The continuing harvest.

It has been a time of harvesting again here. The weather has improved slightly allowing me to cut and bring in various herbs for drying, aided and abetted by Lucy and Isabella of course. Some of the bunches I cut earlier have dried and are now crumbled into jars ready for use in either the kitchen during the months when the plants outside will have lost much of their flavour or to fill some of the sachets in the sewing room. The shelves are once more filling with jars of oregano, marjoram, lemon balm and mints of all kinds.



Mr Davey and I also pruned the lemon which grows all year under our bedroom window. It sits there quite happily in rain and sun and snow - when we get it - the waxy flowers perfuming our dreams and the leaves flavouring any Thai dishes we may conjour up. This year we decided to dry the prunings to have a handy supply for wet days when even the thought of the brief journey through the front door to gather fresh leaves seems too arduous. I may also include some in my Christmas spice mixes to fill the decorative things I am working on for the business.



Dave has also brought in beautiful garlands of hops to drape over the bookcase and kitchen mantlepiece. These will be thrown into the beers he makes which are just delicious - no shop mixes here, all real malt and magical combinations of different varieties of hops, etc to make the beers and ales and my personal favourite of a Guiness-like bitter....lovely!



I am very behind on writing up my 'What we are doing' part of my website. In fact, I am more than a little behind in all things work generally due to holidays and family things. Christmas ideas are part-worked requiring little to bring them together while ideas on notepads litter my worktable just begging me to take them further. Later today I will be writing up the September page on the site and it will include a recipe for sloe gin especially for Diana, my lovely fellow Cornish blogger (maker of gorgeous photographs and beautiful things of all kinds). I realise that for most parts of the country sloes are not ready just yet but we have to pick early in Cornwall. There will also be a bit on gathering herbs and what I do with leftover branches such as these though as I said, that will be later today. Do pop over for a look.



That's me for now on a day where there is only little Isabella to chase after as Lucy and Daddy have gone back to school; strange that the house still seems just as noisy!

Pipany x

All things merged together.

Isn't Bramley apple blossom pretty?




After thinking about it for a little while and seeking the advice of those good enough to read them, I have decided to merge both my blogs together; the business and family life are so very closely entwined that it seems increasingly hard to know what to write where. Obviously the family - all seven children, ducks, hens, cats, etc - existed long before the business officially began and the very skills I use for it are the skills I have used for most of my life. I have always sewn, whether for clothes for the children or soft furnishings for the house; I have knitted for longer than I can remember and I have gardened since I was old enough to trail around after my Grandfather, bucket in hand to catch the haphazardly thrown marigold flowers as I helped to deadhead them. I learned these crafts by osmosis, by following and watching, by trying with a determination that drives me insane sometimes (wish I could allow myself to fail just once in a while!), and now they are second nature to me and my life would feel odd without them.






How does all this relate to the blogs? Well, we have acquired a 90ft x 30ft allotment run not by the council, but by a lovely chap who happens to own a field which got a bit much for him. He thought he would rent out plots and get a bit of a community thing going and we were there in a jiffy. Already we have begun turning it over and as well as feeding our family from it, I shall be growing the herbs I need for the business - the lavenders and marigolds, chamomiles and marjorams; the list is endless and much of it we already grow in our own garden, just not in the quantity I need for a supply of sachets and pillows, etc. So with this allotment business and family life blend together once more, hence it is time for the blogs to do the same... here's a few pictures:


view from the top to the car




bit of extra land the lovely owner let us have to encourage wildlife and pop a shed on




view from the car up!




Ok, so now you are bored! Well, having dug like a mad thing for much of the weekend (slow but sure) I transplanted some young globe artichokes into the allotment, looking forward to when they get like this one in our garden




and on a different note, don't you love looking up through cherry blossom at a gorgeous blue sky which we had plenty of for the entire weekend?




So, there you have it - Pipany and the Poltisko Memoirs all in one blog from now on, and hopefully the change won't be too noticeable. Off to tackle an order for three feet of bunting now which should make for a bright and cheery day!




Byeeee xx