Walking East Stoke's lanes this May

This month’s post once again has pictures from Moor Lane - a time poor month this time round as a good part of it was spent exploring and walking Italy’s Gargano Peninsular.

As I started my walk I was quite quickly reminded of our own little laburnum tree in our previous garden in London - it was never quite as magnificent, nor anywhere near as big, but I’d almost forgotten that they come into their own in May. It’s worth its place in this post though.

Moving further along the lane and approaching the bridge over the A46 it was easy to spot that the verges were full of life, and well, weeds. Though as ever if you live by the definition of a weed that it’s a plant in the wrong place, then that’s probably up for some debate with these. Clearly before the seedheads there would have been flowers, but somehow I think the seedheads are more dramatic - and I’m happy to admire them, just as long as they’re not in my own garden!

I’m not 100% sure what the plant is above - my phone suggests it’s a ribwort, and it’s been pretty accurate so I’m tended to go with that, though if you know then please do let me know.

The star of the month though was most definitely the cow parsley. I started to get an inkling it would be a big feature as soon as I caught sight up the lane.

The fluffy strip of clouds above the hedgerows somehow seemed to add an accent to its frothiness and I’ve probably way too many photos of cow parsley than anyone person needs. Later on in my walk I was joined out of the blue by a chirpy robin who most obligingly posed on the post next to the gas marker, and I’m rather keen on him silhouetted against the pylon in the distance.

Reaching the bridge it wasn’t surprising to see the hedgerow on the right in bloom, and nor was it a surprise to see the yellow flowering rape - thankfully that doesn’t set my hayfever off, I’ve a month or two yet before I start to sneeze (something to look forward too!)

As I turned to head back I was mesmerised by the clouds once again as I looked towards Newark. Living here I really should start to learn about the types of clouds, as with such big skies there’s often different types on display.

And one last photo before I end, this hedgerow seems to be as appreciative of the lichen as I am, and rather than ‘greening up’ in the more traditional spring growth way, it’s keep it’s lichen front and centre. I’m sure it will soon be covered in new growth though, and that’s ok too.

Thanks for joining me this month, I’ll be back to sharing the next instalment around the third week of the month, but in the meantime if you enjoyed this post you may also like some previous series where I revisit the same place - there’s my year in Greenwich Park and remember that time when I followed a tree?

Four black and white pictures

I’d been at a loss for some artwork for our bedroom wall. We had one picture on the wall in our previous house, and that wasn’t right for here so I needed to come up with something else. And I really wasn’t sure.

In the end I took inspiration from an existing picture we had - remember back in March 2020 I shared a photo of mine that finally got on the wall with some help from Photowall?

But I wasn’t sure if where I had in mind would work, so I mocked it up.

And so for the next few weeks or so, I tweaked their positions - up a bit, down a bit, together a bit more and so on. Finally I was happy and then my attention turned to choosing the images.

We had the rocks from our holiday in Cornwall back in 2014, and I knew I had a picture of storks nesting from a holiday in Portugal. But what else? The good news is I found some.

And I used Photowall again, this time paying for my additional three images to be framed.

The service was still good, and it was easy to upload my images and create my artwork, though I hadn’t realised that they’d changed their frames so the three new frames are a slightly different finish to the one I already had. I was disappointed that the frames and pictures came separately though, and I had to assemble them myself once they arrived - not a huge thing, but a definite difference to my previous experience.

That said, I’m still very happy with the end result. Of course when they arrived I spent more than intended on their layout - thankfully for MOH on the carpet rather than the wall (as there was also a difference in the positioning of the sawtooth picture hanger).

I decided on this layout.

And don’t they look great on the wall?

MOH did a great job, under extreme pressure to get the gaps right!!

And as you’re wondering what the images are, they’re (clockwise from top left):

• A view towards Greenwich from the Thames Path

• Storks nesting on telegraph poles in the Alentejo in Portugal

• A flooded field in Elston, one of the villages close to our new home

• A rock formation from our trip to Cornwall back in 2014.

And all are photos we’ve taken ourselves, and there’s nothing better to have on our walls - our memories captured by us - at some point I’ll do a post about each of the four photos we chose and why.

Sunflower watch: sowing seeds into Wool Pots

I was given a free sample of these Wool Pots - an alternative to plastic plant pots - to try for myself, and so I’m marking this post as an ad, as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

It’s been a fair while since I’ve sown some seeds, and far too long really. There’s been a number of reasons why I haven’t, but one of the big factors was the lack of success the last time I tried - well, not with the seeds, but with the actual growing on. That was a lot to do with the lack of light in our old garden given the tree canopy, which because of lockdown was way behind its usual pollarding schedule.

And then we decided to put our house on the market, and our priorities were to sell the house, and naively I thought it would be relatively quick, so I wanted to avoid moving more plants than we needed to - and no, I wasn’t planning on leaving them for the new owners! All in all moving house ran over two growing seasons, and so when we arrived here in July planting seeds couldn’t have been further from my mind.

I don’t have a greenhouse here (yet), so it’s not ideal for sowing seeds but I was keen to get growing again. Dad also gave me some seeds for a multi-headed sunflower and so with seeds, wool pots and the will to get sowing, what could go wrong?

And yes, the wool pots are well named - they are made of wool, and are pots!

They are knitted from washed wool… and while knitting plant pots sounds strange but the makers assure that Wool Pots are strong, naturally biodegradable, environmentally friendly and plants love them. The company aims to raise the awareness of the plastic problem in horticulture and let people know there is an alternative, and show them a solution. Wool pots are also proud members of the Campaign for Wool and are thrilled to be helping farmers find a new market for their wool.

Rather than bring the seeds indoors, which is an obvious way of giving them some heat, I kept them in the garage opting to use my heated propagator, and bring them out into the sun during the day, which was a fair bit of faffing but it did result in a majority germination - with five out of eight pots producing seedlings, though some were slower to germinate than others.

As the days went on, the seedlings started to grow their true leaves, not just the seedling leaves. It’s worth noting that the wool pots should have space between them to prevent the roots merging into each other - the space enables ‘air pruning’ and will make it easier to plant them on when the time comes.

But my biggest concern now that they’d germinated was when to leave them outside, but thankfully the weather decided to improve to help with that. With the seedlings nestled down in one of my currently half-empty pots, and in a more sheltered part of the garden I braved it, and they all survived!

In fact they’re all doing really well, with more leaves developing and getting taller too. Now instead of bringing them out of and into the garage each day, I’m checking that they’re not growing into each other - and so far so good.

I’m sure it won’t be long before I need to work out where to plant them so that they can grow to their full potential. And the best bit, is you can pot on the whole wool pot - I’ll share how I get on when the time comes.

* With thanks to Wool Pots for providing a sample of their innovative project for me to try.