Flowers are very emotive things. I am always reminded of that at this time of year as the first sweet peas and sweet williams arrive in the shop and customers begin to reminisce about their grandparents gardens.

I too associate particular flowers with particular people - foxgloves, at their peak this week, I associate with my Australian friend Sue.

Sue moved with her family to stay in a cottage near our old house for the year of 1998 when her husband Phil worked on a job exchange. Sue is one of these people with a natural ease which makes everything that she does appear to be exactly the way it should be done.

She loves flowers but the exchange rate difference made Scotland a very expensive place to stay, particularly with 3 children. There was no room in her weekly budget for the flowers she was used to buying back in Melbourne. So she would pick cow parsley and foxgloves from the verge outside her house and arrange them in tall jugs in the kitchen. It looked wonderful, as it would.

I was very influenced by Sue- it was her who introduced me to Country Living Magazine and, more importantly, who showed me a more relaxed way to parent. She hates computers so I doubt she will read this.

Does anyone else have flowers that remind them of specific people?

The foxglove in the photo is a variety called "Elsie Kelsie", a sport of the native white foxglove with a very dark mark for the bees to see how to get into the flower.

Not quite the golden egg you would think.

Last week I got a letter from Upper Street Events who run the Country Living Fairs to say that they would not be having a Fair in Scotland next Spring.

It has turned out not to be an viable event for them.

It is a strange thing - talk to the stall holders and they feel that they are paying too much for their space, talk to the customers and they feel that the ticket price is too high, talk to the organisers and they say that they cannot make a profit on the event.

Perhaps there are not enough people in Scotland/North of England to justify the event - certainly, speaking to people who do both the London and the Glasgow Fair there are far fewer people at the Scottish event, spending far less per person.

That is perhaps the rub.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend who had just bought a beautiful quilt from a catalogue specialising in Fair Trade goods. It was a lovely piece of work - the pieces had been carefully toned and my friend had bought it because of that, but also because it had been made by someone being paid properly for the work. She felt that she paid about a £70 premium for the good feeling that she has buying Fair Trade.

How many people would (or perhaps also could afford to) do that?

The Country Living Fair tries to reflect the magazine - to have a high proportion of stalls selling hand made, locally sourced, high production cost items - whether that is bags made from vintage materials or hand made jewellery.

The problem is that the price of those goods reflect the fact that they take time to make. With the Scottish Fair what seemed to happen was that each year there were fewer and fewer of these specialist stalls as too few people bought from them and they did not cover costs. Gradually stalls importing mass produced jewellery, enamelware, trinkets and so on began to dominate. Even the stalls which sold handmade items began to supplement with bought in goods, which were cheaper and therefore easier to sell. This applies to me as much as anyone else - whereas everything bar some hyacinth vases was made by me in the "home section" of my stall, there were pots and hand tools in the "garden" bit which were bought in - and available at another stall in the hall.

There were approximately 12,000 visitors to the Scottish Fair - that means to cover costs on a small stall you have every single person who comes in that door spend 30p with you. That is very high indeed. No wonder so many stallholders - with lovely stalls - hardly make a profit.

I really don't know what the answer is - if I could change one thing about our consumer society I would have people buy less but spend more time and money on their individual purchases. This Primark, disposable society depresses me. People look at a hand made object like a basket and think that it is expensive, if they began to think of the time taken to make it and what hourly rate they think would be fair, I expect that it would suddenly seem a great bargain. -

A Christmas Fair has been suggested for October 2008 and I hope that that comes off and that people use it as an excuse to get all their Christmas presents in one handcrafted, unique, happy shopping day.

I would be interested in hearing what people think from a customers' point of view.

All change

We moved all the chickens to the 2nd field today into a fruit cage - the idea is that they can become a bit more free ranging in a week or so - being let out of the cage to potter about in the long grass during the day and returning to safety of their house at night.

In the short term the netted cage will also stop the buzzard and Minou attacking this gorgeous fluffy chick while still allowing it to socialise with the rest of the hens. As you can see it is still very much with its two "mothers".



