Too busy to blog!

We do seem to have packed a lot into the last couple of weeks.  Burg’s meditation group (http://theartofmeditation.org/) went out last Wednesday, Clare Gennon and Richard Farmer’s Metatronic Healing weekend came in on the Friday (http://www.metatronic-life.com/) – and Burgs returned for his seven day retreat on the Monday!  Phew! Interestingly, these quick changeovers, which are very frequent these days, seem to get easier and easier as we get more used to doing them and trust more that everything will fall into place if we just stay quietly engaged with what needs to happen.  Anyway, Burgs’ retreat is now in till next Monday so a chance to catch our breath!

Steve has taken a bit of time off recently, roaming the Brecon Beacons with a back pack.  He’s come back looking very aired and extremely bearded!  He’s been easing back into work with some mowing and mending, and cleaning all the outside windows of the house now that the swallows and martins have finally left their nests in the eaves (making it now worth doing!).

We continue to be inundated with produce.  Hilary has been using up some courgettes that we accidentally let grow to marrows, spinach and chard, turning it into delicious minted pea, spinach and courgette soup.  A wonderful colour as well as taste!  Not quite time to pick the apples but we continue to freeze the windfalls for puddings next year.  We’ve been juicing windfall pears too which make a beautifully tasty, sweet juice.

There’s still a fair bit of colour in the garden – pink, orange and yellow dahlias, cosmos in various pinks and whites, nasturtiums, heleniums…..Today’s so warm, you can hardly believe autumn is here.

Well, time to turn our attention to next week’s menus and collect up today’s windfalls,

More soon!

Much love

Mel & Steve

Poulstone Court Retreat Centre

Harvest time

The apple-fest continues in amongst our other jobs.  Gemma is becoming a dab hand with the rotary apple peeler.  We are also picking plums, mulberries and damsons.  The two plum trees donated by Spectrum Psychotherapy’s Women in the World group have yielded the first fruit we can pick from the new trees.  They have a very nice flavour and we have frozen this first harvest so the group can enjoy them in a crumble or almond sponge pudding when they come in November.  Our squash harvest is a little disappointing – only six (admittedly pretty large) squash from 10 plants!  Ah well, they are very beautiful and there’s something quite magical about them even if there aren’t very many.  Recent groups have also been able to enjoy home-grown rocket, beetroot, spinach and chard, kale, dwarf beans and potatoes.

We are probably saying goodbye to our sweet peas now as autumn arrives – we’ll be picking our last nostalgic few bunches before the first frosts arrive.  The dahlias are now coming into their own and will take their place in posies on the dining tables during the autumn.

The Reiki Gathering enjoyed their stay last weekend and we hope we shall see them here again.  On Monday we were joined by Ruhani Satsang (http://www.ruhanisatsangusa.org) and are greatly enjoying the silence and feeling of peace that their meditation practice is bringing to the house.  Many of them have been students of their Master Sant Kirpal Singh (deceased) since the 1970s and meet annually to meditate and listen to discourses, travelling from Europe, Canada and America.  It’s very inspiring to see such devotion to their practice.  They will be departing tomorrow and we will be joined the following day by another silent retreat with Burgs (http://theartofmeditation.org/).  So pretty busy for us today and tomorrow!

More soon!

Warm wishes

Mel & Steve

Poulstone Court Retreat Centre

Newton has nothing on us!

Apples are dropping off the trees as we speak!  Gemma, Gail and Mel collected and prepared the first batch for the freezer a couple of days ago.  Whilst most of the apples aren’t quite ready yet for picking, it feels great not to waste the windfalls.  The pears that have fallen however are too tiny really to be worth using so they will go to the compost and delight the wasps. Large drunken parties of wasps can already be seen in their pear dens!

We said goodbye to James Reeves and his Bliss Divine Yoga group (http://www.blissdivineyoga.co.uk/) on Sunday afternoon.  It was their first visit to Poulstone and we greatly enjoyed having them here.  They will be revisiting us next summer and James’ groups are open to the general public so do have a look at his site or our courses page if you’re interested.  It was nice to have some guests from the Hereford and Welsh borders area with us, even though James is based in Oxford.

We’ve now had a few days to do some gardening and gear ourselves up for the rest of the month (we are now back-to-back till 3rd October!).  Gail has been getting up to date with a few jobs in the veg patch – digging up spuds and having a general tidy.  After all the lovely warm, dry weather we’ve been having, Mel diligently watered all the flower beds in the parched garden last night – before a night of rain!  Should have checked the forecast!

The Reiki Community Gathering are with us from this afternoon.  Also a new group to us, we are looking forward to welcoming them.

That’s about it for now.  More soon!

Mel & Steve

Poulstone Court Retreat Centre