So a glimpse of the new windows. Still need to be finished off outside, and we have a man onto that - just need to wait until he is free! Eventually we'll be re-painting the house as neither of us are that enamoured with the colour!

We've been making the most of the glorious weather and spending a lot of time in the garden the last couple of weeks. We cleared a bed that had two (unwanted) stag-horn trees in, and ornamental grasses (of which I am not a fan) and have made a start on replanting it. I'm very much a slow gardener in this respect, waiting for the right plant to wind it's way to me.
We did want to replace the trees though and so off to the garden centre we went. After much umming and ahhing the perfect tree called to us. And here she is.....


Her name is Katy. We do love a glass of Katy cider and so it seemed fitting to bring the apple into our garden. We already have three very old apple trees, and probably didn't really need another but - we fell in love with her.

I'm not a huge fan of roses if i'm honest, though our garden has many and they all have a beautiful scent. That is a must for me if they are going to take up the space in the garden. Unfortunately many of them have got leggy and unruly and as I'm not a rose expert I wonder if they can be saved?
Oz has really been responsible for the major changes in the garden as I'm physically not up to most of it. He does like roses and wanted one for the bed, so i steered him towards the David Austin stand (my years in the flower business mean that i can be fussy about growers) and he eventually picked this beauty


L D Braithwaite. A beautiful deep red, the blooms are full right now. This one has a delicate fragrance, you really have to get your nose right in to appreciate it and having to do that has reminded me of the sensual, velvet feeling of rose petals next to skin. I keep going out there and burying my face in the bloom! Oz was given instructions though that he needs to learn how to look after roses if he wants them in the garden!

He's really found a passion for the garden, I think he's actually overtaking me in that respect!
And this is one of Oz's first additions to the garden

our Buddha statue. Up until now he's been sat in this bed almost hidden from view in a drift of forget-me-nots, and quite beautiful it was - but we cleared the bed completely so he needed some new companion plants and we decided to go for some striking Zantedeschia, and then some marigolds. The one he has placed in his hand was Lemmy's contribution, and led to a discussion about who Buddha is.

Well as usual life plods along here. Had a lovely hour with a relative who is over from Australia on a quick visit, always a pleasure to see her - always tinged with sadness that she will be going back, so far away from me. The exhaust on the car gave up on me this week, so my bank account took a bit of a beating.....

And rain......we finally got some much needed rain, though the soil is still so dry out in the garden....

Halfway!

The window fitters have been here the last two days, and will be here for two more. We now have three new windows in upstairs, they will be doing the two in the living room tomorrow and Friday they will be boxing in and finishing off.

Now when I say halfway - i mean halfway through this stage of the job. When it's finished it will be halfway through getting the windows replaced on the house. There are several more but I'm afraid we need to save some pennies to get those done.

This afternoon I have unpicked the old curtains that i hurriedly put together for Lemmy's two rooms when we first moved in and have been stitching calico round the edges to make them bigger/better. The sewing machine has been liberated from it box and it has made me realise that I really do need to find a space to set up a permanent sewing corner. It seems such a hassle to clear a space on a table, run an extension cable and then have to put it all away again - so I just don't get it out unless there is a job that I MUST do.
I have to admit I really don't have much of an idea what I'm doing with this machine. I'm honestly just making it up as a I go along. I'm not sure i'll ever realise my dream of making my own clothes!

Sunshine!

What a glorious weekend we have had! It's been so warm that even I ditched the jeans in favour of a short skirt and summery vest. We have spent the whole weekend in the garden. There's still quite a lot to do here with the garden, but i'm determined to do it at a reasonable pace and let it develop rather than wade in and change things for the sake of it. I didn't mean to do it but this weekend we cleared eveything that was growing under the pear tree. Much of this garden had been neglected in the couple of years before we bought the house and so much of it has to be stripped right back if i'm ever going to make it truly beautiful
In front of the pear tree is an area that we cleared of pampas grass last year and made a little seating area with a fire pit. We've had old carpet down the side of this to keep the weeds down while we waited for inspiration. Saturday afternoon we decided it would be good to pave it, so we had somewhere to site the barbeque. Sunday afternoon Oz did it! We have an old table next to it that was given to us by a friend, and we sanded the top of it the other week and gave it a coat of emulsion. Next we're going to decorate it as a family and after a coat of varnish it will be done.
Lots of other jobs were done too, tidying up the bed full of garlic, checking the seeds in the greenhouse.