Cuddles our rabbit who thinks it is a chicken cannot accompany them to their summer housing - he would just disappear off into the wild I think - so he is now in the old chicken ark awaiting an intense re-socialising programme to get him used to being petted again. Then, when we get the new guinea pigs (soft touch Mummy!) he may or may not be housed with them depending on whether they all get on without fighting.

We have just been outside watching a woodpecker (greater spotted we think) feeding on the peanut rings - he was frightened off by the sound of the zoom lens so we don't have a photo but shall lie in wait over the next week.

The most uncool post ever!

I have finally got around to buying another copy of Adam Nicolson's book Perch Hill.

I bought my original copy in 1999 or 2000 as part of what Euan refers to as my "stalking" of Nicolson's wife the garden writer Sarah Raven. As far as I can make out, this alleged "stalking" consisted of knowing that she has a cottage on the Sound of Mull, meeting her accidentally a couple of times and buying this book which is about their move to Perch Hill Farm in East Sussex. Perhaps I wittered on a bit as well!

It is at its core one of those "daft city types moving to the country" books, but it is really much more - it chimes with my experience of the seasons, the drive to burrow into a valley, the chill spare reality of mud as well as meadows, the idea that you have to commit to an ideal - Nicolson's "Bright field" - with everything you have.

It is one of the books I re-read regularly. Or at least I did, until I lost it. I know what will have happened - I have a bad habit of forcing people to read books I enjoy, pressing volumes on them as they leave the house. Of course I never get them back and I lose most of my favourite books that way. Now I have it back in my shelves again and have already started the reread.

Black stemmed cow parsley

It is glorious weather so this post will be short as there is a lot of weeding still to do and, now that we are almost into May, a lot of daylight to do it by.

This photo is of Anthriscus sylvestris "ravenswing", a black stemmed cow parsley recommended by Sarah Raven in her book The Bold and Brilliant Garden. It is a big improvement on the general cow parsley which covers the verges here. Now I love cow parsley - there is no finer sight than verges of cow parsley fluff with the last of the pink campion and a few bluebells - but it is not a garden plant.

Ravenswing has daintier flowers which seem to almost sparkle against the dark red leaves and stems. It does self sow but does it very gently (not something you could say of the wild cow parsley) and is a couple of weeks earlier into flower.

It also doesn't seem to have the rank smell of cow parsley when cut and looks beautiful in a vase mixed with black and white columbines like "Magpie" and "Guinness".

I am looking at wild flowers a lot this week - one of the things that we want to do is create a couple of meadow patches here - one in front of the house will be flagrantly based on the entrance to Great Dixter and I will use all sorts of things there to try and create that million flowers type tapestry effect. The other will be in the sloping field and I want to be much more careful there.

I read a lot of books about wildflower meadows over the winter and found that I should really be trying to get very, very local seed to create my patch - the general seed mixes are seemingly not ideal as they bring in slightly different genetic pools into the area. This is seemingly the case even if they are British or even Scottish mixes.

I want to do this properly so I am now collecting seed from an area of 5 miles around the house - we grew some hawksbit last year and I have some baby primroses in plugs. I have my eye on campion and water avens in the lane which should have seed next month.

It will be slow - no quick fix of buying a bag of damp meadow mix - but I think we can take our time. (Euan will laugh at this as I am the most ridiculously impatient person)

Warning - this post contains a photo of a dead mole.

Our approach to wildlife is very simple - if it was here before we were then we have to learn to live with it.

Hence we put up with hares (that nibble hedges), voles (that tunnel under growing plants), pheasants (that eat bulbs) and yes, moles (that turn the grass paths and beds into ripples). While most farmers I know are keen on wildlife and do a lot to nurture it, this latter foible is regarded with hilarity (and I suspect a little annoyance) by our farming neighbours who enthusiastically annihilate all moles with a variety of horrible methods. It is of course for a reason, while a mole to me means an unsightly hump and some nice friable soil to steal as potting compost, to our neighbours it means ruined silage as the soil mixes with the harvested grass.

