Busy July and a sad goodbye

It seems like such a long time since my last post. July, as always, is proving to be a very busy month indeed!

The weekend after my birthday we went to Latitude Festival, which was our first full weekend festival experience and it was so lovely! Nicknamed "Latte-tude" because it's a very nice middle-class Guardian-reading type festival, which was pretty much us to a T! Not only were there some big music stages, they also had a theatre and comedy stages, literature and poetry tents, a stage on the lake which had mainly opera and dance as well as little stages in the woods with everything from shakespeare to early 90's dance music. Plus, loads of quirky little touches like multi coloured sheep and a childrens arena which loads of fun looking things in it (I was very jealous!). We came back feeling very chilled out and not very enthusiastic about going back to work!





Then, this weekend just gone, my mum and her partner, Nick, came to visit. Nick and Matt went off to the War and Peace show at the Hop Farm just down the road. Not really our kind of thing so my mum and I went to the antique fair at Detling. Sadly we didn't getg anything apart from this brilliantly tacky tin for my buttons. It has a picture of a boy collecting stamps with his pet rabbit. Totally bizarre and utterly brilliant!



Then, on Sunday, we headed off to Ben and Jerry's Sundae on the common in Clapham with some friends. Sadly it was a bit rainy and much busier than in previous years so not as good as it could have been but we scoffed plenty of free ice cream and I got to see The Futureheads, who I love.




(The Futureheads)

Our weekend sadly didn't end very well. When we got home on Sunday night poor little Dymchurch was lying in the run, having not been able to make it up the ramp. Luckily Matt saw her first and brought her inside into the box that she's been staying in which we've been nursing her. She's not been well for a while and we had tried everything that we could think of but to no avail. On Monday morning she'd given us and gone to the big chard patch in the sky (chard was her favourite food). So, we are now a two chicken household and we have vowed to pay extra attention to Hythe and Romney and try to learn from our mistakes but we are very sad to lose our little Dym, who was our favourite. At least she had a happy 4 months of life since she "escaped" the farm.


(our little Dymchurch)

Strangely enough, Tinyholder, whose blog we are avid followers of, also lost one of her hens this week and my mum and Nick lost Apple, one of their ducks last week. Not a good week for poultry it seems.

I have also been doing some arts and crafts this week. I made a pencil case for my mum's birthday and I have to say i was jolly proud of it. I forgot to take a photo, but I will definately be making myself one for when I start studying again.

Summer Daze

What a busy week it's been!

Take That really were brilliant - we were old ladies and sat down at the back rather than joining the crush standing but what an amazing show they put on:



The 1st Tonbridge Beer Festival was also excellent - we had 8 friends come and visit for the day and we spent a day sitting in the sun and enjoying real ales and beers. I started with some Hampshire brews, which were as good as ever and moved over to Kent but I think the Hogs Back Brewery offerings from Surrey (which is the closest brewery to where I grew up) provided the most drinkable of the day. We ended up drinking for 12 hours but as we were we sipping halves rather than glugging pints we didn't overdo it too much. We were really lucky with the weather too, these beautiful clouds were on show in the early evening:



Then, on Sunday, off to Devon. We stayed in a wonderful farm B&B on the first night - we had a cream tea to greet us on arrival, a wonderfully comfortable room in which to watch the Wimbledon final then off to a local pub for some fantastic grub - I had home made chicken pie with piccalilli and chips. Bliss! For the next two nights we stayed in a farmhouse near Budleigh Salterton with my dad, step-mum, brother and grandad who were visiting from Germany for the week. What a lovely area it was and we found this little gem of a mill (Otterton Mill) which had a bakery, cafe and art galleries/shops - Matt and I treated ourselves to tea and cakes and my dad bought me a ring for my birthday, which is just lovely. The mill was so beautiful we could have stayed all day:



We travelled home yesterday and it was so lovely to get home to our little house and see the girls, we missed them! I wondered around the garden and picked two bunches of flowers:





I am really enjoying our house in the summer, it's so welcoming.

So, it's been a busy week and it's not done yet - today is my birthday so I had a wonderful smoked salmon and scrambled egg bagel in bed this morning and we're off to Tunbridge Wells in a while shopping then tomorrow Matt has a surprise day planned for me which is very exciting. The week then ends with our summer party - 20-odd people will descend on our house dressed as scouts and brownies to celebrate the Jamboree! We always have a theme to our parties and everyone embraces it so well!

Beautiful Bouquets and Sunbathing Chickens

I have today off work because I'm going to see Take That at Wembley this afternoon (eeek!) so this morning I am catching up with the garden jobs that I've been neglecting for a long time.

Summer has truely arrived - it is so hot outside today I've had to come indoors already and it's only 10am, i can't imagine how hot Wembley Stadium is going to be later! The exciting this about summer being here is that we have our first flowers from the garden. I've never grown anything which could be used as cut flowers before so this is very exciting. This is the bouquet I put together this morning. Hardly award winning but very fragrant and really brightens up the dining room:



The chickens are also a little bit lethargic in this heat, which makes them much more manageable to keep off the beds and Dymchurch has taken to sunbathing:



Last night we had a meeting about our community allotment. The agreement for the land is very nearly finalised so we're hoping that we can start clearing the site before the summer is out and perhaps get some things planted for over-wintering, which is very exciting indeeed! Our plot is going to be about 4x10 metres so not massive but big enough! I'm starting to plan the planting already.