June's journey

We’re currently counting down the days to our long-awaited UK holiday and I actually can't believe we will be there this time next week! As I’ve got to work until Wednesday and we’re leaving already on Thursday, I needed to plan ahead and do the majority of my packing this weekend. Always glad to have that out of the way!

But a promise is a promise so, before we leave, here’s a little update on what else has been happening lately. Catching up completely keeps being quite beyond me, so once again I’m taking you on a little trip in the old time machine, travelling back to the month of June. Be prepared to see lots of outfits, both worn before and after our stay at the cottage in Poperinge.

Monday, which was the first day of June, had a sunny start with highs of a delicious 23°C.

I was wearing the same skirt I wore for the previous day's walk in the park: a blue cotton midi skirt with a most groovilicious pattern. Its companion that Monday was a parrot-patterned top from the Belgian Sweet Soda label. Both were charity shop finds, as was the big green bird on a branch brooch.

My green stretchy belt with its bamboo buckle - a true wardrobe stalwart - was a high street buy a couple of years ago. 

For various reasons, no outfit photos were taken for the rest of that working week, which offered a string of days on which the sun kept playing hide and seek with the clouds and showers were rife.

Think Twice were having another one of their famous sales. With prices down to € 5 and then € 4 per item it would have been rude not to have a rummage!

Not one, but two butterfly-sleeved dresses found their way into my wardrobe, the one on the left being vintage C&A, while the one on the right is good old vintage Diolen.

I fell head over heels for the skirt, which has a rather posh-looking label reading Gerard Pasquier, Paris.

Googling it, this is what I found, neatly translated from the French:

Founded at the beginning of the last century, Gérard Pasquier was initially a leading French brand renowned for its elegant and sophisticated clothing. Embodying the Parisian chic that made it great and famous, Gérard Pasquier now embraces a more understated elegance in keeping with today’s fashion.

I'm not sure of its age, but isn't that pattern just fabulous?

Now, let's fast forward to Friday the 5th of June. The weather gods were clearly having an argument about whether to send sunshine, clouds or rain our way, resulting in a mix of all three, with highs of only 18°C.

My denim button-through skirt was bought on the high street about a year ago, while my colourful dagger-collared coffee-themed blouse is vintage 1970s and was a charity shop find.

Accessories:

- Lilac vinyl belt and orange wooden beads: charity shopped

- Orange cat brooch: Katshop

- Orange plastic ring: Le Petit Souk, a quirky shop which sadly closed its Antwerp branch earlier this year

- Lilac watch: high street bargain shop

I’ve got some garden news for you as well. For quite a while now, I’ve been referring to Dove Cottage’s little patch as the impenetrable jungle or wilderness, which definitely wasn’t an exaggeration.  A true sanctuary back in the days of Covid, neglect had slowly but surely started creeping in during the Summer of 2022, when our neighbour’s kitchen extension threw more than just one spanner in the works.

Bags of compost mixed with rubble were still cluttering the back of our garden, and ivy and other climbers had been left to their own devices, which they gleefully made use of by smothering our tiny patch with their rampant growth. I now regret not having taken any before photos, but at one point we couldn't even see the back of our garden from the kitchen window ...

 

At Jos's local, he'd made the acquaintance of a guy who cleaned up gardens in his free time and who agreed to come and do ours. So, on Wednesday the 3rd of June, he and a mate arrived with some heavy machinery and, taking their job description a bit too literally, completely obliterated all signs of life from the main part of our garden. I actually cried when I saw the concrete desert they'd left behind when I came home from work! Thankfully, they'd left the narrow border on the right, home to our white currant bush, Fuchsia magellanica and magnificent Acanthus mollis aka Bear's Breeches, virtually untouched.

That weekend saw us driving down to the garden centre and spend a small fortune on plants. Just positioning them around the garden still in their pots made all the difference, although without any climbers, ferns and the low Cotoneaster shrubs lining the steps to the sunken part of the garden, it was still looking more than just a little bit desolate.

The weather was another mixed bag of sunshine and dull grey clouds on Monday the 8th of June, but at least the mercury deemed to climb into the low twenties.

My outfit was a mixed bag as well, the green and navy Breton top, ankle boots and enamelled butterfly brooch all being second-hand finds, while the floral skirt, necklace and belt were high street buys. As they've all earned their keep in my wardrobe by now, I'm calling them fast fashion turned slow!

Monday's temperature had clearly been a one-off, as by Wednesday we were down to a miserly 17°C.

