would love to be mortgage free!

Peonie

coldcazzie wrote: »

Random side note: why is it that whenever you remove turf from your garden there's loads of glass under it?! I don't understand?

Whoever laid it was too lazy to dig it up before laying new...

Enjoy the gardening; it sounds like you are making great progress.

coldcazzie

It must be a building site thing.... I never knew building involved so many stray pieces of glass though. Some of them are curved, like they might have come from bottles, rather than windows. I found 2 rusty metal tent pegs the other day as well... :undecided

Peonie

Oops sorry, you wrote glass and I read grass. Thus my comment.

I don't know but I'm finding more glass than I would expect to when going through the compost heap.

coldcazzie

Maybe it's a conspiracy :rotfl:

coldcazzie

Last day of term today before the holidays :j :j :j really looking forward to it. Hoping to go to a meet on Wed next week, and have a trip around the charity shops looking for some summer clothes/coats for me and the kids. I actually cannot remember the last time I had a summer coat - for years upon years I've only had winter ones and gone without when it's hot. I want to change that this year.

Have dug out some more of the garden over the past few days, I'm slowly getting there. Planted the tree peonies in pots for the time being. Have changed my garden plans, again, but actually really like the new plans so think they might be here to stay. Next major decision is whether or not we want chickens...

Assignment is slowly getting there. Got 2.5 weeks until it's needing to be submitted but as that time falls over the holidays it's going to fly by faster than I'd like so going to try really hard to get some more done today instead of going out in the garden again.

Going to check online banking again today - keep hoping my ISA has paid out, but nothing as of yesterday. Monday is the closing date for online applications for this years ISA allowance so I'm really crossing my fingers that I can get in in time for this year.

Hope everyone is well today

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi Caz, I would live chickens too - Tilly x

coldcazzie

Me too

There is a strip of land behind our garage, between the fence and the concrete path, it's about a metre wide and most of it is in shade for the whole day. We already plan to have the water butts immediately behind the garage, then compost heaps, and then possibly one of those storage sheds for kids toys, not sure about that yet, but there will still be about 2/3rds of this strip left.

I had considered the possibility of buying one of those recycled plastic chicken pod things and building a long thin run along the rest of it. Building our own coop would be cheaper but would involve laying a concrete base so that the local foxes couldn't dig their way in and would also involve more maintenance as it would be built out of wood. I'm not sure yet.

Peonie

Lucky you, I think it's our freehold document that says we can't keep chickens.

coldcazzie

Ours said a number of things. 1, we can't keep pigs. 2, we can keep chickens but we have to make sure they are contained such that they don't escape and annoy the neighbours. 3, (added much later) we can only keep one dog, one cat or one caged bird on the property.

We had our solicitor look into the last one and he determined that the only way a breach could be brought against us would be if one of the neighbours complained. We thought that was unlikely as at least half of them have multiple pets too. He also said they'd be able to do that is via the company who originally put it on the freehold, who no longer exist and haven't been replaced by another company. He advised us that we could reasonably ignore it, so we are going with the first two. Not that we have any urge to keep pigs...

Peonie

I find our restrictions quite strange. The house was built in the 1950s so they would have been through the second world war and would have known how important it is to be self sufficient. I wonder if they thought the people on my street should be posh and posh people don't keep chickens. :doh:

Do you know anyone who keeps chickens?

I thought you might want to keep them somewhere you can see them from the house (I assume you can't see them behind the garage).