I always grow some sunflowers as the birds love the seeds. I tried to get some ordinary size sunflower seeds but must have ended up with giant ones – either that or the rabbit manure has worked wonders as these sunflowers are over a foot across – and one of the plants is over 12 feet tall! It’s a wonder it’s still standing – my time spent staking the plants in the spring has paid off.
I used to spend ages collecting the sunflower seeds but it takes ages scraping them all out and the earwigs seem to like hiding in them too – so now I just dry the whole heads in the barn then put them out for the birds in the winter – they don’t mind the earwigs!
The height of laziness – waiting for dinner – Lunar the Cat!
Reading this website, a friend in Birmingham, who adores cats, emailed me this morning:
“Yesterday was such a lovely day, our queen cat was basking in the sun and I noticed her watching the skies, I looked up to see seagulls high above, riding the thermals. It’s still strange to me that they have made the cities their home – but the city is a survivor’s success story for them.”
It’s buzzards that wheel in our Shropshire skies, keening and calling and being chased by crows.
She also asked for some pictures of our cat – so here he is – he’s a Russian Blue and belongs to Dane, our eldest son. Very good at catching mice, but usually doesn’t kill them, Betsy the dog does that – if Dane doesn’t get there first and rescues them by tip of the tail!
The opium poppy, papaver somniferum, family Papaveracae, is the species of plant from which opium and poppy seeds are derived. The Latin botanical name somniferum means the “sleep-bringing poppy”, referring to its sedative properties.
I have always wondered if it’s safe to eat poppy seeds from the garden so I did some research. Evidently the seeds contain very low levels of opiates and the oil extracted from them contains even less. Poppyseed oil has many uses and poppy seeds are used as a food in many cultures. Poppy seeds are rich in oil, carbohydrates, calcium and protein.
The opiate drugs are extracted from opium. The latex oozes from incisions made on the green seed pods and is collected once dry. Tincture of opium or laudanum consisting of opium dissolved in alcohol or a mixture of alcohol and water, is one of many unapproved drugs. Laudanum was historically used to treat a variety of ailments but its principal use was as an analgesic and cough suppressant until the early 20th century.
Poppy seed is mentioned in ancient medical texts from many civilizations. The Minoans a Bronze Age civilization (around 2700 BC) on the island of Crete, cultivated poppies for their seed, and used a milk, opium and honey mixture to calm crying babies. Poppy seeds have long been used as a folk remedy to aid sleeping, promote fertility and wealth, and were even once believed to have magical powers of invisibility.
Morphine is the predominant alkaloid found in the cultivated varieties of opium poppy. In some countries it is illegal to grow poppies although generally poppy seeds as a food are allowed. In the UK there are no restrictions on growing poppies, only for extracting opium for medicinal products.
Ripe seed from both the opium poppy and corn poppy (papaver rhoeas) does not contain harmful substances and can be used as a spice in curries and sprinkled on bread and cakes.
So now I feel reassured that I can safely collect poppy seed and sprinkle it on my home-made bread, sausage rolls and mince pies.
Yesterday the frogs were gathering in the pond and Spring was in the air, today we wake to a winter frost. I’ve had to thaw the water out in the bird bath this morning for the robin and the nuthatch has been patiently waiting for me to get up and put some more peanuts out. It is a really beautiful morning though.
Better than all the rain we’ve had, although there is an old saying:
“If in February there be no rain, ’tis neither good for hay nor grain.”
which I found in a Country Wisdom & Folklore Diary www.talkingtreesbooks.co.uk
The ducks have found the pond at the bottom of the field and now the stream is all flooded they can’t wait to rush off every morning to see what’s new. When there was just Desmond (drake) and the geese, they would stay around the hen house but since the two ducks have joined them (Izzy and Oli) they have been more adventurous.
This picture reminds me of a poem from Kenneth Grahame’s ‘Wind in the Willows’:
DUCKS’ DITTY.’
All along the backwater,
Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dabbling,
Up tails all!
Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails,
Yellow feet a-quiver,
Yellow bills all out of sight
Busy in the river!
Slushy green undergrowth
Where the roach swim–
Here we keep our larder,
Cool and full and dim.
Everyone for what he likes!
WE like to be
Heads down, tails up,
Dabbling free!
High in the blue above
Swifts whirl and call–
WE are down a-dabbling
Up tails all!
Sunset over Shropshire as the last rays of the setting sun shine on the flood waters spreading across the fields
Managed to spend sometime in the garden last weekend, tidying up, muck spreading in the polytunnel – digging in rabbit manure and some lime. Rabbit droppings are quite acid and tomatoes suffer from blight (yellowing and wilting of the leaves and the tomatoes rot) if the soil is too acid.
