The first cottage Christmas...

So it is nearly Christmas - the first for me in this little Victorian cottage. The last three weekends and weeknight evenings have been spent finishing off the last bout of re-decorating for the year. Consequently, there hasn't been a great deal of Christmas trimming completed. But the essentials are in place - a wreath for the front door, and a tree.

The wreath is from Home Sense, to which I added the burlap ribbon....

In the past few weeks I've managed to banish the dark olive green paint that used to grace the sitting room. It has also received the Little Greene treatment - this time I used Inox (224). There are many elements to still work through in the room, but at least there is now a neutral and relaxing background.

I finally had the chimney sweep visit two weeks ago, so now I'm in the process of learning to light fires that manage to burn longer than 30 minutes - its an evolving process.

It certainly helps to add a festive element to the sitting room...

Scenes of Rye...

Just before my sister returned to Australia we spent the day in Rye which is on the East Sussex coast. I'd never been before, but had heard many positive things about this ancient fortified hill top town...and as it is now only a one-hour drive from where I live, it was an easy day trip for us.

The town is very compact and easy to stroll around. We started at one of the information centres which had an amazing scale model of the town - as you listen to a brief history of the town and its royal connection,s areas of the model light up. It was a perfect start to help us navigate our way around.

We started our exploration at the bottom of Mermaid St - the oldest street in the town and one which is full of half-timbered houses from the 15th and 16th centuries. Rye itself is full of galleries, boutique shops and small antique centres, so it is perfect for pottering.

Here are some scenes from our walk...

The Mermaid Pub - the oldest in Rye

Although originally surrounded by sea, Rye is now actually about 1 1/2 miles from the coast. So after a traditional lunch of fish, chips and mushy peas (though not for K, she hates peas) we drove the couple of miles to Winchelsea so she could see a traditional British coastal beach...with pebbles rather than the typical Australian sandy versions...

Hampton Court Palace ...

I have been to Hampton Court Palace quite a few times over the last year as a result of attending courses at the Royal School of Needlework, but I hadn't actually visited the Palace properly itself for about 15 years. My sister was keen to visit when she was here in September, so we spent one Friday exploring the Palace and the gardens.

I have to say, I love Hampton Court - I think it is my favourite of all of the Royal Palaces. I do also love Windsor Castle for its beautiful state rooms, but there is something about Hampton Court - perhaps the centuries of history and the mark that has made on the development of the Palace.

It was a full day outing. We started at 10am when it opened, and finished, exhausted, at 4pm. We used the audioguides which were some of the best that I've ever used. Unlike some historical buildings where the guide just provides enough information to keep the crowds moving through at pace, the guide for Hampton Court was incredibly detailed. From Tudor, to Baroque to Georgian - we learnt a great deal of detail of the development of the Palace over the centuries along with the various royals who inhabited it.

We decided to follow the guide in historical order, starting with the Tudor section of the Palace...

The red brick detail

The tudor kitchens

The Great Hall

The beautiful ceiling of the withdrawing room

Henry VIII's window in memory of his third wife, Jane Seymour

After lunch, we moved through to the Baroque section of the Palace. This section dates from the extensive improvements made by William and Mary, and is my favourite section of the Palace. It is where the RSN rooms are located, and quite often we have a few over the gorgeous parterre gardens from the classroom windows...

And finally, no visit to Hampton Court is complete without a close inspection of the gardens...and even though we were there in late September, the very mild autumn we had here in the UK meant that the borders were still showing off their fading summer beauty...

I can't recommend a visit highly enough...





A return...

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Goodness, how is it already December? This blog has been sadly neglected. Quite often I spy the laptop from the corner of my eye, but just haven't been able to summon the motivation to open it and edit photos etc.

 

That's not to say that things haven't been happening. Although work was incredibly busy through late Oct-Nov, I finally found a clear weekend recently to tackle painting my sitting/dining room. So, the ugly olive walls have gone to be replaced by a pale, calm grey...now I just need to sort out all of the other details in the room.

 

In other news, winter fairs have been visited, Christmas gifts purchased, wrapped and posted, other gifts made, the Christmas tree has been decorated, and a wreath made for the front door.

