welsh hills again

The tiling is just about done, only the grouting to go.  Then I can use the kitchen properly!  Then it might not look quite as empty and lovely as it does just now, so now could be the time to show it off. Here is where we started. And this is probably about as bad as it got with the cupboards out and the ceiling down. Here we have come a long way but there is still a lot to do.  The electrics are in, the new plastering is done and the slate floor is underway. The slate floor is down and grouted and Ian starts work on the framework which will make new shelving down one side of the kitchen. And in the blink of an eye (he may throw something at me when he reads this) here are the shelves, ready and raring to go. Then there was a small hiatus while we waited for the Ikea delivery.  When it came it was an exciting day.  The delivery lorry was huge and was reversed down our drive excrutiatingly slowly by the skilful dr...

I haven't really turned my back on the garden.  I made the mistake of wandering around in yesterday's sunshine and it clamoured at me about all the things that still need doing.  But before I get out there and try to sort things out a bit I thought you might like to have an update about the kitchen.  If nothing else, seeing how truly vile it used to be might make you feel better about your own house! This is really as close as I get to a "before" picture, as shown in house and garden magazines.  The main reason for the absence of "befores" is that it was so dingy, mouldy and generally dreadful that I couldn't bring myself to take pictures in it.  So in this picture the horrible eighties cupboards and the marked and stained worktops have come out, but you get the general idea. Here we are with the ceiling coming down so that Steve, the wonder electrician, could put in the new electrics. Here is the ceiling, decorating the floor.  We are in ...

The dog went home and I raised my head from the world of dogfood, chewsticks and the downstay.  The cat came in again, somewhat crossly, and made its displeasure at its exile clear by sleeping in my chair instead of on the sofa. At the beginning of the week the garden was glowing in summer heat.  Even the roses were throwing a last glorious party.  By the end of it, the temperature had dropped ten degrees and the wind had flattened the cosmos, still flowering their hearts out in the cutting garden. Inside the stripy little Welsummer chicks were beginning to show their first true feathers. As the dog's owner returned, I disappeared off for a weekend with elder daughter, son in law and nearly two year old grandson.  Grandson makes me laugh all the time.  He is obsessed with cars and trains and all kind of vehicles and rides everywhere on his little trike, beeping slowly and carefully every time he goes backwards to show that he is reversing. ...

I didn't appreciate before I started to grow food on a reasonably large scale - domestic scale still, but lots of it - that there is no stage between the one where you get excited about the three real pears on your little pear tree, bring them inside to a bowl on the kitchen table, feel them gently every day as they ripen (pears ripen much better inside than on the tree), finally eat one in ecstacy, the juice running deliriously down your chin, and the stage where you are bringing them inside in buckets. How can this be?  It was the same with the damsons and the plums so I suspect our gloriously warm and dry spring (do you remember?) was just what the fruit crop wanted.  The same holds true for vegetable crops of course.  One day you are cutting your first beans and eating them simply dressed with butter and drooling at their deliciousness.  The next you are wilting slightly in the face of trugs full of the things marching into the kitchen, each bean as long and...

Life is full up on the hill at the moment. The kitchen is still in progress. Here is Ian taking out the sink and then the new ceiling in all its newly plastered glory. Still to be done? Don't ask. It will happen, eventually. The garden is throwing stuff at us faster than we can eat it: cavolo nero, onions, chard, beetroot, potatoes, raspberries, blueberries, beans, salad stuff. And the cutting garden too is full: full of dark purple sweet peas, orange marigolds, orange and gold cosmos, black cornflowers and White nicotiana. There are jugs all over the house but I still can't keep up. And of course there are the projects which have totally stalled. The quilt which hasn't moved on since last November is lying in a box upstairs. At some point it will start whimpering reproachfully when I go by but just now it is dozing quietly. The socks which I dropped a stitch on in January have already got to that reproachful stage. Every time I go past my knitting bag they sigh heavily....

I only usually blog once a week or so but I thought you might like to see a bit of house renovation - some of the dust and slog behind living the dream! Last year we moved the main cooking kitchen back into the old part of the house where it belongs.  We were left with an early 80s horror in the back kitchen, the peeling melamine and stained worktop setting off the mouldy patches on the wall a real treat. So this year's job was to redo the back kitchen as a scullery/utility and work started yesterday with the emptying of cupboards. So the new kitchen fills up with boxes from the old one, which go under the table and on the table and on the freezer and the diswasher and out into the laundry and just about everywhere. The cupboards come out and it is going to get worse before it gets better. Here it is getting worse as the tiles come off. We are trying to leave the sink connected for another day or so and here is Ian actually making it a bit better by cleanin...

Time for an update on the huge variety of projects which have been going on around here, quickly or, more honestly, slowly. The roof was finished in January.  What kind of fool has his or her roof reslated over winter?  Well our kind, obviously.  The roofers did a great job.  Many days there were three generations of the same family working on our roof, the father coming out of retirement because it was an interesting job to do, his grandson now the fifth generation of his family to be a roofer.  Slate is a beautiful material.   I took this one before the scaffolding came down.  Beyond the house you can see one of the yew trees.  It almost makes you wish you could live up on the roof. Ian built a lovely set of shelves which make the curved end of the worktop in the front kitchen.  Work on the back kitchen has stalled since my father in law came to live with us as the scale of the upheaval would be a bit daunting but the front kitchen is ...