12 years ago today....

Best thing I ever did.

Day 2 - the aftermath...

It was hot, and too long... but, this is IT. We have actually layed the last slab. They are all gone, done, layed, finished.

Ow.

Brian laying the last slab in the "utility" area (this is where the compost, recycle and wheelie bins live.)


Et... voila... that's it.


Sadly, the last two days of hot weather have brought the insects out in force, and Brian the intrepid slab layer has been utterly savaged.

Just a slice of cucumber to cool and inflamed eye:


But the whole thing for inesct ravaged legs....

odd... but apparently helped.

Day 2... the long weekend.

Early morning (ish) we stuck our heads out the bedroom window to see this:


While this garden is, indeed, quite lovely and at its best at this time of year... the sunshine meant one thing.... more concrete mixing and slab laying.....

However, there were a couple of distractions along the way:

The very nice postie brought me the item I've been waiting for. Sad, but true. An implement to help me turn the excess produce into something storable and edible....


Anyway - heavy work was interrupted by my mum with a few computer problems, so we managed to put the work off for a few hours. Beware of relatives bearing broken computers and the makings of bacon butties:


So while we breakfasted on bacon butties and fixed computers, my mum's dog, Marlowe, found a shady spot (safe from the sky falling on his head).

As demanded by Ali

End of Day 1... the long weekend

So - having shifted 1/2 tonnes of scalpings, hired a compactor plate, filled the nasty holes in the drive and then topped off with a tonne of gravel... it looked like THIS: (I'd like to add in true form Brian wielded the "wacker" plate - (let's face it, it's a mechanical toy with a motor), while I singlehandly shifted the scalpings and gravel).

Infill to new path:


Storm damaged holes in the drive repaired


(only problem with this is that the gravel is a COMPLETELY different colour to the old stuff. Which means we need to order another 3 tonnes to spread over the rest of the drive.... oh poo).

Suitably embarressed by his lack of manly muscles, Brian proceeded to single-handedly (almost) mix the concrete and lay the slabs outside the GH and the first row in the utility area:

The new "utility" area... first row:


The new step outside my playroom:


OoooOOO we are *so* nearly there.

Best laid plans of mice and men

We have a loooong weekend coming up, not only is it a bank holiday (which means no work monday) but Brian and I have also taken off friday (that's tomorrow (yipee!)) and tuesday.

That's a FIVE day weekend. Glorious.

However, I think we may have a few projects to complete that mean the sofa surfing will have to be left to the dogs:

 
 

Bugger.

Oh well, does anyone know when the sweetcorn will ripen?

Just to reassure Graham

Today I sent Graham, of Graham, Prince and Tilly too fame a chuckit, for which he kindly made a generous donation to EGLR .

Now just to reassure Graham that when I said I had a cupboard full of these I was not kidding, and this was not some weird cyber-stalking middle aged woman with 5 dogs looking for a younger man with a kind heart who could keep her and her dogs in the manner to which they would like to be accustomed.... I'm posting this

 

See?

*chortle*

Anyone else want a chuckit?

Oh yum

Frazzled by today's (and yesterday's) enthralling water and camera crises... I was looking for inspiration for something to do with marrow for supper (my neighbour gave me one yesterday). Nazila sent me this, and I have to say... it's SCRUMMY


The marrow and rosemary "side" Oh fab... I could jut eat this on its own.



I didn't have a red pepper, so a pale green one fresh from the GH had to do...


Ready for the oven


et.. voila!


And I have to say - this is scrummy.

Mains, springs, leaks and holes

Blimey what a day

First thing it looked a bit like this:

It's an ill wind that blows no good, and Maddie the cat thought the running water drinking fountain we had installed for her was really quite nice.

Phoned the insurance people, the bad news is they won't pay for it. Now we COULD wait for the water board to decide to fix it for free (or not cos it's a shared main), in their own time, (2-3 weeks) during which time damage would be done to the house because of the water pooling against the render, and the insurance WOULD pay for that. But because we want to ensure we don't get any damage done and want to get it fixed quickly, we have to pay for it ourselves.

Found a very nice plumber chap this morning who said he could get to us this afternoon, unfortunately their morning's work did not go to plan and they could not get out. Having already taken one day off work I started to panic and phoned the builder who did our extension work (and lives locally). He and his dad came to the rescue.

Looking for the other end of the pipe:


And here's where we are tonight, no leaks, but one hell of a muddy mess!


They will come back saturday to finish and clean up.


For now I am pretending the front garden does not exist.

So how did you break the Canon D20 Kerri?

Ah well, it is a tale of woe, sleepless nights, floods and rampaging pirates (that last may have been a minor exaggeration).

We had people round for tea yesterday. Tea, scones and cakes. It was nice. Anyway, one of the visitors had been unwell and was feeling the cold. So Brian kindly turned on the central heating.

After our visitors departed, we sat down with a glass of wine to watch a film. There was one scene in the film I wanted to make a point about, so we paused the film to rewind. At this point we noticed a strange noise coming from the boiler.

