Mortgage free in Forever Home :-)

KajiKita

No PB win here, again … 🙄😉 But I have FINALLY finished clearing the cut flower border of (surface) bindweed. I also hacked back the chicory I foolishly planted there last year which is tending to take over the world! 😳 I can now see all the plants I intended to have in there 😊 I’ll take a picture later once I have deadheaded. 

I have also made a start on weeding the new border I planted up after the gardener came in and did clearing. OMG the power of mulch!! The weeds are little and soft and apart from tap rooted things I am just ruffling up the surface, picking out the bigger leaved things and leaving the rest. It is SO quick! 😊

I am thinking of changing the veggie patch. 🤔 It is a big area and way more than I need for what I want to grow. At the back there is a wildy hedge (hawthorn, bramble, hazel etc.) which I am realising is robbing a lot of moisture from the back section of all of the beds that run perpendicular from it. My thought is to pull forward the top soil from these beds by about a metre and then lay a good quality membrane and gravel in the back of the veg beds on this cleared section. It would be less to keep and weed as veg beds and would make it easier to maintain the hedge and a cordon sainitere in front of it. Mr KK thinks it’s probably a good idea, which helps as I will need some muscle to lift forward the butler’s sink that is at the back of the cut flower border! 😉

KK

KajiKita

Done the end / beginning of money shuffle and YNAB admin today. Had some surplus so have shuffled: £116 into easy access savings (partly because of the ongoing works here),
£116 as an OP (plus a 56p TT 😉)
and £116 into one of my pensions. 
Feel like a grown up! 😉
In all seriousness, seeing @edinburgher and @savingholmes doing these things regularly has nudged me into starting to try to make this a habit 😊

Dead heading done, including nepeta so Chloe has been rolling around in it obsessively for the last 20 minutes! 😂
Downstairs loo cleaned.
I managed a lot more weeding in the new flower bed - it’s looking quite nice now and I’m trying not to be too downhearted that there is bindweed in there now too … 😢
Mr KK’s washing dried on the line, folded and taken upstairs for him to put away. 

Mr KK has laid more path and the stretch from the front door to the front gate is done - looks fab 😊❤️👏

HM pizza for dinner this evening so I have two dough balls quietly defrosting themselves from my last making 😊

A good day 😊

KK

Willow1983

You’re a busy woman KajiKata! You must be finding a huge difference not being such a stressful job and having more time to do the things you love 😊 I follow along but don’t post much 🫣 can you give me your recipe for your pizza dough please? Thanks willow.

KajiKita

Hi @Willow1983 😊

I always think I am quite lazy! My achievements never match my ambition anyway … 😉 And yes, it is lovely to feel more ‘me’ than I have for years from not having such a long commute and intense job 😊

I use this one:

 https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/quick-pizza-dough-2

We find it makes 4 individual pizzas so we make a batch, cook two and freeze two. 

KK 

KajiKita

Just to give a flavour, the path from our front door to the gate (which will be rehung tomorrow! 😉😂)



The bare soil you can see we will turf with wild flower turf along the whole of the front of the house. The front garden feels a lot bigger now it’s so much tidier. 

Mr KK wants to remake the gate in the same style but in green oak, which won’t cost too much and will look stunning I think 😊

KK

Willow1983

New path is looking fab 🥰 thanks for the recipe will give it a go soon. Willow

KajiKita

When you try to do a nice thing and it doesn’t quite go to plan …

Next door neighbour sparky is very keen on pale ale, so went I went to Morris’s this morning I bought him a few bottles as a thank you for repairing our cement mixer in the week (in the rain!). 

Unfortunately it meant getting through a gate with their three huge dogs all shouting at me. Now I know these dogs reasonably well and although I was bitten as a child I feel reasonably confident with them. I persisted and used the digital doorbell on the gate but there was no answer. Bother thinks I, I will have to risk walking through the dogs, carrying the bottles so I can leave them in the porch. As I came in, carefully closing the gate behind me to keep the dogs in, the youngest of them stood up and put his paws on my back. This dog is huge! Some posh version, fluffy, feathery version of a Labrador with a really long body so when he stands up he is very tall. He scratched me with his claws on my shoulder. I shouted at him very firmly, using his name and he stopped jumping, looked sheepish and stopped shouting. I put the ales in the porch. As I did so I hear the sparky yelling at the dogs - he’d still been in bed (at 11am! 😳) and appeared around the corner in sliders and a dressing gown looking quite cross. 

So I got scratched and the neighbour was annoyed. Sigh …

Ah well, hopefully the ales will make up for it 🤷‍♀️

KK

earthgirl2

I'm also in awe of your energy! 

Sorry to hear about the scratches and the annoyed neighbour though, sure the ale will be appreciated!

Merlin's_Beard

I'm sure he was more annoyed at his dogs than at you!

KajiKita

Thanks @earthgirl and @Merlin's_Beard, tbh I think he was just annoyed at the disturbance which I suspect he felt was 90% dogs and 10% me. 😉

Had a quiet afternoon but have also managed to make a start on the office. Everything is up off the floor and the desk is nearly clear end to end. I wanted to do it all but I think I’ve had enough for today. It won’t take much to finish it. Then all the storage needs going through, a section at a time, but if I have clear desk that will be easier to do, iyswim. 

I’ve ordered a two section vertical laptops holder so we can share the space more easily and it will leave the desk clearer. Another crumb of progress 😊

KK