Showing posts with label Scottish cottage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scottish cottage. Show all posts

Bringing Christmas Into This Old House


 I very seldom post pictures of the inside of this cottage, except for the kitchen, occasionally - and the conservatory, which is where we put the Christmas tree. It's so cold there at night that it hardly sheds a needle.

Today, though, since we've just about finished trimming up - always traditional decorations, some of which we've had for years - I took a photograph of the hallway. Our hall and staircase in this two hundred year old house is bigger than it should be. We've sometimes wondered why it's so palatial in what is, after all, a stone-built terraced cottage. 

It was built back in the very early 1800s, by a retired gardener from Cloncaird Castle, who had been given a piece of land by his employer. Somewhere among the deeds are details of the plot of land and the 'house new built thereon'. He sold it very soon after, so I suppose it was his pension fund. Some of the stones of which it's constructed are huge  - boulders more than stones. You wonder how they lifted them into place. In the sitting room, there's an original lintel, still soot marked, over what was once a vast fireplace - the main fireplace in the house back then but reduced to manageable proportions over the years. 

The wooden floor in the hallway is pitch pine and comes - allegedly - from the deck of a wrecked ship - installed well before we moved here. The beautiful wrought iron balustrade and elegant banister rail are probably Victorian although again they seem rather grand - so this was no ordinary cottage. Previous owners included a sea captain and a doctor, so presumably it became a desirable residence over the years after  the gardener built it. I don't think it was ever a weaver's cottage, although the village was full of them. 

I keep planning to try to find out more about the man who owned the land and built the house but work tends to intervene. I remember that at one point in its history it was sold by 'candle auction' in the pub over the road - the winning bid being the last one placed when the candle went out. 

Not long ago, as he galloped about the house, trying to fix something, a frustrated tradesman exclaimed 'This is a difficult house!'  We know, we know! The thing about old houses - genuinely old houses - is that they really hate being disturbed, even when you're trying to do essential work. And boy, do they let you know about it. 

But we've been here a long time now.  It's a welcoming house. You get the feeling that it always has been. And we love it.  




Where do the crows roost at night?

Drawing by Alan Lees 


 The birds in our garden have pretty much kept me sane throughout the past covid infested months. Especially a pair of very large crows - carrion crows, I think - that have become reasonably tame over the summer. At first they would watch me from a distant rooftop and only come down into the garden once I was safely indoors. 

Now they watch me from our own rooftop, and will even come down onto the bird table when I'm still in the garden. A couple of weeks ago when we were taking advantage of the last of the fine weather, sitting outside for a late afternoon glass of wine with our immediate neighbours, they even flew down to have their customary supper from a smaller feeder, with a drink of water from the bird bath afterwards. We carried on talking and they carried on eating, glancing around occasionally to make sure that we were still in friendly mode.

I put out a seed mix for the birds - we have a lot of small birds in this garden: sparrows, tits, robins, wrens, blackbirds and many more, as well as bigger birds like wood pigeons and collar doves. There are covids in plenty: jackdaws on all the roofs, rooks in the trees in the overgrown field at the bottom of the garden, and a pair of magpies that are not very welcome since they do tend to bully the smaller birds. However, there is plenty of cover for the wee ones in this garden, so they should be OK.

The crows are shown a great deal of respect by everyone else. It's fascinating to watch them. They don't seem to be particularly aggressive, but the smaller birds, and even the smaller corvids, always give way to them. 

Very occasionally I'll put out a bit of stale bread. The crows love it, but they will dip it in the bird bath till it's nice and soft, like dunking a biscuit I suppose. Sometimes, with a particularly hard bit of crust, they will leave it in the water for a few moments, eat a bit more seed, and then come back to it. 

What I really want to know though, is where they roost at night? I assume it must be in one of the bigger trees. We have old fashioned hedges and a big viburnum, and I know that's where all the sparrows hang out. The blue tits and the robin commandeer a holly tree. The pigeons take shelter in a tall fir tree, very thick at the top. The jackdaws lurk among the chimney pots.

