It's Almost Over ....

It's almost over for another year, I couldn't resist taking this photo of part of todays washing!!

Once dry the Christmas T shirts will be packed away for next year.

The contents of my advent calender are now all in the makeup bag that was the final gift on Christmas morning. 

The empty calender is being saved for me to use next year for Alan.  I will keep my eyes open for little gifts to put into the boxes over the coming year, and hopefully M&S will do the same again next year so I can have another one too, as I absolutely loved this.

My favourite gift on Christmas morning was a box made up for us by my older son, which as well as containing yummy things to eat and brilliant items for daily use, included things from my childhood, that had been discovered tucked away in my ex's house and passed on to Simon for giving to me ... saving it for Christmas was a brilliant idea ... it made my day.

Christmas lunch was a quiet affair, cooked together after our daily chores had been completed, and tucked into on our new little table, with Christmas songs playing in the background and the sound of the dogs chewing on new Christmas bones at our feet.

The most successful show of the holiday break was 'Snow Bears'.  The dogs absorbed every minute of the tale of a mummy polar bear trekking across the ice with her twin cubs.

A full hour passed of doggy silence and concentration as the adventures unfolded.

We had quite a television based Christmas this year with the bad weather outside meaning chores were done as quickly as possible and doggies walked as and when we could, but luckily it's been quite good on the old box and I've been drinking in every detail of the BBC adaptation  of Little Women which unfortunately finishes tonight. 

Our Christmas isn't completely over yet though, as my youngest son is coming for a quick overnight visit between shifts from work this weekend.  As an emergency services worker, his Christmas dinner on the actual day was a hastily grabbed and very solitary bowl of pasta, so I think an action replay of our dinner would be a grand way to end our festive celebrations.

I hope each and every one of you had a wonderful Christmas, and can I just say a massive thank you for all the Christmas wishes on the comments on the last post.  It was so lovely to hear from so many people all over the world.

Sue xx

An Extra Pair of Hands Comes in Handy

We had Simon, my eldest son, here for two days at the weekend ... and boy did it make a difference. 

Spurred on by knowing we had a pair of extra hands, combined with a real talent for lifting, shifting and solving problems we threw ourselves into a weekend of work.  The main purpose of his visit was to help Lovely Hubby lift and shift in the workshop.  All his new equipment, lathe, saws and other hugely heavy machinery had been delivered a few weeks ago and now assembled they all needed moving into an approximation of their final positions ready for a plan to be drawn up for the wiring of the workshop.

The boys cracked on with that while I did all the bog standard weekend chores, cleaning out the hen house, washing etc etc.  When all that was done and after a good lunch we set to outdoors.  The sleepers that used to hold up our hillside before the huge retaining wall was built behind the garage, have been waiting patiently to be put good use.  And this was always the plan in my head.

A raised bed by the road side to complete the area to the right of the polytunnel ....

.. and two beds for strawberries at the back of the poly and net tunnels.

The panels that we found here when we moved in will be put to good use to keep the birds off the fruit, after a few repairs to each one.

The three Blueberry bushes in the pots usually live in the net tunnel, but come out at this time of year so the bees and other insects can help with pollination.

You can imagine how hard Lovely Hubby and Simon worked to get these all in place and completely fill them with soil from the formerly huge earth pile we had at the end of our paddock.  A few tractor loads of earth was lifted, sifted and shifted before being levelled in the new rustic beds.

While they were doing all this I was planting potatoes on the hillside and onions in the net tunnel ... and then preparing the henhouse in the orchard ready for moving the chickens back over the next day so that we can rest Chicken World for a couple of months.

After an evening at the cinema we decided that Sunday was going to be a day off, yes all this was accomplished on just one day of the weekend  :-)

So Sunday saw us dropping my car off at the garage, walking the dogs  along the remarkably busy promenade and sitting in the sunshine at the end of Llandudno pier drinking coffee.  A day off well earned in my opinion.

Now I just have to get the Strawberry plants ready for moving into their lovely new beds once the soil has settled.

Sue xx

Anniversary, Christmas ... and The End of an Era

It was our ninth wedding anniversary yesterday and we made the celebrations last the entire weekend.

On Friday we took Suky and Mavis to the groomers and whilst they were washed, dried, snipped and titivated and made to look even prettier than they normally are, we treated ourselves to a coffee.  Later on in the evening we went to the cinema to see Allied, a surprisingly good film, even better than the trailer had led us to expect..

On Saturday morning we opened our Sealed Pot and after years of using the money to do various Challenges this year we decided that the money was ours to do with as we wanted.  So we went to the bank to pay the bags and bags of loose change into our account and then hit the shops.  I bought myself a new dress and two pairs of shoes, and Lovely Hubby bought himself a power tool and it's accessories.

