Changes on this site
Hello, everybody. Danny here. We are making some changes to the site over the weekend, so bear with us if things appear to be a little unusual. It should all settle down by Sunday Tuesday Friday evening. đ Please let us know if there is anything alarmingly wrong – use the Contact Us page or leave a comment on this post. We appreciate all feedback, suggestions and help.
read moreOur new site search engine: Zoom
For Fionaâs blog 3rd birthday we invested in the Zoom site search engine. You can try it out in the right-hand sidebar. One of the weakest features of the standard WordPress package is its inbuilt search facility. It is practically useless. We even had visitors email us to help find specific recipes! So we launched a project to find a better alternative and to customise the results page for Cottage Smallholder. We tested five search engines including the free Google site search offering. But Google was ruled out because the licensing terms...
read moreGrow good potatoes, bluestone and assorted memories of my dad
Fiona suggested that I contribute my first âGuest spotâ this evening, while she cooks up a mouth-watering frittata. Seems like a good trade to me. The aroma of the frying bacon wafts up to my eyrie in the Rat Room to spur me on. Â Her laptop is still in intensive care. The âfixesâ havenât worked. She has stopped ringing the company twice a day to enquire about the health of her companion. She gets the health report each morning. The prognosis his spiralled rapidly down from. âWeâll ring you at the end of the day to arrange...
read moreChildhood perennials
I stayed at home today. Canât seem to kick off the laryngitis so spent most of the day in bed, with the Min Pins and a hottie. This evening D and I strolled in the garden. âWhat are these?â He touched the large evergreen waxy leaves gently. âBearâs Ears. Bergenia. Ours have pink flowers in the spring.â âAnd what are these?â âLambâs Ears. Stachys byzantine. Touch them. Theyâre as soft and silky as a Min Pin pup.â Iâve included these two perennials in all my gardens. Flowers that I remember growing in gardens when I was...
read moreBlue screen of death gets a hot makeover
Hi everyone, Fiona went to work today although she is feeling just 80% of her normal wellbeing so this is my (Dannyâs) third and final instalment of the Emergency Trilogy. I told her that she simply must get back in harness tomorrow or she will lose her regular readers. She agrees and normal service will be resumed. Â I have never known a lady who can produce such dramatics when she is supposed to be lying wan in bed. We had fantastic thunderstorms here (Newmarket, UK) late this afternoon and she returned from work early because her current...
read moreBees and not to bees
Today’s article is brought to you by Danny (that’s me – seems weird to be referring to myself in the 3rd party). Fiona is unwell as per the previous post, but is recuperating rapidly.The big news is that a swarm of bees arrived in one of our two vacant hives. Both our old colonies died off in the freezing cold of January. We had hoped that a stray swarm might take up occupancy and it has come to pass. Happy Days. I remember the old rhyme that I learned when I was knee high to a potato stalk back home in rural County...
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