Minou obviously feels the same. The photo above shows Minou the foreman instructing Jasmine to "keep digging" for a mole that he could obviously hear under the ground. The photo was taken at the beginning of a week of frenzied activity - cat issuing instructions, Jasmine digging until her claws hurt and the mole cheekily coming up behind them with 8 fresh hills. This took up most of their waking hours from last Monday.


This morning this is what we found on the lawn - a beautiful sheeny black mole with 2 telltale puncture marks on his neck. Mr Mole is no more. Minou is a great hunter (he usually catches 2 of everything, one for himself, one for Jasmine the sidekick) but is scrupulous about hunting when hungry and then eating his catch. This was something quite different - he just knew that mole was laughing at him.

I am very sad - it is very easy to be sentimental about such a stunningly beautiful animal. Katie had to be persuaded that a dead mole is not a suitable soft toy.

Prize Draw

We had a small prize draw at the Country Living Fair - The prize was this basket of gardening goodies - kneeler, soap, giant fork and trowel and a set of aluminium labels.

It was won by Wendy Waller of Edzell and (due to holidays) will be dispatched to her today.

Today I am stuffing envelopes with my new postcards and an announcement that we are open from Friday. Surrounded by bright green envelopes, it makes me realise how much paper, time and money is spent on mailings. This was partly the reason for the prize draw. To enter we had to be given an e-mail address - not so that we can spam people - just to make it easier to let them know when the season begins and ends and what we are doing for Christmas.

Time shortage being what it is, I haven't put the names onto the computer yet . . . . so much for efficiency.

Really wild . . .

Sometimes I think that I give the wrong impression of our land. I concentrate in posts about the flat bit near the house, the bit that forms the cutting garden, the bit which takes up most of my time. I rarely mention the rest.

In reality we have about 4 acres here - around about 1 acre is flat - the house is built on this bit and we have put up a polytunnel and lots and lots of raised beds.

The rest of the land slopes behind this down across a small tussocky field then a swampy field and finally through a bluebell wood down to the Altquhir burn.

This whole area is completely untouched and has been for at least 20 years - it is where I go to be quiet and is why we bought the house. Today Zoe and her friend Jan went down to the woods to play on the tree swing - sitting on the river bank they watched 2 herons fishing in the river. It is a very special place.

It is at this time of year that the fields begin to come alive with flowers - dog violets under the hawthorn trees, cowslips in the grass banking between the deer fences, kingcups in the swamp. Soon there will be cow parsley and scabious, meadowsweet and elderflowers and bluebells, bluebells everywhere. Nothing I grow really matches up to these.

My favourite thing at the moment is to lie in the grass under a hawthorn tree looking up through the old twisted branches with their new fresh green shoots.

This is my 300th post - doesn't time fly.

Country Living Roundup.

This was meant to have been done on Thursday - ah well - it is probably a bit irrelevant really but these are stalls I liked at the show and then there are a couple of rants


Caroline Zoob - always beautiful, much copied, but then they never quite get it right.

Primrose Hill Interiors. Flowers, ginghams, hearts and dots

Boxwood - the most packed stall in the hall.


And now for Rant 1.

The Country Living Magazine awards a prize for the best stall design, the prize is a free stall next year and it is meant to encourage people to put a lot of effort into their stall design and so improve the look of the whole show. we won last year and it was a good reward for a lot of hard work that went into the look of the stall over and above the things we were selling.

This is the stall that won

Hume Sweet Hume. I don't really understand it - I'm not being tricksy with the photos - that is the whole stall, there isn't something interesting just out of view. Now I like Hume Sweet Hume's products, their knitted cushions are very soft and tasteful, but this is not a designed stand. It is a shop fitting c. 1997.

This is the stall I think should have won.

Dream Acres had a great hand cart that became the stall and lots of things, including these patchwork flowers, had been made for the show.