Mostly cloudy, with heavy showers and some thunder in the evening, it made me reach for warm layers, in the form of a vintage polyester knit skirt, a vintage long-sleeved blouse and short-sleeved but chunky knit Dralon cardigan. 

My belt with its flower-shaped buckle was another high street find, and I picked up the pale pink suede ankle boots in the closing-down sale of New Look's Antwerp shop back in February 2019.

The showers came thick and fast on Friday the 12th, although there was a brief spell of clear weather in the afternoon. Again, the temperature didn't rise above 17°C.

Following a morning of chores and shopping, we were invited by my friend Inneke for her 65th birthday drink at Bistro Jules in nearby Wilrijk. We went to school together but she's a couple of months ahead of me :-)

Both my faux-snake skirt (by posh label Caroline Biss) and funky patterned blouse came from the rails of the same charity shop, as did the orange wooden tile necklace. My brooch is vintage and was a flea market find. In fact, I think that the only item which was new rather than new-to-me is the belt!

Initially, Saturday's weather didn't look too promising either. A thick layer of grey greeted us as we got up, but it didn't take all that long for the clouds to disperse and present us with patches of blue sky which grew wider and more plentiful as the day progressed.

With temperatures of around 20°C, it was the perfect weather to plant up all these patiently waiting new acquisitions! 

In the meantime, one or two hesitant fern fronts had been brave enough to rise from the dead. 

Planting done, this is what I changed into to sit outside and admire the fruits of my hard work.

My denim maxi dress was a gift from Vix and Jon back in June 2023. I added a multi-coloured pleated leather belt at my waist, wore a string of plastic orange beads - both charity shopped - and pinned a funky lady's head brooch - a cheeky retail buy - to the dress's bodice. 

On Monday the 15th, there was no sign of the heatwave forecasted to start later that week. Both the sun and the day's highs of 21°C must have overslept and took their time to arrive.

My wide floral cotton button-through skirt winged its way from Think Twice into my wardrobe about two years ago. I acquired the short-sleeved thin knit jumper, in an eye-searing pink, around the same time. Together with its green sister, I bought it in the sales from the Sweet Soda - a Belgian label - shop near my office. Another one which has since closed its doors ...

Accessories and shoes were all charity shopped.

Tuesday was the day that Jos had his fall and hurt his knee, jeopardizing our upcoming holiday in Poperinge end of that week in the process. After an evening at A&E, where thankfully it was ascertained that he'd sustained no fractures, we were sent home with nothing more than the advice to take some paracetamol and do some gentle exercises. Needless to say, stress levels were high and neither of us slept well that night. 

But we did make it in the end, even if it was a holiday with a hurdle ...

One last picture of our garden before we go. I'd picked up some solar lights during one lunch break the other week, which we'd dotted around the garden. We've added more in the meantime, but this is how it looked on Saturday the 20th of June.

I'm happy to report that the vast majority of our new plantings had survived the heatwave of our week away virtually unscathed, although our pots and hanging baskets were gasping for a good soaking.

Our bedroom was akin to a sauna but after briefly considering sleeping on the sofa downstairs, I decided to brave the +30°C for the comfort of my bed. Jos was so lucky to be able to sleep in his hospital bed downstairs!

The mercury was still flirting with 30°C on Sunday, which was a vast improvement to the +38°C we'd arrived home to on Friday.

This is what I wore for grandson Cas's birthday party on Sunday afternoon:

- Waxed cotton wrap skirt: Think Twice

- River Woods t-shirt, necklace: charity shopped

- Birds in flight brooch: bought in Cardigan during one of our Welsh holiday

Monday the 29th was the last day of my holiday. The temperature had dropped to a much more bearable - but still much too warm for me - 28°C.

I was wearing the Missoni-esque skirt which was part of my holiday wardrobe but which I hadn't worn.

Both the skirt and the King Louie blouse were charity shopped, as were the bangles and necklace. The pleated yellow belt was a flea market find. 

We sat out in the garden for most of the afternoon and were delighted to see the butterflies and bees return to our little slice of paradise. In spite of being spoiled for choice, they seemed to have taken a particular liking to the Echinacea. 

There's a close-up of that old garden stalwart, the Bear's Breeches, on the top left, with the only flower produced by our new Clematis piilu below. Top centre are the pale lavender flowers of Verbena rigida Sky Blue. On the bottom right, my favourite, Helenium Moerheim Beauty. 

