Merry Christmas!!

I just popped by to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and thankyou for reading my blog and for your comments over the year. Today is a computer free day but lots of Turkey, a little Christmas Pudding, a glass of wine and a snooze in front of the TV with a nice warm puss-cat snuggled down on my lap with a happy purr. so wishing you a very special day away from the everyday routines of life and with hope for the coming year Merry Christmas!!

Christmas time in Cornwall

We eventually found the fairy for the Christmas Tree

The magic moments of Christmas are about to settle over the land and here in Cornwall, preparations have been going on for some time in the house, ready for the festive season. This year I've added a little Christmas  spirit at a time to our home at Ednovean Farm, building layers of Christmas gently starting with the first candle for Christmas and finishing with choosing the perfect Christmas tree for our hall.

2015 and the Christmas Tree is ready at last!

Local Cornish traditions

Mousehole lights

The Christmas lights are making a magical arc around Mounts Bay now, twinkling above the old granite towns and lighting the harbours never more so than at the famous Christmas lights of  Mousehole harbour that draws people from around the country to soak up the Christmas atmosphere in the little sheltered haven from the winter storms. Sadly for one night the lights are switched off leaving only a candle and angle to remember the lost of the Solomon Browne lifeboat crewed by the men from Mousehole, that went out in atrocious conditions to try to rescue people from a stricken ship. It was only as the little if boat went in for the last time perilously near to the rocks that the ship pitched over in the darkness and took the lifeboat and brave crew to the bottom.

Montol Festival

In Penzance the Winter solstice festival of Monool will be underway with a week of celebrations culminating in a candle lit parade of masked participants wearing mock fancy dress

A corner of our hall at Ednovean Farm

Wild swimming in Cornwall

Throughout Cornwall there are a a hardy band of swimmers that swim each day come rain or shine and in Penzance the Battery rocks are a popular launch point. This Christmas on Boxing Day the local, the visitors, the I-eaten-too-much-turkey will race to the Sea in Sennen to plunge into the surf in one of the most popular iconic Christmas events of Cornwall.Try this map to find the nearest spot to you.  Sadly i seem to have mislaid my costume for a while but I love sitting on a quiet cove  with a warming flask of hot chocolate aferra swim in the sea and thee is an amazing wave of warmth that suddenly spreads through your body and a great feeling of peace after a dip in the sea, although personally I've never swum below a temperature of 14 degrees in the sea water!

I hope that you enjoy your Christmas and my little blogs leading up to the celebrations and it only leaves me to wish you a very Happy Christmas!!

October in Cornwall

Looking back along the coastal footpath towards Perranuthnoe and Penzance
with the magical St Michael's Mount

What did we do this October in Cornwall? Well we've been busy running our B&B of course but we have managed to squeeze in a few visits so special places around Penzance with the aid of Lucy land rover.

This year I had a yen to see the vibrantly coloured heathlands around the coast and no, it was nothing to do with the Poldark film crew working around West Penwith! Charles wanted to revisit a Boscawen Un Stone circle  and Carn Euny ancient village and with summer slowly slipping aways we added a couple of afternoons on the beach for good measure.

Of course we've been busy here in the Ednovean Farm gardens and I took lots of photos for my  September and October garden blogs as summer turned slowly to autumn in Cornwall

Looking out to sea at sunset from the Ednovean farm gardens

September days

A statue in the Italian Garden at Ednovean Farm

Is it my imagination or has a certain peace fallen over the countryside now? The frantic energy of the nesting birds; the voluminous growth of the plants as they approached the time to seed; the scurrying of the animals as they reared their young - all has settled down now, the race has been run and there is a gentle acceptance that that autumn is in the air.

The echiums once so dramatic have faded to elegant whispy spires shedding their seeds for future generation

In our garden I love the mellow look of the final emerging grasses but couldn't resist one final look back to summer in my final August blog post  to celebrate those bright blousy summer days. I took the snap above this morning as I cleared a bedroom terrace of their al fresco breakfast - It must have been wonderfully peaceful to sit and look down over the garde towards St Michaels' Mount and Penzance!

Breakfast on one of our private bedroom terraces
(sorry everthing else had been eaten!)

