Blogtober 2022 - Day 29 ☕

Yesterday Jethro had his first visit to the bonsai nursery...despite that big yawn I think he enjoyed himself! Future bonsai boy in the making 🌳 It was his first outing wearing the hat I knitted and it's so cute but kept slipping down over his eyes haha. 

After the nursery we headed to Stone Lane Gardens where there was a sculpture exhibition on (turns out I didn't actually take many photos of the exhibition pieces oops, clearly more interested in mushrooms!) It was one of those magical sort of days where you stumble across somewhere new and it turns out to be a bit of a hidden gem! I'd recommend a visit if you're near Dartmoor, but the exhibition finishes at the end of October so perhaps wait until next year as it's an annual thing.

Stone Lane has National Collections of birch and alder trees. Here I am rocking Jethro to sleep in perhaps the most idyllic setting for a woodland nap:

After a(nother) picnic lunch on a well positioned picnic table, and after settling the baby into his cosy sling, we headed off to explore the garden. 

You know I can't miss a mushroom photo opportunity, especially when there is amanita muscaria about! 

🍄

All in a row.

Some of the stone statues, like these deer, stand permanently amongst the trees:

Acorns and moss.

Ed in the silent space 🙏

Identifying trees.

Fallen leaves that look like confetti on the ground.

Another strange looking fungus (looks like purple minced beef lol). One day Ed and I will get round to becoming knowledgable mushroom hunters so we can ID them as well as just admire them! 😄

Humungous gunnera leaves are always fun:

And we we are, at the start of the sculpture trail. Or the end for us as we realised we'd done the whole winding route backwards 😆 but it didn't matter!

Before long we were back in the car, Jethro was hungry after his sculpture garden snooze and the grandparents consulted the map to plan the route to our final destination of Chagford. We almost didn't make it out of the carpark though when the car tyres were spinning and slipping in the mud 😯

Jethro's first cream tea experience (he agrees that although we are in Devon, the Cornish way is in fact the correct way), and my first time trying whortleberry jam. 10/10 delicious rating 👌

An excellent day full of Devon delights, I felt like a tourist even though I've lived here forever! 💛

P.S. Now that I've completed this post nice and early I've got the afternoon free to tackle my next job - making an apple crumble! 🍏

Bonsai, buttons, and a baby bump 💛

Hello and welcome back to blogland 🌈🌞 here is me and my little family exuding cosiness:

Juniper can't resist my lap when I'm wearing my dressing gown 😆

Some lovelllyyyyy lilac on our neighbour's tree, and my almost 30 week big belly 🐣 I can't believe we're in the thirties now, it really is starting to fly by! I feel the baby wiggling and jiggling around all the time now, I've been trying and trying to capture it on video but somehow he or she knows when I've got the camera out and will not perform on demand.

Viburnum and aquilegia flowers have appeared in the back garden, bringing some much desired colour:

I realised the snails hadn't featured in a blog post for months and months, so here they are! After the baby snail debacle of 2021 (in this post) I separated them into two tanks, but they became almost completely inactive (do snails get lonely?) and it was hard to keep two tanks warm in the colder months, so as a last resort I let them cohabit again. Now that we're in nice, warm, egg-laying season I've separated them again...I know (now) that snails are breeding machines and this doesn't technically rule out the chance of more eggs but I tried my best 😅

As promised, here is my finished baby cardigan! I'm so pleased with how it turned out:

It was quite simple whilst also teaching me some new skills, overall a nice introduction to following a knitting pattern! Plus I found the most perfect little buttons to finish it off 🍄🍄🍄 the only thing cuter will be seeing a real life baby wearing it 😊

A couple of colourful new faces that have popped up in the front garden, purple alliums and our one and only deep pinky red peony. Just like last year it has masses of foliage but only one flower! Any gardeners know how to fix this issue?!

Some proof that Juniper likes Ed's lap as well as mine:

I have officially entered the XL mens t-shirt stage of pregnancy (who am I kidding, I've always worn baggy t-shirts 😆):

Last weekend Ed and I took a road trip to Expo Bonsai 2022, a national bonsai exhibition in Crawley. After leaving home at 6.30am and driving for a few hours (accompanied by a decent playlist of course) we arrived soon after the show opened. After eventually finding a parking space, we got our wristbands on the door and were greeted by soo many amazing trees. I took photos of some of my favourites:

I loved this little ceramic toad plant pot 🐸

...and these teeny tiny trees on a miniature shelf 🌳

This really looks like a place you could climb around and explore!

After the exhibition we travelled on to visit Ed's grandma and spend the night at her house before driving home again the following day. We were blessed with such lovely weather and enjoyed helping out in the garden and then going for a sunny walk around the allotments 🌾 Although we were only away for one night it really felt like a little holiday and it was so nice to catch up with family, especially because it's probably the last time we'll see them in person before the baby comes! 

Back home and documenting the forget-me-nots growing in the carpark at work:

Our first couple + bump photo (courtesy of my thoughtful sister), plus a frantic candle-lighting session for my other sister's 18th birthday:

The jolly welsh poppies outside our church are blooming again, and so is this ajuga in a pot in our garden. It's an amazingly bright bluey purple:

My newest houseplant acquisition, an alocasia dragonscale 🐉 I have wanted one since I first heard of them probably a couple of years ago, and my patience paid off because I managed to grab this one on the reduced shelf hehe. Plus Juniper enjoying the new baby quilt, a beautiful, handmade surprise gift from a kind friend at work:

Here she is trying out the changing mat for size:

Today Ed and I spent some time in the garden, planting out sweetcorn and some of our tomatoes 🌽🍅 Ed thinned out the parsnip seedlings, and replanted some carrots as the last batch seem to have been munched into nonexistence! We also harvested an onion and a garlic to see whether they were ready yet, they looked good but we decided to leave the rest to get a bit bigger! We've also got courgette and chilli seedlings inside, growing food is exciting 😄

Onion twins, and Juni overseeing the garden work:

Queen of the castle 👑 (garden junk castle)

Thanks for stopping by again, hope you enjoyed this life/pregnancy/garden update 💘 see you sooooon!