After lunch on Saturday we decided to head up the road to Sibsey Trader Mill and after climbing right to the top had a lovely cup of tea and slice of cake outside in the sunshine. They had a few plats for sale so i bought three saxifrage, an aquilegia and a twisted willow. It was also the first outing this year for Ethel our VW campervan. We were going to sell her, but have decided to keep her just a little while longer and so have ordered a hammock bed to go in the front so Lemmy can sleep in there with us rather than having to fight to put the huge awning up everytime we camp out.

New Year, New Hopes

So it's the second day of a whole new year, and a whole new decade!

Today I collected Bam from his dad's and we went out for lunch. He was difficult - and it wasn't a very enjoyable experience if I'm honest.
We got home and after a cup of tea we went up to start prepping his bedroom for re-decorating (he's currently sleeping in the spare room).

Oz and I settled down tonight at 7pm to hear the much hyped bumper episode of The Archers. Um - it was a bit of a damp squib really.....I suppose we'll see how the storyline unfolds from here.

After a somewhat subdued Christmas (which in all honesty I did not enjoy and was glad to see the back of) we had a quiet New Year's Eve in together, the woodburner blazing away and good music and a few drinks.

I've been struggling with Winter Blues this year. The most down I've been for a couple of years now and I keep waiting to turn a corner with it. I'm now showing the early signs of a cold too, which I'm hoping will not develop any further. I need to be physically well to fight off the blues.

And so another year begins. I have hopes, and goals - we shall see which of my wishes come true and which of my goals I achieve as the year goes by.

the photos!

This is what we inherited when we bought the house. That is actually York stone, and the mantel shelf is a solid piece of slate. All saved to be re-used somehow.



Stage one of dismantling complete.



Found this in the next layer of brick?


Stage two


Damn Jackdaws!

Done!

We took the plywood arch down.

And found a scrap of amazing wallpaper behind it.

And the finished result!


Still need a fire surround making and installing, but we now have a much improved room. Carpet down, furniture in, bookshelves and most importantly a lovely warm woodburner. We've started spending our evenings in here again now instead of the living room!

the dining room saga.....

The original plan was just to open up the fireplace and have a woodburner installed. We spoke to a builder in June who said he could do it but not until the beginning of Sept......which we thought was OK. Then it started to be a case of 'well i'm quite busy'.....so I got my Dad to come along and knock out the old fireplace so the builder could just come in and do the installation.
BUT........he kept giving us the runaround. I was annoyed because i'd rather he'd just been honest and said he was tied up with a job and couldn't do it. It was the endless 'i'll call you' or 'i'll drop in tonight after work' and then doing neither that really got me mad.
So we ended up getting a different firm to look at the job (through a friend).......and suddenly the job got bigger. We decided to just get the whole room finished.
So we had a bricky in to tidy up the fireplace and put a hearth stone in. He was a right grumpy sod!
Then the plasterers came in. They knocked back one really messy wall and fresh plastered that and they plastered the chimney breast too. Plaster dust gets everywhere. I'm not a stranger the to the mess of building works but honestly that was just awful. Still finding layers of plaster dust on stuff now! (no comments about my housekeeping, if you don't mind). The plasterers were good guys. I liked them.
Then a joiner to fix the ceiling. He was a good lad too.
Then scaffold went up. The guys came to install the woodburner. They got up the scaffold. They came back down the scaffold.

'We can't do it'

'oh'

Chimneys not safe. So. More scaffold. More delays. Wait for bricklayer to come. More money.

An argument about the bricklayers pricing policy and our project manager not being entirely clear about that. We resolved it. Not entirely to my satisfaction but that's because i'm a miserly sod!

