Edited by Cathy Winsor, Saturday, 3 Mar 2012, 08:08
Huge excitement, the conservatory is finished, at least finished as far as the builders are concerned, there are a few gaps here and there, but then they were attaching it to a wall that leans outwards slightly; we’ll have to work out the best kind of filler to fill the wedge between the supports and the house. Of course we need to do the floor; we have moved the furniture in regardless and can just shift it to one end when we start the tiling. It was 22 degrees in there in the evening, 4 degrees warmer than the outside temperature; the cats loved it and curled up on the sofa as soon as we brought it in. We had the tree surgeons in yesterday too, they put up their cherry picker next to the old oak that has been dropping the odd branch on the garage and vegetable plot and pruned back the dead half of the tree. It looks rather asymmetrical now but we are hoping it will sprout some healthy growth below the cuts. The tree surgeons do gardening jobs too and have given me an estimate for digging a flower bed, a mere 70 Euros, so cheaper than hiring a rotivator, so they’ll come in once the vegetation has rotted under a strip of heavy duty plastic. So by April I should have somewhere to plant the thousands of flower seeds I have ordered from ebay, in readiness for the wedding. We put the polytunnel up and all the shelving. I realised I have run out of poly pots so have ordered a few hundred of those. I just love being able to work in the garden again. I can see it’s going to be difficult to fit the module in; I’ll have to be disciplined about assigning hours to study.
Our chosen book for book club on Thursday evening was Amy Bender’s ‘Peculiar sadness of Lemon Cake.’ It generally got the thumbs down. It started well, but the plot seemed to go a bit awol at the end, there had to be a better alternative to turning the maladjusted protagonist’s brother into a chair. After that we all thought it best to decide on the next book together. Tiny Sunbirds far away...in fact I chose it, it’s set in Nigeria, a world I understand and a book I’m sure everyone will enjoy. Driving to book club was quite scary, 30kms of deserted winding country lanes, mostly through woodland in pitch blackness. Living in a cluster of villages we tend to forget how sparsely populated the Midi Pyrenees is. I’ll arrange to give people a lift next time.
3rd March
Huge excitement, the conservatory is finished, at least finished as far as the builders are concerned, there are a few gaps here and there, but then they were attaching it to a wall that leans outwards slightly; we’ll have to work out the best kind of filler to fill the wedge between the supports and the house. Of course we need to do the floor; we have moved the furniture in regardless and can just shift it to one end when we start the tiling. It was 22 degrees in there in the evening, 4 degrees warmer than the outside temperature; the cats loved it and curled up on the sofa as soon as we brought it in. We had the tree surgeons in yesterday too, they put up their cherry picker next to the old oak that has been dropping the odd branch on the garage and vegetable plot and pruned back the dead half of the tree. It looks rather asymmetrical now but we are hoping it will sprout some healthy growth below the cuts. The tree surgeons do gardening jobs too and have given me an estimate for digging a flower bed, a mere 70 Euros, so cheaper than hiring a rotivator, so they’ll come in once the vegetation has rotted under a strip of heavy duty plastic. So by April I should have somewhere to plant the thousands of flower seeds I have ordered from ebay, in readiness for the wedding. We put the polytunnel up and all the shelving. I realised I have run out of poly pots so have ordered a few hundred of those. I just love being able to work in the garden again. I can see it’s going to be difficult to fit the module in; I’ll have to be disciplined about assigning hours to study.
Our chosen book for book club on Thursday evening was Amy Bender’s ‘Peculiar sadness of Lemon Cake.’ It generally got the thumbs down. It started well, but the plot seemed to go a bit awol at the end, there had to be a better alternative to turning the maladjusted protagonist’s brother into a chair. After that we all thought it best to decide on the next book together. Tiny Sunbirds far away...in fact I chose it, it’s set in Nigeria, a world I understand and a book I’m sure everyone will enjoy. Driving to book club was quite scary, 30kms of deserted winding country lanes, mostly through woodland in pitch blackness. Living in a cluster of villages we tend to forget how sparsely populated the Midi Pyrenees is. I’ll arrange to give people a lift next time.