Forced To Slow Down

Life has a funny way of slowing us down. In the space of a week, life got both complicated and simplistic. Covid-19 has take hold of,  pretty much the world. Many countries went into lockdown. The UK went into lockdown at the end of March. Global travel stopped over night, schools closed & people started working from home. Many people have been furloughed or made redundant. The self employed like me took a massive hit on their earnings. 

Amongst all of this many of us have managed to find calm, time for our family, those jobs around the house that we have had on the to do list for ages, time to bake with the kids, get stuck into the garden and chat (socially distanced of course over video calls) to friends and family we may not have spoken to in a while.

It would be a lie to say that although we, as a family, have enjoyed this time that we have not been worried about our future. because we have. What we knew changed, pretty much over night and it does cause worry and anxiety. We have craved a more simpler life for sometime but human nature can't take that much change and uncertainty all in one hit.

What we have enjoyed over these last couple of months though is spending time together and making a start on our little veg patch in our back garden,

With the DIY & gardening stores closed we have not been able create our original plan was but we have made a start. The garden still looks a right mess but we have managed to plant some veg.

We only have a small amount of veg but its a start! We have:

• carrots, 
• potatoes, 
• onions, 
• garlic, 
• spinach, 
• tomatoes, 
• chillis, 
• beetroot, 
• leek, 
• rhubarb and 
• strawberries. 

Last year we planted an apple and plum tree  so hopefully we will get a yield from those this year.

We have two composters up and running. Your traditional composter and then we have a worm composter. we have owned that for years and failed at it a couple of times (its more complicated than I thought!)

but for the last couple of years we have been quite successful at composting through the worm composter.

We also removed the old small wooden fence and replaced it with some baby laurels, this is something I really wanted to create a living hedge for birds and wildlife.

We have also dug out a border along the side of the fence between us and our neighbours. In there we have some bushes and I will be planting some bulbs later in the year so they flower next spring. We want lots of flowers to attract the wildlife.

A little thing that has brought me much joy is our little bird feeder. Currently we don't get many visitors as we the garden hasn't been wildlife friendly but we have had some robins, Great tits, starlings and sparrows as well.

Although the garden is still a mess, it really is great to see it taking shape, providing us with homegrown, organic veggies and at the same time attract lots of wildlife to our small little patch.

Our aim is to waste as little as possible. Over the last few months the amount of rubbish going into the waste bins has reduced as we become more conscious about what we use.

Although many would not class vegetable peelings as waste (they go into the composter), I have done lots of research and started to make my own vegetable stock with the veg scraps. It really is so much nicer than shop bought! This means I get the maximum use of the vegetables before they head to one of the composters. I will create a separate post about these.

Sx