living on the North Norfolk Coast

In my last blog, I covered my experience, producing comfrey tea. In today’s blog, I thought I’d mention about a tea you can drink; green tea. We watched the TV programmes covering Ben Fogle’s visit to China. I was surprised to see leaves for green tea being harvested from trees (this involved climbing up the trees). I just assumed all types of tea come from low level bushes. Talking, with a neighbour, about the programmes which were a total eye opener, we touched on gree

I’ve often heard and read about using comfrey leaves to make a garden fertiliser, often referred to as comfrey tea. Why it’s referred to as ‘tea’, I don’t know especially as it is renowned for its pungent unpleasant smell. With plenty of comfrey plants, growing on rough areas and verges in the village, I decided to give it a go. I collected enough leaves, from various plants, to half fill a bucket. I chopped the leaves up, covered them in water, put a lid on the bucket an

For me, one of the joys of spring, is watching plants and trees waking up after the long winter sleep. Not everything wakes up at once; it’s gradual. In our garden, first it’s the snowdrops followed by other spring bulbs bursting into flower. Not long after, on a sunny day we see the first of the butterflies, emerging after hibernation, followed by orange tips and holly blues. Then there are the bees who are the first visitors to our early flowering hellebore and when the

After discovering that most proprietary cat foods contain little meat (they are bulked out with other ingredients and not those that carnivores would normally eat), we moved our cat Sid onto chicken and fish. We also give him dried food to keep his teeth clean and occasionally an all-meat cat food which comes frozen, from Kat Kins. For some reason, Sid has decided he no longer likes the chicken. This is typical of cats to ‘go off’ certain foods and usually when you have a

Back today on the subject of Japanese Knotweed. I have mentioned in the past, this invasive plant is okay for humans to eat as well as certain animals. In Danni in the Wild ’s latest short vlog, she demonstrates a variety of ways knotweed can be eaten and preserved. I am not advocating we, or local chefs, start climbing the cliffs and harvesting the knotweed. This is something we mustn’t do, not just because the cliffs can be dangerous but after the Council treated the kn

Following on from my last blog, I wonder if anyone thought; why have a gardening magazine that you don’t gel with? The answer is, this is a freebee magazine subscription, one which we get with our affiliation to a company. Having clarified that, I’ll move on to the thief in the village on Monday. Hopefully I was the only one to suffer at the hands of this dishonest person. To explain, over the past few years and during the warmer months, I have put out on our drive, a va

According to both the weather apps, I have on my phone, today is going to be the best of the four over the Easter period. It has definitely off to a good start with blackbirds singing as dawn approached, followed by a beautiful sunrise. We opted to take our morning walk inland, along the field edges and the back of the allotments. Dipping down, off Madams Lane, we were greeted with masses of blackthorn blossom (see photo below). Peter remarked, with so much blossom, ther

Continuing from my last blog. I was back home from the Overstrand Coast Transition Plan Launch, in time for my pre-arranged video call with our youngest son. Connected and ready to chat, but as I went to increase the volume, the screen on my laptop went black. No point carrying on, so I quickly changed to my phone. Call completed, I looked for possible causes of the black screen, bearing in mind the sound was still functioning, which indicated my laptop wasn’t entirely ka