I think it very peculiar - and judging from the amount of people who mentioned the odd choice at our stall - so did a lot of visitors.

Rant 2

There has been a lot of bad publicity for Country Living Shows within the blogging community, a feeling that there are not enough small craft producers any more, that much of the stuff on offer is bought in and that there is a lack of variety, that they are too crowded for a leisurely browse . The knee jerk reaction seems to be to blame the magazine and actually I do not think that that is justified.

Stalls are expensive - the overall expenses for a small stall for a one of the shows must come in at about £2,000 - but this is very much in line with all trade shows -many of which do not have the slickness of the CL show. I was constantly amazed by the speed and professionalism of the Melville team handling the putting up and taking down of the show. I don't get the feeling that the shows are a great money making exercise for CL magazine.

So, to cover costs you need to sell approximately £4,000 over the 4 days. Now this is not an issue for some stalls - Stephensons Rocking Horses must take double that every day, one jumper stall told me of a customer spending £2,500 in a single purchase - but it is an issue for most of the craft stalls. This is because customers do not value their products properly.

I had bought a felt corsage, made from knitted material hand felted then sewn up, a one off.

It is lovely and goes well with my red coat and cost all of £16.00. I feel that it was a more than fair price. 2 customers told me - without my having brought the subject up -that I should have saved my money and gone down to Accessorize where they have a 2 for 1 offer on corsages.

There seems to be an inability in many people to distinguish between mass produced throwaway items and hand made unique ones. It all comes down to price. Though they want the stalls there at CL Fairs so that it looks pretty, they will buy on the high street.

Then there is the customer who does appreciate the difference. The customer who has paid her £7.50 entrance and is using the Fair as a source of ideas. She quizzes about methods, she takes surreptitious photographs, she scribbles in her notebook. Friends say to each other "Oh what a good idea, you could do that".

I had 15 magnet buttons stolen from my noticeboards - presumably by people who thought "Oh what a good idea, I could do that".

So I don't think that it is the organiser to blame - yes, I wish they could get more innovative press coverage, yes I wish they would get more young people in with houses to fill, but really I think that it is the customers.

If you want the small crafty unique stalls to attend- BUY FROM THEM - don't just tell them the look nice.

As to the negative comments about the magazine itself see here I am with Nikki on deploring the laziness.

Rant over

We actually had a very good fair - but many people didn't - so I leave you with a last photo of my van. You can tell I am confined to bed today trying to recover my voice, this post has taken ages.

A duvet day

Hmmmm. By the time I turned up at the SECC this morning it was obvious that I was not going to be an asset to the stall. "Death warmed up" seemed to be the general opinion - grey face, dark circled eyes, that dull sticky ill hair, a 60 a day cough and no voice. I could see their point.

All potential customers were likely to make a wide berth.

I was taken home and have slept more or less since. I am feeling quite a bit better - still no voice but hopefully I will be able to flash a welcoming smile tomorrow.

What it has taught me is that I have such a super team working with me now that I no longer need to be everywhere all the time. I can even be sick on the busiest day of our year.

Thank you Sally for organising everything superbly, to Jo for coming in at short notice, to Euan for being bossy when he had to and to Callum.

Time to chat

Today was a much more relaxed day - more a steady stream than mad surges so there was more time to talk to people.

Time to talk to customers who bought dahlias last year and are back to add to their collections this year.

Time to talk to the bloggers (8 in all) that came and said hello - hopefully you will all feel ready to comment now you've seen my face.

Time to talk to fellow stallholders and find out how the London shows are and make contacts.

Just time to talk.

I am actually not feeling that well this week - I caught some kind of chest infection from Zoe - so I have been drugged up today and paranoid about coming across as really spaced out. Tonight I am left with just a poor croak of a voice - I am keeping quiet and hope it is back to full force tomorrow. Otherwise it will have to be sign language.


Sorry that these are yet more photos of MY stall. I'm not trying to be narcissistic< I just forgot my camera.

Do come & say Hi if you are coming to the CL Fair this weekend.

