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 Welcome to Ruth’s website about having the time to pursue a favourite pastime. I enjoy taking pictures of the local flora whenever I go out for a walk or on holiday. Photography is a hobby I developed while having to take many macro shots of shop stock for work.
I am a director of Daisy Gifts Ltd (www.DaisyShop.co.uk) for my day job.
*** Daisy Shop News has now moved to www.DaisyGifts.co.uk/html/new_products.html
03/08/10
The summer holidays are here! Lots of days out and visits so far including the Lammas festival on Eastbourne seafront, our first sea swim of the year at Holywell, Kittiwake spotting on Seaford seafront, rolling pennies in the arcade, bandstand concert. Lots going on!
On the veg front, we have harvested our first couple of tomatoes. Lots of french beans - I’ve been growing them in a pot in the conservatory this year, as they were rubbish last year (not a single bean). A couple of small courgettes. A few blueberrie & strawberries. Many of the raspberries shrivelled up, due to dry weather I suspect. The garlic harvest was good but the onions rotted off. We’ve had 2 cucumbers. The peppers are starting to come, as is the popcorn.
16/07/10
Have still been thinking about the website, so have limited my entries over the last couple of weeks, but hope you like the re-vamp, with lots of new sections!
We have a resident hedgehog! My daughter Hazel had to do a wildlife audit of the garden for her Year 4 primary school homework last Tues. Right on cue, a hedgehog crosses our patio! He has done the same trip at about 6pm every night since. I’ve tried to photograph him but not much luck so far. Was in such a hurry forgot to turn the flash off, which didn’t help, maybe I’ll lie in wait tomorrow!
We also have a frog living in the plant pot saucers, perhaps I’ll try and get him on camera at the same time!
Mike and I went up to Hampton Court flower show on 9th July. It was much too hot and we could have stayed longer but the car thermometer said 38degC! Drooled over an arbour, a hammock and an iron bedstead planted with chamomile. White hydrangeas and purple aliums everywhere. Photo’s.
02/07/10
Have now decided to move the Daisy stuff back to Daisy Gifts Ltd website and keep work and personal life separate!
26/06/10
I have been putting off writing for a little while, as I have been considering what to do with this website and how to change the layout. Watch this space!
30/05/10
Sunshine on and off! Last Friday we went for a lovely walk on the Downs at Folkington, near the Long Man of Wilmington. We were on a mission to find the viewpoint of a picture we like. My Aunt Nancy died earlier this year and left me a beautiful oil pastel picture of Firle Beacon. I will have to put up a copy of it, along with my corresponding photos for comparison. We made an afternoon of it, and had a picnic with salad from our garden.
 
Cocoa the bunny has been acting very strangely. He spent 2 days digging a massive tunnel about a metre long. I know this is normal bunny behaviour, but he looked so sheepish the whole time he was doing it! Then on the 3rd day he filled it all in again, even patting it down. Must have been hormones!
15/05/10
A day of peace at home today! Mike has gone on a bushcraft course, and taken the kids to Granny’s. So I spent the morning turfing out the conservatory. The courgettes (rather a lot of them!) got planted in the garden. The tub of peas got moved outside (with peas coming), along with rocket & lettuce, scarlet kale & strawberries. The tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers & squash have been potted up and left inside a bit longer. There are still seedlings of kale, millet, parsnip, carrot & coriander to be potted up, but I did do the tagetes lemon gem before the weather turned (I am a fair weather gardener!). Then came inside and put a white loaf on to bake, and a victoria sponge. Boiled up some rhubarb out of the garden, stretched out with a bramley, plus apple juice and honey. We need some consistently good weather soon!
02/05/10
We went on a charity bluebell walk in Ashsburnham near Battle yesterday. Luckily the rain held off and I was able to get plenty of wildflower photos! Stopped off on the way home to pick some wild garlic to have with our roast chicken and new potatoes today.
25/04/10
Had our first BBQ of the year yesterday! Looking forward to many more. Have just stewed our first homegrown rhubarb - only enough for 2 helpings but hopefully more to come! On Friday we went garden centering and bought 3 more small rhubarb plants, a grape vine and a pear tree so lots of hopes for the future. The raspberries and blueberries we bought last year have got loads of flowers coming. Will have to go for a walk with my camera one day soon, and photograph some local wildflowers...
