The next-but-one-village-over held their open garden this weekend, I’ve been saying I’d go for a few years but near managed it until this year. There are some really nice gardens that open too, there was one garden which you go into and you think it only has a small cottage-garden-y type lawn with flower boarders but when you get to the back there is a gate onto the owners studio/shed and a patio area with an amazing bread/pizza over, then the back of that goes into another area with a studio/pottery on one side and a veg patch with a huge fruit cage on the other side, then that goes through to an orchard with chickens, one of whom had a brood of chicks with her, a pond and right at the end a brick patio bit with woven hurdles around it, a chair and a bath! Not a bath just for looking at either, a bath with a fire pit under it and a bar of used soap with some old tea lights.
The garden nextdoor was lived in by an old woman who had been born in the house nextdoor and had moved in the house when she got married. It was a two up, one down when she moved in but they had added to it and the garden now has flowers as well as vegetables (the garden had all been vegetables before.) Her son, I think, had turned the old coalshed into an old Forester’s livingroom. It was lovely. When we arrived we got greeted by a Buff Orpington hen running towards us with their funny half run, half skip that they do.
We also visited another LETS members garden for a guild tour, a ‘yard garden’ which was full of tubs and the schools garden and wildlife area, where I bought a Pineapple Mint.
When we got back I cut some of the goats feet while Mother and youngest sister milked, lite a bonfire and when they got home “processed” the milk e.g. collected the cream that had been left to rise last night, bottled the milk, filtered and put more milk to let the cream rise, filtered and bottled the rest of the milk, put the flask of yogurt into the old cream tubs and in the fridge, put the last of the cream to turn into butter (it never turned) and feed the goat kid.
A Life Less Simple 