Pine Marten Post #1
Hello lovely person, and welcome to the first edition of Pine Marten Post!
I’m excited to share my deeply sensory world with you. Tuning into your senses is a fantastic way to connect more fully with the world around you. And in doing so, you may feel calmer and more grounded.
Gardening tips
If you enjoy eating fresh and succulent salad leaves, why not try growing your own? It’s great fun to watch them develop, and so much cheaper than buying packets from the supermarket.
Even if you only have a windowsill, you can easily grow lots of varieties from seed yourself. Most will germinate speedily and you’ll have enough to harvest in just a few weeks. Snipping a handful of leaves at a time will mean you can cut-and-come-again.
Recommended seeds to try are:
Perpetual spinach - firm and juicy leaves which crop over a long period. Add to sandwiches, or chuck a handful into a risotto for the last couple of minutes.
Lamb’s Lettuce ‘Vit’ - soft and delicately flavoured leaves to add some texture and variety to your salads.
Mizuna - crisp and refreshing leaves which can be eaten raw or cooked. A very versatile choice and copes with cold weather admirably, so you can keep picking through the winter.
I buy my seeds from Chiltern’s Seeds because they’re absolutely the best quality, and very reliable germinators. It’s a very friendly, family owned business too. But you’ll be able to find similar seeds from a good garden centre.
Deadheading any roses once the petals fade often means you could be lucky enough to have a second flush of blooms later in the season.
Why not keep the petals for decorating cakes? Or make your own pot pourri for the dark winter months? Imagine smelling the richly fragrant scent on a freezing, pewter grey day.
Find out more about low maintenance gardening for busy people here.
And how gardening can boost your wellbeing here.
Would a Tiny Garden consultation help you?
Fragrant musings from the library of scent
Imagine…
You’re standing in a bright and tranquil garden filled with jasmine and gardenia, dressed in a freshly laundered crisp linen bathrobe.
A smiling person offers you a glass of zesty lemonade, garnished with juicy slices of orange and grapefruit, and gestures towards a sauna.
You enter the dimly lit, comforting space and your lungs fill with the scent of sandalwood and cedar.
The wooden bench is warm, your fingertips brushing the satin smooth surface. You lean back, close your eyes and breathe deeply.
Then float away on a cloud of ambery musk.
Wear this if you want to feel: Rejuvenated, relaxed and uplifted.
Nature notes for the month
Here in South West Scotland, the hedges are overflowing with wildflowers. Vivid magenta foxglove spires soar above fragile, papery wild roses breathing their fresh, yet spicy perfume into the warm air. Creamy clusters of elderflowers offer themselves to be picked and cooked along with any gooseberries you have, or made into a heady cordial. The pale robin’s egg sky is glittering with charms of goldfinches, interwoven with sooty ribbons of swallows garlanding gauzy clouds. Parrot green goldfinches shrill from swaying telephone wires, and grasshopper warblers whirr from dense thickets of flowering brambles. The soft tridents of rosy gold wild honeysuckle drip heady syrup into rustling grasses swaying below.
Featured bean-to-bar chocolate
Duffy’s 45% cocoa milk chocolate - Dominican Republic
Mellow and smooth, this opens with light milky caramel notes. But then juicy, ripe apricot and peach ambushes you out of nowhere... Aromatic oolong rounds off a terrifically complex dark milk chocolate bar.
Duffy’s leave their hand selected beans overnight in a granite grinder to form the base of their chocolates, most of which are from single estates.
Four painstaking days later, after organic cane sugar, cocoa butter, and a tiny amount of sunflower lecithin have been added in stages, the chocolate is ready to be hand wrapped in foil and packaged up.
Random Scottish fact
The national animal of Scotland is the unicorn, and has been since the fifteenth century. Representing purity and innocence, but also power and independence, it’s an animal seen in many Scottish town and city sculptures. Famous for the ability to purify water and cure poisoning, they’re definitely one to keep an eye open for when you’re visiting.
On the blog and LinkedIn:
Photo credit: Rowan Ambrose
Illustration credit: Imogen Oakes
I'd love to hear about what sensory experiences bring you joy.
Feel free to reply to this email, or you can message me on Instagram or LinkedIn.