We ended Saturday with a meal out, something we have not done that often this year, so it was a treat to put on my new dress and dine at our leisure ...slightly too much wine may have been consumed  ;-)

On Sunday morning after a much more leisurely breakfast than usual we gave the house a good clean  and then put up the Christmas decorations.  We don't go mad, indeed each year we seem to streamline the decorations a little bit more. The ones we didn't use have been bagged up and will be dropped off at the charity shop later today while they still have time to sell them this year.

As you can see from these photos, the little black piggies on the gateposts have got their Christmas finery on too :-)

And this is where I have decided to share our lives for the last time.

Since January 2009 you have journeyed along with us as we moved from town to country.  You've been with us through the trials and tribulations of learning to look after chickens and pigs and as I learnt to grow enough vegetables to feed us and to preserve them in lots of ways to see us through the leaner months of Winter.  You have laughed along with our messy adventures and cried along with our losses ... feathered, furry and family .... you've been true friends in every sense of the word.  But, after much deliberation I think that now is the right time to claim back privacy for ourselves, and to close the gates on our lives in this public domain for the last time.

Thank you for being there, for being you, for the comments, the emails and the visits.  Thank you for following along throughout the last almost eight years.  I will still be around in blogland, and will leave this blog as it stands now for those of you who use it to link to the other blogs on my sidebar, although I will change the photo after this post has been live for a week.  This is not totally the end of my involvement with blogland as I will still drop by and comment on those blogs that I read regularly and follow, and hopefully keep in touch in a more low key way with my blogging buddies.   I hope you all have a wonderfully happy and peaceful Christmas and a calm and happy New Year.

We all have so much to look forward to.

With much love from

Sue and Lovely Hubby xx

&

Rosy, Suky, Mavis, Ginger

and The Feathered Flock

A Trip Back Through Time

I was about to phone the AA and give them a piece of my mind about our exorbitant membership fees for this year (when you compare them to new members deals for both the AA and the RAC) but my phone has no service (this happens a lot in bad weather here in the valley).  So instead I sat at the computer with a cup of coffee and flashed up some of the blog posts that I did each year on or around this date

Way back on 9th November 2009 seemingly we were keeping an eye on our landlords dogs for the weekend, scrumping for apples in his garden (with permission).  We lived in Oxfordshire then, just outside the village of Great Haseley.

And I was in Christmas card production mode for my Farmers Market stall.

Here's the original post.

On this day one year later in 2010, we were awaiting the arrival of a late brood of chicks ...

... and someone was dissecting his chainsaw on my kitchen table!!

Original post.

Moving forward another year to November 2011 and we were in the midst of tough times, but animal antics helped pull us through.

Original post.

Oooh ..... exactly one year later in 2012 and I was apologising for bad language!!  What made me swear .... it was BT of course.  We were now living in Berkshire, just outside Pangbourne.

Original post.

November 9th 2013 saw me posting all about making up transportable and easily eaten food for our trips here to Wales to decorate this house.  That is a very tasty looking post ... don't travel over if you are feeling peckish!!

Original post.

In 2014 it was Remembrance Sunday, and this reminds me, we have yet to find a suitable position for Lovely Hubby's Tower Poppy.

Original post.

And then finally last year 2015, when I posted all about the grey and seemingly never ending wet days of November.

Original post.

Well there you are a quick trip back through seven years ..... and you only stopped by to see what I was up to today  ;-)

Well my phone still isn't working so I will have to put on the kettle, make another cup of coffee and do a bit of blog hoping myself ... and not one mention of the political news that we all woke up to this morning.  I'll leave that to other more daring bloggers .... 

Sue xx

Meanwhile over at .....

We were out last night, out with the other grown up people, and didn't get home until waaaay after midnight.  It's not something we do very often, but when there's a new marriage in the family to celebrate you celebrate :-)

Anyway the late bedtime ... it was 2am once we had had coffee and settled after the long journey home, well it seemed long driving for an hour and forty minutes in the dark and then the strange later start to our day, luckily the dogs were happy to lie in after being disturbed so late in the evening ... has I think left me in a thoughtful frame of mind.

My usual brisk food, film, or book related post over on my other Challenge blog turned into musings from the mind, so I thought I would link to them on here and share also on here ...

... my new mantra, motto, whatever you want to call it.

Over on my other blog today ..... is this.

Now I'm off to clean out the hen house and chop some wood .... my musings frame of mind won't live through that  ;-)

Sue xx

Holding Hands

 

It's funny I don't remember ever holding hands with my first husband, sad really as we were together for 26 years!!  I wonder if it's an age thing or just that we were never 'touchy feel-y' people.  Me and Lovely Hubby have always held hands ...when we're walking down the street of course, not when we're mucking out the henhouse or digging the veggie beds ;-)

 

I think it's lovely when you see very elderly couples walking along together holding hands, and we see it a lot when we're walking the dogs along Llandudno prom in the evenings, romance at the seaside.

 

 I guess we're well on the way to joining them.

 

 

 

Yep ..... that's me  :-)

 

Sue xx

A Totally Doggy Post .... well Almost!!

