Our brush with winter

The courtyard garden that lies in the old farmyard at Ednovean Farm

As winter has set its course through the months, blissfully skipping gently by us in West Cornwall, well until the day dawned  when  we also encountered our very own brush with Narnia.
Spud had departed on his usual mousing expedition, on his usual early or should I say very early schedule and the weather had looked fine if chilly and so it was with some surprise that I found a few hours later that our world had been transported to a winter wonderland. I had had my suspicious on the previous evening, as the  skies darkened and the temperature had fallen  and had criss crossed the garden tucking fleece and nets over the more vulnerable plants although most of ours "do" to minus five, still I want those mighty Echiums to flower this year, sending their impossible lofty spikes towards the skies, so a little help is not unappreciated by them. www.ednoveanfarm.co.uk

The granite sets that form the path between the
courtyard gardens and the stableyard/car park

The childhood wonder of finding snow in the morning never quite leaves you does it and so I spent a happy half an hors recording the scene in the half light before breakfast and alas it slid away a quickly as it had come, vanishing completely by the early afternoon. But!! for a few hours we too had snow in Cornwall. join me for a saunter through the morning at Ednovean Farm on the special day that the snow fell!

Not quite light and the magical scene with mounds
of soft fluffy snow clinging to the Greek pots that
line the top terrace

Young horses exploring their brave new world

Magic leaving the comfort of his bed ready for a snow
adventure

Magic and Archie tow young colts by our Spanish Stallion Danilon

Perranuthnoe Village with the sea beyond

Looking back across the lawn towards the house from our avenue of palms

Our Brood mares enjoyed an extra portion of hayledge for Breakfast

The center piece of the Italian garden

The cross aisle holds a statue of David

The lower garden gate with St Micheal's Mount in the
distance

The flood lights are on for us to go to the stables in the
morning

Sunset from Ednovean Farm

Perranuthnoe set against the sunset

Watching the sunset is always a special part of the day for me - I'm always pleased if our guests arrive in time to see a special one to start their holiday with with us at Ednovean farm and of course I can never quite resist stopping myself to take a few pictures. I love the way that the village below is reduces to silhouettes against the sea and light bounces off of the clouds - no two are ever the same. It wasn't until I developed this passion for sunsets that I realised that "west" appeared to change with the seasons - the visual feast moving inexorable to the tight throughout the summer passing St Micheal's Mount before finishing towards the moors behind Penzane before slowly moving back again with the closing of the season and the shortening of the days until right now it appears to dip down just beyond Perranuthnoe. I'm sorry that the blog isn't appearing as often as it should but for some strange reason I am having difficulty uploading the photos with an ever twirling thingy rotating beside the upload button never to stop - ah well - using two browses, one that can upload but not control the photos and then logging back in with a second browser is "interesting" use of time. I hope to upload some photos of our snowy garden quite soon  well as soon as I am up to the tussle again! See you all again soon and don;'t forget to set a minute aside for a sunset somewhere.

The cloud formation was fantastic that night

Just couldn't make my mind up which one i liked the most

Rather fond of the Date palm leaves in this one
against the village church

and a final glowing moment as the night closed in Cornwall

Find us @ www.ednoveanfarm.co.uk 

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Winter days and sea views

Perranuthnoe below Ednovean Farm with the bright blue sea of Mounts
Bay beyond

The winter days creep on like a small surly beast, sometimes vicious sometimes friendly sometimes sleepily indolent and I suppose that is the nature of the season in the quiet part of the year.
Quiet, but not dormant now that the daffodil and tulip bulbs have started to drive up through the earth and I can reassure myself that this season is only a preparation for spring and the welcome return of the warm summer days. On red letter days the whole landscape is thrown into brittle relief with impossible blue skies but the sharp fragile sunshine that casts deep shadows only mocks the tentative warmth and the days draw on in that well ordered way that leads us ever forward towards the spring.