So, that was it. See you when we're back from the UK!

May days

And just like that, Summer arrived on our doorstep and we've turned the calendar's page from June to July.  

My mind boggles that it's well over two weeks since my last post, which had its feet still planted firmly in May.  In the meantime, we've survived a whopper of a heatwave, part of which was spent doing nothing very much at all in the cottage in Poperinge we fell in love with 14 years ago. 

But all of this was still in the future when I was wearing this outfit on a Mid-May day when the temperature barely climbed into double figures.

It was wet and cold, a gossamer layer of frost decorating our kitchen extension's roof when I drew the bedroom curtains. Nothing odd about this at all, as we were in middle of that period in May popularly known as the IJsheiligen (transl. Ice Saints). These are the feast days of the Medieval Catholic saints, Mamertus (11 May), Pancras (12 May), Servatius (13 May) and Boniface (14 May). According to folk wisdom, these days in May are the final days of Spring which can sometimes still have night-time frosts.

It was Ascension Day, which is a public holiday in Belgium and, apart from it being cold enough to wear a jumper, my diary tells me I dug one of my Winter coats out of the wardrobe it was supposed to be spending its Summer break in.

Next stop in the time machine is Wednesday the 20th of May. I had taken the day off to accompany Jos to what would be his last hospital appointment until September. Although he was starting to feel a little bit better, his appetite still wasn't up to scratch and he was still experiencing sudden drops in his blood pressure.

We were seen by the Professor who coordinates the hospital's thorax oncology department, who was very understanding of Jos's situation. She suggested prescribing a low-dose cortisone-like medicine to see if that would be of any help. At this point in time, I'm happy to report that it spectacularly improved - and keeps improving - his quality of life!

At 17°C, the weather gods were a little bit better behaved by now, although angry-looking clouds, the odd shower and a chilly wind did their best to spoil the game. 

No jumper this time, but I was still wearing long sleeves. My M&S blouse, picked up in a Shrewsbury charity shop in June 2024, was paired with a vintage green and white polyester knit skirt from Think Twice, and accessories bought on the high street at various times.

By Friday the 22nd of May the meteorological deities had cranked up the thermostat to 27°C and there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. 

Instead of our usual weekly catch-up, my friend Inez and I had agreed to meet up at Hof ter Linden in Edegem for a walk, followed by drinks on the on-site brasserie's terrace.

No proper outfit photos were made that day, but I was wearing these wide-legged silk blend Fab India trousers I charity shopped in July 2025.

With our garden still being an impenetrable jungle - and you can take this quite literally - I'd been admiring the glorious herbaceous border of the Museum of Folklore down our street, longing for the day when our little plot would be accessible again. At that point, we were still waiting for the gardener we'd contracted to turn up and tackle the job.

This was what I was wearing on Saturday for a day of running errands and tackling a couple of chores.

- 1970s cotton button through skirt trimmed with rick-rack: T2

- Lobster print top: charity shopped new with tags from Flair Goes Retro, produced in 2015 for Belgian women's magazine Flair

- Red pleated belt and necklace: charity shopped

- Lobster brooch: indoor flea market, February 2024

It was only when I was photographing the details that I noticed the lobster brooch was missing its

diamanté heart. Suspecting that it had gone AWOL while I was running errands, I'd already made a mental notation to look for a suitable replacement when Jos found the missing part on our hall carpet!

Sunday saw us driving down to the park in Duffel for a long-overdue walk. In spite of the temperature climbing steadily into the direction of 30°C, Jos insisted on wearing a jacket! Oh well ...

We met this cheeky little fellow near the end of our walk. After playing hide-and-seek among the trees for a while, I was finally able to catch him scaling this tree, where he obliged me by pausing (or should that be posing) for a second or two. Snap!

My outfit was built around a chambray skirt with faux embroidery I'd cheekily bought from a village boutique on Saturday. 

My funky print T-shirt, belt and necklace were all charity shopped while a found the sailing boat brooch at a flea market many years ago.

The weekend contained a bonus day, as Monday was yet another public holiday in Belgium (Pinkstermaandag or Whitsun Monday). 

For a 30°C day of not doing very much at all, I wore a green and red combo with a touch of black.

The hand-made green cotton circle skirt with its tiny white checks and red dots - a wardrobe resident for many years - couldn't have found a better companion than the red and white dotty River Woods top. Both were charity shop finds, albeit several years apart.

Necklace and butterfly brooch: both bought on the high street.

