Cheery's path to fulfilment - finishing the DIY, looking after myself, appreciating the garden 🌻

themadvix

Merry Christmas Cheery and Mr C - I hope your travels go smoothly and safely today!

Baileys_Babe

Happy Christmas, I hope you return home today safely and your festive gathering is joyful 🎄

Jessy103

Merry Christmas, cheery! Hope you have a lovely Christmas day, despite all the travelling xx 🎁🍾🎄

Cheery_Daff

Thank you @Tescodealqueen @themadvix @Baileys_Babe @Jessy103 Hope you all have a lovely day too 🥰

Nice morning here 😊 candlelit yoga in front of the tree, we opened our presents from each other, I rang round my family to say Merry Christmas, and then we got away roughly on time - Mr C slept in the car while I listened to my audio book and enjoyed the scenery. Collected Mr C Snr without incident (and 'fixed' his emails - the window had disappeared off the bottom of the screen) and now we are just arriving at dinner 😊

Sun_Addict

Have a lovely Christmas 🎄 

Cheery_Daff

Thanks @Sun_Addict hope you've had a good day too! 

Home now 😊 An uneventful day. Nice to have dinner cooked for us, some cheerful presents, and everyone who was there was cheerful and well behaved. Dropped Mr C Snr back off and got home about 7. Settled in for the night now waiting for the house to warm up properly 🥶 

Candles are lit, I've consumed an entire box of gingerbread fudge, and just waiting for Call the Midwife 😁

Cheery_Daff

Morning all, and happy boxing day! 

Glorious sunshine here 😊 I got up this morning feeling like I needed more sleep, and fully intended to make a cuppa and go back to bed, but it was so sunny I stayed up. Did candlelit yoga beside the Christmas tree, then while I was eating breakfast read a gardening magazine from the library app, and decided I couldn't NOT head outside.

No real plan of what to do - I need to start some garden-related plotting and scheming for the coming year! I startled Mrs Pheasant in the veg patch, which reminded me I'd been intending to remove the stones round the beds and create a new shape so I started doing that. 

I designed it in lock down - it's a square, with a thin bed down each side and four square beds in the middle. Cheerful, but a lot of path. Originally I bought in woodchip, but it's a lot of woodchip and I try not to pay for stuff for the garden if I can avoid it. So it reverted to grass, but it's a nuisance to cut.

Anyway,stones are coming out, and for now the big ones are adding a layer to the flower bed that runs down the outside of one side of the veg patch (which has a fence round - completely ineffective as I never put any gates on 😂)

Then I think we're going to move to allotment-style rows. Not quite so pretty perhaps, but easier to maintain, I think. 

I might change my mind about the end, but the stones are definitely coming out either way. 

Proper nippy out today though! Very much appreciating the seat i built in the greenhouse a couple of years ago 😂 There are a couple of panes blown out (just plastic) and another glass one has broken, but I have a spare plastic one to replace it. The clips are in the house though, and the back door keeps sticking so needs a good bang to shut it, and Mr C is still in bed, so now I'm out I'm either staying out until he gets up, or only going in once I want to stay in.

Wish I'd thought to make myself a cuppa to bring out though 😂

Cheery_Daff

Brrr, it's nippy out there! 🥶 

Shifted stones from one edge, and warmed up in the greenhouse. Re-attached one pane - but can I find the clips to re-attach the others?? No! I KNOW I bought a bag of them a few months ago - naturally they will resurface the minute I order replacements 🙄

Came inside for lunch and to charge my phone (for photo/audio book purposes). Had a look through some gardening books 😊

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I found a £10 note folded on the garden path! No idea where that came from - I never fold notes in that way, so it certainly wasn't mine to start with. We are a mile away from a road, and it was a good 15 feet and a couple of fences away from the public footpath. Over in the veg patch so unlikely that Mr C has been over there - although quite likely he might have dropped it getting out of the car.

However, when indoors I generally adopt the rule that "money on the floor belongs to the person doing the hoovering" and so I think that should apply outside too 🤭😂

Right, heading back out. Going to finish shifting that row of stones, and go round the edges of the path from gate to back door - it's getting overgrown with grass and a bit muddy. And I want to sort out the area right outside the gate that forms a small lake whenever it rains. 

Here's a pic of veg patch in current form. The paths weren't originally this wide, but lack of maintenance has made them like this so they're coming out! 

Baileys_Babe

Cheery_Daff said:

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I found a £10 note folded on the garden path! No idea where that came from - I never fold notes in that way, so it certainly wasn't mine to start with. We are a mile away from a road, and it was a good 15 feet and a couple of fences away from the public footpath. Over in the veg patch so unlikely that Mr C has been over there - although quite likely he might have dropped it getting out of the car.

However, when indoors I generally adopt the rule that "money on the floor belongs to the person doing the hoovering" and so I think that should apply outside too 🤭😂

That was always my rule when I did the vacuuming, sweeping and mowing, now the children (20 & 16) mainly do those things I think I might change the rule 🤭

Cheery_Daff

😂😂 @Baileys_Babe 😂😂

It's proving to be an eventful day in the garden! An old couple just came down the drive (which is a public footpath) - obviously while I was sat with a cuppa rather than while I was energetically digging 🙄😂

Anyway, it transpires his mum was born in our house 😂 I did try to get them to come in and have a look round but they wouldn't hear of it. Told me some stories though (including that the living room was originally a separate building! I knew it was an extension obviously, but didn't realise it was separate originally). Said they'd come back one day with some photos.

Back to digging. Wonder if anything else exciting will happen while I'm out here?!