Tuesday 27 May 2014

Europe, Gardening and The Shed

It's been a busy few weeks with lots of work travel to Holland, Germany and Holland again during their World Cup win over Australia. The cheering as each goal was scored was something powerful!
The times in between have been filled with gardening, nourishing our first plants as if they are new borns and taking personal pride in each days additional growth. We're experimenting this year with brussel sprouts, sweet corn, beet root, potatoes in bags, leeks, mangetout, lettuces, herbs, spinach, garlic and french beans. We've been in the middle of a heat wave with very little rain for the past two weeks and lovely burning hot days which make the garden a great escape from the office.
Our first harvest has been the garlic, planted at mid winter last year and pulled today, just after mid summer. It's drying in the sunshine as I type and my plan is to weave the long fronds into one of those pleated things you see women sitting making by the side of the roads in summer in France so we can have our own garlic string in the kitchen.

And most excitingly, we took delivery of a new shed....
This is something we have been talking about and planning for, for over 4 years as part of our "where will we put everything if I move in" dilemma. So now, finally, we have gone a long way to solving that problem and giving us more space in the house. It's also the last of the really big jobs we wanted to tackle this year. The chimneys have also been repaired and had little pots put on them to stop birds nesting where they shouldn't and been swept for the first time in some years. So were optimistic we won't smoke ourselves out when we're relying on the log burner this winter :)

With the help of some friends, some kind weather, lots of drills, beer and a bit of swearing the job was done.
On the creative side, it's mostly been about playing with nail art. I've really taken to this after being shown the techniques by a friend who invited some of the girlie crew over one Saturday for lunch and varnish. Life is too short for boring nails and if you don't like it, you just scrub it off. Easier than tattoos I presume. I don't have any but I think changing them is far more troublesome.
My preference is for subtle rather than bold colours although it was fun to play with the samples above. I like the dotty flowers you can make (a cocktail stick dipped in varnish does the trick). Put on a base coat and dip dip dot in the colours you have lying around. Fun and cheap!









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