Memory of a Summers day

What a fabulous day when we opened the garden for the ngs to perfect blue skies and a brief glimpse of Summer after the rain.

Thank you so much Perranlady for letting me use this image of our garden at Ednovean Farm that I had seen in your blog of Perranuthnoe photographs. I had spent some time preening the geraniums ready for our big day and I hope that you had a great day out with us. To see more images of Perranuthnoe visit Perranlady and follow the link to Album of Perranuthnoe blog photos

The west Cornwall photo album is another must visit for super daily pictures of this Cornish life - there are links to both if you click my profile

And this morning as i made my way up to the stables I heard a dawn chorus for the first time this year, poignantly echoing through the air to welcome the Spring and with it bringing the promise that just maybe we could have geraniums bright and sassy sitting on the parterre wall once again.

It was peaceful here yesterday!

It was so peaceful here on Wednesday but Thursday!

"We'll be there on Thursday" the electrician said "We can do Thursday" the Aeriel men said and the car park started to fill. Two vans from Simpsons to deal with this digital switchover lark and now we can get sixty nine channels - well maybe a few less because our Aeriell faces Gulval but it seemed the best decision on balance. So the dust rose and the floor boards came up and the men set about routing cables through our three foot thick walls.

I tried to work out how it was possible to watch sixty nine channels, every day but my maths failed me at just under a minute on each one and of course it will need complete dedication of purpose, this digital life............I was happy with four channels of course but they are switching them off.

The electricians set to work changing the kitchen and dining room lights, to nattily restrained grey spotlights, artfully concealed amongst the beams. Cheerfully trailing sawdust, bits of cables and stray screws, as the fittings were manipulated this way and that. In the midst of this endeavor that had already taken over every room, the window cleaner arrived and sprayed water over the windows neatly bringing the number of vans in the car park to four. So I decided to take a relaxing ride on old Sootty, who at the age of twenty three likes a gentle stroll around the village some days ....Perranuthnoe was gridlocked of course with a builders merchant lorry viewing with a Redimix lorry and a delivery van......... Sootty, nervously beat the retreat back to the peace of his stable at his best "I hate lorries speed" So back to the house for me it was and I nearly got a cup of tea before the phone rang with the icy news "Loose horse on the A394"
Charles phoned St Piran's Stud and I ran to check our mares. As Charles jumped in the landrover to rescue the beast, I was too late to grab a lift in the land rover, after counting our curious brood mares, so set off up the footpath across the fields, to Trevelyan Farm Shop with not a horse in sight..... So had a chat with a gentleman who'd broken down on the side of the road, who told me about his wood burning stove, before spotting our landrover the other side of the cross roads further down the hill. As I panted up to the lay by the little horse had already been caught by our neighbour Paul and so it was decided to lead the little chap back to the safety of Perranthnoe wedged between two landrovers, hazard lights flashing, with Charles now jogging beside the stray horse and a growing procession of villagers following patiently behind.
Our electricians, out buying "bits" later in the day saw the horse being led back up the hill by his owner half an hour later. And we? We gave up and went to the Victoria Inn for super and this blog of Thursday has arrived dreckly on Friday But Thursday was definitely THE Day for action in Perranuthnoe! Sixty nine channels who's got time for those.

My Winter Garden

The gardens at Ednovean Farm were bathed in the warming glow of winter sunshine today, as the steady progress of clearing the debris of the winter storms and season continues.

Revisiting the garden this morning, that I had safely wrapped in nets for the unusually big freeze just after Christmas, was not a depressing as you might think, as I charted the winners and losers of the the plant stakes. A surprising number of the palm species have defiantly shrugged off the frost and throughout the garden the newly emerging Daffodils make fun of the pretensions of sub tropical planting with their indomitable spirit of spring.

The Italian Garden, always sheltered, felt lush and warm today, under an uplifting blue sky, as the debris was piled into the big builders merchants sacks (no longer returnable) to be carted off to the compost heap.

To leave the garden, this evening, with its enveloping sense of peace, as the sun slid below the horizon behind Perranuthnoe was a wrench at the end of this special day lent from Spring.

