The patio at the back of the garden is starting to get a little more overgrown:

We have crocus, and flowering clematis:

And a certain fluffy Jack Russell who likes to jump onto the picnic table in order to drink rainwater from his favourite crystal bowl:

Cuteness!

You can check out November, December, January and February's photos in a photo gallery here.

What's happening in your garden at the moment?

So naturally when the sun comes out I immediately start thinking of summer holidays, and of course our French Master Plan - so with that in mind I'd like to share some images of a stunning modern home from The Telegraph Magazine:

Gorgeous, no? By the way, the dude on the balcony is actually fully dressed, despite evidence to the contrary. I find myself being increasingly drawn to the concept of buying some land in France and then constructing our dream contemporary house from the ground up, rather than buying an old farmhouse and renovating it. Of course the build would have to be sympathetic to the local environment - local wood, local stone, a sloping roof at an angle that compliments the slope of the rolling hills and mountains surrounding the Luberon valley, paint colours to match the surrounding olive trees and vineyards - but I think it could work...

Check out this pool:

I love the feeling of light and space in the interior:

I've been keeping an eye on the property market in the Luberon for nearly a year now - but I've been focusing on houses for sale, rather than land for sale. I think I need to broaden my focus to include terrains - and also to do some research into French planning permission (ie how challenging it would be to get permission to construct a glorious modern maison in the middle of an olive grove). Of course, Andre and I don't intend to make our minds up right now - but at least we want to have considered all the available options house-wise, you know?

What's your take on the whole modern v traditional house debate? Which kind of home do you prefer to live in? Do you think that modern houses enhance their natural surroundings, or detract from them?

I was passed the baton by the lovely Simply Grove, so here are my thoughts on what inspires me.

Yeah, it's a fairly huge question, right? I guess I could list my design inspirations, but I kind of want to go a little deeper than that, you know? So, ever the Eng Lit grad, I turned to the dictionary to look up the definition of inspire: 

"To fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence." I like that definition. For me, inspiration is all about the elements that move us on some primeval level - that touch the synapses in our brains and make us fizz over with emotion.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think about what moves me is music. Bruce Springsteen's Streets of Philadelphia, Keane's Crystal Ball, the wonderful gospel choir who belted out Oh Happy Day when my new husband and I walked down the aisle (well, actually we danced down the aisle. And stopped to hug every one of our guests. It was probably the longest recessional in the history of St James, Didsbury). The opening sequence of The Lion King where the old king holds baby Simba up in his paws (yeah, it's probably wrong that I still well up at the scene). Lightening Crashes by Live. And my favouritest happy song, I Need Love by Sam Phillips.

I'm also inspired by poetry. You know when you read a truly amazing line in a poem, and the hairs on the back of your neck just raise up? Frank O'Hara's The Day Lady Died gets me every time. Even though I've read it a million times, I still get goose bumps when I read the last stanza. My all-time classic poem for evoking a strong emotional reaction has to be e.e. cummings I Carry Your Heart With Me (which I have loved since long before Cameron Diaz learned to read it in the movie In Her Shoes). It's so beautiful that I'm going to share it in full:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Yeah. It's incredible. We had this as one of the readings at our wedding and I swear I wasn't the only one who cried.

And the final source of personal inspiration that I'd like to share today is simply the wonderful natural world that surrounds us - from the glorious vista of a deserted tropical beach, to the sight of the first daffodil bulbs poking their heads above the earth.

Here are some of the most beautiful views I've had the pleasure to experience.

Zipolete beach in Oaxaca, Mexico:

Secret Greek island in the Ionian sea:

Hakone national park in Tokyo, Japan:

Hillptop village of Gordes in Provence:

When I saw this view for the first time last summer, I literally burst into tears because it was so incredibly beautiful. Andre and I now have a plan to move to France full-time, mostly because any part of the world that makes you cry on account of its beauty should probably be added to your List of Places to Live.

So there you have it - some of the things that inspire me in life. And now I'd like to pass the baton over to Sloe Gin Fizz, who will be blogging tomorrow about her inspirations, so make sure you check out her blog (and her divine recipes!).

What do you find inspiring?

