I hope that you are all enjoying May so far. I am continually and pleasantly overwhelmed by the beauty of this month. Living out in the country I am so much more in tune with the subtle changes in the seasons.

Along the country lanes Cow Parsley towers above carpets of purple bluebells. Horse Chestnut trees are laden with soft creamy/pink candle flowers and the fields are awash with yellow dandelions that slowly give way to waves of white as they turn from flower to dandelion clock seed heads.

My own garden is bringing such delights, the Clematis is romping away, clearly forgetting it’s manners as it clambers over its neighbouring plants bringing swathes of delicate pink and yellow where it’s dainty feet choose to tread.

The greenhouse has brought me such joy. I love spending time in there planting seeds, potting on seedlings as they grow, dreaming of an abundance of flowers to be enjoyed, picked and displayed over the coming months.

My vegetables are growing beautifully, especially the lettuce. We have already enjoyed quite a few salads over the recent weeks. The more we harvest it the more it seems to grow. I love walking up the path with my scissors and a pretty bowl to harvest leaves for our meal.

The Chives and Parsley are thriving at the moment and have been enjoyed in homemade potato salads.

With all this lovely spring weather, we have been spending quite a bit of time outdoors. Lots of gardening of course but a lot of relaxing too. I pulled out some of my favourite books this afternoon and did a bit of reading and journaling.

I will be sharing a bit more about this in my next YouTube video – which was supposed to be out last week but… we have a lot going on at the moment and time seems to run away with me quite frequently. I’ll share a bit about that too. Thankfully I have a more relaxed week this week and I am fiercely guarding my time so I plan to record tomorrow.

We had two birthdays in our family in April and gorgeous weather so we took advantage of it and enjoyed a birthday breakfast outside. Lilacs are in bloom and they made a lovely arrangement for the breakfast table.

As you can see, the bunting is up too – it will stay there for the summer coming down only to be washed and then straight back up. There is something so cheery about bunting don’t you think?

Finally, who else absolutely loves hanging their washing outdoors to dry? This is one of those very simple, everyday ordinary things that brings a small sense of satisfaction to my homemakers soul.

I am reorganising my studio (post to come) and I found this quilt and a few of my favourite embroidered items that I hadn’t unpacked since our move last year. I really want to get joy from the items I have crafted and I want them on display in my studio, so I gave them a wash and hung them outside to dry in the spring sunshine. Soon they will be back in the studio to enjoy.

Well my lovely friends, I am off to go and enjoy an episode of Miss Marple – perfect Sunday afternoon viewing! Enjoy what remains of your weekend and I shall see you back here very soon.

The post The Seasonal Weekender: Early May appeared first on Seasons of Grace and Learning.

Here in the Welsh hills, it is blustery and rainy with the occasional hail shower. We had wanted to visit Bodant Garden in Conwy today but I think that given the conditions, we may wait to visit in May.

Instead, I have spend the morning baking some lovely Blueberry-Lemon Buttermilk Muffins. The mixture yielded 12 muffins plus enough for a loaf, or you could do 24 muffins.

Make my Blueberry-Lemon Buttermilk Muffins

Here is my recipe if you would like to give them a try – they certainly are delicious!

Down the Spring Garden Path…

This is our first spring in our new home and it is a joy to watch the garden awakening this spring.

The garden is surrounded by a variety of trees, shrubs and hedges and most of them are in various stages of blossoming. It is so lovely to see colour creeping in to the far reaches of the garden.

While we have had clear blue skies on occasion, April is renowned for its turbulent nature, so to see these pops of colour helps us to remember that better days on most certainly on the way!

In the greenhouse, I have had mixed luck with my seeds. The problem is that I planted a lot of seeds who’s sell by date had come and gone. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away, they had to be given the chance.

I have cosmos, lupins, poppies, rudbeckia, sweetpeas and sunflowers coming up. I bought some fresh seeds just this week so I will get those sown this weekend.

My YouTube Channel

I wanted to let you know about the trials and developments with my YouTube channel.

I spent hours and hours recording and editing my launch episode only to find that the program I used draws the various clips from a URL and does not store the content on its platform.

This is completely useless because it means that I need to keep the files on my own hard drive on cloud storage which takes up an immense amount of room. If the URL’s are deleted, your uploaded video is destroyed.

So, back to the drawing board. I think I am just going to record again, not worry too much about making it a professionally edited production, and hope that people are happy to connect with me in a simple, unedited manner. Something is better than nothing right?

You will note that I managed to figure out how to get the comments form visible on this new blog home – it’s only taken me about 7 months! So if anyone has recommendations on editing software, I would love to hear from you!

Saturday Afternoon Reading

I picked up The Simple Things magazine yesterday so I am enjoying paging through April’s copy this rainy afternoon.

I am also enjoying this little spring display that I put together for the coffee table in the conservatory. We got this gorgeous Easter card from a dear friend and I love it so much that I’m going to keep it for future spring displays. The little house was a gift from my daughter’s recent visit to Copenhagen and I picked a few of the blooming dandelion flowers from my garden.

I’ve shared before how my husband can’t stand them and how much I love them – they are a hallmark of spring! Fortunately, all the dandelions in our garden appear to be containing themselves to the far reaches of the garden and in the wild boarders, so in my view, they have every right to be there.

Anhyoo lovelies, that’s about it from me this weekend. I hope that whatever you are doing you are enjoying a slower pace and will find some time this weekend to nurture your creativity and home.

The post The Seasonal Weekender: Delicious Blueberry-Lemon Buttermilk Muffin Recipe appeared first on Seasons of Grace and Learning.