Another view across the bay from the garden

Our car park was in the shadow of the hillside but how
bright Moutns Bay beyond

Newlyn across Mounts Bay

over the courtyard wall

The ever beautiful St Micheal's Mount

The sweep of the bay rises beyond the garden

How beautiful - St Micheal's Mount against a powder blue
January sky

One of our lush sheltered courtyard corners that frame the house

So a rather beautiful day in January on a day thta the little beast of winter slept warm and snug!

www.ednoveanfarm.co.uk

A new year starts in the garden

New Years day and the sun is creeping across
 the Parterre at Ednovean Farm



The box hedges have stayed crisp through the winter

New Years day dawned bright and sunny, bringing welcome sunshine to our courtyard that has been formed in the old farmyard in front of our home. Looking back we chose a Parterre so that our welcome to our guests would always be the same throughout the year and the bare bones of our garden hold up through the winter months with their lean geometric structure. Admittedly the hedges are slightly skew whiff after Spud has had a one cat steeple chase around them on an almost daily basis but all in all i think they look pretty good. I like to add a little frou frou to the mix in the summer, with bright pots of Geraniums and Lavender to complement the foliage plants that soften the corners but just now we are enjoying the cool design that Ian Lowe layed out so carefully back in the year 2000.

Spud enjoying his mornings grooming under the shelter
of a bank

I bought these pretty white roses to sit on the bedroom dressing tables in little cache pots but they have thrived since they have been put out in the garden flowering throughout the winter

The sun shining through the french door of the
Apricot room

And so a new year starts in the garden with the bulbs I am always so excited about beginning to push up through the soil to start another cycle in the year.

Happy New Year

The house at sunset the other evening

Well another year has gone somewhere but i can't think where!! But can Charles and I wish you all the happiest New years of peace and prosperity and may all of your dreams come true!!

Christine, Charles, Spud and Danni (and his family of course!)

Some photos from our Christmas week hope you enjoy them:-

I filled the window sills with candles and holly from the garden

St Micheal's Mont of course beyond the courtyard



Danni settling down for his morning snooze



Spud full of Turkey on patrol in the stables

Our tree in the hall

The evening sunset

The last moment casting the house into relief

The wonderful colours of the sky

Happy Christmas

Our tree in the hall

The night before Christmas and a certain silence a certain quiet in the air. Our tree is decorated wtih the little velvet and hessian hearts and drums that i bought for our very first Christmas from that famous emporium R&J Supplies, at Praa sands and they will be lovingly tucked away in a little box marked velvet decorations after Christmas to wait again in the loft for their two week annual holiday.

Somehow the mild weather doesn't feel a bit like Christmas and boy has it rained lately. Charles and i rode up primrose Hill the other day, to find the narrow lane flooded at the top.  Just as the horses were about to wade through the knee deep water, a fox rushed across leaping high, in an attempt to keep dry but only succeeding in putting up a wash like a speed boat that lapped towards Danni's astonished nose!

Spud our little submissive angelic cat, discovered a friends visiting dog in the hall and full of Christmas spirit launched an attack  that would have done a Rottweiler proud, rolling out of sight under the Christmas tree in a ball of feline furry firmly attached to the astonished dog. he sat on the window cill snarling for the rest of the morning after that - I'm not sure if Santa will call on him after that What do you think?

Spud cuddling his mouse and waiting for Santa

And finally wishing you all a very happy Christmas - thank you for visiting us and sharing our home, thank you for reading and  for commenting through the year. Have the best Christmas and may all of your dreams come true

Christine, Charles, Danni the horse and Spud Cat Esq!

p>S Great Christmas Tree this year at Trevenna Cross Nurseries

A Cornwall blog for Patti

St Micheal's Mount just after dawn the other morning

I was asked to write a blog about Cornwall the other week for B&B colleague Patti in America who has started a new blog One Road at  a Time to gently cover Patti's own travel experiences and explore the world beyond the horizon. This morning I thought that perhaps you'd like to read it too!

Cornwall a land beyond the horizon

Come let me tell you something of my home in a far away corner of western Britain - Cornwall. Warmed by the gulf stream and almost inaccessible over the centuries to all but the most intrepid of travellers, its history swirls hidden by the veil of the present and takes form in the shape of the stone circles, ancient villages and fugous. The old memories tell of pixies, knockers and giants in times of distant magic and the Cornish language so strange and unpronounceable to English ears still lingers on to trap the unwary in the pronunciation of anything from road signs to field names. Take a drive through narrow roads that wind through farmyards, past low banks of warm soil decked with wild flowers, past field systems that have lain unchanged since the bronze age. As you drive you may notice the jutting granite engine houses that are all that remain of the industrial revolution that saw Cornwall in the forefront of tin, copper and silver mining; the jagged scars of a once tortured landscape clothed again now by nature as the miners bones lay entombed in the church yards. Young bold men who found they could drill faster "dry" than wet until the drills were known as the "widow makers" and the churchyards were full of such men in their thirties. Yet still Cornwall gave her innovations to the world, Humphrey Davy the inventor of the miners safety lamp, the miners who spread out around the world to America, Australia, South America with their knowledge of hard rock mining and then the mining was gone sliding away into the mists of time, generations only a memory