A statue in the Italian Garden touched by the winter sunshine

The church tower of Perranuthnoe silhouetted against the sea, beyond the garden as the sun sets

A triumphant agave, survivor of the unusual frost

Nick Nacking Season

This is officialy my "Nick Nacking Season" - the time of year when I can steal an hour here and an hour there to search for that perfect something to set of a window sill. Penzance is only ten minutes drive away with her unique individual shops and one of my favourites has to be Mount's Bay Trading in Causeway Head, neatly set between my chosen route from bank, to soap shop, to car park - I can even buy a pair of shoes there within my Penzance triangle, with hardly a pause for breath. So today I chose this dramatic crackle glazed urn or is it a jar or a vase? to set off the slate of the Blue room window sill. Fore sure the "nick nacking season" is about to end soo though, to be replaced by the "decorating urge"......... not to be sneezed at the first promise of warmth in the morning sunshine in Cornwall this morning.

Sounds of the morning

"Have you seen the weather this morning?" Charles said as I opened the front door. Somehow the blanket of fog was completely unexpected to me after listening to the weather forcast with its gloomy predictions of fog in the South East....well we're in the South West aren't we, nearly as far away from the busy centres of commerce as we can be, so no fog surely?

The all enveloping cloud enclosed our lives in an other worldly white, overlaid by the unmistakable pulse of the sea, vibrating across its surface. Not the urgent, angry, drumming roar of the weekend, that spoke of a partly expended Atlantic swell but a gentle caressing sound enveloping our morning as comforting as the purring of a familiar cat.

The chatter of radio four from the feedhouse kept me company for a while surrounded by the clank of mangers and gentle munching. Followed by the angry, metallic "scratch scratch scratch of the battered old rake on the car park as Charles tidied the gravel before the guest came out from breakfast. Still later the whine of the hoover as we beetled about the house and bedrooms muttering "tea bags, hot chocolate bottled water" in an effort to remember everything that was needed all in one trip to the bedrooms (this seldom happens but I dare say the exercise is good for me!) And now the ring of the blacksmith hammer on his anvil on his regular, four weekly visit to Ednovean Farm, the ancient rhythmic beat that has been heard on farms for centuries, as the sea purrs on.

Today's picture:- A view of St Micheal's mount as the fog clears on an early Autumn morning taken in the garden of Ednovean farm

Stray Cat cafe

The stray cat cafe opened at Ednovean Farm this summer - a quiet affair with just a few selective customers or should I say clients, discreetly adopting the secluded, sheltered lawns of the Italian garden and making them their own. Daily they have dined well on freshly caught organic rabbit, mouse and bird selecting their own ingredients purrfectly prepared for "Fine Dining" in intimate silence before slipping silently away to other exclusive location know only to the "in" crowd of the stray cat cafe.

We noticed at first a slight decrease in the the number of bobbing bunny tails and an improvement in some rabbit gourmet selection plants - leaves in fact .......and just occasionally we'd see a silent shadow slipping away from the tail of our eye. Slowly slowly the ephemeral forms took shape - a beautiful, tabby tom with his short, dense, beige coat spotted in narrow stripes almost like a Bengal, a slinking shiny black tom with the powerful shoulders of a prize fighter; both disdainful of our human company, strangely tolerated by our house tom cat Olley. Olley, our RSPCA ginger rescue cat that had been thrust hissing into Charles's arms from a cage bearing the slogan "Not to be rehomed with another Cat"Olley who had not tolerated another Cat in a hundred yard radius had grown portly over the years and now adopted a worldy weary expression as he hovered watchfully near to the new comers.

The tabby was dubbed Wilbur for no particular reason and the black may be Tribble of a few years back, who knows. As Summer turned to Autumn, Olley could be spotted late at night or early in the morning sitting affably side by side with Wilbur, until the smallest rattle of the front door would make Wilbur magically fade away into the shadows of the bordering shrubs. With the onset of one of the coldest winters here for twenty years, I started to leave a little food in a saucer in the open garden room and each day it would vanish and Wilbur when glimpsed appeared plumper. Will we seduce this gorgeous cat to live permanently at Ednovean Farm? Who knows but for the moment there is the ever open stray cat cafe!