Find the new Ednovean Diary

Sunset behind our courtyard garden

Don't forget that the main Ednovean farm diary has moved now but you can catch still up with all of our news here   What a summer we have had and did you spot our garden in the September issue of Homes and Gardens? We've only managed a couple of walks along the coast this summer from here as we have been so busy with the B&B

A view to St Michael's Mount from the coastal footpath

and finally a special birthday treat a picnic on a secluded
cove

So don't forget to pop by the blog and catch up with our news from Cornwall!

By for now!

The light step of summer

Breakfast in the Garden

Summer has arrive with a light step - still a little chillier than normal but welcome none the less!

Spring in Cornwall has seemed to speed passed this year, yet with the little markers of the season arriving right on cue.  The migrating House Martins that make a home in the stables eaves returned to spend their days swooping a diving over the pastures and expertly re plassering their nests. The first cheeping of young chicks from under the house roof from the nesting   House Sparrows that make a clamour in the courtyard in the mornings. And one day I looked around from my busy daily routine and realised it was Summer!

This year we have reached another milestone at Ednovean Farm with Twenty four years as a Bed and Breakfast I don't know where those days went either of course - maybe I'm not paying attention! Still we were just as delighted as we would have been when we first started to have reached the final twelve in the Dorset Cereal's B&B competition - we'd love you to vote for us of course!!

Breakfast waiting for our guests - we're proud to have reached the final twelve
 in this months Dorset Cereal's B&B awards

The Garden has flourished after the mild winter and you can read about its progress in my April blog Spring in the Ednovean Farm Garden and the final flourish of  May in the Ednovean Farm Garden. June is still full of promise with the Agapanthus about to open and i have been working on a new border but that news will have to wait until my June roundup to tell you about it!

Louis-Cat has selected his spot for the Summer in a sunny border

Spring in Daffodils

Mixed species of Daffodils frame an old granite gatepost at the end of a vista

Spring to me means daffodils, those impossibly bright flowers that appear as if by magic each year after the long winter days As the weeks have gone by the drifts of spring daffodils have unfurled across the garden threading like  a  coloured ribbon amongst the palms and framing the marker stones at the end of walks.

This week in the garden I  spent some time raking up the palm frond that had fallen in the overnight gales accompanied by the ever present Spud Cat of course. He's always a great diversion from any repetitive jobs in the garden, racing around the palms and occasionally shining up the trunks to look down at me triumphantly from his lofty perch. i can almost hear him saying "Cats rule OK!" This week he found the new shoots of the catmint just above the soil - well all I can say is "My name is Spud and I'm a catnip-o-holic!"

I'll leave you with a photo I took this morning looking down through the courtyard to the sea from our home at Ednovean Farm  as spring gathers momentum.

The courtyard garden in front of our home opens to the
sweep of the main lawn fringed by palm trees - that's
St Michael's Mount beyond

Spud Cat Esq gardening cat extraordinary

Click here for more blog post about Ednovean Farm

Summer plans and winter jobs in Cornwall

St Michael's Mount at dusk

I think people often wonder what happens in a B&B in winter - do we hibernate to wait for the return of Summer perhaps. Well the answer is  we keep pretty busy - it's amazing how the amount of work expands to fill the space - in the traditional manner.

Here at Ednovean Farm we take the opportunity to start the education of some of the young horses that we have bred, in the quieter winter months.

Charles with Toffee a young Holstein gelding this very wet Sunday

Each week the young horses learn to perform more tasks and gain in strength and suppleness, until eventually they will be ready to ride.....with negotiation of course!

Magic one of  our spanish stallion Danilon's sons

Occasionally we venture away from the farm - My husband Charles surprised me with supper at our local pub the other night - it could have been because I offered to make my "Famous beef casserole" of course!!

We we walked down across the fields in the twilight to the Victoria Inn down in the Perranuthnoe and spent the evening tucked up beside the log burning stove enjoying a delicious supper by candle light. As we walked home again in the darkness, under a velvety black sky studded with stars, I thought how  strange it was that our feet could feel the well trodden grove of the footpath in the darkness from the passage of feet, over the year by some inner instinct. I stopped at the top of the hill to admire the ring of lights around Mounts Bay a saw the moon on its back above St Michael's Mount.

Supper at the Victoria inn

Still my thoughts have started to turn towards summer accommodation and this week I put together a blog for my guests to help them plan their days out. I spent quite a few evening
researching some of the dates ( about which I must admit to having a hopeless memory!) and turned up some surprising facts - Penzance was raided by the Spanish who burnt most of the Medieval houses before holding a mass and setting sail again or that Turkish pirates were still capturing slaves as late as the 17c. Dear, dear, what a wild and dangerous place it was. if you would like to check out my first suggestions for a visit to Cornwall, try my Penwith Tour Part one!