Among this magazine mountain I discovered The Best Magazine In The World Ever - also known as a genuine 1965 edition of Brides magazine - also known as the best present I've ever been given (by Andre, natch), bar none:

Andre presented me with this vintage treasure when I was busy planning our wedding (yes, I'm using the singular. I planned our wedding. Andre turned up. Bless him). Now, naturally I do not intend to start waxing lyrical about weddings on this blog (well, until July, when our two-year wedding anniversary comes up, and therefore I'm reserving the right in advance to inundate you with photos of handmade invitations, handmade bunting, handmade floral arrangements, handmade seating plan, and so on - c'mon, we put a marquee over our entire garden, respect must be paid).

However, what's fascinating about 1965 Brides is the focus on setting up home. I'd say half the magazine is dedicated to planning the wedding, and the other half to living happily ever after. The last time I picked up a modern wedding magazine I don't seem to recall any articles on the latter - plenty of information on dressing like a princess, and choosing a super-expensive honeymoon - but the happily ever after part? Not so much. Change in priorities, anyone? OK, OK, most people already live together these days, but it would be nice to see a little bit more of a focus on the 99.99% part of your married life, rather than the 0.01% that constitutes The Big Day, right?

Here's the contents page - with around 100 pages of articles about setting up your first home:

The articles themselves are priceless - here's one on choosing the style for your first home:

And here's another on 'the man in your kitchen', which opens thus...

"He's yours - you married him - and you think you know everything about him. Until this dashing stranger steps into your kitchen and proceeds to make himself happily at home, cooking up a storm or, anyway, his own special dish." AWESOME:

My favourite parts of the magazine are actually the adverts - check out this beauty for Bassett furniture:

Precious. But my all time favourite is this splendid advert for sterling sliver:

"Don't let Daddy give you away until he gives you your sterling". LOVING IT.

So the plan is we're going to install a new paved driveway, a new picket-style wooden fence, and some wooden arches along the side of the house that we can train evergreen clematis and sweet peas to grow up in order to soften the overall look (to mirror the effect of our pergola/gazebo-type structure in the back garden):

This has led to some fairly hilarious discussions with Manchester city council. Me: "We're thinking of installing a trellis-style fence". The council: "Well, that doesn't sound very nice". Um, OK then. We've eventually compromised on a picket-style fence which fulfills the council's requirement to be see-through (apparently so we can't hide people in our garden) and my requirement to not cost so much money that we have to re-mortgage the house to afford it.

I'm planning to order the paving from a company called Simply Paving whom we have used previously to order our Stone Circle of Servitude Fortitude. Here are the options I'm considering so far:

Which do you like? All three options have different price ranges, with the most expensive option being twice the price of the least expensive option. Can you tell which is which? Go on, tell me you think the least expensive option (ie the one we're probably going to choose) is the most expensive one. I would LOVE that :-)

I've also placed an ad on Rated People to find a contractor to do all the heavy lifting, digging, and individual sett laying (Alice and Andre in 'actually hiring someone else to do the work' shocker) - I have no clue whether the going rate for this kind of work will be merely eyebrow-raising or full-on heart-attack-inducing, so watch this space - we may well end up doing everything ourselves as usual...

In a future post, I'll write about the process of deciding how to re-design our garden - but today I'd like to share a few of the drawings I created as part of the design process.

Here are the first two designs I came up with:

And after a suggestion from my clever green-fingered Mum, I slanted the oval lawn on an angle to draw the eye to the end of the garden:

And you can see from this photograph that our garden in real-life ended up looking very similar to the final design:

Do you have a garden? How is it looking at the moment?

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Like walking into the kitchen to make yet another espresso (thank you, Gaggia!) and seeing the sunlight shining through a bunch of red tulips on the windowsill:

And then admiring these adorable little cactus hearts:

And giggling at brown-money-collecting Froggy - look, he's got a radio! And he seems really pleased about it!

Loving it.

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Here's a little something for the weekend - a recipe for French onion soup. I have assiduously experimented with numerous recipes over the years in search of that authentic Parisian bistro taste, and this recipe from Jamie's Dinners comes pretty close.

