The Garden

I am now beginning to realise that this garden will never ever be finished! As fast as I do one part the rest unravels, blimey, why did I buy a house with such a big garden? The raised beds along the edge are coming along nicely, coming to life with bulbs, but the rest of the plants have struggled with the cold weather, we shall see.

The new potting shed is looking good, but of course I forgot to water the plants over the winter and they are not looking good, in fact they are very very dead. But the shed looks good! It's also full already of stuff I don't need.

Now the vegetable patch is half done, the sleepers are done and the soil is in. I ended up with injections in my wrists after moving 3 tons of soil last year so I am taking it easier this year! Planning to sort out the area between the beds and cover it with gravel and log slabs. If I can get that done this year I will be happy. Making the small beds into a herb garden and a salad garden, then an asparagus bed, and two veg plots. Should keep me out of mischief. Here are pictures how it is today.

The little black thing in the bottom of the picture is a sonic cat scarer off ebay. I bought it because next door had a new kitten who thought my veg patch was a nice large litter tray, grrrrrrrrr. Sadly I heard today he was run over on the busy main road so my gadget is redundant for now.

Anyway I will post later in the year and show the progress.

The Kitchen

The builder had renovated the kitchen before I moved it. I really liked the style, it was very simple and functional, but small! Eeeeeeeeeeek it was minute! I invited Holly and Jon around for Sunday lunch, and got well stressed as I had no room for anything. I decided to have an extension. Outside behind the kitchen was an ugly outbuilding,(an outside toilet) adjoining next door's wall and it was hideous. Building an extension would remove the outhouse, and obliterate the ugly view of the wall.

I called the same builder back and we decided to double the size of the kitchen, making it into a long galley kitchen. We would keep the same units and just add to them. The building work took ages to happen, being complicated by the fact that nobody was living next door to give me permission to join the wall. Eventually the same builder bought next door so the problem was sorted. He renovated next door to match my half which was great I thought.

My building work went well; I liked the work in spite of long delays which made it seem forever. But oh dear, when they fitted the interior they made it into a disaster, too long to go into here. In the end I found the courage to sack the builder, and finished it mostly by myself. Also held back a couple of grand to complete it, so felt that justice was served.

It is lovely now, really nice looking and works well when one is cooking. if there are two of you, then you need to be quite friendly as your bottoms touch as you pass. Bit of a nuisance if it is a work man fixing things!