Despite our usual New Year optimism for the gardening year ahead, an unexpected combination of care duties, hospital treatment and Covid, meant that we are having a very slow start to our spring at The Secret Acre.
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There is a new soul with us at The Secret Acre.
Meet Noodle, the labradoodle!
When our beloved Ruby passed away before Christmas we were very clear. We were not going to have another dog for at least a year in order to go travelling. But fate had other plans for us. Continue reading
There have always been three souls here at The Secret Acre, the third person in our marriage being Ruby, a little rough-haired Jack Russell.
She even carried the rings down the aisle for us.
So it was heart breaking this Christmas when Ruby died at the ripe old age of 13, from what we have now all learned to call ‘underlying health issues’. The first of a string of devastating bereavements as it turned out. Continue reading
Sadly it’s turning into a Christmas Horribilis for us. More about this at a future date when we feel we can write about it.
But before the proverbial hit the fan, we were busy preparing for a happier, socially distanced Yule.
The Christmas tree arrived on a tractor, delivered from the farm a few hundred yards down the road, where we had often walked the dog past the field where it was growing.
Just six inches needed trimming off the top to get it in. Continue reading
August’s harvest rapidly flowed into the Sept/Oct apple crop (more on this in the next blog) and before you know it here we are in November!
But while this hectic period was on, we still found time to enter September’s traditional local Village Show.
Now, veterans of this blog will know we have form when it comes to Shows.
Well, I say we, but although we have both entered before, only Emma had actually triumphed. Continue reading
Last month our dog, Ruby, emerged from the darkness of her usual night time patrol round the garden with a stick in her mouth.
Bringing us little presents is a relatively rare event, usually confined to the odd rotting fermenting windfall apple, presented with a slightly drunken look on her face as if to say ‘you should try these fermented apples they are really great!’
Ruby’s stick face however had an altogether different look of smug satisfaction. And rightly so. Continue reading
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