Tag: houses

Busy, Busy, sell!

Hi there. It’s been a few days since I posted about the clock being the heartbeat of the home, my wife and I have finally arrived back into the East Midlands after she has had the break away with her friend, in West London.

I’ve gone back to work and have been doing the early morning stint, I’m currently on the second of two rest-days before I’m back on early shift again starting Tomorrow.

I have a lot to thank my wife’s friend for especially in arousing an interest in gardening that I have been trying to nurture for many years. Our current garden has taken almost 8 years of planning, planting and correcting mistakes to reach the maturity it displays today. A garden is a form of art, it’s not produced in a matter of days as numerous gardening programs would have you believe, it really takes years and needs a big commitment. When I went to collect my wife from London it had become apparent that she and her friend had pretty much visited about every garden centre in West London. The beautiful specimens of plants that greeted me on my arrival were testament to that. My wife had chosen all the plants and she was now genuinely interested in making the garden even more attractive.

Garden

There was a very slight caveat though….

In her time away and after having discussions with her friend she has made up her mind that we want to move to a new property a bit further away from the city. We had our current house valued before she went away, and we were sitting on that information that we were going to discuss on her return. This is when she broke it to me that she’d love to help me develop the “New Garden” and that is when I knew she had made her mind up.

I was ready to get things in motion, but being the cautious person that i am, I’ve asked her to look at a few options prior to putting the boards up, and we are currently going through these options. We need to get away from the city centre on health grounds, and it would certainly help to move away. Part one is a visit to the developer, and that is going to occur later today…after the new washing machine has arrived. Yep the trusty servant of the last nine years has seen its last load. Time for a new one.

It’s been a busy week for me as I’ve taken advantage of the gorgeous weather we have had for the last few days. Today we are back to the normal gloom and grey backdrop, so here I am putting pen to paper or is it finger to keyboard? You know what I mean.

New stone surrounds

I’ve given the garden a lot of attention, thinning out areas to allow sun into the slower growing plants as the bigger, quicker growers have been stealing all the sun. I’ve rescued a Rhododendron that had been engulfed by a Californian lilac bush, and repotted it into a large pot that now has a sunnier outlook at the front of the house. All bushes and hedges have now been trimmed and grasses cut and manicured.

I’ve finally got around to finishing off the stone surround to the garden room, a large bag of stone had been residing in the garden for at least 18 months and has now been disposed of, it opens up so much more room in the garden. On top of that I have rejigged the Hedgehog highways around the garden to allow them a better more secluded access and they are making full use of it at the moment if the noise at the food tray last night is anything to go by.

So today we begin the journey of looking at new homes. Not one I particularly enjoy as we have got this home and garden into a nice condition that I am both proud of and content with. And now there is the possibility of starting it all over again with a blank canvas that is both scary, and exciting in equal doses.

But fickle as the property business is, we may still be here in months or years to come so there is no point in getting carried away with it all, we need to still pour all our love and attention into this little home, and keep it comfortable as it has always been. We could still be here for ever more. And that’s no bad thing.

Have a blessed day.

Journal – Post two

Good morning all and i trust you are well. For the second instalment of this riveting read i will bring you up to date with what has occurred in the last few days.

We have advanced from Summer to Autumn, we still have ridiculous amounts of rain fall, and to top that this morning we have had a hardy spread of frost. I’m really surprised about the weather to be honest, as normally at this time of year we are holidaying in Cyprus and when we are there they always seem to have a heatwave back home. This year seems to be an exception to the rule.

The usual discussion of “Should the heating go on” is high on the agenda at the moment, with the wife staunchly stating that it’s not going on before mid October. We live in a 1930s house with the rear of it facing North, to say its sometimes cool is an understatement, it leaks heat like a bucket with a hole, but in the heat of summer (if it ever happens) its as cool as you like. Great Mediterranean architecture design’s shouldn’t have been a consideration of builders in the 1930s UK.

Tabs house

I’ve mentioned about the feral cat we inherited when we purchased our house all those years ago, we call her “Tabs”. Well a couple of days ago the wife decided as the weather was still turning that she was going to buy Tabs a house. During the winter months she lives either under the covered garden furniture on the decking or in the next door neighbours garden under a lean to. It’s been fun watching the wife trying to coax Tabs into here new home, she will go in if we put treats in there but she firmly leaves her rear end poking out of it….she still needs convincing. We have had disagreements regarding its siting, i say it should be down the garden but the wife insists it should be near the back door. Time will tell. I lay money on it that our resident Hedgehog community will visit and check it out before too long.

Work has been gearing up to probably the season we hate most and that is leaf fall. It’s fast approaching and we will no doubt have trains slipping and sliding all over the network before too long. It’s a real challenge to get sites treated before this happens and it’s a busy time for us on the ground. People may laugh and scoff, but just don’t understand the issues that we face. It’s real, and it’s a real problem.

We are both suffering the holiday blues after a wonderful small break away in Norfolk, hence we have now booked all our holidays for next year. We didn’t go abroad this year as we knew our dog Alfie was unwell and we had decided our priority was him and looking after his wellbeing, we had a beautiful holiday with him this year in Devon that we will forever cherish. We still have a couple of small breaks this year, one is for a 60th birthday in Devon and the other is down in the Twickenham area of London to meet with a friend of the wife’s for a few days who is struggling with her health.

Next years agenda is like so: January back to Norfolk for a relaxing small break. February we are back to Iceland as we love it so. June we are back to Norfolk for a big family gathering and then to top it all we have treated ourselves to two weeks in Aruba in October. Never been there before, heard a lot about it so we are giving it a go. I should still have some days available after all of this that we will use for days out etc. We haven’t been this organised for years, and we both love having something to look forward to.

I’ve been back to fixing a few items but to be honest I’m not concentrating that well so my decision making whilst fault finding is a bit shot at the moment, I’ve stepped away for a few days to regain some composure then i will return.

Working late shifts at the moment 14-2200hrs and they are full on. I have a day off tomorrow and I’m looking forward to that as much as i would a holiday.

Look after yourselves and stay warm.