But I've never managed to see exactly where the crows go to roost. And they're so big that you'd think it would be obvious. 



When the gorse is in bloom, kissing's in season.




 Drove past 'Trump Turnberry' today, as always noting its faint resemblance to the Overlook, on the way to and from one of our local farm shops for tatties and carrots, freshly dug this morning. The carrots smell like a completely different vegetable and I'm going to make some of them into a salad with the last apple from the garden and a few cashew nuts. Too good to cook. Actually, it's the last-but-one apple from the old Golden Noble apple tree at the bottom of the garden. It's so old that it's on a two year cycle, a rest year and a fruiting year. This year was a rest year and it managed about six apples. I was waiting for the last huge apple at the top of the tree to fall, but by the time I got to it, it was a hollowed out shell - the birds had got to it. I couldn't begrudge them it. They give me so much pleasure. 

The whins are in bloom. That's the Scots word for gorse. And as the old saying goes, when they're in bloom, kissing's in season. Because they're always in bloom. But in spring, they are so bright that they dazzle your eyes and the scent of coconut is overwhelming. Now, they're strangely and sporadically in autumnal bloom - one or two bushes covered with vivid golden flowers, among several others with no flowers. Throughout the winter, here in the warmish west, you'll see a few flowers lingering here and there and then slowly but surely, you won't be able to tell whether they're last year's clinging on, or the beginning of spring. 

Always a cheering thought, because I hate November, and I hate mid-covid November even more, because usually there's Christmas to look forward to, but it looks as though we might be cancelling Christmas in this house, anyway. 

All the same, who wouldn't be cheered by the gorse? And did you know that you can cook up the blossoms and use the resulting liquid to flavour cakes and things? I didn't, until I watched the wonderful Nora On Food. I haven't tried the cheesecake yet, but I might make a perilous gorse flower expedition and give it a try. 

Cottage Garden Favourites: Canary Island Broom


When I'm not writing, at the moment, I'm spending a lot of time in the garden. Still, the weeds are growing too fast for me to keep up to them, the ground elder in particular, which was seemingly introduced by the Romans (drat them) and is said to be edible. I haven't tried it, but it certainly smells lovely and I'll admit that I often leave bits of it to flower, because the blossoms are very pretty. I'm saying 'leave' but in reality, because it runs along under the ground, it's almost impossible to get rid of  it without resorting to weed killers, and I don't like them.

Anyway, in a cottage garden like mine, it doesn't seem to matter too much if there's a certain untidiness and wildness. Lots of shelter for the birds!

One of my favourite shrubs is this one, pictured above. Everyone thinks it's a forsythia, but it isn't. It's a Canary Island broom. I can't remember where I bought it, but it was a very small, thin plant and like everything else in this ancient garden it has grown into this robust monster! It seems to like it here. It flowers quite late in Ayrshire. This is it in full bright bloom, more or less at the same time as the dazzling 'whins' or gorse bushes, and the may blossoms, in all the country round about.

By the way, the old saying 'ne'er cast a clout till may be out' refers to the may or hawthorn blossoms and not the month. I'll post some pictures of them soon, when they're at their best. We have a big hawthorn in the hedge at the bottom of the garden.

I grew up knowing with absolute certainty that you should never bring these blossoms into your house. I suspect this belief came from my Irish nana, Honora Flynn. It was deemed to be unlucky. The reason for this may have been as prosaic as the fact that the heady scent attracts insects, but I think it much more likely that - as a tree often dedicated to the fairies, or 'good people' - you meddle with it at your peril. So you should admire, but don't chop. That's what my nana thought, anyway.

Meanwhile, the may is just coming into beautiful scented bloom here, so you can take off your winter woollies. Allegedly.


