I’ve spent the past two Saturdays out in the garden. It’s one of my new year’s resolutions to learn all about what to do and how to do it in our jardin magnifique – hopefully I, with the help of my wife (and her parents who have been great already) will be able to turn both our back and front gardens into something to enjoy instead of the eyesores that they are now.

We’ve got a very big, old tree standing at the back of our garden and the whole area around it looked very messy. When I took a better look I found that the tree had lots of little bushy branches low down and no discernable trunk – from my very limited knowledge I think this must have been due to somebody cutting it back and not paying much attention to it afterwards, causing a mass of small branches and shoots to appear. So I set about it with my loppers and removed what seemed to be a massive pile of branches and twigs but leaving a tidy cut-back tree. I’m hoping that I didn’t cut back too much and do the tree any harm – I had a quick look on the web and in a basic gardening book we had lying around the house and the rule-of-thumb seemed to be focused around not cutting too many of the branches off as a whole so I guess it will be okay. I hope it will be okay!

So far over the past week we’ve cut the tree back, added a bird-box to our other large tree, put some nut and seed dispensers up (which the birds are just loving), removed two reasonably deep-rooted plants, cut back another very old and scraggy tree, cleaned out our water butt and de-mossed some guttering. I’ve also invested in a copy of The Complete How To Be A Gardener by Alan Titchmarsh (an absolute bargain from Amazon.co.uk) and a small pair of binoculars to watch the birds! Exciting stuff. I’ll try and keep you updated with how it goes. Any tips appreciated!

Yes, it’s that time of year again. On Saturday we popped out to the wonderful Christmas Tree Farm in Chesham. We picked ourselves up a lovely tree that has now been decorated and is sitting very handsomely in the corner of our kitchen. This has now got me very worried about presents – Christmas comes around so fast that I never know what to buy!

Well, it had seemed too good to be true. We have had very few problems with our house so far and felt that the person who lived here before us, while not spending much money on decoration and furnishings, had always kept the really important things in the house up-to-date. We’ve got a recently-installed boiler, modern circuit-breakers for our electricity, the dormer windows have been recently re-felted and our soffits have all recently been PVCed. This opinion changed slightly when my wife felt water dripping on her head.
Continue reading →

The move went well…we are now officially residents of Berkhamsted. This weekend was taken up by endless cleaning and unpacking, but it feels like we’re now getting somewhere. Moving from a flat that had been completely renovated to one that needs updating throughout is quite a shock; we were lucky that Bob from B&T Interiors was able to pop over and plumb our dishwasher in, which makes things easier for us (thanks Bob). Now things are cleaner and we’ve managed to unpack most of the boxes we can tell that it’s a house we’ll be happy in. Lots of decorating to do now!

Our first visitors arrived in the shape of Jules and Joanna who brought with them home-made scones, jelly and custard! Yum.

Unfortunately we don’t yet have a phone line, let alone an internet connection, so I won’t be blogging or picking up email for a while, other than what I can do through my PDA…which isn’t very much.

After many phonecalls, faxes, letters, meetings and general coordination, we finally exchanged contracts on Friday. It’s all very exciting but we haven’t really got time to think about too much as our completion date is set for this Friday! We’ve lined up a removal firm who will be dropping off boxes and packing materials on Monday evening, so we have four days to pack before we leave our house for good. A busy week lies ahead!

We’re on the move. A couple of weekends ago we arranged for four local estate agents to value our flat. We were pleasantly surprised, and it’s now on the market with Martyn Gerrard in North Finchley. Although they are slightly more expensive to use, we were impressed with how realistic the valuation was and how professional the estate agent seemed. A week has now gone by and we’ve started to get one or two people viewing; hopefully it will pick up soon.

We’re moving out of London as we’d like a bit more peace and quiet and somewhere where we can ride bikes and go for walks at the weekend. As times have changed and there is now two of us instead of one we can afford quite a bit more so we’re looking to get a garden as well. Another summer without hosting a barbecue would be too much!

Unfortunately, as our flat is above a shop it may take a little longer to sell than most. We’ve never found that a disadvantage, though – with a white goods shop below us, an office to one side, a shop owner and his family on the side that we don’t spend much time and very friendly neighbours we’ve hardly heard a peep from anybody and have been able to make as much noise as we want. Hopefully someone will visit soon and want to spend their next few years in it!

It’s a difficult habit to get out of. You finish your drink, screw the lid back on the bottle and throw it in the bin. The trouble is that the bottles are incredibly strong when sealed and are very difficult to crush. If you’re not recycling (and we haven’t been up until now as there isn’t a ‘plastic bank’ near us by foot) then at least save some space in the landfill by crushing the bottle before sealing it up again!