We checked the radiators and noticed they were not warm, checked the boiler pressure, came up with a theory that there was air in the system, bled the valves and went back to watching the film.

When the film finished we could still hear the funny noise. So we cooked up another theory about the air in the boiler system overheating the water circuit. So we ran the hot water until it went cold, hoping this would sort the problem.

It was about 12:30 at this point, Brian went off to bed while I waited for the hot water to run cold. It made no difference, so I found a torch and went round to the front of the house to look at the boiler.

I found the problem. The mains water feed into the house had sprung a major leak and was flooding out the bed in front of the house.

Shite.

Got Brian up to have a look. We decided there was nothing we could do until morning and it looked like the water was draining away sufficiently not to cause a problem.

However, the noise of the water escaping was rattling though all the pipes in the house (due to proximity of main feed coming into the house with the central heating pipes).

So I could not sleep.

So I went to the spare bedroom and settled down there where it was quieter.

However, the spare bed is firmer than ours and aggravated my dodgy hip, so I hauled myself out of bed to go downstairs and fetch a hot water bottle to soothe it.

It was at this point, in the dark, that I tripped over the camera tripod.

My trusty Canon is in need of major TLC.

If I were not an athiest I would be send up a prayer of thanks for an understanding hubby who knows just how clumsy his wife is and bought the extended accidental damage cover for the camera. As it is I'll just cook him breakfast.

The week ahead of sorting out insurance and plumbers fills me with dread.

My sense of humour has failed.

Friday salad

When I can get my "aristocratic shit together" in the morning I make salad for work

Lettuce "Counter" picked the day before, toms 10 mins out of the greenhouse and cucumbers overflowing as usual.
 

Yeterday I picked our first lot of "real" plums, Brian was convinced there was not a single decent one on the tree... he's not a gardener.
 

Meanwhile last night I prepped the onions too small to use for cooking for the pickling jar. And this time I prepared my own vinegar mixture, because last years store bought variety was... a little... strong.. *wheeeze*.
 

At this time of year you can never have enough jars.
 

Scrumping

We have 5 dogs (I may have mentioned this before). Anyway, the thing about having five dogs is that you always have a pocketful of poop scoops when out walking. And these come in very handy when confronted in the woods with a tree full of apples for the scrumping (that would otherwise fall to the ground and rot (and don't worry - there's plenty to go round for the small critters)).

Very handy things, poop bags.


These are the perfect apples, slightly under-ripe and loaded with pectin for making rosemary jelly. Mmmmm.

We've got greengages

A hugely enormous bumper crop the likes of which we have never heretofore seen before. Must be the weather.

I would rush out and take a picture of said greengages growing on the greengage tree (well what kind of tree WOULD you expect them to grow on?) but it's dark. And pissing down with rain. So I won't. So there.

Anyway - armed with more greengages than I knew what to do with and the power of the internet, I found out how to make jam. Well, sort of...

 

So we now have OODLES of greengage jam.
It's yummy.


All I need to do now is find gazillions of unsuspecting friends and relatives and not only accost them with cucumbers, but also press jars of jam on them.

And then find more jars.


Greengage anyone?

New toy...

Saturday was a really really good day.

My lovely neighbour Sue brought me sweet peas from her garden to trade for a cucumber (this is particularly nice as at the moment I am forcing cucumbers on everyone I meet, including workmates and the freecycler chap).

Our kitchen is now full of the scent of sweet peas...

Brian poached me perfect eggs on muffins for breakfast, washed down with black coffee (please note lurchery mugs....)


And the postie brought me a widget I had ordered:


No - not the camera, I've had that a while, and not the tripod either, that's an old one of Brian's which is seeing good use again for the first time in years.

It's that dangly bit of wire, that lets me do THIS:
 

I am chuffed to bits.

Shhhhh - come with me

Come to the front garden and look at what I found this morning in the veggie patch
 

Isn't it cute?
 


My first ever round courgette. I am ridiculously excited about this. Which probably tells you that I lead a rather boring life, but never mind, it keeps me happy...

I love freecycle

Now you see 'em....
 

Now you don't
 

And I did not even have to lift a finger (except to make a cup of tea for the very nice chap who came to collect them).

How cool is that?


PS. Can someone please shoot the pigeon who is perched on the chimney pot cooing loudly down the chimney?

Morning all

7:17 AM. Dogs fed, plants watered, pee watered (yes - we water the pee), cat let out. I'm not sure WHY the cat goes out every morning because as soon as you open the door she goes to the other door and asks to be let in. Dogs I understand, cat's are a mystery.

There's something else I'm supposed to do in the mornings.. what was it...? Oh yes, shower, dress. We have a "dress code" at work, it's "wear clothes".

But it's wednesday today, as one of my old uni lecturers used to say "I hate wednesdays, they cut into both weekends".

I am so a morning person.

Weeding

anything I weed today will not grow back tomorrow. With the possible exception of the bindweed. But I have to show willing and join the fight. I weeded for an hour tonight, the front garden has been a little neglected with the other work going on.