03/04/10
Happy Easter! It was wet here yesterday, and is forecast wet for the next couple of days :-( so my dreams of possible getting the barbecue out for its first airing of the year might have been a little optimistic! All the seeds mentioned last week have come up except the french beans, which I put in the airing cupboard yesterday to give them a bit of a temperature boost, and the tomatoes are only just starting to poke through.
28/03/10
The bunny has been evicted! He is very happy to be out on the grass again! Have spent my free time over the last couple of weeks sowing seeds such as courgette, tomato, scarlet kale (pretty, even if we don’t eat it!), french beans, peas and rocket. Planted a few seed potatoes and potted up some strawberry plants to put in the greenhouse for an early crop.
The kids have decided they don’t like my homemade yoghurt (I really like it, it tastes like the stuff out of a muller fruit corner), so I tried making corn bread with it. They didn’t like that either. Will have to come up with a sweet recipe - maybe a nice moist chocolate brownie perhaps?
10/03/10
It’s still absolutely freezing at the moment. I’m very keen to get gardening, but am not the hardy type! I’m itching to evict the bunny from the conservatory so I can grow some plants in there - maybe one more week...
27/02/10
Enjoying a bit of sunshine. Wouldn’t go as far as to say I suffer from S.A.D., but sunlight really feeds the soul! Just a bit more warmth and I’ll finally get the enthusiasm to get out into the garden and tidy up before the new growth starts in earnest...
20/02/10
Spent the afternoon baking - had to use up 4 eggs so made a victoria sponge with the kids. Then tried Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall’s method for apple crumble - make apple compote and crumble separately, then you can mix and match as you like. Should go well with the plain yoghurt I made last night. This might provide breakfast options as well as puddings (the kids don’t like the yoghurt or the cooked apple, but more for me and Mike!).
Photograph of Cocoa the bunny, who watched all this with interest from his winter home in the conservatory.
12/02/10
More snow yesterday - I was supposed to go to a couple of meetings in Eastbourne, but the road was closed. The weather had thawed by the evening though. Finished the big bird watch page, so have a look if you like!
08/02/10
It was snowing again today - fingers crossed it won’t lay overnight - roll on spring I say! Have been spending the last two weekends at Mikes parents house near Battle and watching the incredible array of birds they attract with their birdfeeders. Took part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch last weekend and took lots of photos, which I will put up in the next day or two -I needed evidence in case they wouldn’t believe me!
09/01/10
Mike has just made some mulled cider to warm us up - it is snowing heavily here. He got the recipe from the Waitrose website:
Heat cider gently for 10 mins with cinnamon, cloves and honey. Add a sliced apple for the last few minutes.
We were considering adding brandy but decided its not late enough in the afternoon for that!
06/01/10
We are snowed in! Here in Seaford there is thick snow and it has been falling all day, but only a few miles away in Eastbourne they have only had sleet. The schools are closed and we are staying inside in the warm.
30/12/09
Got a new camera for Christmas! Its a Fujifilm Finepix S2000HD - a great compromise between a fixed lens digital camera and a digital SLR. It doesn't have interchangeable lenses but you have much more control over the final picture than with a fixed lens. I have yet to work my way around it fully but am looking forward to the opportunity to take some less flat-looking photos. Its got good macro capabilities apparently, which is perfect for my two main applications - photographing wildflowers and photographing stock for www.DaisyShop.co.uk.
I always spend a bit of time re-evaluating at this time of year and there seems to be more to think about this year! Mike (my husband) came to work for Daisy this spring, which has been great but we have had to completely shift our personal lives from the way they had been going for the last 15 years or so! One thing we had discussed doing when he came to work with me was to try and live in a more eco-friendly way, but that has gone out of the window a bit. Having said that, we grew a lot of our own veg last summer, and we now make most of our own bread. I also make yoghurt and have just found some bread recipes that use it as an ingredient. I would also like to try a paneer / soft cheese recipe next. So we are quite good about our food. I think for 2010 I would like to take it up a level and try to eat more veg, and try to be more careful where our meat comes from.
Forthcoming articles include:
Local walks around Seaford
Growing our own veg.
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