Champagne Lifestyle on a Lemonade Budget.

phoebe1989seb

Glad you are feeling so much better, sugarbaby125 

Hope everyone had a good Easter weekend, despite lockdown! At least the weather was fabulous - well it was here in Carmarthenshire - which is always champagne-moment-worthy 

As a result, we spent almost the entire four days in the garden, getting many of the long overdue jobs done so now things are looking far better - although we still didn't get the new paving finished, so for now it continues to be laid out dry (hence the unevenness in pic below!).

Having cleared loads of overgrown laurels we've finally got the stock fencing fitted at the back of where a new rustic shelter with seating area is planned - and you can actually see the huge bamboo now!

We planted around 50 shrubs and perennials plus more veg etc and somehow managed to manhandle my freshly-painted, 6' x 3' timber bin store into a new, more practical position (involving moving it 12' and to a level 3' lower, so no mean feat), clearing the way for the proposed greenhouse - although I think that won't be happening till 2021 now.....

Everywhere in the garden plants are bursting into flower - bluebells, geums, persicaria, ajuga, magnolia, clematis, saruma, malus, centaurea. The primroses look fab and the roses have buds!

Indoors, I also moved all my seedlings to a better location - am too wary about chilly nights to move them into the polytunnel yet - in the process freeing up space to sit and read in the book room/our summer sitting room  This had become a repository (aka dumping ground!) for all things seed - trays, propagators, compost - but now it can be enjoyed on sunny afternoons/summer evenings as a place to play games, read or just relax with a glass of wine etc!

Inbetween all that hard graft we found time for some delicious food - although the roast chicken planned for Easter Sunday got moved forward to Monday so the treat of fillet steak in Madeira sauce intended for yesterday is still to come......

A few Aldi chocolate eggs and some bucks fizz was partaken of too. So, all in all, a good quota of champagne moments were enjoyed 
 

phoebe1989seb

Sarumas, primroses and bluebells.....More champagne moments!

It's hard to believe this is the same barren wasteland we found when we bought the cottage two years ago!

sugarbaby125

Phoebe thank you. 
I am not lucky enough to have a garden, so it was great to see the photos of your garden in bloom  

I am cooking the chicken wings in Nando's hot marinade for my birthday dinner tomorrow. That way I can take it easy on my birthday. 

helensbiggestfan

Good morning my lovely friends......

Phobe - great photos, your garden is going to look really pretty.  

Well I have started my next project.......painting the kitchen cabinets.....I just can't stretch to a new kitchen (well I can but I want to use the money for something else - upgrading the loft room ).  It is fine but doesn't meet with new current building regs and I want to resite the staircase anyway.  Not quite sure how much thst little lot is going to cost so for now I'm just going to give the kitchen units a cheap and cheerful makeover.  They are currently dark pine which makes the kitchen dark, so a nice light paint job.  

So for the next few weeks my time will be divided between working in the garden and painting my kitchen units. 😂

It will be a way if using my time productively during lockdown and keep  out of mischief And I do enjoy doing both.  Not quite sure whether they qualify as champagne moments but they will certainly give me satisfaction and ultimately will add value to my house.  

helensbiggestfan

Sorry for the size......

This is my front garden when I bought my house.  😂🤣 

Siebrie

Oh my goodness! Is there a height difference between your garden and the street, or were the weeds that high?

helensbiggestfan

This is the most recent photo.  A work in progress but a slight Improvement.  😉

helensbiggestfan

Just the height of the weeds......😂🤣

helensbiggestfan

Actually it's looking pretty bare at the moment because I didn't manage to get all the spring bulbs in before all that rain last autumn.  I ended up just shoving them in pots.  

I am aiming for a sort of old fashioned cottage garden. You can't  see them but there's hollyhocks, delphiniums, foxgloves and lupins just coming up again.  I have got dahlias and lilies to go in as well but what I really need are a few more shrubs for permanent structure and also some nice rose bushes.  I have just taken some lavender cuttings, hoping to make a lavender hedge to separate the planted area from the gravel.  Took about 30 cuttings. Hopefully some might take.  

Anyway time to get cracking....

have a great day y'all.  

phoebe1989seb

helensbiggestfan said:

Phobe - great photos, your garden is going to look really pretty.  

Indeed, but it's a very long way off, lol! Over half an acre of back garden (not including odd bits of woodland etc) takes some planting/cash....ask my bank balance 

I can't believe now that our original plan when moving to Wales was to buy a place with several acres in order to create a massive garden! This is quite large enough unless you're Monty 

I'm going to add a couple of before and afters of my own (sort of, as it's hard to capture the same angle and show improvement) - the *before* (bottom pic, obviously!) is from 2018 (our first year here) while the *after* is from last year.

These give an idea of how things are - gradually - taking shape. We started out with virtually no flowering plants at all - except some snowdrops, bluebells, an oversize rhododendron and a couple of rambling roses plus a few straggly comfreys etc - the only 'structure' provided by mature trees and overgrown laurels. Years of neglect had allowed the weeds to take over.....

Yours looks massively improved, LL/Helen  Hoping you'll share pics of your kitchen transformation when it's done!

Very happy to cheer up your day, sugarbaby!

Champagne moments last evening included enjoying a surprisingly good sponge pudding made from store cupboard leftovers and some refrigerated pineapples....even DH (not a pineapple fan) had a piece. Today's have involved more garden pottering/sorting seedlings and later will feature that much anticipated steak...yum!

Btw, over the next few days I hope to start a 'project' thread on the 'In My Home' sub forum, sharing more pics of our cottage restoration. Prior to the recent forum changes a few of us discussed doing this as it would be interesting to see members' home improvement progress and hopefully it would be easier to embed photos (which it is!)....so, apart from the occasional champagne moment, I'll no longer be cluttering up this thread with pics, lol!!!