7 simple pleasures this week

1. The scent of a rose

My Wedding Bells carpet rose is my favourite rose. It's scent is gorgeous and it has decided to start flowering for the 3rd time this year! We have had an unbelievably warm Autumn, which has confused a lot of my plants, and Winter starts tomorrow! I spent ages looking at the rose, smelling it and then taking photos.

The scent of this rose reminds me of my childhood in England where we had abundant roses growing in our garden. My best friend wanted to show me how to make perfume out of rose petals. So we picked every single rose in the garden and mashed the petals to a pulp with water. The smell was divine while we were preparing the perfume. But not so heavenly after a week in a bottle. My father didn't say a word, amazing.

2. A stroll around our land

We had a few days without rain despite the weatherman forecasting rain all week. So I made the most of it by going for some leisurely walks around our land with my cats Abby and Otto. My cats always come with me wherever I walk on the land. They get all excited and run up and down the trees.

3. Discovering the umbrella grass

I found that the umbrella grass patch has sprouted up again with beautiful green leaves. It has even started to flower. The seasons really are mixed up.

4. My nephew's nature collection

A few years ago I encouraged my young nephew to start a nature collection. I gave him a large shoe box with a lid and we went hunting on the land for little treasures. Now at age 10 my nephew still has his collection and still adds to it. I help him also by keeping my eyes open on my walks, for natural things to add.

On my latest walk I found a monarch butterfly which had died and was lying amongst the dried brown fallen sycamore leaves. It was just by fluke that I spotted it as it was quite camouflaged. My sister-in-law is very squeamish when it comes to insects, so she won't be happy with this find.

I also found 2 feathers, one from a magpie and the other from a pheasant, chestnuts in their prickly cases and a pine cone. I can't wait until I see my nephew again. I haven't seen him since lockdown started.

5. The first snow pea flowers

This afternoon I went to have a look at the vegetable patch and found that the snow peas had started to flower. I was really surprised as it doesn't seem so long ago that I sowed the seeds. Fingers crossed that the bees and other insects will still be around to pollinate them as the weather cools.

6. Planting more vegetables

Dad finished clearing and digging the remaining half of our enclosed vegetable patch this week, then he bought some seedlings to plant. The garden centres are now open with plenty of stock and luckily weren't too busy. We felt that it was too late in the season, with the colder weather coming, to try to grow these from seed.

We planted; celery, lettuce, curly kale, more kohlrabi and sprouting broccoli. Then protected against slugs with slug pellets the next day because the slugs had had a feast in the night on our new veggies, grrr.

7. An afternoon tea treat

I bought a box of Mr Kipling's French Fancies as a treat this week. They are imported from England and I found them when I was doing our grocery shopping online. They are little petit fours made of light sponge and icing. They went perfectly with my Twinings English Breakfast tea. Yum!

What things have you enjoyed this week?

Looking forward to hearing from you :)

Rose x

Edit: Post linked to "My Corner of the World" at the Photographing New Zealand blog