Champagne Lifestyle on a Lemonade Budget.

Wednesday2000

Champagne moment for today was ordering a takeaway pizza.

 It is warm and sunny but it's meant to get a lot chillier at the weekend. I'm going to do my meditation in the sunshine in the garden this afternoon.

phoebe1989seb

We also semi-retired early (40/43), although our move to the seaside was just swapping one coastline for another 

DH soon grew bored of working from home and began a ridiculously long commute into central London, by train which he hated. After six months he found another job closer to home and all the while I kept our (online) business going during the day with DH - unable to step back from his baby entirely, lol - doing his bit at weekends/evenings.

Things didn't work out for us in that location and we ended up selling/buying a couple more times before finally ending up here in early 2018. Along the way we've been tackling fairly major projects - of the property variety - DIY, so all our intended hobbies that we envisaged having time for went out the window 

Hopefully this time we've got the balance right....we certainly love the location, just the cottage is a lot smaller than we've been used to. 

Right now, I think it's safe to say that virtually all my champagne moments are garden based. Just today I've been getting all excited at the prospect of more plants budding/flowering - the peonies won't be long and most of the David Austin roses (except those newly arrived/planted as bare roots) are not far behind 

Meanwhile, the rockery I planted last year is beginning to look good (particularly the persicarias and Welsh poppies) as is the honeysuckle by our front door.....

chanie

phoebe your garden is stunning. 

Me and the children planted some sunflower seeds in the front garden a few weeks ago and they have just started to sprout.   I am very excited to watch them grow.  We grew one a a few years ago and often saw people staring and taking pictures as they walked by.

carolbee

t14cy_t said:

I semi retired 5 years ago aged 45, left our busy lives and swapped for the kent coast...best thing ive ever done!! 

Which part of Kent coast are you, I’m near Margate

helensbiggestfan

Gorgeous garden Phoebe.  

🇬🇧🇬🇧  HAPPY VE DAY. 🇬🇧🇬🇧

carolbee

Beautiful garden Phoebe

sugarbaby125

Phoebe your garden is blooming lovely  
My Champagne moment today was my daughter receiving her 'furlough' pay with no issues, as promised from HMRC.  
My 2nd moment today was arriving at Lidl to find no queue 

LizL_2

What a lovely garden. Thank you for sharing your photographs.

phoebe1989seb

Thank you, lovely ladies - your compliments make all our hard work feel worthwhile 

It's certainly a huge labour of love and not for the faint hearted. Despite the estate agent describing the space as a ''magical garden", all that was here two years ago was a relatively barren half acre of wasteground punctuated by some massive trees (mostly beech and Scots pine), loads of overgrown laurels and an absolute ton of weeds. There were/are also some ancient stone walls. Virtually everything of any real interest - except the trees - has been planted by us, but we've barely scratched the surface  Good job we enjoy gardening - I'm guessing the previous owners didn't!

More plants arriving imminently from our local place so another busy weekend ahead.....

Happy VE Day!

helensbiggestfan

hello my lovely friends.  

My iPad is playing up so reduced to my mobile. Not going to type much because it hurts my shoulder.  So....until it’s sorted I won’t be posting much but I will keep reading and enjoying hearing about your champagne moments.  

I had a lovely weekend. Spent some time with close family.  Obeying all the rules of course.  Lol.  Lots of lovely champagne moments.  

Back to the painting this week.  

Stay well and safe and keep those champagne moments flowing.