So, here's what you need:

1.1kg onions, fresh thyme, 3 cloves garlic, 1 bay leaf, 1.3 litres chicken stock, olive oil and butter, bread, gruyère cheese.

Chop the onions, and fry them very gently in butter and a drizzle of olive oil for 15 mins over low heat in a covered pan, along with the bay leaf and the thyme. You'll need to strip all the leaves off the thyme and use these rather than the stalks, which are not tasty. Stir the onions occasionally to make sure they don't stick:

Next up, remove the lid, turn up the heat, and cook for 5 mins or so until golden brown:

Add the chicken stock (I use organic Kallo stock cubes), turn the heat down, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Now, if you want to serve the soup in the most traditional French manner, what you need  to do is toast some bread, put the soup in a bowl, place the toasted bread on top of the soup, cover the entire surface of the bowl in grated cheese, and then place under the grill for 5 mins until golden and bubbling.

The problem with this is that firstly you'll need a soup bowl that can stand up to the heat from the grill without damage - and secondly that because the bowl will become incredibly hot, it's no use for an 'eating-from-your-knees-in-front-of-the-television' situation. Cos you'll end up with burned paws. And knees. Not so good.

So, I compromised by grilling the cheese-on-toast part on a baking tray, and then floating it on the surface of the soup. I also used manchego (cos we didn't have any gruyère), and it worked just fine:

Yum. It's so good. And so easy to make. Très bien.

Happy weekend!

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Neighbourhood: A walk through the autumn woods (plus homemade cake)

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I felt immediately drawn to these photographs, went to take a closer look, and immediately realised that I had responded to them in this way because they were taken by Neil Roland, a well-known Manchester photographer. 

I have admired Neil's work for years (his photographs can be found all over the city in galleries, restaurants, cafes, even my local GP surgery) - in fact I like his work so much that I commissioned him to create a bespoke set of photographs of the West Didsbury area, which I gave to Andre as a wedding present.

Neil takes photographs of Manchester and the surrounding urban area - usually with a focus on capturing particular colours, street signs, and types of buildings, which he then displays in sets. He often takes the photograph at unusual or close-up angles, so it's not immediately obvious where the photo was taken, and a little detective work is required to identify the location. He also uses film rather than digital, and therefore has no reliance on PhotoShop to alter his images in any way.

Here are some of Neil's photographs of our local area - Didsbury, and West Didsbury:

And here are some of Neil's photographs of Manchester city centre:

It's very dark and gloomy in Manchester at the moment, so taking photographs is a bit tricky. But if it ever lightens up, I'll take a photo of our very own Neil Roland, which hangs in the living room, above the sofa.

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Garden: Our magical garden by night

Currently I'm working my way through Philippa Gregory's The Virgin's Lover, which is a highly entertaining account of the early years of Elizabeth 1's reign. A number of grand Elizabethan palaces and houses are featured in the book, so when I got home today I decided to look them up on the tinternet and see what they looked like. And they look pretty cool, so I thought I'd share them with you.

So without further ado, here is some prime Elizabethan real estate for your viewing pleasure.

Elizabeth 1 spent most of her childhood at Hatfield House, a rather splendid mansion 21 miles north of London. She was at Hatfield when she first heard of the death of her half sister, Mary Tudor, and therefore her accession to the throne:

Yeah, it's all right, isn't it?

Check out this casa - just a simple home for two (hundred):

This is Burghley, built over a 32 year period by Sir William Cecil, chief counsellor and general fixer to the young Elizabeth 1. It has 35 major rooms, and over 80 minor rooms.

And finally, here's Syon Park - once the family home of Robert Dudley (widely believed to be Elizabeth 1's lover, or at least an adamant suitor for her hand in marriage):

Looks quite dinky compared to Burghley, huh? Well, check out this conservatory, which is just one of many buildings languishing in the grounds:

Hmm, maybe Syon Park isn't so small after all.

Syon was confiscated from the Dudley family by Mary Tudor after the family masterminded the marriage of Lady Jane Grey to a Dudley son (the wedding took place at Syon Park), following which Lady Jane reigned as Queen of England for nine days before being displaced by Mary, who subsequently executed her. Are you keeping up? Blimey, we English don't half have a complex and blood-thirsty history.

Which house do you like best? 

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