7th It has been a busy start to the month with work continuing to get the garage sorted out. Have taken advantage of left over ceramic plinth to tidy up the edges on the first side and am now working on the second. Yesterday I had a visit from Luce with her daughter Melanie who wanted to see the house.
There have been complaints that Cassidy has not featured in recent photos on the blog. So I set out to rectify that yesterday. He loves his big garden where we often play football together. He is a good playmate and a VERY happy dog!
So many toys, so little time.
Don’t tell me he isn’t smiling?
11th A lovely bunch of flowers arrived today from Georgie and family to sit on the sideboard with house warming cards from other friend. Work continues on the garage!
12th The garage is finished and looking much cleaner with its newly painted white walls and light grey floors. Now it just remains to rationalise the stuff and get rid of anything un-necessary.
I never tire of the view from my back deck, especially in the late afternoon sun.
21st. I set off this morning to do what will probably be the last harvesting of blackberries for this season. They are beginning to rot on the briar. However I am not complaining as I already have 3 large kilner jars of stewed blackberry and apple and with today’s 1.2kg of fruit 12 jars of jam.
My main haul today was from the hedgerow between the local plant nursery and a fallow, unfenced field. I had to leave one section unharvested because I came across a nest of Asiatic wasps. The rather dangerous non native species are unwanted guests and if you inform the municipality they will send a team out to remove and destroy the nest. After I had finished picking I went into the nursery next door to talk to the proprietor about this. He undertook to make the call but his biggest preoccupation was with impressing on me that I do not have the right to pick these blackberries as this is private land!!!
23rd. Dusted down my bikes and went for a one hour ride. I chose to use the MTB as I was not sure of the quality of the farm tracks that I had picked out on the OS map. One hour in pleasant temperatures on broad, mostly grassed, undulating farm tracks. Enough of a cardio vascular work out for the first ride in a long while. Now I just need to keep it up!
26th. Finished installing the video door bell today. It was quite a challenge especially pulling the cable through from the front of the property to the location of the distribution board and then through the hollow wall without it dropping into the cavity! However now that it is done it is quite cool. I can see the houses across the road!
Then it occurred to me that I might be able to fit the small sofa into the gap under the window between the distribution board space (heavily contested with the constructor) if I turned it on its end. So after much heaving, pushing and gentle persuasion the lounge has been a bit re-arranged and looks more spacious. Quite pleased with the outcome.
27th Today’s job was to insulate the garage door. the walls and roof are already insulated so it seemed a shame to have cold coming in via the aluminium door. It will make it pleasanter if I want to work on projects in the garage during winter. Also I have foam underlay left over from laying the laminate flooring in the two bedrooms. This looks like a good opportunity to use that up. I bought one pack of polystyrene sheets from the hardware and have used them all up with two door panels left to do. So before I add the final layer of sheet foam I need to think about what I am going to do, if anything, on the last two panels.
This is the dilemma you find yourself in when you break with the habit of a lifetime, in this case, “Never throw anything away”. I recently, in a fit of clearing out, took three nice thin sheets of polystyrene to the dump!
28th Took a bike ride today round the local streets in search of low hanging figs and bought home a 1.2kg haul to turn into Jam! Yum!
29th The veggie garden, all in large troughs is coming on well. I am eating salads daily and my first (and possibly only!) butternut is growing by leaps and bounds. Made a loaf of yogurt bread today. This could be a stable if I decide to “shield” over the winter.
31st A productive day with a batch of Crunchies baked, jars of Basil Pesto made and a new batch or basil plants and lettuce bedded out.
capetocarpe 