Towel trouble.

I looked over over our fence into the neighbours garden the other day. Can you imagine my horror when I spotted this display?

I mean really, I know the new neighbours are straight, but please!

I could forgive them any of these colours if they had actually made a choice and they were all the same chosen colour. In fact, I’d probably applaud their bold choice of, for example, orange or yellow.

As it is, this collection of mis-matched garish-ness would be more at home on a set of prayer flags strung out across the high peaks of the Himalayas.

I do hope that you, dear reader, dont have any similar crimes against interior design lurking in your airing cupboards!

Early Easter

Apparently its the earliest Easter since 1914 years and wont be this early again until 2160!

Happy (snowy) Easter 🙂

Here is a more usual sight than snow at Easter, a lovely bunch of Daffodils.

We dont have a vase the right size, so the bottom of the vase is stuffed with the cellophane that the Daffs came wrapped in, I think it gives a great effect to the whole look.

Rainy washday blues (and beiges)

I’m quite disappointed by this photo, you cant see that its blowing a force 8 gale or that it been raining heavily all night or even that its only 09:30 hours. In fact this washing has been out all night, something that’s not unusual for our (recently) new neighbours.

I’m sorry, but that would all have to go back in the machine if it was mine!

Do they know nothing?

Recipe for a Busy Saturday

Wash the dishes
Load laundry in washing machine
Wash car
Hang washing out to dry
Load laundry in washing machine
Polish* car
Hang washing out to dry
Clean the exterior of the conservatory (3 hours!!)
Vacuum the car interior
Water the plants
Scrub the bath

You’ll know youve done it right when you fall asleep while taking a bath!

* I believe this to be the only word in English that can change meaning when capitalised!

Nothing doing?

So in lieu of proper posts, lets look at what’s been happening recently on Planet Andy.

Myself and Paul ate out last night, which for us is a pretty rare thing on a week night. We went to Estikutum and really enjoyed ourselves. The company (Min and Marie from work) was good and the food divine.

I always find it reassuring when your fellow diners are of the same “ethnic group” as the food being served. In the restaurant, the majority of the customers appeared to be of either Indian, Pakistan or other far east origin. In fact, Min is of Indian descent, so I trust her when she said the food was authentic. My verdict? Five stars!

On Sunday, we finished off the front garden. Finally! Here are the obligatory photos showing off the view 🙂

We’ve gone from

To this

And finally

So that’s that done, I can now spend some time erecting my shed and greenhouse at the allotment 🙂

Hopefully inspiration will re-visit me soon and I’ll be back to my usual prolific (read: sporadic) level of posts.

Truth be told, one reason I’ve not posted much lately is that I’ve been labouring over a particular topic. Its one of those dreadfully self indulgent cathartic posts, it still feels quite raw in places but hopefully has some humour too. I’m almost happy with the content, I just have to decide if its really a good idea to post or not.

Cool as…

Whats that in the distance? If I hold this leaf back and we squint a bit…

Yes thats right. Cucumbers!

Check out the Garden Diary page for some pictures of the Tomatoes too 🙂

Garden Diary

Did you see the link, over there ——> To my Garden Diary ?

I’m only pointing it out as its the main reason I am not posting much to the blog lately. I seem to spend most of my time either at the Allotment or making little updates to the diary.

Check it out!

Potato Buckets pt2

The buried treasure revealed. I dug up one of the buckets yesterday.

I planted these on March 10th this year, and as experiments go, I’m pretty pleased with it.

If I do it again next year I’ll put one or maybe two seed potatos in each, I think it was a bit cramped with three. As you can see, there are quite a few tiny ones that would have probably grown better with more space. Though now I have the allotment I may just stick to doing them up there.

I’ll leave the other bucket a couple more weeks.

Deck, deck and deck again.

Will it never end?

Probably not. Here is todays work on the front garden, I’m so tired! We started work on a decked area, almost finished too!

Wish we had taken a “before” picture.

Its gonna be great!

The remaining grassed area we are still debating, possibly some slate chips or maybe cobbles.

First Potato harvest

I couldnt resist having a little dig around in the buckets and this is the result.

I’ll leave them a bit longer before harvesting more than this one!. We roasted this one (the oven was on anyway) and I can totally confirm that it was delicious.