One of the many ruined Engine Houses that haunt
the landscape

Beyond the land the sea - always nearby in Cornwall, the county shaped almost as an island in its long narrow isolation bounded only by the sea To north and west and flanked by the River Tamar into England. Each coastal village with a harbour, great granite constructions to withstand the power of the turbulent ocean, where daily the men risked their lives to catch the fish and to this day the boats still set out from the harbours, risking all on the jagged granite coastline where the Atlantic rollers pound. The seas around here are a graveyard of ships over the centuries, never more so that the Isles of Scilly. The legends of ships lured to the rocks by bobbing lights still linger on - with just a hint of truth perhaps - as each Sunday the pastor may finish his prayers with "Dear lord keep them safe on the seas but if they founder let it be near here"

Charles took this one on a sunny spring day as we  walked beside
a traditional fishing cove - Cadgwith

To this day Cornwall can be warm and somnolent, holding the warmth and moisture to her bosom and encouraging great valley gardens to be made, often with the profits of the shipping industry and many are still nurtured to this day.

Cornwall with the bright inspiring light that drew artist to work here, forming The St Ives School and the Penzance and Newlyn School. Cornwall to this day is a magnet to artist and crafts men who come to live simply in the little stone cottages tucked into the hillsides or clinging to the harbours. And now we have foodie Cornwall where the young chefs come to make their names competing with each other to prepare the freshest local vegetables and freshly landed fish in artfully designed restaurants to woo the visitor.

Cornwall my Cornwall, a county to haunt the soul.

About Christine and Charles

I live and work in the far west of Cornwall at Ednovean Farm Perranuthnoe, in a 17 century barn overlooking Mounts Bay, with the jewel of St Micheal's Mount never far from our view. We have been welcoming guests from around the world to our AA five star gold Bed and Breakfast for twenty one years now. Our home has slowly evolved over this time, as we worked our way through a trio of farm buildings to make the home that you see today. One of the earliest references that I could find for our home, was in an early Tithe map in the county records office, that referred to it as "Cot House Town Place" with a dwelling house opposite to it. Well, the dwelling house has long since disappeared and the County Librarian was of the opinion that the word "Cot" came from the West Saxon language, so who knows what things the stones of my walls have seen.

The entry in the Book that accompanies the Tithe map

We renovated our barn over a year prior to our marriage and Charles carried me through the door on our wedding day! Slowly over the years we have created three en suite bedrooms, two with French doors to private sitting areas and the third with a romantic hand carved four poster bed. For the gardens we started in the old farmyard before working our way out across a natural terrace on the top of the hillside, overlooking the sweep of Mounts Bay, finally landscaping an acre and a half of garden starting with the Mediterranean style courtyards and formal parterres, that leading to sweeps of lawns and Italian Gardens, all guarding secret private corners for my guest to find, to while away the afternoon with a book.

And on the farm? We have imported and Pura Raza Espanola Stallion, Danilon, from Madrid in Spain and we have bred him with our thoroughbred mares to produce a Spanish Sports horse - we are just about to start training the first of his offspring so I'm very excited!

For more information about our home find our website www.ednoveanfarm.co.uk
Our Blog The Ednovean Diaries
or find us on Facebook www.facebook.com/ednoveanfarm

Some useful links about Cornwall

http://www.cornish-mining.org.uk/

http://www.gardensofcornwall.com/

http://www.cornwallinfocus.co.uk/history/historic.php

http://www.explorethesouthwestcoastpath.co.uk/south_cornwall.html

http://www.stmichaelsmount.co.uk/

http://www.minack.com/


http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-st-ives

http://www.penleehouse.org.uk/

Painting and Drawing Courses Cornwall - Newlyn School of Art

www.newlynartschool.co.uk