wherethejourneytakesme

July 13, 2018February 3, 2019

homestEAd ~ rEAdy…stEAdy…decorate

After sorting out a few things at home yesterday it was time to go back to my daughter’s house across town to continue helping them get their house in order.

When I say in order I am not referring to a bit of tidying or cleaning – no, by order I mean the complete works – decorating, finishing off half completed jobs and revamping not to mention the outside of the house, painting the front door and window sills, laying turf and putting down gravel. Then there is the shed (needs a coat of paint) and the garage (ditto).

So welcome to Where the journey takes me 2 – Painters, Decorators, Odd Jobbers and Landscape Gardeners Limited.

My daughter has a small house but in the eight years they have lived there they have only finished the two bedrooms and put in a new bathroom. We offered to help them sort the rest of the house out ready to put on the market at some future date and to make it a nicer environment for them to live in until then.

About 3 years ago they removed the dividing wall between the tiny kitchen and the dining room to make one large space and all the cabinets, worktops and the laminate floor were put in place. It just needed decorating and the dishwasher installing which DH and SIL were responsible for doing and was finished just before our holiday.

At last they have a fully functioning kitchen and dining room and it is looking much more like a usable space. In the dining area they have a dining suite that belonged to my mum and dad, it was one of the first pieces of furniture that they saved up to buy when they got married.

The suite is an original vintage 1950’s – The sideboard design was first shown at the Festival of Britain, 1951 and there is one permanently displayed at the V&A. It is mahogany with Bombay rosewood veneered doors that feature a striking double helix pattern cut to reveal white birch beneath. It was designed by David Booth, made by Gordon Russell of Broadway and sold in Heal’s of London – although I believe my mum and dad bought it from Robert Brothers department store in Sheffield. We have lovingly cleaned and polished it and this little family treasure looks really quite nice in its new home.

My role in this makeover (when not polishing furniture and making cups of tea) is as the landscape gardener – before our holiday I removed many old woody shrubs that had grown far too large for the space and extended the lawn – not the best time to lay turf with the hot weather but it has survived and is looking green and ready for cutting.

They have quite a few Hydrangeas which adds a nice bit of colour to the garden along with these lovely yellow flowers. The name escapes me, I have never grown them but they do have a really long flowering time.

Tomorrow if the weather holds I will be preparing another area of the garden to lay gravel and make a seating area. The ground is so hard now I am having to break it up with the pick.

It has been a lot of hard work, some days we have been there until 8 o’clock at night and we were glad of the break when we went on holiday. It took a lot of ‘getting back into it’ today first day back on the job – I estimate it will take us another three weeks to complete everything if we are lucky.

I hope everyone is enjoying the rain and a rest from all the watering.

Back soon x

July 12, 2018February 3, 2019

dEAr diary ~ reappraisal…the next steps

As you might have realised by the sudden gap in transmission we are now back home in Yorkshire and I am back at work.

Back at work wondering why on earth I didn’t put my final day to leave work as June 30th when I handed in my notice – so now I am stuck with 31st July (I gave them two months notice) and to be honest this was a mistake. The break from work for our two-week holiday has meant it has been so hard to return to fulfil these remaining days of which I have now only 7 to go (not that I am counting), but it suddenly seems an eternity.

It is a bit scary leaving but now I just want to get it done.

Overwith.

Start my new life…whatever shape that will be.

Today is my first day off this week. We arrived back quite late last Sunday, unloaded the car, watered our devastated and thirsty garden with endless watering cans of water (as we didn’t know if a hose pipe ban was in place) then fell into bed.

So now my home looks like it has had an attack of some kind with the contents of all the bags from our holiday dispersed around the rooms waiting for some action. So my task for today will be to CLEAR IT ALL UP.

I have washing to sort, unpacking to finish, menus to plan and a shopping list to write. I actually feel a bit disoriented and exhausted. Maybe that is just age, maybe just me but somehow as they say my get up and go has got up and gone.

I have a new follower, Cathy from Still Waters – welcome Cathy. I noticed her most recent post was about insomnia. I can relate to this – I did not sleep well the last three nights and it was not the heat but the pressures of work, or should I say the pressures of leaving work. There is still much unrest in the office – speculation as to where the new directors are taking us, the new imposed restrictions, the never-ending meeting and setting targets to bring in more money. It is all about more money – never about client satisfaction and care or even the employees satisfaction and care. I can’t continue to work in that world. So I won’t be.

Well I don’t wish to moan anymore I just have to sit out my last seven days over the next three weeks – my replacement starts on Monday – and then I can turn my focus to my new life.

What am I going to do with my new life? It is a bit like having a blank page or the start of a new year. I need a plan.

But that will be another post another day – I have to get moving on the tidying and shopping.

Quick update – whilst out shopping this afternoon I picked up a few things in Sainsbury’s – the rope coil basket was £6 and will be useful to keep our laptop chargers and cables in, the gardening gloves are reduced to £2.25 and are great for gardening – I had a pair recently at the cottage so I have bought 2 more.

Lastly, I got a copy of Mollie Makes – I hope it is the right edition – No 94 as it should have the feature in of Gillian’s home from the blog ‘Tales from a happy house.’

Back soon x

July 7, 2018February 3, 2019

mEAndering ~ a trip to the Isle of Whithorn

We had planned a day out on Wednesday as a change from gardening (and after all it is our holidays!) – but decided that a long drive up through Ayrshire to Largs for a trip on the Waverley steam boat was not a good idea for me in this heat. DH is as tough as old boots but I am too delicate in this hot weather!

