Friends in our garden

This little guy is living in/around some of my plant pots and seedling trays. Does that mean I'm over-watering them?


Very glad to see him, anyway. They're great for pest control.

Pink mulch

Flowering cherry + high winds =

Got wood?

We sure do!

We have decking planks for the top of the deck; a bunch of 6x2 for building deck frames; the deck frame being worked on; big, big chunks of untreated hardwood for an as-yet undisclosed use; smaller chunks of 'pre-aged' untreated hardwood (i.e. ex-display from the garden centre.)

The latter has now been used to build a raised bed for me to grow vegetables in. It's already proven itself in that Kita no longer runs over that patch of ground!

I love it:

The back is made of treated offcuts of 6x2 from building the deck; it will prevent the earth that's going to be put in there from rotting the fence.

That's gonna need a lot of earth, though:

First barbecue!

Contrary to all expectations and experience with the British weather on bank holidays, we've had a truly glorious Good Friday. Besides a short shower this morning, it's been blue, sunny and summery; and we had our first barbecue - both of the year and in this house - this evening!

It was a bit of an impromptu affair; I suggested it because J was going to Tesco anyway, and I thought he might be able to pick up a cheap barbecue. It turned out that he could pick up charcoal, meat, salad and cheese - but no barbecue.

So he improvised:

We had halloumi kebabs, chipolatas and mustard marinated escalopes of veal (don't shoot me - no crates involved! It will never be my favourite meat, though). Cooked halloumi, particularly barbecued, is one of the favoured foods of the Gods. Raw, it just squeaks.

Mmmmm!

And Kita learned to eat sausages off a fork:

Bless.

Impulse purchase: new sofa!

I regularly pass by a furniture retailer that is situated just next to my work: we've bought two sideboards and our dining chairs from there, so far, and we're very happy with them. On Thursday, I went in with my little camera to see if any of the sale items would do for the living room. I was looking for bookcases or shelving or storage of that nature. I found a sofa:


It's being delivered on Wednesday. It should fit neatly where our current one does, and round the corner to the window. It will use some currently dead space, and hopefully make the living room much more sociable place to be. It's a clearance item, so we got it at about a third of the retail price, which is very gratifying.

It is, however, cream. Miss Muddy-Paws 2006 witll be delighted.

Meet Kita!

She's been here a whole four hours now, and seems to be settling in nicely. She's definitely very smart, and highly motivated by food, so should be easy to train.

We've had a few wanders round the garden boundaries (on the lead), and a run in the snow:

and she's explored the downstairs of the house very thoroughly. She seems to have accepted her bed, and is currently enjoying a yummy rawhide bone.

Though she seems to think that I might take it off her...

The Boxes Return

Well, I've been spending a lot of time moving stuff from the old place to the new, and I can confidently say that the floor is no longer clear of boxes. I'm sure it will be, in time, though.

Why is it that the last 20% of the stuff takes 80% of the time to move?