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

strandedinaber

Well done on the steam cleaning Cheery! Looks impressive to me. I need to get mine out and have another go at the car - I steam cleaned it and then bought several bags of gravel and was given a few used paving slabs, so, now it needs cleaning again

Also echoing the belated happy anniversary to you both

themadvix

Another belated happy anniversary from me Cheery! 

Appreciate time constraints of journey there might make this impossible, but is there a number you can ring to save you the trip tomorrow?

Cheery_Daff

Probably, yes, but we're going to combine it with a trip out for breakfast - it's just up the road from the cafe 😊 and if I get my act together in the garden in the next hour or so,  we might even be able to add in a trip to the tip! There's a pile of ivy already cut,  just needs shoving into a bag...

Forecast is sunshine today,  so if quite like to spend at least some of it in the garden. Might even be able to get some washing done and our before we go too 😊

I'm off till 8th now and need to find the right balance between wanting to tick all the things off my list and actually having a nice rest and some days out with Mr Cheery...

fannyadams

I subscribed. I'll never miss another post again.
Happy unniversary to you both.

Cheery_Daff

Hi @fannyadams sit down and have a nice cup of tea 😊

All sorted with the steam cleaner - extended for another week. Nice breakfast in the cafe, and some plotting and scheming for the rest of the year (we're a quarter of the way through already!) Some nice cheerful plans for visiting and visitors, and also some plans for more practical projects too 😊

One annoying thing. When we did the TSB switch, we did it through TCB for extra cashback. We have the switch incentive, and are now trying to meet the cashback conditions, one of which is using the debit card twice each month. Mine was fine, done this morning. Tried using Mr Cheery's - it was declined 🤔 Tried in another shop, declined again, and the message flashed up saying 'first time use' 🤔 Clearly not, as it was used twice in Feb. 

Tried logging in at the cash machine - it let him log in, but when asked for a balance, it said 'we are not able to perform this operation now' or some similar nonsense. 

Logged into online banking - there's over £500 in there and we were trying to spend under £5 so that's not the issue 😂 Cant see any other issue. Most mysterious.

Also quite annoying - if he can't use it twice either today or tomorrow, we'll miss the window for the cashback. I hadn't thought it was an issue leaving it til now as it worked before! I assume TSB hasn't had an outage as I used my card about an hour earlier, twice. 

🤔

Cheery_Daff

Evening chums 😊

Well, I had a productive afternoon in the garden 😊 Finished cutting the ivy runners out of the lawn, and mostly got everything bagged up - another 2 tonne bags ready for the tip now. It's quite a small area, but I'd not cut the ivy back in the whole 6 years we've been here, so that'll be 4 giant bags of it 🙈 Still, we now have full use of our only bit of lawn that can't be seen from the footpath 😊 

There's an odd breeze block planter round there too. It wasn't filled with soil, and doesn't seem to have a bottom (well, it doesn't go to Australia but at one point I was seriously considering it might be an overgrown spring 😂). It's not a spring - I think it's just a planter at the end of the concrete. Anyway, I was cutting the ivy and matted grass from round the top but had to stop as I disturbed a toad... Left him to it. Have shoved a load of ivy cuttings and other green wast into the planter, will top with some compost and probably plant the £1 things I rescued from B&Q last week. 

So, a list for tomorrow - the only remaining sunny day of my holiday apparently 🙄

GARDEN
* bag up remaining ivy (only the big I abandoned after the toad)
* retrieve a bench from elsewhere and put on the terrace for tea in the early morning sunshine 😊 Will likely need a new bench - one of mine is so broken it's liable to collapse, and the other doesn't have a back, and I can't lean against the house because there's a windowsill in the way
* make a start on the other seating area

ADMIN
* pay bill (had this on the list for weeks!)
* see if we can use the stupid TSB card for an online purchase, and if not we might have to abandon it and relinquish cashback 🙄 Not worth getting Mr Cheery to ring the bank - fully intend to switch away soon anyway 🙄 We'll lose the cashback, probably £30, but we'll still get it for me, plus we already have £125 each for the switch
* start next switch if still available

OTHER
* possible goals meeting with sister
* batch cooking something! 
* more steam cleaning the floor in the evening
* ooh, possibly defrost the freezer with the steam cleaner! 😃

Mr Cheery is out in the evening, so I might watch a film and finish sewing his hat (which was meant to be a Christmas present...) 🙄😂

Cheery_Daff

Oh, and the local gym is doing membership for £10 til May. Normally £37 a month, or £24 for just swimming. I've been a member before, it's cheerful there, I just couldn't justify the cost for the amount I went - it was cheaper to just PAYG. Lane swimming (the only thing I've done there for yonks) is £4.65 so I'd only have to go three times for a saving... 

Tomorrow is the last day to decide...

themadvix

I’m intrigued - I wouldn’t have risked ivy in a hugelkultur bed - would think it would find its way through… 

Gym sounds like a bargain and a no brainer, even if only for swimming.

 Happy Easter! 🐣 

Cheery_Daff

Ha, I'm not recommending it as good gardening practice, just reporting what I did - they are often very much not the same thing 😂😂 In this case, there's still ivy growing round the walls surrounding the bed, so me chopping some up and throwing it in the bottom won't make much difference. I was just being idle - one less pile to throw over the wall and take to the tip. And also trying to be a bit thrifty and lazy - it's quite a deep hole, far bigger than is needed to grow flowers/herbs, so I wasn't going to fill it all with compost! Especially as there's no way to get to it without going up a set of steps, so trying to minimise carrying things in either direction 😂

I wouldn't have done it with a veg bed, but this is likely just going to end up covered in ivy again anyway, which is fine - it just needed to be slightly less monstrous! 

Will take a picture in a bit 😊

Cheery_Daff

Right, I am calling it a day on the lawn/terrace. Still got some pottering in relation to getting stuff to the tip, but I'm declaring the area itself done 😃

Here are before and during pictures of the lawn...



And after:


You can see the corner of the house on the right, and the weird planter thing on the left. It has such an odd shaped opening - it makes me wonder if there was a giant statue of a lion or something on it that was ripped off 😂

Yes, the drain pipe trails over the path. When we moved in it just emptied onto the terrace so at least this way it drains into the gras rather than over the concrete 🙄

And this is the marginally spruced up 'terrace':



A grand word for what is essentially just a strip of concrete outside the living room window. Looks rather grey and dreary today but that's partly the weather, and partly that I've pulled a load of ivy off (you can see at the end where the wall is lighter). It'll look better when I put something in the planter at the end, and I might put a pot just this side of the planter too - I've just moved one from there because it was only full of mud 🙄

Bench rescued from elsewhere in the garden, needs painting but is otherwise pretty sturdy. I thought it would need a back, but actually it's fine as it is. This bit only gets the sun very first thing in morning so it's not a lazing all day spot. I do need to remove a few low tree branches over that bit of lawn though, otherwise that's not going to get any sun either!

Came back in for a rest. I'd put soup in the hay box earlier, a mix Mr Cheery's niece bought us for Christmas from their zero waste shop. He's eating some now but I'm saving mine for teatime. 

I'll go back out shortly but it's actually pretty cold out there so I needed to warm up!