A Long Walk!

Beckside Post Box

• Standing at the roadside at 4.00am in the morning waiting for the minibus to pick my son up for the Keswick to Barrow walk.
• Buying flowers and chocolate biscuit cake at the village plant sale.
• Pouring a hot bubbly bath for my son after a long hard day of walking in the brilliant sunshine.

Garden Treasure Hunt.

Today I just wanted to share with you the simple pleasures of our annual village garden treasure hunt. This year over 100 residents placed an unusual object in their gardens for us to find, Here are some of my favourite photos. I hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoy the excitement of finding things. The treasure hunt symbolises light evenings and summer holidays ahead!

St Cuthbert's church Kirkby in Furness

A village garden

Weather vane

Cottage at Sandside

Black Combe at dusk

Passing the time of day!

Camelia in the garden

• Conversation over the garden wall about bird watching with a gentleman who it turns out is recently widowed and appreciates the conversation.I now have to research Skylarks !
• Appreciating the waft of lily of the valley as I walk out the kitchen door.
• Welcoming our new neighbours with a home made card and some newly laid eggs!

The Blue Bird

TIME IS A GIFT TO BE LIVED & LOVED; SAVOURED & APPRECIATED

The Happiness Institute

I just wanted to share with you a beautiful song called The Blue Bird which  we are singing in choir.Enjoy!

Sticky Toffee Pudding and Alice!

Cartmel Priory

Door from Alice in Wonderland!

• Sitting in the sun shine watching the ducklings as they bob down Cartmel beck on the current.
• Eating delicious warmed chocolate brownie and ice cream in the home to famous Sticky Toffee pudding as we gaze out the window into the village square and to Cartmel Priory beyond.
• We walk past a small door hidden in a dry stone wall, too small to get through .which reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.

Wild flowers and Butterflies

Orange Tip

The hedge rows are full of wild flowers now and I spy an orange tipped butterfly on the grass verge.We are so lucky that they don't spray the  verges in the village!

My son showed me a ladybird he found basking in the sunshine.

The newly painted cottage next door blinds me with it's glare from the sunshine.

Greater Stitchwort

After the Rain!

The grass verge in the village today.

Toffee drizzle cupcakes

• All the pear blossom has blown off the tree following the wind and rain in the night. Blossoms lay like confetti on the grass.
• The countryside looks clean and new in the sunshine,after the rain, like an oil painting newly restored.
• I get to make toffee drizzle cakes in the kitchen as the steam rises from the grass in the sunshine.
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Funny Things!

Hi there!Would you mind letting me out?

• One little boy wrapped up with his dog in a duvet!
• A husband sitting in front of the computer in his furry tracker hat on a warm April evening.
• Laughing with a friend who got into the cot of her autistic child to help him get to sleep and then couldn't climb out again!

A Day off!

Coniston Water

Driving along the banks of Lake Coniston at 8.30am on a sunny Friday morning to collect my daughter from school as she has rung to say she is feeling ill. The mountains are magnificant and the lake is as still as glass! Every cloud has a silver lining
Thinking how lucky I am to have my son and daughter at home with me today.
Walking out into the sunshine to peg the clothes on the line. Our labrador comes bounding out, making his escape and rushes out to find his football!

Evening in the Countryside!

• The peal of church bells over the fields as I tend the front garden in the dusky evening.
• The bluetit chirping quisically at itself in the wing mirror of my car standing on the drive
• The sound of the lawnmower and the smell of newly mown grass as I walk up the drive at the end of the evening.

Keeping up Traditions!

Traditional Egg rolling in the rain!

• Rolling pasche eggs down Hoad hill in the pouring rain, a tradition which has continued in Ulverston for as long as I can remember.
• Warming up with a cup of coffee and a Ploughman's lunch in the peace and tranquility of our local Hospice cafe.
• Watching the young children on a treasure hunt in the Hospice grounds and chuckling when their Grandma came in to collect their prizes because they were too cold and wet to get out the car! 
• View from Hoad on a good day! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpjJiS7jMWo

Easter Celebrations

Hunting for Easter Eggs

• The lilac tree overhanging the gate post is just coming into bloom.
• We see the stork again flying over the dual carriageway on our way to the station.
• The cockerel crows three times and I'm reminded of the Easter story.
• Children running round the orchard looking for Easter eggs followed by hens in hot pursuit!

The Specialness of one to one time!

Two men and their dog!

• Chatting to my fifteen year old in the kitchen on a rainy spring morning whilst he cooks me eggy fried bread, bacon and baked beans for breakfast.
• Listening to two little boys giggling upstairs as they spend time on the X box together.
• Digging up some teasel plants from my garden for my friend as she wants them and I'll be glad to get rid!

Simple Pleasures!

Tarn on Torver Back Common

• Wood anemones growing on the grass verges.
• A Stork sitting on the top of a telegraph pole! (Yes it was a stork! I think it must have escaped the nearby zoo!)
• Making a chocolate fudge cake with my eleven year old daughter in the kitchen on a rainy afternoon!

Who says nothing happens in the Country?

