We’re approximately five weeks away from the birth of our fourth child. This is causing some problems as we want the house to be perfect before she comes but we know that’s not going to happen in that time scale. Add to that Vonnie is having serious trouble with SPD again as well as pulling muscles in her back and neck which might make labour interesting so I haven’t actually been at work that much recently. I’m off every Thursday but this week I’ve actually only been in the office for one day!

What it does mean though is I’ve been able to take the kids into the garden and get some work done there.

For the past two years I’ve been trying to get my raised beds built and every year something comes up to stop that happening. Last year I had my health problems so I only managed to get the chicken coop built which left everything else still to do in the garden. We have a skips worth of general rubbish sitting in one corner, the old chicken run waiting to be pulled down in another corner, the patio to turf over and various fences to build as well as getting those those raised beds built.

So with the better weather we’ve had the kids out on what’s left of the patio whilst I fenced it off from the rest of the garden. All we need now is to paint it which will cause some problems as it needs to be done after the chickens go to bed. In fact that same problem has meant the fence at the bottom of our garden has never been built. Since we started keeping chickens I’ve actually just had two fence panels leaning against the back hedge to keep them from escaping into our neighbours garden but they ‘kindly’ cut the hedge right back thinking the panels were an actual fence. Twice this week I’ve been able to get work done after the chickens were put to bed so hopefully that will be sorted by tomorrow night. I managed to get the two fence post holes redug as I’d originally made them in the wrong place, line up the posts in their holes and get the supports nailed on and finally get the cement into the holes. Unfortunately I ran out of screws so I’ll need to pay B&Q a visit in the morning before finishing it off.

The raised beds have been started but their location has changed. Until about two weeks ago they were to be placed where we actually have all the rubbish but since losing the greenhouse to the weather and moving the shed and coop about we’ve decided to place the beds on the small hill we have in the garden.

As you can see I have one built so far with another three going in alongside it. Then once that’s finished I can get the chicken run dismantled and the fruit trees/bushes can go in there along with another raised bed or two depending on how much wood I have left. In order to stop the chickens getting in at the veg in the beds I’ve put some pond netting over them using the supports I’ve built on either end to hold it up. I completely forgot that old saying of ‘measure twice and cut once’ though when building the supports as they should have been about two inches shorter that they actually are which accounts for them looking as though they are about to fall over. They are sturdy enough for me to sit on them without fear of breaking them though. So far I’ve got the cabbage, broccoli and lettuce in there but I know the broccoli will be to big for the low net ‘roof’ so I may need to rehome them once I build the other beds.

As for the cat on the bed… I wasn’t even aware he was there until I uploaded it to Flickr! That Fitz is a sneaky one.

Not been on here in a while. I just haven’t had the time to be honest.

Lets see. Works been crap what with me no longer working in HR and being moved to Accounts to help out. I started off really positive and looking at it as a new start and a new challenge. As the days go on though I’m beginning to feel as though I’m purely there to help out and not as an actual team member. I guess that comes down to noone actually knowing for definate who’s responsible for me while I’m in Accounts. They can’t make any plans for my future because my reporting line seems to change daily and without all the training I need to work in Accounts there is avery little I can actually do. Hell I’m currently helping out another section my clearing payments which is something I learned to do 8 years ago and have’t actually ever done until now.

Friday night was Stoo’s Stag Night Mk2 after their trip Berlin. I gather it started well with a trip to Jongleurs and I joined them after the show for a few drinks. I ended up doing a small pubcrawl by myself as I arrived to early and had about 90 minutes to kill so I went around Ohenry’s, The Solid and Rufus for a drink to see if anyone else was out. Aside from the folk in Ohenry’s I met up with Shawsy in Rufus where I experienced the Nightmare on Hope Street cocktail for the first time. So anyway I met up with the guys and had a few drinks and it was time to leave. A bit of banter was had at the exit at the bottom of stairs with a few of the other groups. Scott walked through the double doors to be greeted with a fist the size of Norway followed by the body the size of Russia. The guy was big. Anyway to cut a long story short Scott ended up in A&E to get a couple of stiches in his head and the guy spent the night in jail.

Saturday we went to Wickes to pick up some fencing for the garden and muggins forgot to buy fenceposts and hinges for the gate. That went down well with my heavily pregnant wife who had herded the kids around the place for an hour. Anyway we went to B&Q today and picked up the bits that were missing and a few extras. I also managed to finish of the ‘pallets’ I was building at the bottom of the garden and move the shed and coop down onto them. Not bad considering I did it all myself and that included getting them down the hill!

It’s all boring stuff I know but as I keep saying my brain is turning to cream cheese so I need the written reminders

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. We’ve had a rough old time of it these last few months and to be honest the last thing on our minds was sitting down in front of the computer and blogging about it. Things are starting to look up though.

We had great plans for our garden. We had lots of plans. Then I was hit with chest pains and the garden took a back seat for a while. So much so we’ve started getting a delivery of organic veg from a farm a couple of hours drive away every two weeks to cover what we had planned to grow ourselves.

Aside from the fox attack which took three of our hens we’ve had one chicken drop dead almost overnight and one of our ‘chicks’ was crushed in the hen house as well. I call it a chick but it was a fair size and a good age as well. I never actually get over calling them chicks as we have a favarolle that I still refer to as a chick and its the biggest hen we have! We picked up a few meat birds as well from our friend which have taken up residence in the run alongside two turkeys. The other hens have moved into their new coop which sits out in the main garden. They free-range during the day so don’t actually ever use the run any more.

My tomatoes and cucumber plants died whilst we were on holiday and my one remaining jalapeño plant is currently growing its fruits but has just been infested with aphids overnight. I need to sort that one out sharpish. My potato buckets have came to nothing. Between the chickens eating the leaves and the very heavy rain we’ve received these last few months they are all but dead. Even our bramble bush has not produced much in the way of fruit this year. In fact the only harvest we had that was successful was from our rhubarb plants. We’ve got a cupboard full of jam now thanks to that harvest.

The plant beds that I was meant to dig over the summer so that the ground was ready for next spring have yet to be planned out never mind dug. Between the weather and my health it just hasn’t happened yet. I have found through talking to some people that my hopes of getting an allotment might not be as bad as I’d heard. There is a waiting list of around 1100 people looking for an allotment with about 80 plots. Going on the councils figures they say that’s a waiting time of about 30 years but after talking to a few allotment owners they say the turnover of plots is quite fast at the moment. Apparently it may only take two years to get one rather than the decades I first feared.

Anyway I’ll get back to work and we’ll see how things go with updating this place more in the future.