Attempting to ditch the well-worn rucksack and find a bag that will fit my laptop and all the rest of my rubbish, without giving me chronic backache.
This bag, from Mary Portas, is nice and roomy and structured. Let’s see if it works out, or whether I’m back in the rucksack within the week 🙂
In the old days (ie, Easter weekend, about a month ago), a Bank Holiday weekend meant an extra hangover day. But this weekend I was extra good and used the long weekend to actually do stuff.
The weather was nice on Sunday so I decided it was time to start The Garden Project. The first thing to do was actually try and see the grass for the, err, grass. At least 3 ft high, the meadow masquerading as a lawn was the first thing to tackle. We’ve only got a very small, not very powerful lawn mower, so it took quite a lot of effort to get through it. It also became pretty obvious pretty quickly that the grass was actually quite a lot of weed.
Oh, and we found a visitor in the undergrowth.
Mowing the grass was pretty hard work, so I left that to himself, while I focused on the bindweed and the patio weeds, along with clearing out and preparing pots, ready for new flowers. There is much more work to do on the patios, just to get the rest of the moss off and jetwash them again, but for now it was more a case of making the garden presentable than anything else.
After a couple of hours we whizzed off to the garden centre and decided to buy some herbs to start a small kitchen garden, along with some tomatoes and peppers. We bought tarragon, thyme and mint, to go with the rosemary and sage we still had from last year. We also bought a few little flowers, as these are supposed to encourage the hover flies, which eat the nasty bugs that eat the plants. That’s the theory anyway. You can tell I’ve read up on this – not!
So we got back, in proud possession of a rake and about fifty quid’s worth of plants, but which time we were pretty knackered. So we finished off the grass, collecting eight bags of cuttings in the process – which is pretty amazing considering how small it is, and planted our tomatoes and herbs.
I finished off the planting on Monday morning, and did a heroic trip to the tip with the garden rubbish. Along with most of Sussex it seems – clearly the hot weekend attraction round these parts.
So, providing I remember to actually water the plants we bought, I’m hoping this is the start of a very small, but productive kitchen garden. Next time I shall do the patios and perhaps cut the overgrown bushes back. It’s nice to see the garden looking better, for sure, and the aching muscles from a bit of hard work is quite nice too.
While Madge starts to seriously step up his training for this years’ Prudential 100 and more importantly, his cycle trip from London to Paris in September, I figured it would be nice to have a project of my own. Not one that involves cycling hundreds of miles, but something a little closer to home.
I’ve never had the slightest interest in gardening, but my poor little postage-stamp sized patch is looking particularly unloved after a long winter. The grass is more like a dandelion field and the patio has so much moss on it that it’s more moss than, err, patio!
So this morning I decided to start to tidy it up and I figured it could be something quite nice to do while he is out pounding the streets on Sussex on a Sunday morning. Not quite motorbike racing, but it would be nice to pretty the place up a bit and it’s something to do that isn’t work, or thinking about work, on a weekend.
I started Phase 1 today: Jetwash. Probably the most fun power tool ever. I’ve only got a little jetwasher but I started by giving one of the patios a once-over, obviously covering myself in mud as part of the process. There are two small patios and a tiny patch of grass in the garden, so there’s not much to look after, but before I can do anything I need to be able to see the stones and establish if there is any grass in-between the weeds.
I took some ‘before’ pictures, though they were just after I’d jetwashed, so it actually looked worse about an hour before, if that’s possible. It’s definitely going to need another session and some moss killer but you gotta start somewhere!
 
I don’t really want to spend a fortune as I’m not sure how long we will be in this house after next year so I think the best idea will be to plant lots of pots and things that are moveable. But should I stick to a colour scheme, or a particular style of flowers, or herbs even? Can you do a kitchen garden in pots, or grow tomatoes in them? There’s so much I don’t know (everything, in fact). Might be quite fun designing my small garden makeover 🙂
Guard your time. Let kindess rule. Create good habits. Choose to focus on the good. Start each day with goals. Find the best in others. Be the best version of you. Believe anything is possible.
Gua
2015 manifestoAt the beginning of November I found out I had shingles, which was pretty shitty. Not the finding out bit, but the shingles bit. I didn’t even think I’d ever had chicken pox, but it turns out I must have had, in order to develop shingles.
It is ‘a viral disease characterized by a painful skin rash with blisters in a limited area on one side of the body (left or right), often in a stripe.’ And it’s a pain in the arse. It lasted for weeks, and just as I thought I’d cleared it I got the office lurgy – a flu-type thing with a hacking cough.
So 2014 didn’t so much go out with a bang, but more like a slightly ill whimper. It certainly curtailed some of the traditional December excesses and pretty much everything apart from a couple of events and just going to work and coming home again fell to the wayside.
Thankfully, I have a lovely holiday to look forward to, to catch up on sleep and rest. I’m looking forward to coming back feeling better and ready to take on 2015.
It was a great week off work, though hanging out with nothing in particular to do took quite a bit of getting used to. We had to keep reminding ourselves that it was OK to Just Do Nothing.
In between long bouts of Doing Nothing I fitted in a visit to the garden centre, got my nails done, visited a local Vinyard, lunched at Nobu, did a trip to Harrods, a visit to the parents, celebrated my birthday, structured a new website and finished off the week of with a long lunch at our favourite restaurant, followed by cocktails and fun.
So really, we did quite A Lot while doing lots of Doing Nothing, when you look at it like that.
My Birthday presents from my Mum and Dad came in a large black box with this on the top.
I love this message and it’s a very handy box for keeping things in too 🙂
I have a week off and I’m not actually going anywhere on holiday. This is amazing and a first for me. I have never, in 27 years of working, had any time off to just STAY AT HOME.
After a big holiday in April and with another holiday planned in December, there wasn’t really the money, or the inclination to arrange to go away this week. We could have slipped off to a European destination, but the thought of organising it, packing and paying for it just left me a bit cold. So here we are, Friday night of ahead of the week off and a world of possibilities awaits.
I am a little worried that I’m going to waste the time, that I’ll wake up next Monday to go to work and realise I haven’t rested or I’ve spent all week pottering around and doing the ironing. So I’m going to make a list. In time-honoured-project-manage-the-shit-out-of-everything tradition a list shall be crafted.
The weekend is taken care of, plans have been made and bookings confirmed. But next week stretches out like a long oasis of nothing. I might do some yoga. I might go to the gym. I might go into London. I might read a book. The luxury and fear of a completely unconstructed week excites and scares me in equal measure.
Ah well, let’s dive in and see what happens…
Lovely animation about resolutions, personal change and goals.
It’s all about the small stuff. Who knew?