 

Winter has finally arrived in the UK, and it has been very cold for the past week - on a positive note, the chimney sweep came to sweep my fireplace today, so tonight I can light a fire for the very first time...lacking any sort of experience in these matters, we'll see how successful I am...





Visiting Hever Castle, Edenbridge, Kent...

I am finally catching up with some photo editing and posting. In mid-September, my sister came to visit from Australia for a fortnight. We spent quite a few days visiting royal buildings, or those with royal connections. The first of these was Hever Castle - which was the home of the Boleyn family. Hever is in Kent, and is only about 10 miles from where I now live.

The property was built as a country home in the 12th century and came into the possession of the Boleyns in the mid 1400's. Anne Boleyn spent her childhood here, and also lived here during the period in which she was courted by Henry VIII.

After the death of Anne's father, Henry VIII took possession of the castle, later bequeathing it to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleeves.

Like many properties of its period, the castle fell into some disrepair, until it was purchased by William Waldorf Astor at the beginning of the 20th century. He undertook some extensive renovations, so whilst the outside of the castle looks Tudor and even earlier, parts of the interior are definitely Edwardian. Astor did restore many rooms sensitively to their Tudor origins - he even completed a large extension to house staff and visiting guests...but designed it to look like a Tudor village.

The lake and beautiful colonnades were also developed during Astor's ownership.

Although we visited at the very end of summer, there was still some lovely sights in the gardens...

There were even some locals to greet us as we arrived!

Next up - Hampton Court Palace...

Getting there in the garden...

I finally feel like I've been making some progress in the garden. For the first three months after I moved in, my only efforts in the garden seemed more akin to destruction than beautifying.

You see, this is what the garden was like the day I moved in...

Lush, green, but not quite what I had envisaged - the bright blue garden shed and large deciduous shrubs were not part of the plan.

Instead, my pinterest garden board is generally full of pleached trees, and single colour borders...

Image via

Image via

So, I resorted to three months of digging out every misplaced and overgrown shrub in the garden - I finally bought a mattock...if only I'd done this three months earlier this task would have been an awful lot easier than digging them out with a spade.

Here is where the redevelopment of the garden has reached to date - I've just started to re-plant the beginning of a structure to the new garden scheme...

Ideally, I would have loved to do a row of pleached limes along the fence - unfortunately, it is such an ugly expanse of fencing, that I really needed to plant something that was evergreen...which narrowed the options considerably. I eventually settled on evergreen magnolias. 

They will be underplanted with predominantly hydrangeas and hebes. I did find a type of gardenia at the garden centre a few weeks ago. I didn't think they survived the UK winters but these are a supposedly hardy type - time will tell in the coming months.There are small hebes along the front of each of the two long beds - these are a small version which only grows to about 60cm. They are called 'Champagne' but are actually white flowers with the slightest hint of lavender. The upturned plant pots are serving as spacers for the planned hydrangeas - I've not been able to order them in time this year, so these will now need to wait until next spring to be ordered and planted.

I've installed a steel-edge garden edging to give a cleaner demarcation between lawn and garden beds. Unfortunately my lawn looks pretty dire at present - I had a major problem with perennial weeds that is still not yet resolved. I've laid turf in the new areas that were reclaimed from the large shrubs and seeded the dead areas with lawn seed. I'm hoping these will start to germinate before winter sets in. The small strip of grass that used to run along side the deck was actually a trough and full of weeds, so I decided to replace that small section with gravel.

Finally, I've dug a new garden bed just before the decking (in front of the shed). This is going to become home to some David Austin standard roses. I'm about to order them, ready for bareroot delivery in November. I am fairly certain that I'll be planting a variety called Winchester Cathedral. The soil is quite heavy clay...but the website assures me that roses do very well in clay!

It is a long way from what I have in my mind, but at least I feel like I'm building towards something now...and I think most of the heavy work is complete. Once the roses are planted that is really as much as I can do for this season - apart from planning and scheming what else to add next year come the spring.

In the very far corner, I've planted a small crab-apple tree...

...and I'm already looking forward to the spring blossoms.

In other news, my feline friend has been a frequent visitor...

As you can see, she makes herself quite at home...

...and now her brothers have also invited themselves in...meet Chester and Teddy!