Friends and neighbours fear that I am being held hostage or have been kidnapped! No one has seen or heard from me for months. But the truckloads of wood, sand, cement, picket fencing and old Victorian ridge tiles piling up in my drive all tell another story and the real reason for my absence; I … Continue reading
Happiest when I am about to tackle a new challenge and happier still if the job involves flowers, I set off into the frozen wastes of the Cottage Garden to see what I can pick. This wasteland of dried stems with the odd pernicious and very hardy weed is hardly an oasis of verdant growth … Continue reading
I am in a baking frenzy. There is a flour tornado in my kitchen as I open up self-raising, plain and gluten free flour and bag after bag of sugar. The KitchenAid mixer is maxed out and I am juggling four recipes whilst desperately channeling Bree Van de Kamp and trying to remind myself that I … Continue reading
“It’s a pop-up cake club on Dartmoor and the sweetest place to be” I used to own and run a restaurant and inn. So I know a bit about how to make a place look nice and how to make people feel welcome. I can cook, write a menu, lay a table, clear it and … Continue reading
When other artists were painting landscapes, portraits and flowers, I was painting vegetables. Big blowsy bunches of Beetroot and gentle bunches of Carrots with feathery fronds. The buyers at my exhibitions bought paintings of strings of garlic, onions and the like and for my private views I wore silver earrings in the shape of carrots. … Continue reading
Swept up and cast aside by the sparkle of Christmas and washed away by months of rain I slither and slide down the slippery path of the New Year into my waterlogged garden. Seeing all my sad and sodden potted Primulas and Cowslips, I gather them up lovingly and head for the greenhouse. Surely these … Continue reading
My pre-breakfast morning walk is a push for power; for a fast-paced, heart-pumping, energizing surge where battling against the wind and weather helps me to reclaim some of the adrenalin driven lifestyle I once had. Yes, I rise when the bats are still following their flight paths home to roost and with a torch strapped … Continue reading
The meadow and moors beyond the Cottage Garden are damp and hazy with mist, as the Blackbirds swoop down to peck at fallen apples amongst the piles of rustling autumn leaves. A sudden blustery wind swirls around the house, making the cockerel weather-vane spin, and tugs at the branches of the oak tree, helping it … Continue reading
Seduced by the beauty of their ghostly, pale, grey-green skins and the plump rounded curves concealing burnt orange flesh beneath, I have left several of my ‘Invincible’ Pumpkins untouched because they are simply too beautiful to eat! But this season’s crop is starting to plump up in the Kitchen Garden and it really is time to … Continue reading
Days and days of burnished, golden, Indian Summer sunshine sees the late autumn flowers blooming for the bees and my skin turning a pale caramel. This sublime, mellow weather with its misty mornings clearing to deep azure skies and a honeyed, warming light, brings with it a feeling of calmness and contentment which runs very … Continue reading
Dartmoor Flower Shed 