A mixed weekend

Himself always says that Sunday's blog is the more difficult one because it combines three days and not just two. He may actually be right about this, but let's not make too big a deal of that fact. I do miss him though.

Anyway, it is Sunday evening and I am casting my mind back to Friday morning as best I can. It started in the same way they all do Monday to Friday and I got up, had coffee and went to get the men. The mornings have been very foggy until the sun breaks through and when I let the puppies out after collecting the men it was still quite damp. I didn't realise just how damp it was until Louise came bounding through the door of Room 13 looking like a drowned rat! Silly puppy.

A damp Louise

Friday:  After having rushed around all week and with his Lordship swanning off on his holidays and getting me up at 4am (only joking love), I was feeling the effects and was pretty much exhausted. Friday was a true day of rest for me. I took myself off to bed not only once in the late morning, but again in the afternoon. I was extremely lazy, but I felt a whole lot better for it, which is all that matters. Whilst I was sleeping, Bekir and Sally were getting on in the kitchen and making yet more progress.  Sally was re-doing the ceiling in the nook and applying a second coat to the walls; Bekir was fitting our snazzy lights!

Redoing the nook plastering

Bekir multitasking

I did achieve something on Friday, however small and in the end, pretty useless. We have had problems with the swallows and sparrows nesting and feeding inside the chicken house. I thought it was worth a try to put up a fly screen, attached with velcro, to the outer door and see if that would keep them out. It proved to be a pointless task about two hours later when I went to check in on it and found about five swallows frantically trying to get out. I chased them out and gave it another go. This proved just as useless as when I went to lock the chickens away (it was dark), they were all huddled around in a bunch by the corner of the enclosure. They were refusing to go inside because THEY were afraid of the net.  Anyway, the hassle I had trying to get them all inside and having to actually catch and carry Ginger in, really was not worth it. The netting is down. I give up.

Swallow-proofing

 Here is the final look of the lights at the end of the day. Bekir had called me down to show me that they were working on a triple switch, one for each of the zones and a separate switch for the large Old School globes that we are re-purposing. Doesn't it look great?

Funky lights

 Saturday:  I woke feeling much more refreshed than I expected on Saturday and had, in my head, a list of things that I wanted to make a start on. And that is exactly what I did.  First on the list was the sheets from our bed, mainly because I wanted to spring clean the room, so a good opportunity. It blew a gale all day though, so I had to keep checking it wasn't halfway down the mountain.

A bright start to Saturday

We had taken the curtains down in the living room a while ago, but due to the builder doing the insulation on the balcony, we had to wait to take the bedroom ones down. He had done this a week or so ago and neither of us had managed to put them away. Tick. Job now done.

Curtains go away

The puppies were a little manic on Saturday. I think this had something to do with them realising He wasn't around. They were in and out and in and out all morning. I am unable to leave the doors open as the swallows continually come in to build nests, so eventually I found a bent wooden door stop we had used for another door and boom....no more running up and down the stairs to let them in. Adorable they may be, but noisy when they want to come inside!

Energy saver

Next on the to-do list was to finish off the final shelf for the living room. I had forgotten that the bottom needed two coats and so set to it. These are proving very useful in the living room as we are placing the seedlings by the window and because there is so much sunshine coming through in the early part of the day, they are thriving in there and get a real boost before they get transferred to the garden. These simple little things will hopefully set us in good stead for future growing.

First coat, final side

Yesterday, in between my tasks I kept going into the kitchen for a look and stood staring at it. This may seem odd to most of you, but when you have spent over a year cooking in your office, perhaps you have a greater appreciation of it. I just love it.

Kitchen happiness

I had spent a lot of time in our bedroom tidying and hoovering and generally moving things around. It was a bit of a mess really and it was starting to irritate me. Ideally I would have liked to remove the petchka, but that would have made more of a mess than I started with, so I left it in place.

Spotless

Saturday evening was spent on the sofa with a couple of glasses of wine and a film. The girls were snuggled up with me and it ended up being quite a late one, for me, but a very relaxing one after a busy day.

Sunday:  After the beautifully clear start yesterday, today brought more fog. Unlike Himself, I don't really function in the mornings until after my coffee so I did not get an early picture of that, but did manage to catch it just as it was disappearing. 

Morning mist

 After the troubles of last year with Rambo and the ticks, I am particularly anxious about the pups getting bitten, so first thing I sprayed them with the spray. This is Thelma post-spray, looking far from happy.  The plus side to this is that they smell lovely until it dries. I think she would rather smell like poo.