So on the 19th of November, considerably later in the year than we anticipated our woodburner was finally installed!

*big cheer*

I have to mention here that independently of this work we had a couple of other builders in to do some odd jobs and finishing off and they were a pleasure to have here. Well, mostly. Cos if Cookie reads this I don't want him getting all self-important.
Will post the photos in another entry because it will be easier.

Goodbyes.....

We've said sad goodbyes to two beloved four legged companions in recent weeks.

Our beautiful Kelly-dog.


She was a grand old lady. In August 2009 we very nearly lost her when she collapsed one morning. We rushed her to the vet and after an emergency op she came home with us and made a remarkable recovery. What we discovered as a result of this episode was that Kelly had a very aggressive form of cancer and we were told to expect her to die within a couple of months. Well, never one to conform - she just kept on going. She still loved her walks, still scooted off to munch on fresh horse droppings or find some rotten old bait that a fisherman had left on the bank. She even still eyed up the ducks and swans on the drain, threatening every so often to dive in.......something we discouraged because she was never in a hurry to get out again! and of course the inevitable wet dog smell that would invade the house afterwards!

She actually had three types of cancer diagnosed and it was one of the others which eventually grew back, a lump on her belly. The first one we had removed, but she didn't cope so well post-op so we decided that really was the last time we intervened. The lump did eventually grow back, though wasn't bothering her. In her last days she went downhill quite quickly, physically but not mentally. Her back legs seemed to get weak and the lump suddenly got much bigger. She couldn't lie down and get comfy, and could no longer get up into her favourite armchair. It's the little things like that which make you realise it's time.
That last day we took the dogs for a walk in the morning and she seemed to enjoy it, though she had slowed down considerably. That afternoon we took her to the vet and in our hearts we knew she wouldn't be coming back :(
So it was. I stayed with her while the vet carried out the last act of kindness. So very sad, to hold her in my arms and feel her leave. It was sad but peaceful.
We brought our girl home and laid her in her basket, where she stayed overnight so our other dog would hopefully have some sense that she had gone. The next morning we laid her to rest in our garden and eventually we will plant a tree over her.

I don't have a photo of my other dog on this computer, so if i track one down i'll add it at a later date. Jarvis is the dog that I owned with my ex, my son's father. I got a text at tea-time on Sunday to say that Jarvis had died that afternoon, peacefully. I was obviously upset. Not only because it was so soon after losing Kelly but also because Jarvis had been such a big part of my life. He was the first dog i ever owned. We got him as a pup, and knew both his parents. He was bloomin' hard work at times - a real chewer. He chewed the tongues out of my first ever pair of Dr Marten boots, and had a taste for books *argghh*. He dug the foam out of a succession of old sofas that we had. When I was pregnant with Bam it became obvious that he was too much for me to look after (and would be while i had a small baby) and so the very hard decision was made that he had to go, though thankfully for us my ex's parents agreed to take him in. Letting him go was one of the hardest days of my life, even though i got to see him most days anyway I still felt like i'd let him down. Actually he was in his element down there - loads of space to roam in and a constant stream of visitors who adored him.
My beautiful dog returned to the ex some time ago, when he started to slow down. He'd become an old man in the last few months and I suppose his death was a release for him, but I'm sad I never got to say a proper goodbye.

Both these dogs lived to the grand old age of 14. Both of them had happy lives. They both brought joy and comfort to me in different ways and at different stages on my life and I shall miss them both very much.

So now we just have Ozzie.



What can i say? He's become my shadow since we lost Kelly. They've always been together and so I think he's finding it difficult not having his companion. This dog has defied the odds really in getting to the age of 10......his back legs aren't so good after a serious back problem some years ago and now he's started to drag his feet more so we've bought boots to stop him cutting his toes, though it's going to take some adjusting and fiddling to get them to last! He's a real character, typically labrador (he's absolutely starved, y'know......*rolleyes*) and he is the friendliest dog, he wants to say hello to everyone!