Sowing seeds

I was very excited when I moved to be able to get growing things again. For some reason my city garden never really seemed to like me trying to cultivate anything at all. It grew weeds in abundance, they would wind and twist their way through my fence from my neighbours garden and well, to say that it was a never ending task to rid my garden of them would not be and understatement, it became soul destroying. I remember when I moved in that I had no idea that the garden was in fact paved because I couldn't see anything under the tangled mess of vine weeds.

My new house has a small but very useable garden, but it is quite frankly a blank canvas. But hey, a (sort of) weed free blank canvas. I'll take it! It has nothing growing at the moment except the neighbours out of control ivy and has no borders or anywhere I can actually plant anything.

However, hopefully we'll be putting all this right in the next few weeks and in preparation i've been sewing a few seeds. I've left it a little late, but they have a snug little propagator in my greenhouse of a conservatory (it gets quite warm and toasty in there when the sun shines) which should bring them on quickly.

I've missed being able to pick tomatoes still warm from the sun straight from the vine, but soon I'll be able to choose from 3 different types of tomatoes and two different types of courgette. I'm still trying to decide what else I have room for!

It's easy and cheap to grow your own tomatoes, and they don't require much care...just lots of water and a bit of light maintenance as they grow, but it never fails to excite me when I see the first flowers on the plants.

Scenes from autumn

Autumn has always been my favourite time of year...the chill in the air the hits your face as you step out of the front door in the mornings and an excuse to drink hot chocolate at every opportunity. Warm jumpers and thick tights as you kick through the leaves littering your path knowing that soon winter will be setting in.

Scenes from my autumn adventures...

Leaving the city

I've never had the sort of life where I grew up in one town and had life long friends and roots. In some ways that's a blessing, in others a curse.

In my life i've drifted from south to north,from north back to the south and from seaside to to the city (and bounced a little between the two for a few years) and now as I sit here writing this i'm waiting for the call that will allow me to move back to the seaside island I used to call home. 

I've enjoyed my time in the city, I love the convenience of everything on my doorstep, the history and being able to order a pizza to be delivered if I so wanted.

But then something happened, I met my husband. We had fun exhausting the city of it's conveniece and things to do, until one day we were driving back to my home seaside town to visit my dad when my husband dropped a bombshell I hadn't been expecting at all. "I think I could live here" he said as we were driving along the twisty main road of the seaside island. I genuinely hadn't thought about it...until then. I hadn't even thought it was something he wanted.

But as I sit here I find myself genuinely excited about the prospect of returning to my old sleepy seaside community. The sea shore surrounding us, and a much slower pace of life. It's time to move on.

Here's to the future and now i'd better get packing as whilst i've been musing about this, the phone call came through and it's on! 

What i'm reading: Mrs Hemmingway by Naomi Wood

Before I read this book, I was of course aware of Ernest Hemingway but not quite familiar with his work. However this book seemed like it would be an interesting read. Ernest was married four times during his life and this book is told from each of his wives point of view. Ernest was a terrible philanderer and it was difficult to ever feel sympathy for him. His character was seemingly not entirely plasant in my opinion, he came across as basically a bit of a lush and quite arrogant. I'm sure no one doubted his genius but it came atatched to a troubled man.

But despite this, Ernest managed to be married 4 times and these women were apparantly devoted to him no matter what. They accepted his cheating as part of him just being Ernest Hemingway and apparantly no matter how much it upset them - it was the price to pay for being Mrs Hemingway. 

The interesting thing is that the four wives are all quite different in character from each other. Hadley was demure, Fife was glamourous, Martha was adventurous and brave and Mary, well she was a loyal wife to the end.

It's hard to know what to feel about this bunch of women, all interconnected with one common denominator - Ernest Hemingway and told from their eyes. But despite Ernest's flaws as a person the fact is that they all stuck by him until he moved on to the next wife. 

It was an interesting book, I'll admit that part of the way through I wasn't sure if I was enjoying it but pretty soon I found myself intrigued by each woman's story and what made them tick. The book jumped around a little from different times and years in each of the wives life which at times made it hard to follow and I found myself flicking back chapters to see where I was but overall it was an enjoyable read. I'm not quite how much of this story is accurate, obviously these are real life people...but of course i'm sure much of the scenes are fictionalised. The author sourced the material from various memoirs and papers to get a sense of historical accuracy.

So for a not quite non fiction book I'd recommend it as a good read that you can dip in and out of easily.

Hello!

Hi there!

So, after a rather large blogging hiatus i'm back! I was blogging before blogging became trendy..but I lost my momentum and well, I took a long break. But I've been thinking lately about what I want from a blog and I realised that maybe the time is right to get back in the game! So here I am!

So me? Well I live on the south coast of England with my hubby and two cats. Actually, i'm about to move out of a city and onto a sleepy seaside island, but more about that later!

This blog is about being ok with loving where you are. About being happy in your surroundings, and making life a prettier, better and yummier place..