Not a happy puppy

With Himself in the UK, I have opportunity to do things around here without disrupting him too much. When I walked into Room 13 this morning, I instantly decided that I would simply have to clean my desk; I could barely see the actual desk. His was exactly the same. So now we can see that they both are wood and not made of dust or paperwork! I wonder how long this will last? We are two messy pups sometimes.

Sunday is our day for cleaning anyway and I carried out the normal routine; laying the rugs this week after the corridor was hoovered. I did not take on the living room however. That will perhaps be a job for tomorrow. It is all much more time consuming when there is only one of us here.

Desk tidy

Wooden desk

I scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom (it wasn't too bad actually as there are no boys here now).

Easy cleaning

Today has been absolutely lovely weather-wise. I was sitting on the balcony and decided that I would go and get my diesel in town and then come back and take all of the dogs out for a walk. The weather heard my thoughts and when I got back it was blowing another gale and the clouds started to draw in. It looked like we were set for another storm. I forgot the walk and went to do the watering round instead.

Rambo was having his own rest day today and sat out of the sun (it was warming up at 28 degrees when I went for diesel).

Incoming

Day off

This is hateful. A brand new paint job and these swallows are making a right mess of it already. Every day, all day, I knock down what they have stuck up there and every morning I come down and there is more. I wonder who will win this battle in the end?

Ongoing battle

I have just eaten my chicken and chips and fed the puppies. It is time for me to go and relax before the working week begins once more. I am going to be very lazy with this last section and just show you some photographs from the garden of the things we are growing and how they are coming along. I have shown you the spuds and corn earlier in the week, so here is the rest of it, so far.

Garden:

Poppies and bees

New growth

Sprouting sunflowers

Coriander

Peppers

Grapevine

Courgettes

Brassicas

Beetroot

There are tomato plants out there, spuds, sweetcorn, lettuce and a few carrots which may take. In the brassica bed there are cabbage, cauliflower, swede and broccoli. Along the fence behind the broccoli are peas.  There are also a few melons. I think if we manage to harvest this lot, we will be doing very well indeed. With every year, we will learn more and more.

That's it from me. It looks like a storm is coming in from the west now, so I will hit publish before it starts. 

A x

Christmas begins

Sunday late afternoon and we had both forgotten about doing this blog until just now. I've got a few pictures, and looking through them I can see a few things have gone on, so it's worth while getting this one as quickly as I can. The thing I'm struggling with is the titles, however I don't want to do a chronological one.

Putting up the tree

Because of the struggle with the titles I'm going to begin this update at the end with something we just finished; we have put up our Christmas Tree!

That's a pretty cool sword, huh

A getting the baubles hung right

I was in charge of tinsel

All done and very happy

Now those of you who think you know me well will be surprised at this as I'm supposedly a well known grinch however that isn't strictly the case. What I dislike is being forced into doing something whether I want to or not and this isn't what has happened here; we both agreed that we didn't need to have a tree and then both came to the conclusion that it would be lovely to have one after all. A bought one which proved too small so we went to get another one on Friday and seeing as today is the 6th, and traditionally this is when the tree can be errected, we set ourselves to doing it, after lunch, and had a lot of fun in the process. We think we need some more lights so that is now on the list to be picked up early next week and we're also short a couple of presents that the postman is bringing us.

Vegetables

We have been out in the vegetable garden a couple of times this week to tidy up (the little caterpillars keep coming back, and they keep getting given to the chickens) and small as the vegetable patch is (this year just ending was very much of an experimental nature) we've got some good stuff going on.

Onions and a few rogue potatoes

A tiny cauliflower is growing

Awesome cabbage

First on Thursday A was out pottering around as she likes to do and she went into the garden and called me down from the office where I was working, telling me to get the camera. She had found that there were some extra potatoes, obviously left over in there after we harvested, that have re-seeded themselves and have now pushed shoots up above the surface. The onions, planted after we pulled the last lot, have also been growing well and we've been eating the leaves in champ potatoes and other dishes for the past week or two. There is one very small cauliflower coming on looking really well formed and finally there is some really awesome looking cabbage. Brilliant stuff and I can't wait to eat it.

