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!)

A week of rainbows

A sailing ship on Mounts Bay from the Ednovean Farm courtyard

It has been a week for rainbows this week with the weather swinging from mood to mood at seemingly a whim and now I'll say the required "of-course-we-needed-the-rain" Now is that better? -no not really but we have had days with stunning blue seas beyond in Mounts Bay and days when showers raced towards us blocking out St Micheal's Mount with the skis suddenly clearing in our season of rainbows.

The view from the Apricot room courtyard across Mounts
Bay to Newlyn

I popped out on to the Apricot room courtyard/patio/terrace to take this view down over the little formal sundial garden and out across the bay on Sunday and on Monday set off on an adventure with Danni to the horses hospital in Gloc for an MRI scan at the b&W Equine Clinic leaving Charles with our guests and horses and cats ........they all survived well, but you should have seen the heap of washing beside the machine when I eventually got home. Still we had a successful outcome as the found that he had a slight strain to his  Lateral Collateral Ligament of the Coffin Joint. Danni had a stable full of soft shavings to sleep for the night and Charles had booked my into a pub on the Canal Towpath for the night - The Tudor Arms -very very comfy atmospheric bar, amazingly quiet, modern style designer bedrooms with super soft beds, powerful showers in the chic little bathrooms and great bar food on tap from lunchtime until late! Once Danni was tucked up after his first day of tests, we checked in ( I travelled with a girl friend) and spent a happy few hours getting lost on the canal path with a loop back across farm land. We found a place in the conservatory for Breakfast overlooking the lock gates  but alas nothing happened but it was so nice to have Breakfast cooked especially for me!! Danni was a good boy for his scans and we were on the way back to Cornwall by 3.30. How welcoming our car park and stable yard looked that night, with all of the lights on and Dani's stable door flung open for him that night. It was just the huge heap of washing the next few days really.........!

Ollie found a sunny place beside the Greek pots in
the courtyard

So there you slightly truant but with good cause and a nice place to stay to recomend! And don't forget the Porthleven Food Festival tomorrow around their historic harbour

Homage to the Apricot Room

The Pretty Laura Ashley bed in the Apricot room

As i have been spring cleaning the bedrooms I thought i would continue my bedroom visits with a "homage to the Apricot room"! I know when you are choosing our bedrooms it is great to see lots of pictures so here we are - I've added a few outside shots of the terrace/courtyard taken in the summer too for good luck. I'll label the pics and say a little about the decorating at the bottom:-

The cosy window seat overlooking the Parterre

A pretty mirror reflecting the room

The sun on the chest of drawers yesterday

The wallpaper came from Laura Ashley

I gave the chest of drawers a distressed paint finish

The beams have been colour washed

Looking across the Parterre and fountain

Slipper bath and travertine tiles in the en suite

Mixer taps

look carefully for the duck on the towels!

Summer view of the private courtyard

French doors facing south into the private courtyard

The iron chairs have a lovely patina now

just before dusk the sundial garden in Summer

A sunset over Mounts Bay below the Apricot room courtyard

Our Apricot room overlooks the courtyard on one side and has french doors, flanked by pots of Date palms, opening on to a private courtyard on the other. Sunny in the mornings and looking down towards Mounts Bay, for a perfect view of the sunset at night - the view framed by the little sunken sundial garden set about a sundial modelled on the three graces or is it the ages of women? i bought it for our third wedding anniversary and slowly built the garden around it. The Apricot room itself is a mix of furniture I've painted distressed and hand waxed and swish Laura Ashley lamps and Bed of course. One wall is taken up by hand painted faux panels stencilled by me with cherubs on winter afternoons and Charles wallpapered the other with a chic duck egg blue paper from Laura Ashley. The sweet en suite bathroom holds a deep Slipper bath frame with Travetine tiles and this is our Apricot room at Ednovean Farm.

The Apricot Bathroom, VAT & Cats!

The Apricot room en suite bathroom




Our new tiled "enclosure" in the Apricot bathroom






I think the final effect is serene and spa like


A curious title you may think quite rightly but then the day to day journeys of life tends to be too. Take this morning for instance, the house was in crisis - Olly had run out of his favourite brand of Cat food for which there is no known substitute. An offering of cat meat in the stables had gone a long way towards a temporary solution but with the weekend approaching and the closure of the "Cat food shop" until Monday morning, decisive action was necessary to ensure peace and harmony reined for the rest of the weekend. And so I headed for
Long Rock as soon as it was practical this morning to stock up on Ollies favourite snack. I decided on a larger that usual sack of his favourite Hill's Science Diet as the strain of failing THE CAT was definitely getting to me and I didn't want a repeat of the story sometime soon.......and then it struck me, Ollie's bag of food started life at a hefty price of £28.69 but with VAT this rose to £32.99.


The cat is paying VAT! "Ah cat food is considered a luxury item" explained the chap behind the counter - I could only gasp "Gosh - has anyone told the RSPCA"


So i decided to cheer myself up by driving back through Marazion, an excuse to steal a glance at Marazion marshes, which this morning were being whipped into a messy chop of inky water, with the elegant swans sheltering in the reed bed. From the bridge the sinuous snake of water that always reflects the sky so perfectly, never fails to enchant me as I follow the windswept original A road that runs parallel with the beach. The first sight of the mount is always stolen through a gap in the dunes and today, it was magnificent; staunch; defiant; in an awesome boiling sea. Never had it looked so magnificent to me, before the road slipped into the village proper and the polite negotiation needed to get into the village square, through the single track road. Today a coach was heading towards me, so I thought it politic pull over and pause before creeping up through the village passed the pretty cottages and old manor houses that line the route. As the summer goes on each will vie with the other for the best floral display but today it was the art gallery windows that caught my eye. Turning back off of the A394 toward Perranuthnoe village, the sea spray could be seen thrown high in the air, far beyond Mousehole at the point before I turned once more into Ednovean Lane. Well somebody had to go out for the cat food!





It hasn't been all horses this week at Ednovean Farm - we closed the apricot room for another visit from Mike of Stonwell tiles to re tile behind the bath in Travetine to match the basin. The Slipper bath couldn't come out completely as this would mean turning the water off for three days and so Mike was seen crouching in the bath dexterously applying the tiles to our irregular walls. With the birth of the foal this week, Mike got very few tea breaks to reward his labour as we beetle busily in circles but never-the-less the result is stunning with the Travetine framing the slipper bath in an elegant bath enclosure. The tiles mirroring the soft undulations of the wall but still applied with precision. A combination of respect of the spirit of the old house and fine workmanship - who could ask for more?








Wild, white horse beyond in the bay as lizzie takes her foal for a spin

click the photo to see the sea properly beyond the farm

Wait for me mum!

The wild white sea below the mount seen from Lizzie's field a Ednovean farm