Friday 27 July 2012

Composting

While I was spending a few days swanning around Pisa with my cousin, Jon got his parents over to the House of Love to put in some work. I came back to a tidied front garden (how does it get so messy and weed-strewn?), some lovely new daisy-like flowers in the back garden, and my longed-for second compost bin.

This means I'll be able to move my compost from one bin to the other getting lots of lovely air in there to help the bacteria break everything down that little bit quicker. It also means I can have one compost bin for collecting and one for using, no more having to decant the compost bin into bags!

They sensibly built the new bin over the MASSIVE tree stump in the garden thereby using up some otherwise dead space.

Look, it's got a special door to help me get at all that lovely compost.

What a stylish compost bin, made from reused pallets don't you know.

So now I have a black bin to put all the yuk in while it breaks down and a nice wooden bin for all the lovely tasty nearly ready compost to do it's last rotting.

Wednesday 18 July 2012

1st Anniversary.

There will be no photos in this post. The aim of this post is to point out that we moved into our house 1 year ago yesterday. If you want to see the house, look at previous posts. You could start here and look at ALL of them!

If you do, you will see how much stuff we have done and how much we still have left to do. We've done a lot, I reckon, but we couldn't have done it without the help of all our wonderful friends and family who have appeared on the blog over the last year, especially my dad and Hannah's mum. They come around and do lifting and digging and painting and things that we're a bit too lazy to do. They also lend moral support when the prospect of another coat of paint or another trip to the dump is just too much to bare.

We never did have a proper housewarming party - and I'm not sure we can be bothered now - but if you're reading this and still haven't seen our house - or haven't seen it for a while - please invite yourself over. It's about the best thing we've done, I reckon.

Friday 13 July 2012

Stairwell to Heaven

I think every wall, apart from the stairwell walls, had had at least one coat of paint. Painting is annoying. I hate it. Lots.

So I get my dad to come and do it. He doesn't seem to mind so much. The stairwell involved high up ladder painting! He likes to do the more dangerous things because he says he's old and doesn't have as much to live for! DAD!

We covered up the banister because we're pros like that.

He still wants to strip the paint on the stairs but I like it. It looks like we meant it to look shabby chic, but we didn't, so that's, like, actually cool, rather than, like, fake, right?
Oh, and I changed the lampshade (check back to first photo) to one of those spherical paper ones. They're about the only lampshades we can agree on. And they cost £1 at Wilko's.

VIEW THE EPIC JOURNEY OF THE STAIRCASE HERE!

Saturday 7 July 2012

Salad self sufficiency

Ever since we got back from holiday we've been eating massive amounts of salad. And we haven't bought any from a shop, it's all been grown here in the Garden of Love. I am hugely proud of this. Even if my beetroot don't swell (why can't I grow beetroot?) and my squash only produce one tiny pumpkin I will still be happy that we are self sufficient in salad.

Last night Tamsin and Camilla came round to celebrate new jobs (me and Camilla) and I made this salad that looks super pretty with tasty edible nasturtium flowers, yum yum!

Sunday 1 July 2012

Cut flowers

Following in the footsteps of my garden heroine, Alys Fowler, I want my garden to be beautiful as well as productive. And one of the ways I want it do beautiful productivity is by furnishing me with cut flowers. And here are the first cut flowers from the garden this year, Feverfew. It has a bit of a strange smell but the daisy like flowers are currently filling the garden and house and making everything a little bit better.