Yesterday I spent most of the day with my Mum and brother Graham.  We met up at Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet, had a wander around the shops,  drank numerous cups of coffee and had a spot of lunch along with a bit of a catch up .... it's seems us ladies who lunch have taken to dragging along a token male to keep us company this past couple of weeks  :-)

Anyway when I got back, the dogs who had been snoozing the day away ... very sensible with the temperatures we have here at the moment ... were relieved to get out and about in the sunshine and have a good old play around in the paddock.

Running free and letting off steam and just generally tiring themselves out.

Here's Mavis getting her breath back .....

... and grinning at Mum.

Pensive for a moment ....

.., and then back came that happy face.

Suky enjoyed her run around the paddock with the others and then we all went back over to check out the chickens.

You might be mistaken for thinking that doggy walks are just that ... but no most of our doggy walks and play sessions include our feline member of the pack.  

Ginger is always happy to mooch about the paddock with us.  Although this time he kept out of the way while the dogs whizzed round and round, and simply strolled along at his own pace.

A good day in lovely weather, but roll on cooler temperatures I say ... I got bitten to buggery sitting on the grass taking photos of the animals, and last night I had some most unwelcome visitors ... three Daddy Long Legs flying round the living room ... YUK !!

Sue xx

Where Did August Go?

Okay hands up who stole the end of August ?

Time has whizzed by so quickly and I simply have not been in the office and on the computer to be able to do a blog post since last Monday.  The Bank Holiday here in the UK flew past with jobs being done, things caught up on and bumper harvest being brought in, and prepped for storage as well as consumed by us for tasty meals.  Then suddenly, it was back to work for Lovely Hubby and a change of man about the place with the arrival of my eldest son Simon.  

He mucked in like the trooper he always is, cleaning windows, entertaining pooches and digging up the last of the potatoes, while I tackled some of the weeds that have taken up residence in the veggie patch and faffed about producing jars of Plum jam.  It wasn't all work though, and we spent a couple of evenings watching tele, catching up on news and on the Wednesday both going for lunch in Manchester with Mum.  Me and Mum decided Simon could be an honorary 'lady who lunches' .... although he didn't have to wear a frock ... well that would have been so wrong with me living in jeans virtually 24/7  ;-)

Now it's all swap again with Simon back home to Workington and busy decorating his new flat and Lovely Hubby back home after the shortest working week for a while,  currently moving piles of chippings from the far field to top up the pathways around the raised beds in the Veggie Patch.

Oh, and I took my eyes off the courgettes for a couple of days, and now I have marrows.  EVERYWHERE!!

Sue xx 

Mum's Garden

Last week after my 'Ladies who Lunch - Round Two' post, someone asked to see Mum's garden so here, in all it's small but perfectly formed beauty it is.

Mum lives in this little bungalow in a small development in Sale, Cheshire.  Hers is the brown door with the two windows to the left of it, confusingly the little brown window to the right of Mum's front door is her neighbours on the righthand side hard up against the flats that form the rest of this development.  The other window on the far left with the greenery growing around it is her other neighbours.

The communal gardens that wrap around all four sides of the development are kept immaculate, with the grass mown regularly and trees and bushes trimmed by a regular gardening team.  The floral delights and extra maintenance is all done by Mum's neighbour to the right Hilary, who works really hard keeping everything in tip top condition and who took over from Mum last year in making sure the little fountain is always clean, not an easy task when the Magpies, Rooks and other birds all come to bathe in it daily.

Mum's little bed, that runs just underneath her windows, was neat and tidy when she first moved in but very sparsely planted with just generic plants to match into the other borders.  After a couple of months Mum set to filling it with all her favourite plants.  Growing some from seed on her little kitchen windowsill and buying others from the various garden centres she goes to either with me or my brother.  She soon had it looking lovely, and each year the colour scheme varies slightly, with more and more pots and planters being added near the door.

Hilary's little patch next door is equally colourful and is full to bursting with all sorts of flowers and shrubs.

It shows what a lot you can fit in a small space if you crave colour and beauty.  While Dad was the main vegetable grower of the family, Mum always loved flowers and their allotment was softened with lots of flowery areas, attracting all the beneficial insects to their plot.  You can see where I get my green fingers from looking at Mum's plot ...

... and seeing the plaque that fellow allotmenteers put up to honour my Dad, outside the Trading Hut at the allotments where they used to grow.

Oh .. and there might have been a few more sale purchases made yesterday .....

Sue xx

Happy 60th Wedding Anniversary

Happy 60th Wedding Anniversary

to Barbara and Norman.

And this is where we were over the weekend last week, helping them celebrate with a wonderful family get together and meal at The Old Hall Inn in Chinley.

And then afterwards at Fran and Colins lovely house just down the road in Chinley for cake cutting and champagne.

It wa a brilliant day, lots of catching up with everyone in the family and lots of laughter .... just the sort of day needed to mark such a special occasion.

I hope today is just as lovely for you both.

All our love

Sue and Alan xx