Planting a copse

Old Shrubbery

Our big project of the weekend was to get the copse planted at the end of our garden. I have a fantasy in which we harvest wood for the house from coppiced trees. It will be a good few years before many of these babies are up to being harvested but we have taken the first few steps.

Time management

I've never been great at managing my time but recently I have been getting worse and worse. I've also noticed that now that my boys are older they also seem to be requiring more of my time too despite gaining more independence. Perhaps it is because I used to be able to do two things at once when they were smaller but today they will require my full attention. Regardless of the reason the amount of time at my disposal feels as if it is shrinking daily.

Spring clean

Our neighbours have always kept the exterior of their property tidy but this has recently been taken to extremes with their regular brushing and tidying of the gravel. It all seems a little over the top until you realise that they are trying to sell their property and, in the process, are trying to make it look as good as it possibly can. Unfortunately, if you turn your back to theirs you will be faced with ours, a lot less pretty.

I admit it, we hadn't tidied up the front of our place for two years. Thanks to the tractors driving past there was a vast build up of muck, soil and weeds along the bottom of our front wall. Not only looking a little grotty but pretty disgusting. It didn't help that we still had a pile of subsoil sat on our driveway left over from some building work 3 years ago. The regular brushing of our neighbours had it's effect, we decided that it was time to smarten up a bit!

It is amazing what a few hours of hard work can do. J removed the subsoil pile and generally tidied up the driveway. This also included a drastic prune of our wisteria that was beginning to take over the roof of our garage and looked as if it intended to cover up our solar panels. I grafted at the front, removing most of the plants from our little border and introduced a couple of large primulas and snowdrops. My rose, that hasn't been happy for a while, had a drastic chop too and will hopefully come back bigger and better. But the hardest work was cleaning up the edge of the road. There had been such a build up of muck that all sorts of weeds were flourishing that needed hoicking out.

It was hard work but I was amazed at how quickly it all pulled together. Just a couple of hours of hard labour and our home looks so much more inviting to visitors. The results may not be comparable to our neighbours but it is no longer an embarrassment.

Make do and mend

Mending finished!

Much as I enjoy handicrafts there is one aspect that I never seem to get on with and that is the mending. It's not that I hate it, more that I would rather be doing something more interesting.

Washing.

My washing machine is dying. When on a spin cycle it sounds like an aircraft that is about to take off. So, expecting the worst some day soon, we bought replacement bearings. Unfortunately there is no way to replace the bearings because our washing machine has a sealed drum. We are not happy.

Stuff

Not a picture of my junk room!

I should have guessed that I was going to get hit hard with a cold. And so I have. But it's nearly gone, hurray! I still feel lethargic but finally there is a bit of fight in me to get going again.

Looking at the lawn

crocus

Spring is definitely on it's way. I cannot miss the crocus' that have pushed their heads out of the earth.

Kitchen update

Last weekend found us removing yet more of our fitted kitchen. This is a photo of the end wall that used to have units all along with a narrow top unit sat directly on the bottom as there is so little headroom in this kitchen. It felt claustrophobic and dingy. But what I really hated was that it blocked my access to the window in the corner.

Spring cleaning.

Garlic cloves in modules

Okay, it isn't yet spring but the sun shone for a bit. I had a busy day getting started on the garden. When I say getting started I mean doing what I could without having to step too often onto our still water saturated land. So the shed it was then.

My 2013 Christmas decorations: wreath

After putting up all of this years decorations I looked at what was left in the box, a handful of faux foliage based items that looked chic in our old house but I've never been able to make them work here. So I let them be. Then I watched a 'how to do Christmas' type programme where I saw them using cable ties for many, many uses and I was inspired me to sort out a wreath for the front door using the odds and ends left over.

The wreath base is from an orange leafed wreath that I had purchased many years ago. The orange fell out of favour but I've been reusing this base with fresh foliage for several years. But this year it just felt too wet to gather the greenery so I had been putting it off.

Cable ties are a fabulous way to put this together. Quick, secure, I am so impressed! And if I want to re-do it next year then I can simply cut them at the back and it will simply come apart. So much easier than winding wire or, more usually for me, string around again and again to hold it together. Just a quick wrap of ribbon and it was finished. 5 minutes tops.

I still prefer fresh foliage wreaths but it wasn't going to happen this year so this has been a great compromise and has coped well with the bad weather that has hit us over the Christmas season.

Emergency kit

Local flooding

What do you need in an emergency kit? A quick bit of googling opens you up to a whole world of disaster planning for the apocalypse! I think that I might be too scared to leave the house for a while...

Condensation

As you can see from the photograph this is a wonderful image of condensation. Being a double glazed window theoretically we shouldn't get much condensation but they are old (for PVC) and clearly we do.

The importance of good design

A well designed, for our purposes, work space

I find myself pondering this subject often. It is so easy to spot a bad design but how do you come up with a good one. What makes a good design?

The kitchen

Behind the sink

As I've said before, our house is still very much a work in progress. There are times that I wish that we had found a more modern home that only required a lick of paint.

Forgetting about the garden

Getting the garden tidied up for winter is what I am supposed to be doing at the moment. But I'm not. I need to collect all the fallen leaves for leaf mould. I keep putting this off. I just want to be tucked up inside the house with I nice hot drink.

Decorating again!

I've not even posted the finished pictures from the bathroom yet and I'm already moving onto something new. Actually the bathroom isn't quite finished though I have completed my bit so I'll have some after pics up soon.

All my preserves

A fine larder

Dough nuts

Dough nuts

Doing up the bathroom: floor

I'm sure that I said that I wanted this project to just be a big clean up. I did, didn't I? I'm positive that I made that statement. Well, here is the bathroom now. J decided to become involved.

Apples and cider

Windfalls

Apple season is upon us. We have four trees in our garden but we don't eat many apples. Some will be bottled as apple sauce but the majority of them will be juiced to make scrumpy.