The Bond of Bees, Keri Hulme, author of the "Bone People"

I'm Blending my mind
With the ease of wine
From candle flowers
On a warm afternoon
And a bloom of bees
From the kamahi
Resounds resounds
In the quiet room

Spikes to the honey
Bees to the comb
The yeast to the sweat mead
And now the mead home.



The roses are now in full second flush and look fabulous, I love them...

Good Morning World

The sky is a cystal clear blue, the dogs have breakfasted in the sun
 

And there are dew dusted roses blooming.
 

Isn't life great?

This evening.

This evening I have
a) come home (it was a good start)
b) mopped the water from the floor where KuBrin stood in the water bowl in his excitement to greet me
c) walked the dogs
d) fed the dogs
e) pilled the dogs
f) planted bedding plants in the herb bed to replace those eaten by slugs
g) put slug pellets down
h) picked cucumbers
i) picked tomatoes
j) picked and washed a lettuce for tomorrow's salad.
k) hung out washing
l) put away three loads of washing
m) unloaded the dishwasher
n) loaded the dishwasher
o) put the bins out
p) watered the garden
q) sown some seeds
r) done the paperwork and paid the bills
s) ordered dog food
t) ironed 8 shirts
u) poop scooped
v) juiced apples

Come home Brian, all is forgiven

Nothing for it but to finish the last slice of CAKE.
 


And on the subject of cucumbers, please send help.

So what did we do with our weekend?

The sun was shining, the weather was hot for the first time here since April.

On Saturday we finished the "great path laying expedition of 2007". Well - almost. We've finished the concrete mixing and sandstone slab laying for the major path runs, there is still pointing and a small area to do behind the garage but no one would notice if we did not!).

The last path looked like this:


We celebrated with a glass of wine, a BBQ supper on the deck and falling into the hot tub in a state of exhaustion.

For an encore today I cleared out a whole load of "stuff" in the area behind the garage, constructed an impromptu compost bin (our old ones are too small) from the sandstone crates, shifted a whole load of old slabs and one bin full of compost (at one point I had composty muck on the end of my nose as well as on my shins - but it's ok - I have showered - honest).

In a moment of inspiration I then posted the remaining slabs on freecycle - and have had LOADS of interest - so with any luck someone will come and take the rest away this week. I love the internet.

Then I chopped up the rest of the crates, it's the first time our back lawn as been free of crates for a year. So I had to mow. And restake the trees. And dig out the concrete in front of the greenhouse.

Can I please go back to work now for a rest?

I may never walk again

but the upside is we have finished laying the sandstone slabs around the house.

Still need pointing & then there is the bins/recycling area behind the garage to do, but basically we've finsihed the main paths. Only taken 4 months.

I'll unload pics from the camera later. BBQ & wine first.

Ow.

This is not good news.

Foot and mouth outbreak

The last time this happened all the footpaths were closed, dog walking was very difficult. (Which is not to belittle the suffering and slaughter of thousands of farm animals and the ruin of many farmers' livelyhoods).

Oh poo.

Happiness is

an extra 2Gb RAM for your laptop.

AND a new cookery book.

AND an unread novel.

An Escape Plan.

Sometime in the summer of 2006, after a few months of the daily grind of commuting to my new job (sum total of 10 miles, up to an hour each way), wondering where I was going, what we would be doing in a few years time, you know, the usual mid life crisis stuff, I hatched up a PLAN.

I'm not really sure how this came about but for many years I had lusted after a house on the West Falklands called "Shag Cove". Perhaps not the the most appropriate of names (though for some unfathomable reason it appealed to him indoors), nevertheless, no neighbours, no mains power, space for the dogs to run, really in the middle of nowhere and overlooking a beautiful inlet in the Coast Ridge. Colder than a well digger's arse as the saying goes.

Mulling over the possibilities and improbabilities of living in such a remote place with no income I had a moment of folly.

"Brian, how about we cash in our endowments and buy a house in the Falklands?"

"Ok"

Pregnant pause...

"What do you mean 'ok'?"

"I've been waiting for you to suggest this for years".

And they say men don't understand women.

So the plan progressed, the compromise was buying a "settlement house" (ie one with a few neighbours) rather than an "outside house" (ie one with NO neighbours, for miles, many miles, and no roads, or power, or water supply.)

Out of the blue a house came up for sale in the settlement where my family used to live, indeed, some of them still live there. Internet powered diddle dee telegraph operating at full tilt, the news arrived, was debated, weighed, considered, rejected, reconsidered, and leapt upon. £100 of telephone calls later we sent an email offer. 12 hours later it was accepted.

Gulp.

Red tape sundered, we find ourselves in possession of a four bed house on the edge of Doctor's Creek in Fox Bay Village, in need of much care and attention. 8000 miles away. OK - great plan. I like it.

It's here: "Old Doctor's House"

Front of the house, looking south from Doctor's creek:
 

Back of the house, Looking North towards Doctor's Creek.
 

Looking out from the "conservatory".