Just finishing off and I was leaning on the fence in my favourite spot, the sun was setting and a flock of starlings were making patterns in the sky. This isn’t a lake it’s a waterlogged field, we’ve had so much rain this winter; I’ve had to move the hens from the front lawn as they were paddling in mud. Now there’s Spring in the air and we wake to frosty mornings. The Candlemas Day rhyme was right – it was fair and bright and winter is having another flight although this year it’s more like it’s first fling, this morning’s frost felt like the coldest so far this winter!
I was appalled by the events in Cologne on New Year’s Eve – and in Finland, Sweden and Switzerland – and London. That women were specifically targeted, that the Police did nothing, that they tried to cover it up (although with social media they must have realised that was impossible) and then that women were told ‘to go out with chaperones and carry rape alarms’. I therefore decided to do a social media campaign on International Women’s Day this year to highlight these issues. I am no feminist, but I feel very strongly that if we had more women in positions of power the world would be a better and safer place.
All children deserve access to education and this education needs to include the teaching of respect. Anyone choosing to live in Europe must demonstrate that they respect our culture – and that includes respect for women. Emmeline Pankhurst would be turning in her grave if she was watching Cologne on New Years Eve.
At a recent co-operative Ways Forward 4 Conference #WF4www.cbc.coop Alan Semo was one of the final speakers. He spoke about the Middle East Crisis, and the people of Rojava in Northern Syria, a community with a mix of ethnic and religious people – Kurds, Christians, Jews – living together, supporting gender equality, and setting up co-operative projects. Cath Muller from www.radicalroutes.org.uk summed this up at the end:
“We are inspired by you, the people of Kobane and Rojava – by your determination, by your sense of solidarity and by your commitment to fairness, to ecological sustainability and to freedom for all. We have much to learn from you and to share with you. We look forward to developing mutually beneficial links between our co-operatives and your co-operatives and contributing together to the development of truly co-operative economies.”
All women deserve the right to education, the freedom to choose who they marry,what they wear, where they work, where they live, what they say and where they go. We sometimes forget how lucky we are living in this Western world where these things are taken for granted.
Please join me in a social media campaign on International Women’s Day, 8th March by sharing my posts on
The very first flowers of Spring. Our very first visit to the cottage each year was to pick some snowdrops and I remember those journeys looking out of the car window searching the fields wanting to be the first to see the new lambs. That feeling of looking forward to Spring returns with the snowdrops. Mum used to say: “If you have good health, you can change everything else in your life.” As I am getting older, I have good days and bad days and I really make an effort to make the most of the good days – those days when you get up in the morning and feel like changing the world. But however you feel, whatever your health, you can always enjoy the little things in life, using your senses to the full, listening to a robin sing, watching blue tits on the bird table – and the scent of flowers – did you know that snowdrops have a very delicate, fresh, green smell?
Snap up the pumpkins left over from Halloween and make some spicy soup for bonfire night. There’s nothing quite like sipping hot spicy pumpkin soup gathered around the bonfire and watching the flames and sparks drift into the night sky.
Pumpkin freezes quite well so when you’ve scraped out all the pumpkin flesh to make Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns, cut it into cubes and put into a polythene bag. It will store in the fridge for up to 3 days or will freeze for over a month.
The seeds can be dried to use in bread and muesli – or to feed to the birds during the cold winter months.
Visit the recipe page for a not too spicy pumpkin soup recipe.
It’s time for bonfire night but I’m still picking sweet peas, the nasturtiums are going strong – and the poppies are still in full flower, brightening up the garden on these musty, misty mornings. It’s just as well we had an Indian summer as the runner beans were planted so late, due to a very cold and wet May, that I doubted we would be picking any beans at all. So maybe the seasons are moving – and we should plan summer holidays in September next year?
Whatever, I have really enjoyed picking sweet peas right through October. I put some in the lounge where I sit in the evenings but also some on the window ledge near the sink – where I seem to spend an awful lot of my time. I do really enjoy cooking vegetables I have grown myself – they taste much better and they are so much fresher – but it is more time consuming than preparing clean, bug-free supermarket varieties.
The rabbits are also enjoying the long season as they get a nasturtium leaf (and sometimes a flower) every day. As the Nasturtium Flower Fairy says, as soon as the frosts come, the nasturtiums are “… gone willy-nilly, umbrellas and all”.
Nasturtiums in November
The Song of The Nasturtium Fairy is from ‘A Flower Fairy alphabet’ by Cicely Mary Barker
