Oh Woe is me.....!

Oh woe is me ... my little band of helpers is no more! 

They have packed up, hopped in the car and gone home for a relaxing end of summer stint on their allotment.

"No ... I promise I won't put that picture on my blog!" 😄

Ooops....sorry it just slipped on!

On a more serious note ... THANK YOU ... Mum and Dad, your help over the last week is much appreciated and thanks to it things are moving on in leaps and bounds.

Lovely Hubby making adjustments to the doorway at the back.

 

The polytunnel is now (almost complete) just final fixings at the front door, door handles and catches all round and then it's time for serious planting. The tomatoes have taken up residence already, and thanks to my Mum and Dads' magic green fingers might even offer up a fruit or two in the next few weeks.

First residents.......tomatoes!

The first new plant purchased for the tunnel is the white grapevine.....mmm.....perhaps wine next year! Who knows. This has to have its' roots outside the tunnel and the greenery inside so had to go in place before we finished sealing the edges.

The old peas were dug up and after being snacked on by the chickens are now in the compost bins, and brand new plants are in their place, giving us the chance of another crop before Autumn.

New pea plants in place and pea seeds planted further along the row.

 

The new chicks are relishing their daily freedom, although they are slightly fed up of being herded into a tight little bunch and they spend a good section of each day hiding in the bushes from the exuberant Sophie.

Little Rosy, the newest addition to our family is slightly bemused at the family shrinking so rapidly overnight and is looking for the missing members. 

She has now learnt to 'sit' and is doing it not just for food but also on command. Her next lesson is 'fetch', and we are half way there. This is an important one because Sophie loves it so much and it only seems fair to get Rosy understanding the game too. She came for a long walk with us today (Archie stayed at home for once) and was very good on her long retractable lead and didn't trip me up once!! She is now having a long afternoon snooze to get back some energy for mischief tonight.

Today work has started on the piece of land at the back of the house, it is to be our little 'allotment' area, with nine more raised beds, with numerous pathways in between the beds and leading to the shed and the compost bins.

  The land had been filled with all the rubble from the house build many, many years ago and the renovations from more recently, with a layer of large stones covered by another layer of small shingle like stones, so we have a lovely man with a little digger and a big lorry relocating all the stones to the back of the barn for us. Up to know it has taken him all day to get us to this stage, but by the end of tonight we should be more level.

 

Of course every time Ian leaves the digger to drive the truck to the barn the chickens rush out to dig for worms in the newly disturbed earth.

We are truly moving forward in this little enterprise, helped greatly by Mum and Dad, so a massive thanks to you both for last week we truly could not have achieved what we did last week without you. I keep telling myself that every little thing we do is a step forward in this new and interesting life. (I don't always believe it....but I keep telling myself anyway!!)

Until next time ... keep busy, and more importantly keep happy and always take time to smell the roses.

Sue xx