Hopefully these will taste awesome

Talking of which we are having some of the broccoli (not that much has come up yet; the caterpillars really did get a good munch of these) in our Sunday Roast. There are quite a lot of very small florets growing which could provide us with more in a few weeks I hope. The raised bed has continued to prove its worth and the plants in there are now huge. I'm particularly looking forward to the Swede.

Various tidyings

We've had a good week of tidying and readying ourselves more for the hoped for snowfall. Both inside and out we're making progress. It's a pleasure at the end of the week to look back over everything that has been done and see how much nicer it is now things are tidy.

Now Thomas can get back in his home

Wood store temporarily co-opted for car stuff

First of all on Thursday lunch time we both went down into the garage area to give it a good clean and tidy. After a few days of putting Thomas in there the pile of wood from the oak tree pushed him out however the forecast is for some pretty freezing days in the next week or so and we wanted to get him back inside again. We shifted all the wood from the garage into the wood store, along with the laycorn boxes which eventually will be put into the other room as storage, We then swept out and finally shifted Thomas's back box first of all into the garage and then, in a burst of energy, right the way through into the wood room.

Freezer getting full

At the same time as all this A was also clearing the small freezer (that I brought back last time full of steaks) which has started to ice up very badly and bringing the food from it to put into the new chest freezer which has now been plugged in and is working well. She also reorganised the freezer in Room 13 so we have things we don't need as much (like the preserved stews in pots) down in the chest freezer. It's plenty big enough for us and will soon have even more stuff in it after I make my new pasta sauce, though you'll have to wait for next update to hear about that.

She's back at that chainsawing again

A whole pile of wood

Stacked the brush into the green building

Friday and Saturday was largely about chainsawing for A. She was determined to get through everything that was piled on the patio so we could finally clear that of leaves and twigs and other rubbish. She worked like a trooper and was so very close to finishing on Friday she got started on Saturday morning first thing while I was out shopping and when I came back she was all but done, Typically, after we had cleared away all of the brush into the green building, we found some more of the tea tree that I had chopped last week and pushed onto the front grass so there's still a bit more to do yet however it'll only take half an hour and will be an ideal task for one lunch next week.

A sweeping the old bottles out of the trailer

Usmivka smiling as Special One lights the bonfire

Hitching a ride the local way

The fire burns down

Space for potatoes has now been cleared

Trailer fits fine in its long term parking spot

As part of this push to clear the patio I decided that I would move the trailers from where they have been parked. The old trailer was still full of bottles pulled out of the bottle room (now the gardening room) by A while I was not here. I hitched it up and back it over to the big pile of metal and old windows next to the garden and started to load the old metal in on top of the glass. My initial idea was to leave this to empty the next day (today) however when I got it down to the dump point, where we're going to dig out of the pond next year, I realised I wouldn't really be able to lift and unhitch the trailer as full as it was so A and I worked together and really quickly had all the rubbish removed. Today I got round to finishing off the job and was assisted by Usmivka and the Special One. They came over to ask if they could have the old metal fencing that has been piled down there since last year to which I gladly said "YES!" as the only reason I had kept it was to give to them. They helped me to load the trailer with wood for a bonfire then we went back down and got the metal chainlink onto the trailer and took it up to their yard where they unloaded it into a corner; I don't know if they are going to weigh it in. After this I removed everything else that was left in this area and now we are ready to build the vertical potato planters. This won't be done til early spring but it's great to see how much space we actually do have there.

Some cracks in the plaster behind the petchka

Protective and Reflective

Hoovering with Henry

Top corridor before and after

Sunday morning was once more our tidying morning and we set to with a will. First thing I did the washing up and cleaned the fires out and then we set ourselves onto the clearing. I was going outside to get the metal cleared (as per the previous paragraph) but before I went we had some things to do together inside. Some of the hooks had come off the curtains so we went round with the ladder and fixed them all up and then I also had found that the plaster is cracking slightly behind the radiator above the petchka in the living room so we've fitted a silver metal reflective thing to protect the wall, and give us that heat back into the room. It's making quite a difference. I then headed out and built the bonfire as discussed while A went through bedroom, living room, corridor and Room 13 with a hoover and got all the dust up. Finally I came in having completed everything outside and swept down the stairs and now we have a lovely clean living area once more.

