Floating in a mist of time……   This year really is a season of “mist and mellow fruitfulness”. Early morning mist shrouds the valley, spider’s webs glint in the sharp early morning light. The whole landscape has an ethereal, floaty- ness. Trees and shrubs seem to drift, disembodied down the hills. The dove cot has…

  Food Food Family Friends   Summer seems to have tumbled over itself in a hurly burly holiday extravaganza. We revelled in a July heat wave and sailed in Bahamian sunshine to the white sand of Bryher on the Isles of Scilly. We walked on deserted beaches, sat silently on hilltops gazing out to sea. We were buffeted…

  Rabbits have been on my mind rather a lot recently; grey furry rabbits, large and fat, small and sweet. Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, and my childhood favourite, Alison Uttley’s Little Grey Rabbit: all of them, sisters and brothers, children and cousins, aunties, uncles, old ones, young ones, suddenly here they are invading this valley.

It’s been the busiest of springs, no time to turn. We don’t seem to have caught our breath since lambing. Three ewes slipped through the net and, just when we’d taken our eye off the ball, decided to give us five more lambs thus successfully throwing all post-lambing-plans in the air.  Paul went for a…

The seasons role around again; the valley springs back to life. Cold weather held us all to ransom for weeks, then suddenly everything happened all at once. It was as if a cloak of leaves and flowers unfurled itself across the whole landscape over night. Cornus Nuttallie threw out her white handkerchiefs almost as I…

Spring 2006 Rain at last; that sweet veil of soft weather glides sideways past my window and enfolds the valley. The wind has suddenly swung round to the welcome, familiar south west, so much kinder than the swingeing north easterly we’ve suffered for months. It brings with it the soft, salty, earthy smell of spring……