A Room With A View

Ayrshire sunrise
We have had some of the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets I've ever seen, this year. It does your heart good to see them. Which is perhaps just as well, since the news elsewhere is so very depressing. But who wouldn't be slightly cheered by the sheer beauty of this view - one that I'm lucky enough to have from the room where I work.

I know writers who prefer to work in a room with no view at all. They tell me it's too distracting. Perhaps because so much of what I write has a rural setting, I don't feel the same. I love to gaze out of the window, between chapters, watching the slow change of the seasons. Even today, in early January, it's quite green out there and the garden seems to be full of birds. Yesterday, I spent an hour outside, sweeping up leaves, adding a little compost to some of my tubs and pots where those same birds had been rummaging and had dug up a few of my springtime bulbs.

It felt like spring. Of course, it won't last, but I much prefer January and February to November. It seems like the right side of the year, somehow, and quite soon, it will be obvious that the days are growing longer!

Happy New Year (still thinking about resolutions!)


New Year's Day, here in this little village, dawned clear and cold and sunny. Not that I saw the actual dawn, because we joined a group of friends young and old, just along the road, to celebrate Hogmanay and to welcome 2017. This morning, after we'd watched the splendid New Year's Day concert from Vienna (another ritual and one that always reminds me of my late mum and dad, who spent a couple of years living in that wonderful city) I took a brisk walk round the village to see a few signs of spring already and remind myself what a truly beautiful place we live in.

Once we've cleared away the Christmas decorations - always a sad task - and dealt with the inevitable dust, I like to 'bring spring into the house' in the shape of hyacinths and other spring flowers. So that's what I'll be doing later in the week. The 'Christmas cactus' defeats me every year by flowering madly in late January, but so does the large indoor jasmine - already bearing lots of buds.

I have only a few resolutions for this year. One - the most important for this blog - is to challenge myself to post something on here every day for the next 31 days. They won't all be big, important posts. A few of them might be 'how to' posts for writers. One or two might be longer and more reflective pieces about researching and writing historical fiction. But most of them will be short bits and pieces about the place where I live and work, the objects that inspire me, and what it's like to live in a 200 year old cottage in lowland Scotland.

My other resolutions are to spend a lot less time on Social Media. I love it, but boy is it (a) a time suck and (b) depressing. And that leads me to my third and final resolution: to write lots more fiction and a bit of non-fiction too. I have a couple of very specific projects in mind, and I'll be blogging about them in due course. At the moment, one is well under way but needs some more dedicated time, while the other is only at the planning stage.

You never know. This time next year, we might be millionaires!

A little taste of spring, here in the Scottish countryside.


The days are very short here in Scotland at this time of year, but we comfort ourselves with the thought that in another couple of weeks they'll start to get longer. And by the end of January, they'll be noticeably longer!

Which is not to say that I want to skip Christmas, because I love everything about it. Always have. But all the same, it's cheering when the spring bulbs start to come through.

This is an old terracotta pot of white, scented narcissus bulbs I planted earlier this year, and hid away on a cool, dark shelf at the back of my office. Now, it's downstairs and they're growing and greening up on such light as is available. There's a pot of hyacinths as well, although they're a little way behind.

With a bit of luck, they'll be flowering not long after the Christmas decorations are put away for another year. I don't buy forced hyacinths at Christmas time, but I do buy them soon afterwards, if I haven't had the foresight to grow my own. I love to clean up and then bring springtime into the house in the shape of bulbs and - quite soon, here in the west - bunches of snowdrops and catkins.

I much prefer February to November. In November things are still sliding. In February and even earlier, you can feel the whole garden and the countryside beyond drawing breath, getting ready for spring. My favourite time of year.

It may be even earlier than usual, this year, since, after a cold spell that drove all the outdoor bulbs back underground, it has been incredibly warm for a few days. 'A pretty decent Scottish summer temperature' as my husband remarked! I gather it's due to get colder again pretty soon. Maybe in time for Christmas.