St Michael's Mount - one of the first stops on my tour it has been in turn a place
of pilgrimage, an Abbey, a fortress and a home

Valentines and birdsong

Ednovean Farm's own Spud and Louis

As Valentines day speeds towards us again, there has been a subtle change of atmosphere in the garden. The joyous sound of birdsong fills our days  and I suddenly realised how much I had missed it in the long winter months. Of course it was Valentines day when the birds were said to choose their mates and the Ednovean Farm ones are definitely singing their courtship songs just recently!

The bright days of warm sunshine temps the cats outside again, to preen and pose in sheltered corners of the courtyard gardens. The odd couple of toms find a mutual interest, in lapping up the spring warmth; the plump white hedgerow cat and the aristocratic burmese have but a single joy in worshiping the sun, in quiet harmony together, despite their disparate backgrounds. Spud would point out this is a purely platonic friendship to his fans!

Spud-Cat a confirmed sun worshiper 

I set off today to secure those elusive red roses for my B&B guests coming for the Valentines weekend.  Experience over the years has taught me to expect  a dearth of reasonable priced flowers nearer to the time and today I added a pack of heart shaped confetti to the trolley just for fun. I have some idea of scattering it around the vases of flowers - not to OTT I hope for my guests...... After all it is Valentines and I want to bring out the full romance of the occasion for them!

Just a quick update!! A very happy Valentines day now out in my latest post. I hope you enjoy it - of course Spud-Cat will think it was all his own work!

To read more about the quiet days of anticipation try  "Enjoying winter days" at Ednovean Farm

We had snow!!

There was a dusting of snow on a Greek pot on the
terrace yesterday

We had snow yesterday! Oh the excitement that those big fat flakes bring to the day - maybe it was those childhood memoires of waking up and finding the hum drum familiar world transformed by a magical, enveloping blanket of white. The flurries started here in Cornwall,  where we live near sea level, on Monday afternoon. I'd been watching for days of course for snowflakes after a few promising weather forecasts.

It must be said, it as a chilly afternoon but I was intent on a major operation in our box parterre that has been suffering from box blight and I decided on major surgery with a hedge trimmer. I finally found by slightly angling the trimmer into the box I could reduce it by a good three inches thus removing the diseased portions in one fell swoop. It was then the first huge flakes started to swirl around me and strangely as I worked I'd stopped really noticing the cold. With blackening skies we finished our garden jobs and moved on to bringing our young horses in from the fields - that was after dealing with a feline emergency to Spud and Louis who had been sunbathing in a sheltered spot under the date palms and needed to be inside FAST!

Spud-Cat was not amused!

AS dusk fell I really hoped the snow would continue overnight so that we woke up to a magical new world but - well I do live in Cornwall so the covering was a gentle dusting rather that that deep scrunchy snow I was dreaming of. Still I can say! We had snow this year"

If you'd like to see some of my snaps of our "nearly" snow from around the garden, take a look at my blog "Watching for snowflakes"

Looking across the fields to the village of Perranuthnoe

Only eight weeks until spring

A corner of the hall at Ednovean farm

It's eight weeks until spring apparently and how eagerly I count the days! Watching the garden each day for the smallest sign of new growth and following the sunset each evening, watching for precious extra minutes of daylight each day.
The days hung heavily just after Christmas in a sort of twilight hinterland of a season lost -  but not a new land found but now i really do think that spring is on the horizon don't you?
Occasionally I dress the house with the bright new flowers of the season, to cheer the old stone walls and can never help but wonder how many springs my home has seen. Did people stand here and look at the sky and wonder if spring was really ever going to come over the horizon? With an early name, thought to be of West saxon origins, listed as "Cot House Towneplace" on the tithe maps it is probable that my home has seen many a spring come and go but for me each one is special. each one holds the memories of the winter - the hard work in wind and rain and sometimes but very rarely snow - and then it slowly slips aways and the sun shines again and I think "yes spring at last" only eight weeks to go I'm told!

A simple pottery jug holds Daffodils on a sunny windowsill

To read more about spring at Ednovean Farm try my latest blog post:-  A spring affair

The fist Daffodils are opening in the garden now but I find
them far too precious to pick!