Measure twice

Cut once

The wall fell away

Finally got it hung

Also sealed the hatchway to the garage

For the past few weeks we have been talking about how we would seal the kitchen downstairs from rats and also keep it slightly warmer and drier than it is at the moment. I decided to make a door out of the chipboard we had bought for the guest room double door failed experiment and so, while A was chopping wood on Friday, I got stuck into making a very simple door. It went very well right up until A had helped me to screw the hinges in and at this point the plaster and concrete split and fell away and the hinges collapsed. The mistake I had made was to use a hinge that was too small and therefore too close to the corner. I bought some new ones which were perfect the next day and got it hung quite quickly. Unfortunately it will not be rat proof at all however the difference it is making in temperature is quite noticeable. A mixed success.

U-bend fitted

A different angle on the stream in the orchard

Our hens are laying again

One other task got completed this week. If you remember last week A tided out the chicken house during the downpour and we found that the chimney was letting a lot of water fall inside and onto the chicken coop. We moved it to the other end of the building but I was still wanting to prevent water and snow getting in so I thought a bit and decided to use some of the spare pipes we have to put a U-bend in which will stop most of the rain falling. I climbed up and fitted it without any trouble and then got some shots of the orchard from this new angle. We went inside the chicken house to check out how it had gone and decided to pull the coop back over to its original position. We were very pleasantly surprised to find four eggs that had been laid on the hay in the corner, not in the nesting boxes. Our chickens are back laying again.

Loose bottles and two swords

Sorting the books into alphabetical order

All the books about specific composers

The other books, compendiums and dictionaries of music

Finally for this section after my initial abject failure to put hinges into a wall I got a bit annoyed and decided to sort out the new bookshelf we had bought. A had said she wanted to put the loose bottles, previously on the unit next to the record player, on there and so I moved them over and then as there was some space I figured the two swords we have which have been gathering dust on the sofa outside Room 13 would fit there nicely and so they did. I then brought up the Encyclopedia Britannica but when I tried to fit them in the shelves I found the gap was too small. I did, however, still have all the boxes of music books sent me by the kind man on twitter and so, with some help from A, we hauled these all up and I started sorting them out. There were a lot! In the end I got A-Z of composers into the bookshelf and all the remaining ones are unsorted on the ledge above the stairs. The entire second shelf of the bookcase is books about Mozart. Amazing.

Th'animals

An update from the Old School would just not be complete without some pictures of the animals, and maybe a video (or two, like today), however there is an unusual extra special bonus for you this week.

Sitting attentively as A gets their rice pudding ready

Cuddly Thelma (a rare sight)

First of all, Thelma and Louise have been having a ball as always. Thelma is a solid bundle of muscle and she runs and runs until she decides to fall asleep. Louise is less energetic when it comes to exercise but she's begun to get back into the habit of playing with Thelma on the top bank and chasing around loads. The one thing they do both have is a love for cuddling, Louise more than Thelma normally, and they've both grabbed multiple snoozes on our laps this week.

Louise saying hello to Rambo

Thelma pretending she didn't want the stick anyway

While we were putting the brush wood into the green building the dogs were all out playing. Thelma had stolen a stick from Rambo and was dragging it around, squeaking and growling and generally having a great time of it. Louise sniffed around for a while then asked to come into the green building with me wherein she legged it around for ages sniffing out rats. Eventually Thelma's fun ended when Rambo came over and found her with the stick and took it away from her. We can't tell him off for this as it was his stick and he is not allowed near theirs. It was a lovely thing, though of course she stopped making the crazy noises as soon as I got the camera ready to film her.

She's munching away at the green goodness

Gorgeous Sassy

Now she doesn't appear much in the blog because whenever I'm with her, which is every day as she feeds and I give her a quick groom, I don't have the camera with me. Today A fed her with some scraps from the veg for our Sunday roast and I got the camera and got some lovely pictures while she was munching. Just as I left she stretched out and hopped around for a bit but the camera was off and I missed it. She's still a lovely bunny rabbit and she even lets me pick her up a bit more. Soon we'll have her on the balcony I hope and then she can really begun part of the family.

Celebrations

And so I come to the end of this update. I've eaten dinner by now (a lovely Sunday Roast chicken that was superb) and now the fire is hot and we're going to settle down and watch some Sopranos.

Mulled wine for Christmas

I'll leave you with our refreshment while we were putting the Christmas tree up. I bought these mulled wine sachets while still in England earlier in the year and finally we've got to take them out and give them a go. I'm not a fan of wine but you cannot beat a mulled wine while putting the Christmas tree up.

Cheers for reading.