When you go out in the morning, you never know what you are going to find. Sadly, these few bits of white fur are all that is left of Holly rabbit and her six babies – just one week old. Something had got into her pen overnight and taken all Holly’s babies AND Holly rabbit! I am guessing it was a polecat as it had ripped a hole in the wire at the bottom of the pen. It might have been a fox but a fox would easily have jumped into the pen, not made a hole in the wire. We also heard an owl in the night which is quite unusual as we live so near a main road. Whatever, Holly has gone and so have her tiny babies.
Happily Eny rabbit and her kits are all OK – Eny is a more aggressive and protective rabbit – she gets really cross if the cats go anywhere near her and she runs at them. So Eny has to be shut in her hutch at night now which she doesn’t like at all – and tries to hide under the hutch – I keep telling her that won’t protect her and her babies from whatever got Holly but she’s not impressed.
It was so sad, Holly was my favourite rabbit and loved being cuddled. But there’s always something to cheer you up. Wandering around the field looking for clues as to what happened I came across these poppies growing in the ashes of last year’s bonfire night.
Natural plant based remedies and alternative therapies in Shropshire
Thérèse Hickland’s dream of bringing holistic healing and safe expertise and advice to local people and the surrounding communities became reality in 2007 when Healing Thyme opened in Whitchurch. The shop looks and feels like a traditional apothecary shop and offers traditional quality advice and personal service.
Based in Whitchurch High Street, with beautifully decorated, peaceful consulting rooms, Healing Thyme offers a range of alternative therapies including aromatherapy, acupuncture, reflexology, osteopathy and a range of natural remedies.
Thérèse says: “As a trained Medical Herbalist I understand and work with natural plant based remedies. I wanted to create an environment where people’s health and happiness mattered more than anything else. “
The herbal dispensary stocks over 250 dried herbs and tinctures where two qualified Medical Herbalists make up creams, drops, ointments and tea blends. The shop stocks a range of health foods, most of which are organic and/or suitable for special diets including gluten-free. There is also a range of organic and chemical-free toiletries, including soaps, shampoos and toothpaste.
Simple remedies may only need a brief, free consultation but where longer consultations are necessary, private consulting rooms are available and Healing Thyme offers a complete range of practitioners to cover every aspect of complementary medicine. A full list of therapies and practitioners – along with consultation fees – and opening times can be found on the new look website at: www.healing-thyme.co.uk – a bespoke website created by www.Rainford-IT.co.uk
Healing thyme support the local community in many ways. They provide the use of their beautiful, calm and tranquil consultation rooms for local therapists (all self-employed). They are a strong supporter of Fairtrade; they always support Blackberry Fair (initially sponsoring The Giant) – and this year they sponsored the new Whitchurch 10k run which attracted over 600 runners, raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support.
Thérèse says: “At Healing Thyme people matter to us; we are all passionate about sharing our knowledge and expertise in natural forms of healing and health. Our environment and people are critical to ensuring that you feel welcome and able to bring your health concerns to us.”
Healing Thyme are always looking for new therapists to join their team. A medical therapist is available in the shop every day. They have disabled facilities, with Blue Badge parking spaces right outside. Breastfeeding mums are welcome to use the facilities. For more information visit:
Often you don’t have to go very far to find Today’s treasures
June is a delicious month, a time of strawberries, new potatoes flavoured with apple mint, and the first broad beans melting with butter. And the gardens are alive with colours – yellow flag irises decorate ponds, azaleas brighten up patios, rhododendrons mist the hillsides with a purple haze and poppies startle you with their brilliant red blooms.
Butterflies and damselflies flex their wings and the heady scents of honeysuckle and wild roses fill the hedgerows. Bees are busy investigating every single foxglove flower and the buttercups dance their golden heads in the summer breeze.
The bird table is alive with hatchlings, families of blue tits and great tits vie for space on the feeders – and the swallows return from far off places, wheeling and diving across our skies. Alas, gone are the times when the cuckoo called across our fields and the skylarks sang high above our heads – we need to go further into the wilds of Wales to hear these birds now, but we get more visitors to our bird table – goldfinches, nuthatches and great spotted woodpeckers love peanuts and sunflower seeds.
June is also the time to make elderflower champagne (not really champagne – and in fact not alcoholic at all if you drink it soon enough – but it tastes delicious). Iced elderflower cordial is the perfect complement for summer lunches – these traditional recipes were handed down to me by two elderly aunts – handwritten on yellowing paper, now immortalised on my website: visit www.barbararainford.co.uk/recipes
So quite often, you don’t have to go very far for Today’s Treasures, you can always find something new in your own back yard – a blackbird’s liquid notes heralding the dawn, daisies opening up their petals to the sun’s rays, a glimpse of the first wild rose, the sweetness of strawberries, or honeysuckle’s saturating scent – stimulating all our senses. As our very own Shropshire A.E. Housman said: “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?” Take a moment to enjoy Today’s Treasures.