Olley in his favourite seat in the flagstone hall at Ednovean Farm

Mount's Bay this morning

Mounts Bay was spectacular this morning, as a scudding storm followed the spine of the moors up the north coast, missing us at Ednovean Farm although framing the bay with inky black clouds. The girls were shooed out from under the shelter of a hedge much against their better judgment to pose in front of the Mount in our top fields- Belle on the Left, Diva in the middle and right of the end the ever growing Dolly. Diva has obviously told Dolly to "watch for the camera Darling and show your best profile"

The view is always intriguing from here never more so than with Penzance and Newlyn touched by the sun as the storm passed by behind them leaving them untouched. "How far away is Penzance from you?" people often ask when booking and I peer out of the window and say "about ten minutes by car or just over an hours walk along the Bay..........or is it two hours?" But a different world from the field at the top of the hill with the air deliciously cool, carrying salt still from yesterdays storm...........but not far not far at all.

Where does the time go?

Where does the time go as Winter creeps on with its grip slipping towards the spring? Each day has developed a rythm at Ednovean Farm, the rythm of the country side and the promise of new life. The brood mares contently munching their breakfast each morning, rocking their triangular mangers from side to side so that the oats gently roll out of the corners before ambling out into the feilds swathed in rugs, dreamily somulent, with their swelling bellies promising new life. They grow more careful in their movements as the season draws on - Diva the original yummie mummie with her thouroughbred daughter Dolly, now at once elegant yet gangling, sweeping along in her wake. Our new mare Belle has become an honary Aunt to Dolly, the two mares wedging the young filly between them if the rain slants in but still disciplining her with sharp nips of their teeth as she learns the manners and disciplines of horse society. Lizzie and April no longer racing carelessly across the front feilds but staying close to their stable through the day -popping back to check if we have serviced their stable - dubbed "No 1 and No 2 The Lane" by Charles and then settling back in once again to pull contentedly on the haynets and dream of the Spring. I spotted and young fox the other morning as I walked up the lane to them - lean from the winter and at first I thought it could be a Cat until it trotted away with its unmistakable gait. The lingering odour in Lizzies box (lets call it No 1) told of another creature grateful of the stables shelter and warmth - sure enough, a deep depressed circle in the far corner told of a cosy and comfortable night for the little creature in the company of the two brood mares.

And with the dusk we bring Diva, Belle and Dolly back to the main farmyard to be casually greeted by Sootty and Danni and the stables setttles to a steady rhythm of muffled munching interspersed with the occasional soft "prrrrffff" of their contentment and Ollie the Cat escorts us back to the house with the promise of a soak in a hot bath as a reward.

Todays photo was kindly taken by a visiting guest and sent to us just before Christmas and shows Danilon in our car park quite at home with the Date Palms to remind him of Spain

The light of dawn

Welcome to our occasional diary of random thoughts and impressions, that long to make the fingers twitch over the keyboard but usually disappear before the next scheduled newsletter.



The daily routine that can suddenly become magical in an instant when you take a second to breath. Take this photo for instance - taken by my husband Charles early one Autumn morning when we turned our horse Danni (Danilon) and Sootty out in one of our back fields before returning to the farmhouse to cook our guest's breakfast. The dew casting and enchantment to the hedgerows and encrusting the pasture in a trillion diamonds of the dawn with the early mist still rising to meet the sunrise, now just touching the cloud formations of the sky. Our young Spanish stallion caught sight of the camera and passaged towards us through the dawn and in those few seconds a special memory was born that i still hold in my heart of this Autumn.



Taking the time to step back from life may only take a second but can lead to a lifetime of memories. Hope to speak to you again soon. Christine



The view over our garden at Ednovean Farm from the courtyard with St Micheal's Mount appearing from the mist

Welcome to the new Ednovean Farm Blog

Here is our new blog for 2009, we hope you enjoy it.

Regards

Charles & Christine Taylor