Busy, busy, busy

Goodness, it was busy. At 10 o'clock as the doors opened we were still tagging up and sticking magnet sets up on the wall.
From that point on we didn't stop. Jo, who was in shopping stayed to help as we were overwhelmed with queues of people wanting to chat.
The nicest thing was that practically first in the queue were a couple of women who bought garden kneelers last year and rushed in to buy several more before we sold out. that got my day off to a very good start.
And we have sold out of a number of things so we shall be re-arranging the stall first thing this morning.
The upshot is that I haven't really had a chance to look round. I had intended to post about all the lovely stalls but haven't any photos and only know stalls either in the ways to the loos or near to us. Caroline Zoob's stall is gorgeous as usual, Primrose Hill Interiors is very pretty, Samantha Holmes has wonderfully luxurious jumpers and scarves and there are a couple of lovely vintage fabric stalls.

Knackered but happy

Now off for that wine.
Thanks to Sally, Jo and Euan.

Moving the van

Well we are on our way - Robin Watt from nearby Lomond Classic Transport came to pick up the van and take it to the SECC. Euan cameback in his lunch hour to drive it up onto the ramp, it was strapped down and is now safely on our stand at the CL Fair.

Robin is a great chap, not phased at all by the vagaries of vintage vehicles. After delivering our van to Glasgow he was about to transport a band box new landrover down south so that it could maintain its 0 mileometer until delivered to the owner.

Taking the van in today also meant that Euan was able to see the space that we have, he says that it isn't as big as I've been fearing so hopefully we will be able to fill it all generously tomorrow.

Tying up loose ends

I have finished making things for the CL Fair- I wish I could have made more but I have to stop sometime, I'm not doing that "taking a sewing basket along with me" thing.
I am now concentrating on all the things that make a stall look nice.
One of the things that I have been doing today is potting up some unusual spring bulbs.
In the autumn I planted trays and trays of spring bulbs in the hope of having lots to pot up now.

To be honest, it hasn't been a great success. Mice and the unremitting rain saw a lot of them off but there were some survivors.
The photo is of muscari latifolium - basically a grape hyacinth in a very deep blue with a beautiful spathe shaped leaf.
I always think that shape gives a kind of sinister glamour to a plant - I don't know why. The flower hangs around inside the leaf for a week or two then elongates and looks much more like a grape hyacinth.
Bix, our eldest cat, has been supervising the packing up.

Aprons

Last year the most requested items at our Country Living stand were the aprons that Sally and I were wearing. I didn't have any for sale at the time but subsequently made some up - mainly for B&B owners who wanted something out of the ordinary for serving up breakfast.

So aprons were always on my list, but with one thing and another they have turned out to be the last thing to be sewn up.

I actually have a problem with aprons. I have as euphemism would have it, a curvy figure. I have a bust and hips with a waist inbetween. In most aprons I look like a badly tied parcel with a baggy bit above my bust and not enough material to wrap round my ample hips. I never feel like a capable confident domestic goddess in an apron. I feel like I am in a hospital gown.

Over the years I have tried the tie on 1950s pinnies and the amazing wrap dresses from the 1940s - the sort of thing you should wear to scrub your step in a Hovis advert - but nothing looked right.

So this year I decided to tweak last year's apron pattern and come up with something flattering to the non-beanpole. And it has worked - I used a couple of beautiful drapey linens so there isn't that bunchy cardboard effect that you get with ticking or denim, I was generous with the side flaps so that they don't stick out and most importantly, I scooped the neck so that it sits properly.

The result is a very high class apron indeed with a lined top, an Irish linen pocket, vintage button detailing ans a handy clip to attach a cloth to so that you can wipe your hands.

It is a pinny for Nigella or Marylin (or me).

Bellis, bella, bellum

I normally like to grow all my own plants but getting the larger space at the Country Living Fair, Scotland was a last minute thing really so I have had to buy them in.