Published in the June edition of the Whitchurch Gossip
Midsummer – time to make Elderflower Champagne – which is not champagne – or alcoholic – at all – but, according to my family, is every bit as good as champagne:
Elderflower Champagne
4 large elderflower heads
2 lemons – rind and juice
2 tblsp white wine vinegar
1 lb 8 oz of granulated sugar
7 pints cold water
You will need 2 large clean buckets – one to make the champagne in and another to strain the champagne into.
Remove flower petals from elderflower heads (just rub the flowers off the stalks – it’s not critical if some stalks get in as well) and put in a bucket with rind and juice of 2 lemons.
Add water and vinegar and stir well.
Leave for 2 days, stirring night and morning.
Strain through a stocking held over a sieve or colander into the second bucket.
Add sugar and stir well.
Leave 24 hours then bottle in screw top bottles. (Plastic pop bottles will do fine.)
It should be ready to drink after about a week.
If not drinking straight away you will need to release the tops of the bottles regularly so they don’t explode – or you can use old port bottles with corks.
Today’s Treasures – Snowdrops – Tiny Pearls of Springtime
The days are getting longer and the first flowers of the year are peeping through Autumn’s fallen leaves – snowdrops – tiny pearls of springtime, creeping towards the light; frosts may wither them but their fragile stems soon revive in the sunshine, they shake their petals free of winter and their tiny white bells tremble in the spring breeze.
Snowdrop Walks mark the start of the season for many of our historic houses and there are lots of early spring walks through snowdrop-dappled woodland. Rode Hall, just over the North Shropshire border, has a wonderful display of snowdrops set in enchanting woodland.
The snowdrop trail begins alongside neatly manicured lawns overlooked by a picturesque combination of unusual mature trees, through formal rose gardens, heavenly scented in summer but now lying dormant waiting for the first rays of the summer sun.
Through the gap in the hedge, a whole new vista opens out and you enter a wild woodland star spangled with snowdrops roaming unchecked, under the trees, along the brook, scrambling around the shrubs and bushes that decorate the landscape, and you can find a bench, or perch on a stone bridge, and merge with the magic of the trees, serenaded by robins and blackbirds and soothed by the sound of the stream bubbling over stones, watched by myriads of tiny snowdrop faces, studying their reflections in the water.
Rode Hall is open from Saturday, 4th February to Sunday 5th March (except Mondays) for snowdrop escapades for all the family (including dogs – on leads). The tearoom is open serving light lunches and you can warm up by the logburner with a welcome pot of tea and homemade cakes. The art exhibition in the barn is well worth a visit, showcasing creations by local artists – and not all of the paintings feature snowdrops! www.rodehall.co.uk
In the Druid calendar Snowdrops heralded Spring and first appear at Imbolc – celebrated on 31st January and 2nd February (Candlemas Day).
There are snowdrops walks all over Shropshire, including Combermere Abbey, Attingham Park, and Dudmaston Hall.
The Snowdrop Fairy
Deep sleeps the Winter
Cold, wet, and grey;
Surely all the world is dead;
Spring is far away.
Wait! the world shall waken;
It is not dead, for lo,
The Fair Maids of February
Stand in the snow!
What a surprise! One damp and dreary early Autumn morning I stumbled out to feed the chickens and was suddenly stunned wide awake by this beautiful bright blue flower positively glowing – Morning Glory! It’s supposed to be really easy to grow but I nurtured tiny seedlings that struggled to survive and, when I finally planted them out they just sat there and refused to climb up the bamboo wigwam – until I got bored waiting and forgot all about them – until this morning! Every morning since there have been new flowers – they love the early mornings and close up later in the day – hence the name. It’s a type of convolvulus – our native white version can be a troublesome weed as it chokes other plants – hence its common name – bindweed. All of the plant is poisonous as it contains tropane alkaloids – especially the seeds – but this flower certainly brightened up my morning.
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 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?
Nasturtium the jolly,
O ho, O ho!
He holds up his brolly
Just so, just so!
(A shelter from showers,
A shade from the sun;)
‘Mid flame-coloured flowers
He grins at the fun.
Up fences he scrambles,
Sing hey, sing hey!
All summer he rambles
So gay, so gay –
Till the night-frost strikes chilly,
And Autumn leaves fall,
And he’s gone, willy-nilly,
Umbrella and all.
From ‘A Flower Fairy alphabet’ by Cicely Mary Barker
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
