View Post

The Forest’s built heritage transformed

The Forest’s built heritage transformed The Foresters’ Forest, National Lottery Heritage funded, ‘Built Heritage’ project, has delivered several successful small-scale conservation and building preservation works on a number of key heritage sites in the Forest of Dean this year. Many of our Built Heritage sites are becoming overgrown by vegetation and gradually crumbling away as the Forest grows over the …

Reflection Window Cleaning

Reflection Window Cleaning We have seen the van from Reflection Windows outside our neighbours and decided to give them a try. They did a marvellous job on cleaning our windows which are much too high for us to reach and yesterday they returned to clean our fascia boards. I can’t recommend the highly enough and they are based in near …

View Post

Self Isolating in the Forest of Dean

Self Isolating in the Forest of Dean Like many others we are doing our best to stay at home as much as possible, but the fact of the matter is it is simply impossible to completely self isolate. We retired here 5 years ago so we don’t have family members to help. our children live in Manchester, Southampton Stonehouse and …

View Post

Environmental charity calling on local artists to help highlight new  recycling on-the-go initiative 

Each year 250 tonnes of rubbish is removed from the Forest of Dean, costing local taxpayers £457,000 per year to clean up.​ In 2016, environmental charity Hubbub launched its #LoveYourForest campaign, to tackle the issue through a number of interventions which in four years, has seen more than 800 bags of litter collected in the area. Now, in its fifth year, Hubbub is calling …

View Post

Fun lessons at Harts Barn Cookery

Making sausages and faggots Yesterday I met my lovely daughter Lara at the Harts Barn Cookery School for this course. It was great fun with witty comments from the chef and applause when someone mastered the sausage filling machine successfully. We made several different types of sausages and of course some faggots that look scrummy. As they have to be …

View Post

The vegetable garden has been good to us

The vegetable garden has been good to us this year We are now well into autumn and the vegetable garden is still feeding us. We have been eating the leeks for some time now ( leek and potato soup is our favourite ) , we have a shed full of onions and garlic and the freezer is full of French …

View Post

Busy Busy Busy

Well, it is ironic people said I would be bored when I retired. I have had so much to do that my own little blog has been neglected. I shall be putting that right this week with more gardening posts. This last few weeks I have been busy with https://fourgatesofgloucester.co.uk/ that I support , launching a new site for https://charlietaylorinteriors.co.uk/ …

View Post

Growing Your Own

Growing your own Growing your own vegetables is a real joy. The quality and taste is far better than anything shop bought, and you know they have not been covered in chemicals. Even the smallest plot can be used to very good effect, as I hope to show you here. I have included a video clip at the end of …

View Post

Growing vegetables in a tiny plot

Growing vegetables I have said many times it is not difficult to grow some vegetables even if you have a tiny garden like ours, or even if you have no garden at all. The photo on the left shows lettuce and a courgette growing happily on a window ledge. We started off the seeds in a tray in my shed, …