February sucks...

Bushes decimated for compost...

Cyclamen grows through the grass...
Nothing grows where it is planted!

No idea what date it is...

Utter chaos!

Halfterm is over tomorrow isn’t it? We have managed one day walking in the Fens but our ongoing building works and money being spent are having a very negative impact. Ever the optimist I believed I’d have a job by now and a more regular income stream... well, that hasn’t happened and it seems no one except me thinks it’s a possibility! I am working every opportunity I get on a casual ad hoc basis but it leaves me little energy to expend on the applications that require specific tailoring to prove I am the one for your job, please. Life in 2018 Britain is not easy if you’re a forty-something who has been out of the working world for any reason. My oldest friends are moving in and out of jobs with ease compared to me and I don’t know how to change that.

I am offered help on my cv and voluntary job clubs but how many times/how many opinions can I listen to these? I have had to not go to the job club when I get offered some work... it’s infuriating and not much fun. I don’t know what to do anymore as I am either too honest or not being circumspect enough.Help gets offered and taken away by the other hand when I’m not paying attention.

And then there is my garden which is meant to offer me solace when all is blue but the detritus is too heavy for me to shift and the grass which was under control for some reason is growing all over the flower beds, the boxes I filled with plants last year have been moved absurdly and I can’t move them back without doing myself an injury! It’s all a big mess, and when people say get some help, the people who have helped are now helping people who have more need, so I am back to the start of this blog again with lots of questions and wild dreams of getting stuff sorted. It’s the Groundhog Day Catch 22 loop.

We did spend some time building a raised bed with sleepers a neighbour gave me and cutting down bushes and roses and brambles in that corner we designated for a compost bin. The new bed has been planted with hostas, lilies, agapanthus and something else purple. The hostas very nearly got clumped together as I missed that the three rhizomes had been bound with white elastic. We enriched the soil with pellets of nutrients and spread slug away pellets over the top. Will the snails be intrepid enough to cover the hardcore to get to the hostas? Watch this space... 

New bed with lostas of hostas!

Escape to the Fens!

11th February 2018

Wicken Fen and Ely, Cambridgeshire 

A rotting tree stump

With the start of Half Term and a cold house, it was easy to agree an outing after we saw our builders for a progress meeting. Things are still in progress, if a little slowly because we have a kitchen arriving midMarch, it kind of makes sense that the builders have prioritised things so we don’t lose the cooking facilities... So we had a look for National Trust places locally and decided on Wicken Fen which is near Ely, Cambridgeshire, and we had a pleasant walk on the boardwalk and stopped in the wildlife hides. It really was glorious sunshine, if a little nippy, and the kind of scenery I enjoy, much like we see in the Broads. A really pleasant and stable walk with no hills (its fenland after all) makes for a healthy number of steps. I am keeping to roughly 10,000 on average and with the halfterm I am glad we had this outing before telly and vegetation in front of step up over the holiday! 

There was a rather pretty if semi-derelict windmill and a shiny wind pump which was moving water around to stop the fens from drying out.

This evening Countryfile showed an article on Red Fen which was close by and how the reinstatement of fenland is helping to keep natural wildlife like the bittern from dying out. It was certainly a real escape from our normal habitat, and understandable why we must do all we can to try and keep up our areas of outstanding natural beauty for the wildlife.

We dropped into Ely and wandered through the cathedral which is starting to feel like one of our popular family visits.

February destruction....

The concrete is up but the hardcore
replacement is not pretty.

Can this door become a cold frame?

10 February 2018

Can’t see the wood for the destruction...

I was hoping to be bringing good news but I can’t even see the garden for building detritus. We have an enclosed space for the new kitchen but with delays ordering a kitchen, the builders have gone where they can be busy leaving me (us) very cold and a little bemused. We have a lovely sense of the potential for the space but are huddling by the woodburner trying to keep warm. It is February and it is freezing. We missed out on deep snow but it felt like we had snow inside at points.

Boxes of sanitary ware lurk in every spare corner as the builders wouldn’t leave us without a sink... despite my probably impractical pleas of well we will have a bathroom! Kitchen is due to arrive in a few weeks - will I cope? - and boy, you should see the mess in what used to be our garden!

I rather optimistically bought some more bulbs and despite the heavy boot prints of builders, there is sign of some of last years planting struggling through the building muck, and growing despite planks of scaffolding being dumped inappropriately. I might have some new flowers to populate the blog in March. Watch this space?

Abandoned trugs...

Drainage holes...

The skylights are stunning!