Stretchy chevron patterned belt: charity shopped.

Clarks sandals: Shropshire sales bargain back in June 2018, still going strong after all these years.

According the my journal, the mercury kept flirting with the 30°C mark all week

After a short, 3-day working week, Friday, and thus another weekend rolled by in no time.

I'd finally plucked up the courage to have my hair coloured again, which would be the first time since my final appointment with Michel back in December. He had kindly jotted down the exact mix of colours he'd been using, but as Mitte, my new hairdresser, is using a different brand of dye, the end result turned out to be just a little bit redder than before. I absolutely love it!

A € 5 Think Twice find back in August last year, this vintage sleeveless cotton frock in shades of green and orange got its very first outing.

The brooch, which echoes the dress's print perfectly, was a Shropshire charity shop find in June 2024.

In spite of the continuing heatwave temperatures, guess who insisted on sleeping in our bedroom, which is officially Dove Cottage's warmest room ...

Although the sun kept playing hide-and-seek with the clouds on Saturday, the mercury still climbed to a cloying 30°C.

Cool cottons to the rescue!

I found the fuchsia crinkly tiered skirt at Think Twice back in March 2025. Be prepared to see it pop up on my blog a lot, as it has turned out to be my most-worn Summer skirt so far.

The tie-neck blouse is from King Louie, charity shopped obviously.

On May's final day, Sunday the 31st, the temperature had dropped to around 22°C while a welcome breeze accompanied us on our morning's outing to the leafy park in Boom.

As I wanted to see what was going on in the garden belonging to the ecological visitor centre we made a little detour to stop and smell the roses.

Again, it totally escaped my attention to make proper outfit photos, so you'll have to make so with a mere glimpse of what I was wearing.

My blouse is another King Louie, found at Think Twice in August 2024, and exactly the same model as the one I was wearing on Saturday. The blue, psychedelically patterned, cotton midi skirt (this one) was a charity shop find back in November 2023.

So, that was the month of May all wrapped up.

I'll try to be back with a mini travelogue of our little trip to Poperinge soon. With yet another little holiday - to the UK this time! - on the horizon, I'll definitely need to get my skates on!

Good times, bad times

Now that life is more or less back to normal**, it feels strange to revisit the time, now well over a month ago, when things weren't exactly a bed of roses.

For the sake of the continuity of my blog, however, let's once more hop into the time machine and alight at the end of April.

Only two days after Jos's third - and as it would turn out, final - course of chemotherapy, things were still tickety-boo, with Jos's energy levels still being boosted by the magical properties of the cortisone-like medication he was given right before and after his session.

After a morning of chores on Saturday the 25th of April, I walked into the village for an afternoon of drinks and a catch-up with my friend Inez. 

While I was waiting for her to lock up her e-bike (she'd cycled over from the next village) I was complimented by a passer-by on the skirt I was wearing. It's a vintage Trachten one, a € 5 sales bargain from Think Twice last August. After trying on a couple of tops, I think it found its perfect companion in this charity shopped blouse with its groovilicious caramel, cream, burgundy and lilac pattern.

My accessories were a blend of second-hand and high street finds.

With Sunday's highs of 18°C and oodles of sunny spells, it would have been downright silly to spend the day inside. Instead, we drove to Fort 5 in Edegem, our neighbouring village, for a walk. 

Due to roadworks, we'd had to drive around a bit to find a parking spot, but eventually we managed to grab a space just a short walk from the entrance.

We ended our walk, which took us along and inside some of the atmospheric old fort buildings dating from the 1860s, by soaking up some Spring sunshine on a sun-dappled bench.

My outfit of the day contained no less than two Shrewsbury charity shop finds. I picked up the magenta short-sleeved jumper in June 2024 and the pink floral trainers 5 years earlier.

The skirt came from a long-gone vintage shop in Antwerp. 

Let's have a look at my accessories!

Clockwise from top left: lilac watch and ring from the high street, funky wood and plastic necklace from Accessorize UK, who used to have a branch in Antwerp many years ago, charity shopped pleated leather belt and a dragonfly brooch found on a flea market in Middelburg.  

In the week that followed the chemotherapy side effects started kicking in one by one and, although he was still feeling relatively well on Wednesday, we didn't take any chances and made use of a wheelchair to go for his weekly blood test and consultation at the hospital.

After an interminably long wait, we were finally seen by the doctor, who told us that not only were his blood levels satisfactory, the CT scan he'd had the week before showed that things were stable.

