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New growth for the New Year
Lynn • January 4, 2021
Winter has arrived at Montpelier Cottage with sprinklings of snow and hard frosts for the last few weeks. The freezing cold weather has put a halt on gardening and as we have just finished our latest indoor renovation project we are spending time exploring more of the stunning, panoramic countryside of Herefordshire.
Our latest trip was to Hergest Ridge, a short 12 minute drive from our cottage, which is a large elongated hill, part of the Offas Dyke path on the border between England and Wales. We enjoyed an exhilarating walk to the top of the ridge. The higher we went the deeper the snow. A fantastic walk even if the blizzard prevented us from taking in the spectacular views over the Shropshire and Welsh hills.
Once back home and warmed by the kitchen Aga, we sat hugging our mugs of hot chocolate looking out onto the garden and meadows. At this time of the year the bird table is full of sparrows, tits and finches darting back and forth to collect peanuts and sunflower seeds. Every so often our resident Greater Spotted Woodpecker swoops in and all the other birds fly off while he hammers away at the peanut feeder. We had only spotted the male woodpecker with his defining red head but recently we have also seen and heard a female in the nearby Ash tree. It would be fantastic if we could get a glimpse of their young in late spring.
As we were warming ourselves and bird spotting we had to contain our excitement as we spotted four Roe Deer right up against the stock fence between the perennial garden and middle meadow. It was the most beautiful sight, but all too quickly they must have sensed our presence and ran elegantly back through the meadow into the woods that border our land.
Despite it being too cold to do much work in the garden it is already showing signs of growth with the snowdrops, hellebores, cyclamen and primroses all bursting through the frozen ground.
Although we are currently unable to welcome guests to The Cob due to Covid restrictions, we are so proud to have been featured in Sawdays top 10 Favorite Inspections of 2020. A crazy year to launch a bed and breakfast business but we have met so many interesting and lovely people and received such fantastic reviews that we are so looking forward to welcoming guests back to The Cob to enjoy the peace and tranquility of the gardens as Spring approaches.
After a two month break when we enjoyed a lovely Christmas with our family and welcomed our fourth grandchild baby Arthur into the world, we are re-opening ready for Valentine's weekend. We have been busy spring cleaning the Cob and making a few design changes which we are very pleased with. Despite it being winter there is an air of spring on certain days when the sun has been shining- drifts of Snowdrops and Hellebores are carpeting the ground and the green shoots of Daffodils are pushing through the hard earth following the frosts we have had lately. Already we have had many bookings for the season ahead and are very much looking forward to welcoming back previous visitors to The Cob and meeting new guests.
The beginning of September definitely brought us some golden Autumn days, after a pretty wet late summer. Early morning mists hanging over the meadows have cleared by 10 o'clock to give us gorgeous cloudless sunny skies. The meadows have been mowed, the cut material raked and cleared away to allow the wildflower seeds to set and hopefully give us an even better display next year. We knew that The Cob and gardens would be featured once more this year in Country Living magazine (see last blog) following Sian and Brent's second visit to us last year to use us as a location shoot, this time the theme being gathering Autumn fruits and flowers. What we didn't know was that The Cob would be featured on the front cover of the magazine - so we were thrilled to bits when we saw the magazine on the shelves of the local paper shop and promptly bought all of the copies to distribute to friends and family. I had been concerned the roses in our newly designed rose garden weren't giving a second flowering later in the season after taking off well in June - they looked healthy but no new buds, then our wildlife camera caught the culprit in action - Mabel the Muntjac has a taste for all our rosebuds! I can't be too cross with her, as she delights us prancing through the orchard and meadows with attitude, she's a real character. Short term we have protected the rose garden with chicken wire, but another Winter job to add to the list- ring fence the rose garden!
Finally, a chance to sit down and gather ourselves. What an interesting, busy and exciting time the last couple of months have been. May is always my favourite month as, day by day we see the garden becoming more green and by mid month colour is scattered throughout with the bright acid yellows of the giant Euphorbia, blues and purples of early geraniums and pastel pinks, ruby reds, blues and creams of Aquilegia. Knowing this is just the start of the flowering season with so much more to come including the flowers in our recently planted rose garden is truly exciting. Last July we had a great couple of days with Sian and Brent who were working on a photo shoot for Country Living Magazine. Our shepherd's hut and wild meadows were the perfect location for their "Picnic in The Meadows" feature and we were thrilled to see the article in the recent June edition of the magazine. The world famous Hay Book Festival which runs for 10 days at the end of May and the three day HowTheLightGetsIn Festival, brought a great number of visitors to the area. The weather was beautiful and the town was buzzing. I think one of the most special moments we have had at The Cob was when the Bosnian-American author, Aleksandar Hemon was staying with us before his performance at Hay Festival alongside musician Damir Imamovic. It was a perfectly still, sunny morning and the two friends were sat on the verandah chatting away in their native Bosnian language before Damir began to play his Persian lute and sing some of the folk songs he has written as a companion piece to Aleksandar's book, "The world and all that it holds". A truly moving and magical morning.
We seem to be all consumed by our garden at the moment and have been working out in it in all weathers - glorious sunshine, rain and wind. Each day brings more growth and colour to the garden and slowly the jobs on our list are getting ticked off. New rose garden constructed and planted, new raised beds built, perennial garden mulched and seeds for cutting garden and veg patch sown. Although we have been working hard there is always time to stop and observe the wildlife around us. The birdsongs are getting louder as territories are marked and mates found. There is an abundance of frog spawn in the ponds but I'm not too sure if they will survive as a lone Heron has taken up residence in the wet meadow and is feasting on frogs and tadpoles. The roe deer are back and most evenings lately we have seen at least three feeding on leaves and shoots in the meadows. Recently we took a trip out through Hay on Wye and up a very long, winding single track lane to the Black Mountains where we found the most gorgeous pub, The Bulls Head at Craswall, what a gem, amazing views and fantastic food. Definitely our new go to place after a hard weeks work in the garden. .
