Spring Comes To The Garden

In the strange year that is 2020, it's good to know that some things don't change......like the inevitability of the change of seasons. We had a weird winter this year with the almost unknown phenomenon of a quite heavy snowfall in Launceston. I'm still discovering things in my garden that were broken in that storm! The sound of breaking branches woke me in the middle of that snowy night and I rushed outside in pyjamas and gumboots to take a few photos of this once-in-a-hundred-year event.

But, inevitably, spring has rolled around again and quite early this year. The blossoms started to appear almost a month early and the blooming has been wonderful! I'm hopeful of some good fruit yields this summer with lots of blossom on the plum and apricot trees as well as the berry bushes.

Maybe spring is my favourite season - I like the changeability, the wind, the increasing sunshine and longer days and the way there are noticeable changes day by day. 

The backyard is just bursting into leaf - in a few weeks this will be green and shady and I will be regretting that I didn't dig more and sooner for vegetables! It ALWAYS catches me by surprise. 

 

Back Porch

I have a tiny porch outside the back door, which opens off the kitchen - it shelters the back door from the worst of the weather and that's about it! I decided to paint is as the last outside painting job before the colder, wetter weather of winter. The rest of it - the back windows and soffits can wait until spring.
The porch looks very much refreshed with a few minor repairs, holes filled and the paint job!

Here's an update on the frog pond...….with everything growing nicely. No evidence of new permanent residents yet, but I'm hearing them often at night.

Beginning The Living Room

Well...........I recently realized that two months have slipped quietly by since I last posted here - I haven't been idle since finishing the bathroom (..........and HOW much am I enjoying it?) I've simply been busy doing other things, mainly getting my online business back on track after some serious neglect.

I needed a break after the bathroom effort, but I have been surreptitiously sneaking up on the living room renovation. The biggest job in this room will be stripping back, repairing and repainting the huge window. I've already prepared the corner one - its now ready for painting. The rest of the room just basically needs a clean and a re-paint and I'm going to tackle making a set of roman blinds for said huge window.

The room has a fireplace with a built-in Saxon wood-heater in excellent working condition, but some previous owner had slathered a thick, textured coat of white emulsion over the bricks and mantelpiece. A combination of stripper and chipping and scraping got most of it off the bricks, but it was looking like a much harder job on the mantel itself, so I opted for a trompe l'oeil stone look, which I think looks pretty good! 

 

 

Here's the fireplace before and during the process of cleaning it up.

 

..........and a couple of close-ups of the finished mantel.

                                                             Here's how it looks now

 

I bought this 70 year old two-seater couch recently. I'm planning to refurbish it in the summer, along with a few other pieces of vintage furniture I have. This couch is still as solid as a rock - I love it!

 

 

The cats approve of the new couch.......separately! They still only just rub along together.

Now I'm just waiting for that painting urge to hit again so I can finish this room completely........I can feel it coming! 

 

 

 

 

 

Hiatus

I've done all the hard graft, the messy, dirty, dusty work and now I have to wait for three things: the items I've ordered to be delivered (hand-basin and shower screen); the bath to get it's shiny pristine new coat (26th April) and my handy help, Alan to return from his Easter break in Victoria. In this hiatus, I've been finishing off silicone sealing of expansion joints, completing the painting and sourcing a few odds and ends to make this space special ("I've become a staaahlist, daaaarling!")

I've had my eye out for some lovely rich red accessories for quite some time, to no avail until this morning (in Bunnings of all places) These resin ones are perfect and pretty much exactly what I had in mind. Note: the window still needs a good clean and scrape on the outside - it was sloppily painted last time it was done.

 

And I put together this cheap and cheerful cube storage unit that has fabric drawers. It's really shoddy stuff (cardboard came with the kit to tack on the back - I'm going to use some fabric instead) but it will do for now until I can design and make a more permanent storage unit. I even found some towels in the right colours on special in one of the city department stores. Might go and get a few more next week - it's ages since I had any new towels. This is FUN now!