So instead we opted for a run out along the coast road that takes us round to the other side of Luce Bay and down to the Isle of Whithorn, a picturesque village centered around the natural little harbour.

It is one of my favourite places – I could easily live here though it is some 22 miles to the nearest town of Newton Stewart where there are larger (but not huge) supermarkets and a range of independant shops. Down on the Isle there is only a community shop run in the visitor centre that closes at 4pm and no petrol station for miles.

It has some fascinating buildings – the Isle of Whithorn Church (a former Free church) is situated on the foreshore of the harbour just along the main street and is very much in use doubling up as an exhibition area when there are no services taking place.

The windows are clear not stained but an old repair here shows someone has added a patterned glass in one of them at some time which is rather cute.

This row of houses also built on the shoreline jut out into the harbour. The end house / houses (I am never quite sure if there are three or four houses in the row) are being completely renovated at the moment.

The larger house in the cluster with the blue painted windows has just been renovated and brought back to its former glory. The garden wall is decorated with black paint to represent castle walls. Look closely at the end of the terrace of houses and you can see a rather picturesque balcony.

I am curious to know what the three stones are for that jut out of the corner of this house!

This is the old Tower House just off the main street by the river with its tiny turrets on the corners.

I loved this little find – down one of the side streets. I thought I had found a use for DH’s old leaky wellies – DH just informed me that he had put his old wellies in the bin and that the bin men had emptied it this morning!

Either of these two cottages would suit me if ever they come on the market. they look out across the harbour and are quite sheltered.

I think that this might have been the former post office which is now located in the new lottery funded visitor centre.

It was too hot to venture over to the old ruins of St Ninian’s Chapel but here are a few pictures from a previous visit. St Ninian was the founder of the Whithorn Priory said to be the most holy place in Scotland. He is acknowledged as Scotland’s first Saint.

At one time the Chapel (which dates back to about 1300 and built on the site of an earlier chapel) was actually situated on an Island just off the mainland but after the redevelopment of the village and harbour the gap was closed and it is now part of the mainland just beyond the harbour.

The pilgrims to St Ninian’s Shrine at Whithorn some 3 miles away would have landed on the beach just below the Chapel and then given thanks for surviving the treacherous sea journey before setting off on foot to visit the shrine where it is said that many miracle cures and healing took place.

There is such a rich history in the area of early settlements and Whithorn’s development as a Christian centre. There has been many archaeological excavations and a lot of interesting finds.

With the hot weather and very little shade (there are not many trees on the Isle of Whithorn) we could not go exploring far but it was good to get out and about for a while.

July 2, 2018May 3, 2019

bEAching ~ more good weather – more gardening

Garden Notebook

White Foxglove

I hope I am not boring you with all this gardening but I have to take advantage of the good weather whilst I can even if I feel I will never straighten up again and my gardening boots are welded to my feet.

Talking of feet, what was I thinking – to come on holiday and not bring some cool open sandals? Trainers and Sketchers are a bit warm this weather and my feet feel two sizes bigger – nothing to it but to plunge them into a bath of cool water. I suppose with the sea only a few yards away I could go and have a paddle this evening but I think the thought of dodging the midges out there puts me off. I will stick to a bowl of water.

It is unlike me not to be in the mood for gardening but today I did feel a bit ‘off’ but I think that is more to do with the weather being so unusually hot for days on end and having to continually move about the garden with the shade and not really getting any border fully completed.

Frustrating.

I finally settled for sorting out under the apple tree and clear around the base. The gardening books all tell me that apples do best when the ground around the trees are kept free of grass and weeds. The grass doesn’t grow there anyway (far too shady for it to be bothered) but obviously the weeds don’t read the same books and will insist on gathering around the trunk on mass!

After spending the morning crawling around underneath this and the adjacent Corkscrew Hazel I have cleared the spot once again and will spread some manure around in the hope it will help preserve some moisture and feed the tree at the same time. This dry weather might make all the apples fall off while still tiny – fingers crossed they stay on the tree long enough to swell and ripen.

Of course the apple tree should have received a hefty pruning last winter to cut it down to a more manageable size but if you remember the visit when this was planned the country was taken over by the Beast from the East and we retreated to the warmth of the caravan all week.

Apple tree therefore did not get a good ‘going over’ and as a consequence is now another four feet higher. Not sure why anyone would want to plant a half standard apple tree that grows up to 5 metres in height and doesn’t own a cherry picker. Needless to say we inherited this tree with the garden but it does produce the most wonderful Bramley’s – but only at the top of the tree!

We went into town after lunch as we had to do another tip run with all the bags of weeds that I have generated – they accumulate quickly and filled the trailer. I also had a shopping list that went something like this:-

1 large bag Compost
3 bags Farmyard Manure
3 bales Bark chippings
2 pints milk

The milk being for us of course!

I would normally make my own chippings by shredding the pruned branches but there just isn’t time on this visit. So nothing for it we decided to buy some – it would be worth the money at the moment to keep on top of the bits of garden we have cleared.

There is not a lot of choice up here and the prices are more expensive than at home – there are no chain stores like B&Q only independently owned shops. We did manage to find some 3 for 2 on both the manure and bark at the local garden centre which is easy parking when you have a trailer on the back and they do a good cup of tea and the most deliciously moist fruit loaf sliced and buttered.

Bobtail bunny is bobbing around the garden tonight – his curiosity is leading him to investigate our pile of bonfire prunings. A good job it is too hot to light it or one more ‘bob’ and he would be a roast bunny.

Back soon x