Wednesday Working in the Garden.

On Wednesday afternoon I spent a little time in the garden.

We have four raised beds.  These three and one in front of the garden workshop.

This is the one that has celery in it, which is absolutely delicious.  I have been cutting one stick off a day to have with my lunch.

I am not sure what the very leafy plant is....there are some minuscule carrots tucked in there as well.  I thought it might have been parsnips, but I pulled one out and the root was so thin I am not so sure.  It could be that they were planted too close together so haven't grown properly?

I decided I would start weeding and digging them over.  I started with this one.

Looks much better now.  I need to see if the onions in the corner are any good, but I didn't at this stage.

I picked up all the fallen apples that had sadly been wasted in the orchard and put them in the compost bin, which will need rethinking about as they have been using metal coal bunker bins, and quite honestly I'd rather they were used for coal.  Not only that I'm not convinced they make the best compost bins and they are just full of twiggy rubbish, so will need to empty them out and start again.

The orchard floor looks much better now and the snowdrops are absolutely wonderful.

This is my evening reading at the moment before I go to bed which is when I read my current novel.

Oh and when I got home from my walk on Wednesday there was a ferry going past.

Always something different to see and watch.

Happy New Year!

Wishing all my friends and readers a Very Happy and Healthy New Year.  

I have been planning... (actually did this a couple of days ago, and have been thinking about my plans and goals)

I have compiled a list of things I hope to achieve for the month of January, one of which is to clear/sort at least one box a day from the loft this month.  That way the job doesn't seem insurmountable and by the end of the month we would have cleared/sorted at least 31 boxes!

I have started up a draft page so I can record each day what we manage and will post that at the end of the month.

Photo of the day - taken with my phone, fortunately, as the two I took with my camera were a disaster!

I emptied our jar coin and we have saved £54.50 - so just over a pound a week on average.

Not bad for loose change!

A Two Year Plan

The call of New Zealand is always with me and in 2005 after our last holiday there together as a family, and some serious searching around various areas I thought we were finally going to go.  We came home, packed up all the books from the bookcases in the hallway (and there were a lot!) into book boxes and decorated both the hallway and lounge in preparation to put our house on the market.  Two years later I finally unpacked those books resigned to the fact that it wasn't going to happen and just got on with things and enjoying the musical opportunities and other activities I did, namely showing and breeding cavies.  Nine years later with the loss of the music and cavies the pull to return to New Zealand has returned with a vengeance...and this time it WILL happen. I miss the space, the friendliness and openness of the people and the weather.  I am just so sick and tired of grey skies, damp and cold weather and although we had a lovely summer this year, it was the first one for a very long time!   Our younger son now only has one and half years left of schooling so the time has come to start working towards this goal in earnest.  

This will take a mammoth exercise in clearing out the loft, working out what will stay for us to take with us and what will have to go.  With an end goal in sight I feel this will help hugely with my past futile attempts at trying to declutter!

Many things will have to go, including the majority of my lovely Singer Sewing Machine collection as really it is just not feasible to entertain trying to transport it all those thousands of miles.  I will keep my 201 in the cabinet, my 221K and hopefully a treadle - for those days there are power cuts!  I will have to go through our massive collection of books - again we will have to be realistic about what to keep and what will have to go.  There really is a lot to think about!

I will have to work hard at keeping my husband on board with this huge move as I have learnt the hard way that leaving it up to him and it won't happen...plus he will need to concentrate on working to enable us to finance this move, especially now I am unable to teach and play any more

One thing we are both agreeable on is the type of property we want which is always a good thing.  We want privacy, some native bush and a little bit of land but not too much that it is unmanageable as it will be me that will do most of the work trying to maintain it.  

My aim is for us to be out there by 2016 at the latest, so there is a lot to do and think about in what will turn out in reality to be a short space of time.  

So time to pull in the reins, harness our thoughts and put them to work.