• Jumping as two curly horned sheep jumped out from behind the dustbins as I walked down the drive.
• My neighbour sitting in the sun amongst her hens and ducks waiting for two scavenger seagulls to arrive and plotting how to divert their attention from her flock and its eggs.
• Escorting lamb number 25 back through the five bar gate through which it had escaped onto the lane.

Indian Runner Duck

In my back Garden.

• The faint buzzing of a bumble bee as it hovers over the newly mown grass
• The chack, chack, chack of the magpie that is watching me from the dry stone wall
• Wilma the hen who is having a dust bath in the sunshine
• The wiggling tail of a lamb in the back field as it suckles its mother.

Going with the flow-not with the Crowd

As I went to fill up with diesel as I normally do on a Thursday I was met with queues of panicking motorists eager to fill up with fuel because of the impending tanker stike (that's if it actually happens) It seem that the U.K.  media have successfully stirred up panic buying, causing problems before there even is one.
It occurred to me that society sadly so often follows the herd. People were buying petrol because they saw queues at the filling station and realised if they didn't stock up there would be none left so they refuelled too. Mostly to full capacity!
We are fairly sheltered in the country side, there's  a community here and people are more resourceful in emergencies. They have to be, there is little public transport. I remember a pensioner joking that whilst he was delighted to have a free bus pass it would be even better if a bus came with it!
So often there is a good side to such emergencies. We take our transport so much for granted. A hundred years ago in our village you would have taken your horse and cart to market every Thursday over the Fells, a round trip of 16 miles and it would have taken all day. You would probably have sat on the moors with a picnic overlooking the estuary on your way back watching the sun go down over Black Combe, a much healthier and contented lifestyle than most of us have now! Obviously there were great hardships too but people didn't expect the government to sort it out, they pulled together and helped one another.
Here we have another beautifully sunny day, I have my weekly shopping and I intend to spend the rest of the day working in my garden. The problems of tomorrow can wait (after all only 80% of what we worry about actually happens anyway.) So until it does it's not worth stressing about!

Black Combe

Sights and Smells of Spring!

Never did sun more beautifully steep 

   In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill; 

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! 

   The river glideth at his own sweet will:  

Upon Westminster Bridge, William Wordsworth

• The clocks have gone forward for British Summer-time and, as I shut in the hens for the night, I notice bats circling in the dusk.
• The crescent shaped moon shines brightly through the bare silhouetted trees which have not yet come into bud.
• The fragrance of Viburnum  bush wafts through the garden in the warm air and the redcurrant bush is in full bloom.

Things to be Thankful for!

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And Heaven in a wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

William Blake , "Auguries of Innocence"

Pussy Willows in Spring!

• It was a day of firsts today. I saw my first pussy willows in bloom, watched as a flock of geese flew over towards the estuary and saw my first dandelion of the year. Small things but a sign of new birth!
• The builder sitting in his upturned wheel barrow in the sun drinking a cup of tea!
• Sitting under the pear tree amongst the daffodils with my son, drinking chocolate milk shake and munching a chocolate muffin!

Surround yourself with Beautiful things

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. " William Morris


As anyone who knows me will tell you. I'm not a tidy person. I've read about just about every book imaginable on the subject of de cluttering but I still struggle to throw things away in case I suddenly need them. When however I read William Morris' quote I suddenly realised that he was right, there was no point surrounding myself with things I didn't need any more or had no time to do. They were just filling up space and complicating my life.

I decided to take a bag of things to the charity shop every week in order to minimise my chores. Books were a problem as I love reading but I came across www.readitswapit.co.uk/ and my problem was solved. For every book I read  I had to give one away. It made me more aware of what I owned too! I had a pile of books waiting to be read and I hadn't got round to them. By reducing the pile I could see what I still had to read!

I also found that if I thought hard about my purchases then I got far more pleasure from them. Instead of buying the first thing I saw I would ask myself if I needed it. If the answer was "no" then I walked away. If I wasn't sure I decided to leave it and come back another day. If the item had been sold when I came back it wasn't meant to be.I started to record a wish list on www.amazon.co.uk when I read an outstanding review of a book or film so that when I received money for my birthday or someone wanted to know what I wanted then I was sure that the item was something I'd really considered and waited patiently for .

I found that the things that gave me the most pleasure were simple things like a bunch of daffodils from my garden or a Christmas wreath made from Holly and Ivy, giving friends a box of our own hen's eggs or a home made jar of lemon curd. I enjoyed making cards too. The feeling I got from giving my own card was far superior to rushing out to the supermarket at the last minute to find one.Even my vases and crockery were important to my well being. I chose vintage cups and vases from charity shops and car boot sales. They didn't need to match, the only criteria is that I should find them pretty. I filled them with flowers I found on the grass verges on my way down to the beach.We are lucky in this area to still have such things as grass verges filled with celandines, buttercups, foxgloves, shepherds purse, honeysuckle and campions at different times of the year.


Bed linen received a once over too. Rather than seek out duvets based on the current crazes of my three children I decided to collect white cotton bed linen and sought out home made patchwork quilts. It didn't happen overnight but I'm gradually collecting a wonderful selection of vintage bed linen which brings me a great deal of pleasure, particularly when sprayed with a bottle of lavender mist! I'm still not tidy but I am gradually learning that every thing I choose to surround myself with says something about me and my personality and, if chosen wisely makes me happy!