Yesterday I headed for Perthshire to collect my order from the Dutch van man. They have done me proud, really good quality plants - these are the bellis daisies. I also have muscari, narcissi, primula and cyclamen.

Tomorrow they will have all their flowers cut off to let the new stems get ready for blooming their socks off next week. It seems a bit mean, and I am very anxious about the planting bit - I have never tried to time plants flowering like this before and I hope that they will be happy in the heat of the SECC.

I hate the waste of shows - the first one I went to threw out 50 perfectly good jasmine plants (which I rescued of course) and hundreds of narcissi at the end of the 3 days.

My mother is worse - I did the flowers for the CL pavilion when the show was in Edinburgh. With the dryness of the hall it was a tough gig for flowers, particularly the spring flowers I was using and by the Sunday night there wasn't much lifespan left in most of the flowers - 2-3 days at the most I would say. My Mum came to help me dismantle and pack up but actually spent her time dismantling and giving away bunches of the slightly droopy flowers rather than put them in the bin.

Walking the dog

I have been musing - this being my second year doing the CL Fair - whether I am better prepared, both in terms of stock levels and, more importantly, in terms of stress levels.

I think that I am - and part of that is remembering to properly walk the dog. At Christmas I got so tied up with work and so stressed with orders that I stopped doing anything else. Jasmine was neglected and she turned into a wee tub looking morosely at me from her basket.

Now I have begun to realise that, counter-intuitively, doing things away from the business gives me a better perspective and moreover seems to actually stretch time. You also notice things - a couple of days ago Jasmine and I walked along the track at Craigievern, part of the West Highland Way, and saw ditches full of billows of frogspawn. Spring.

These photos were taken yesterday evening. Katie and I went for a walk by Loch Lomond and up through the woods. Zoe was at her piano lesson. This time last year I would probably have been sat in the car frantically punching holes in price labels. . . . so I think I am improving.

Euan disagrees and claims that I am still being followed around by a big black cloud of stress.

I made a list of everything that needs to be done between now and Tuesday when the stand goes up and put an estimated time next to it. It added up to . . .300 hours.

Now that will take some stretching of time.

Planning the stand

Yesterday Euan went to see a cooper in Aidrie to pick up our barrels. I wanted to have really large planters on the stand with tripod frames and ivy growing up them.

Whisky barrels seemed to be the obvious solution - unfortunately while they would have all been delighted to provide them, none of the whisky distilleries round here had any in stock.

Fortunately the cooper in Airdrie did and he cut them up for us to order. They are fabulous - chunky, weathered, big enough to put planting in, it is a pity we can't show off their very scenic purple bottoms. We have left them outside to get rid of the smell - they are very alcoholic. My car smells like a wild party in Inverness.

I was paranoid doing deliveries this morning that people would think I had taken to morning tippling on my way to the shops.

Alternatives to cut flowers.

It is that time of year when I begin to get a lot of phonecalls from people wanting to order flowers as gifts. The sun is shining, snowdrops and daffodils are in all the verges and people feel that I should be open again.

It is very flattering. It is great to know that people miss the business while we are closed. But it is just not possible to make up bouquets of flowers from my garden at this time of year.

Yes - I could probably grow early daffodils but it wouldn't be worth it - the early forms don't have a good vase life and they aren't bulky enough to make a good bouquet. Also, even when we have the glamorous, long lasting, beautifully scented narcissi at the van in April, people will not pay money for daffodils.

I sometimes despair of the way that what people expect has been formed by the cut flower industry. In the C19th cut flowers were not generally available from January-March and instead potted plants were used to decorate interiors. In fact, the C19th used a lot more potted plants -plants like primroses and harebells - in temporary flowery arrangements.

If I do ever extend my season to take in February and March it will be this example I will follow - trying to persuade people to order potted bulbs instead of flowers. In fact, I do continue to do this a bit all year and the photo is of a lovely sturdy aged zinc plante that I delivered today. It is full of the narcissi Soleil d'Or.

I continue to blog on the Country Living Site - very slow and bulky - entries can be read here