So the clocks have changed again and I’m starting to get the house ready for winter, my wood delivery arrived (oh my where do a start?!) yesterday and spent a happy day stacking wood as well as finally giving in and lighting the fire.
When I last wrote I said that all the ugly render had been hacked off the barn walls and were ready to be repointed. Well after more mixes than I care to remember here are the finished barn walls. It’s just the windows to be painted and doors to sort out now. As lovely as the corrugated metal doors are it really time for them to go and I hope that this will be done early next year.
After all my hard work on the allotment here’s just a small sample of my produce. I had courgettes coming out of my ears and there is not a courgette recipe that I haven’t tried! I saw something the other day that said ‘one day you’re young, hip and carefree and the next minute you’re photographing vegetables in your garden’! Ah hem.
Friends C and E came over for 3 weeks and as usual went around the house and garden like whirling dervishes doing loads of jobs of me. Along with much needed cleaning, de-cluttering and generally tidying me up they cracked on with the allotment and building my new greenhouse. On the allotment they built 2 new beds, extending climbing frames for my fruit bushes, planted 2 trees, added more gravel to pathways and gave all the roses and bushes a good cut back.
The biggest job was the building the new greenhouse – took much longer than expected and was way more complicated than the scant instructions would have you believe. But here it is in it’s fully glory along with Luna who can’t resist getting in on the action.
Things are progressing in the gite; the ceilings are all painted and the beams have all been waxed. The new floor upstairs has started to be laid and we’ve almost finished all the electrics ready for downstairs to be tiled. I currently have a full kitchen sitting in the house ready to be fitted. The gite will have a much nicer kitchen than the one I currently use but I’m trying not to be bitter about it – much.
I also had a bit of time to do a bit of up cycling and painting:
Back in the day when I was a runner and when I used to do mad things like bungee jumps and climb mountains, I used to enter races and ended up with more t-shirts of one size fits all, as in they fit no-one, that I could every need. Not wanting to throw them out or leave them stuffed in a box I made a t-shirt blanket.
Things here are slowly starting to open up again. And over the summer I went to a 3 day music festival, which was handily just up the road so was able to go home to my own bed each night. We’ve also finally been able to back to dance classes – so much fun to be back doing this.
Luna, Chablis and Malbec all continue to muddle along together some days they wind each other up and others they snuggle up together best of friends. I cannot believe it is a year since Merlot left us though.
I did have a bit of run in with Luna – not her fault as I was cutting back lavender in one of the gardens I work and she was running around at full pelt and didn’t see me and ran straight into me and this was the resulting bump followed 2 days later by some lovely black eyes. I still have a slight tender bump even today.
During the summer we took a day off and went to Brantome for a very chilled out day, lunch by the river, walking around the town and the abbey and just generally people watching.
Here are a few pics Luna and my walks around the village.
And lastly I cannot believe that it was my birthday again. I had a fabby evening with Builder Dave, his lovely wife and Builder Dave Junior. And for the first time ever I carved a pumpkin and went to a Halloween party.
the house will be lovely when it's finished... 