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