An English Summer Holiday

Hello All, well it’s been a couple of weeks since my last post and that is because Mr Jones and I have been on our holidays. When I say holidays it was a stacation, after all we did only just get back from our honeymoon. However we managed to get a lot of things done during our time off in the garden and in our home.

We did escape and get to visit friends down in Poole at the beginning of our time off. Mae (the springer spaniel and all time love of Bruce) loves to swim in the sea and so each day we devotedly (come rain or shine) headed to a dog friendly beach to let her have a swim or splash as it was more akin to. Mae is a gun dog being a spaniel and Bruce does work her during the shooting season. Although she is very good at flushing birds she is less good at picking them up (we put it down to the free range chickens she shares her garden with and being scared of them). Yet one thing she is good at is coming back when she is whistled at. We use a 2.10 ½ dog whistle and have worked with her over the last 2 years at getting her working to the whistle. We are really lucky to have had such good advice from Mark in the gunroom as to what training aids we needed for her. She loves her water dummy, her normally dummy and her furry dummy (I am not keen on this one when its left in the garden, gets soggy and then bought in and left on the cream carpets), but as Bruce says we do have a dog, three cats, four chickens and a Bruce so what do I expect. The training videos and books from the gunroom are also really useful and we have lent ours to a friend who is training their gorgeous little puppy spaniel.

Apart from splashing around in the sea we have also converted a potato box (courtesy of our good friend Tom Powell) into a rather spanking veggie box which I plan to plant up for goodies next spring. Bruce cut the box in two with an angle grinder and saw and then I used wood primers and paints (all from the shop) to create a fantastically blue and splendid veggie box. It will look lovely next to the one my uncle made me for a house warming which holds our plentiful green beans.

As you know we have moved into our new home 4 months ago and the garden was a little overgrown. Our summer stacation was the perfect opportunity to tackle some of the more robust areas of the garden. I love my Wolf multi-change tools and my Felco Secateurs that we use all the time in the garden. Most of the jobs we need to be done can be achieved with these tools (Autumn pruning will be easy as with these tools). Well all the jobs I can do. For the hedge trimming and sawing well I just watch Bruce do the hard work whilst I sit in the fantastic Lafuma chair we got this summer having a cheeky G&T and why not…. He does get to have a beer at the end of the hard work!

As we all know this summer has been a bit hit and miss on the weather front and I have found it very hard to get all our gardening clothes and walking clothes (more about the Mordiford loop and getting lost on two separate occasions another time) dry in all the rain. We have a gnu in the utility room and I have been having to use this more and more during the summer months rather than to use the rotary washing line. During our holidays Luke and Liz from the shop came over to do some filming for our youtube channel on the rotary washing lines and it reminded me how good these washing lines really are. I do take a certain about of pleasure hanging out the washing on a hot summers day with the animals running round like crazy in the garden. Let’s hope we get an Indian summer and I can get all those things from the forthcoming Game Fairs washed and dry before the autumn gets here.

If you are coming to Chatsworth Game Fair or the Midland Game Fair then come and say hello. I am doing the catering for our guys and helping out on the tills and it would be great to hear what you think of some of our products. Enjoy your bank holiday everyone.