I was wearing my vintage poppy dress that day. I can't for the life of me remember whether it was a charity shop find or a Think Twice one, but it definitely joined my wardrobe pre-blog. Looking back at my previous wears of this gorgeous dress, I always seem to combine it with green accessories, so why break the habit of the last 10 years or so?

My pale pink suede boots were bought in the closing down sale of Antwerp's branch of New Look back in 2019.

I'd taken both Wednesday and Thursday off, as on Thursday we needed to return to the hospital for another check-up, this time for the inguinal hernia surgery he'd had back in January. 

We were running late that morning and were only just in time for our appointment. Expecting the usual delay, we were pleasantly surprised that we were called into the consultant's s office mere minutes after we'd sat down in the waiting room. As everything was looking fine, we were in and out in less than 10 minutes.

A quick look at my outfit, which was all charity shopped over the years, except for the brooch, which was a flea market find. 

The disadvantage of my newly acquired photography assistent is that he or she completely refrained from telling me that my necklace was wonky!  Definitely a he then, I guess :-)

Friday the 1st of May was Labour Day, and thus a public holiday in Belgium.

With Jos being in the full throes of post-chemotherapy misery, the day was spent mostly inside, even if the mercury had climbed to the mid-twenties.

Again, most of my outfit consisted of charity shop finds. This time, the odd one out was my belt with its faux tortoiseshell hexagonal buckle:  a cheeky high street buy back in May 2021.

And then another Saturday rolled along, the afternoon of this moody 23°C day being spent having another meet-up with my friend Inez. We're trying to make this a weekly thing, as it allows us so much more time for drinks and a natter than our former lunchbreak cappuccino catch-ups. 

The dress I was wearing is one of my vintage Diolen Delights and again green was my colour of choice for accessorizing it. I wore a comfortable pair of red shoes by the Portuguese Kiarflex label, charity shopped in the Spring of 2022. This is one of only a handful of pairs of non-sandal shoes I'm able to wear barefoot without causing rubbing and blisters.

The day ended with the thunderstorm which had been brewing all afternoon and which lasted well into the evening.

On Sunday - we were the 3rd of May by now - I woke up with a painful ulcer in my nose, which gave me a headache and meant I could hardly bear the weight of my glasses. I hadn't slept well and needed a steady mix of painkillers to get me through the day.

I still managed to get dressed though, opting for a vintage skirt and Breton top combo, accessorized with an orange belt and necklace to match the orange bits in the skirt.

In spite of having had another sleepless night and being in lots of pain, I dragged myself out of bed on Monday morning and foolishly went off to work. Thankfully, I was able to make a doctor's appointment for that evening, when I was prescribed stronger painkillers, hydrocortisone cream, antibiotics, lots of rest and the advice to take the rest of the week off work.

With wearing my glasses still being an issue there was nothing for it than taking regular naps in between reading bits of Julia Glass's The Whole World Over. I'd read and loved her debut novel, Three Junes, a couple of years ago while on holiday in our cottage in Poperinge, and this one didn't disappoint either.

It took until the Friday of that week until I started feeling myself again and was able to leave the confines of the sofa. With Jos still feeling unwell and not up to anything productive, I caught up on a couple of long overdue chores.

The weather gods weren't particularly on their best behaviour that day so that I was forced to wear a jumper. A thin knit one, but still! My faux patchwork skirt is vintage C&A and again I picked green accessories and wore my Kiarflex shoes.

Not having left the house in days, I was starting to get cabin fever, so I walked into the village to run an errand. As always, I ended up for a quick browse at bargain store Zeeman where I fell hard for these granny square slippers, which obviously had to come home with me.

One final outfit before I call it a day.

Saturday's weather was infinitely better than Friday's, with highs into the low twenties.

No need for a jumper that day. Instead, I chose a red and white floral short-sleeved blouse (from the Belgian Wow To Go label via the charity shops) which I wore with a skirt with the funkiest of patterns, which someone on Instagram once likened to a collection of colourful plates. 

This time, I picked black for my accessories to tie in with the black background of my skirt. Again, the charity shops supplied the majority of my outfit. 

*** I will try to catch up with your blogs soon but please do bear with me as I might have jinxed it when I said that life was more or less back to normal. Earlier this week, Jos fell and hurt his knee, which made us end up in A&E once more. Thankfully nothing is broken or seriously amiss but it will take time to heal, meaning that our little holiday - which starts tomorrow - will be one with a hurdle!

See you soon!