few hours!

We battled on enjoying the fact that we were very clearly stamping our mark onto our little piece of the Perthshire countryside but soon realised that an acre of land is not something that you turn around in a few months (timescales have never been my strong point!)! I had a huge list of jobs to be done over that first summer, we're still knocking them off the list! Our neighbours continually comment on how we've imporved the place so much but we only feel as if we've scratched the surface!

I have always been a keen gardener, very much influenced by my grandmother, she had me weeding at a very early age! Both her and my grandfather were and still are great gardeners, but more about that in another post. It's only really now that I feel as if I'm getting to grips with the scale of our garden and that for once I seem to be organised in my seed planting! I sat last night and planned the veggie plot and read up on each vegetable that I'm intending to grow this year, at last I felt as if I was actually doing what I came here to do.

Gregg and I also got discussing another area of the garden last night, the wild flower garden. I shouted up to him to do a search for a company called Scotia Seeds. Diane at our local Organic Hut had recommended them to me last summer when I was talking to her about growing wild flowers. They are based not far from us and produce native wild flowers to Scotland. It has always been a dream of mine to grow a wild flower garden and at last we are ready to plant some seeds and see where it goes...........

We are planning on sowing the wet meadow mix along the burnside,

the woodland mix on the banking over the burn,

and the short mix around the edge of the paddock.

So we'll have hopefully have turned an area that looked like this......

into something a bit more eyecatching and appealing to nature.

I read this post today and felt truely heartened to see that there are others out there who understand exactly how I feel, sadly, there are so many people out there that just don't get it.........