After three months winter break we are now back open ready to welcome guests to this beautiful part of the world on the English/Welsh border. In the time we have been closed we have managed to fit in two holidays - (our first for over five years) and more excitingly our daughter and grandchildren who live overseas were finally able to come over to England for a four week visit; after not seeing them for three years it was a very special time for us. The dry weather lately has allowed us to crack on with work in the gardens and meadows. The biggest change our returning guests will notice is the laying of over 70m of hedging. This work has completely opened up the far two meadows letting in much more light and hopefully this will encourage even more wildflowers to spread. The evenings are getting lighter week by week, the Snowdrops and Hellibores are a delightful picture. Primroses, Ox slips and daffodils are brightening up patches of the garden and the birds are busying themselves marking out their territories and singing to attract a mate, all cheery signs that spring is finally on it's way after a long cold winter.
As November draws to a close we are looking forward to welcoming our last guests of the year who are staying at The Cob while they spend a long weekend "slow" Christmas shopping in the area. The local towns are full of lovely independent stores full of unique gifts to buy at a slow and leisurely pace. Hay on Wye is hosting it's Winter Festival, while the nearby towns of Ludlow, Ledbury, Leominster and Bromyard all have Christmas markets and special events lined up for November and December. Many of our guests will remember dear old Bobbin Robin our friendly one legged Robin who was a favourite with us all. We haven't seen him for over two months so guess he has gone to that great big bird table in the sky. R.I.P Bobbin. Despite closing until next spring we have plenty of projects planned to keep us busy. The ponds need some major work to clear them of grasses and weeds. The rose garden which I've been planning for the last year is now ready to be prepared and planted. Hopefully a lovely place to sit and enjoy the fragrances in the middle of the perennial garden next year. It won't all be hard work though, as we have a couple of holidays booked - our first since moving here - so we are very much looking forward to the rest. Then all ready and refreshed to re-open in Spring.
There is nothing more lovely on an early October morning than to get up, put a jumper on over my PJ's, pull on my wellies and walk down into the mist of the meadows with the dog. I love when it is as still as can be and, as in the last few mornings, there has been a ground frost. Buddy and I explore the hedgerows- catching sight of a fox yesterday, and today I saw a Roe deer through in the woods that back onto our land. I pick an apple from the orchard to eat with my Aga cooked porridge, a favourite with our guests at the moment. Then it's back to the kitchen to get warm while Buddy munches on windfalls. We watch the mist rising, which may take half an hour or hang around until late morning, but as it fades away it leaves the amazing colour palette of Autumn leaves which are particularly beautiful in the far meadow where we have many specimen trees - the aptly named toffee apple tree and liquid amber being my favourites
Despite the soaring heat this summer and many plants in the garden struggling to survive, most of our visitors have commented on how much greener our grass and trees are compared to other parts of the country. The weather finally broke last week and we watched some amazing thunderstorms coming over the Brecon Beacons under the cover of The Cob verandah. The much needed rain has given a boost to the late flowering plants and we now have a mass of colour at the bottom of the perennial garden, with shades of blues and purples from the many varieties of asters, and golden splashes of yellow from the tall helianthus, helenium and giant rudbeckia. The pumpkins are huge and ripening nicely and giant sunflowers over seven feet tall will provide plenty of food for the birds. The orchard has supplied us with a bounty of apples and damsons although no pears this year for some reason. I have just found a juicy crop of blackberries at the bottom of the meadow so it looks like apple and blackberry crumble on the menu this weekend. A new eatery has opened up on the site of the old toll house at the toll bridge into Hay on Wye. We took some time out last week to visit. It was a most beautiful September day and we enjoyed a drink and platter of tasty food looking out over the River Wye and the fields beyond. A very relaxed and peaceful way to while away a few hours in the glorious countryside of the Welsh Marches.
August- too hot even for me to garden. Just a bit of pottering early morning before serving breakfast and maybe a little night gardening, glass of wine in hand at 8pm as it starts to cool down. Enjoying these hot days of nowhere to be, nothing to do. As I write this at 4pm and 33 degrees on the patio, I am sitting in the shade in my swinging egg chair, watching the butterflies and listening to the mellow sounds of the Delta Blues being played by our guest Graham, who is sat on The Cob Verandah playing his steel guitar. Doesn't get much better than that!
To quote the famous headline from The Sun in the summer of '76 - What a scorcher! The hot weather has meant lots of lazy days for guests and us too. The verandah of The Cob stretches the full width of the building and with it's living roof, offers shade from the midday sun. The perfect place to sit and read or nod off listening to the occasional call of the red kites or buzzards who are circling overhead as the farmers take advantage of the warm, dry weather to to cut and bale hay. Many plants in the perennial garden are looking magnificent in the sunshine. Our display of hollyhocks in shades of pastels through to deep magenta have reached over eight feet tall in some areas. The gravel garden is thriving in the dry weather with splashes of vivid red from the crocosmia , deep crimson and bubble gum pink of the scabius. Casualties of the weather have been the ponds. One has dried up completely while the smaller one is reduced to green sludge. Definitely a big project for the winter for us to sort them out. However, insects and bats still abound with beautiful damsel and dragonflies. We are so pleased with the progress of all our meadows as we identify more and more wildflowers each year. We are just off now to spend fifteen minutes counting our butterflies for the great butterfly count