There's a monkey on my wall and other first world problems...

Firstly, I must apologise if you tuned in last week only to realise I hadn't posted anything new - it's no excuse, but 'busy' doesn't even come close to describing the schedule we've dealt with over the last 14 days. Amongst everything else, I've also been trying to secure a new job... Thankfully I got the one I was rooting for, so let us go forth with a renewed sense of achievement and confidence in the next steps.

It's been a horribly sweaty couple of weeks hasn't it? Even if I hadn't spent an inordinate amount of time steaming off wallpaper and painting walls and scrubbing floors I would have felt the oppressive humidity that has enveloped Britain of late. I know it's so terribly British to complain about the weather - particularly hot weather! - but it really has been sleep-deprivingly hot and sticky... I like to drink water not breathe it in! It has just made a very busy and trying time even more frustrating.

Some of the friendlier chickens got to clean up and cool down in a nice bubble bath...

Bubba found the coolest spot in the half-way house... bathroom floor was it apparently!

Things are coming on in leaps and bounds at The Keep though, so much so that the decorator has been in and we have some entirely decorated rooms! I admit I did argue the case for not having a decorator - I've painted enough walls in my life to think I know what I'm doing enough not to entirely mess it up, so when D suggested it I poo-pooed it straight away. He persuaded me though and I am entirely glad he did. Our bathroom is now stunning, that's the only word for it. What was a dark hovel-like room with a hole in the floor is now a fresh but dusky grey sanctuary, it has a beautiful soft 'shabby-chic' floor and is having the new suite fitted this week. I honestly could not be happier with that room.

A sneak peak before the bath and shower goes in...

Our bedroom has also been completely decorated, including a vintage inspired, wallpapered feature wall. Or at least that was what it was supposed to be... As with everything at the Keep, the paper was pondered over for some time, many samples were hustled out of DIY stores and colours were matched with tester pots and material swatches. In short, we thought long and hard about what we wanted the last thing we see before we close our eyes at night to be. So, imagine my reaction when, after all that forethought, we finally get to see this masterpiece installed on our bedroom wall and there's a monkey, yes seriously, a monkey in the pattern!! 

Monkey say, monkey do...

Peeved. I am somewhat peeved. It laughs at me every time I curse it's little face, it says 'silly girl, you should have stuck to growing veg and fannying about with chickens, you know nothing of interior design...' Damn monkey...

It has a point though. I am good at growing veg and raising chickens and I want to be getting on with exactly that. There's very little in the house for me to do other than clean up after workmen and the decorator, so I have been promised that the next few weeks can be more focused on the garden. My new job should mean more time to spend on my back yard farm project and I hope to start posting more regularly on what this blog was really meant to be about - the life and times of a backyard farmer. The truth behind what it takes and the struggles you encounter. But, most of all, the utter joy I get out of it. 

I feel, at least, like I have taken some pretty big strides forward since I last posted and that I have made some sound decisions that should benefit our future at The Keep. D is tirelessly doing everything the contractors don't do and I pick up the pieces around him. Money's tight, time is tight and there is a sense that we are really suffering for our cause at the minute - but it feels good. The roots are taking hold.

With plenty of change afoot, I feel strangely cool and confident, sure that things are taking a turn for the good. You know what they say, chop your own wood and it'll warm you twice.

Now to get that monkey off my back...

Come rain or shine, it'll still be mine.

G

Reap what you sow...

My seeds arrived!! Those satisfyingly tiny pips are my first investment into my new back garden (if we excuse the fence) and they have unleashed a flow of excitement in me that I just can't seem to stem. I am woman, I will grow things!

Funny, for the first time in the history of me growing things, that I should get so excited over flower seeds - I am definitely on 'team veg' when it comes to the world of horticulture, only really choosing the seeds or bulbs that promised the biggest, brightest or craziest of fruits. Given, however, that I am going to have a bee colony on my backyard farm I thought it best I get to grips with flowers and try to recognise that they are just as important to this new edible garden as any purple sprouting broccoli may be.

Of course I've opted for the most exotic, intricate looking blooms I could find... they're something I can't even pronounce but they have vivid dark petals and lovely, protruding yellow trumpets burgeoning with nectar, so thought they would be a good start. There was method in my madness too though - they're hardy perrenials so should, with any luck, come back every year without much effort on my part! I like a lot of 'bang for my buck' so what I've bought plus some luxurious looking peonies should get the ball rolling in the right direction.

It's all these little decisions that are taking up most of our time at the minute. What colour should this wall be? What type of flooring shall we have in here? Papered or plastered? It's right what they say, the devil is in the detail. With things moving way too fast for our income to cope, we're making spur of the moment decisions and I can only cross my fingers and hope that they are the right ones. We are so focused on doing The Keep Justice and making sure our own stamp is well and truly marked on it that I sometimes wonder if we should dress up like war veterans and paste ourselves on the walls -vintage, quirky and an expression of ourselves - exactly the look we are going for!

We made the decision to collect some of our things from the lock up and move them over to The Keep so that, when the actual move in day arrives, we wont have that much 'stuff' to shift. We collected the vegetable trugs, some garden gates we'd (thankfully) had the forethought to keep and of course the all important chicken shed. The item that really struck me though, as it was hauled through the doorway on what was an incredible rainy day, was our new oven.

The oven was gifted to us by my old employer, it's a modern range and I fell in love with it the minute I started working for him. He closed his doors one sad day last year but he gave me the oven as a farewell - I know, what a legend. It has been in storage ever since. So to see it even near the kitchen in it's untouched glory was a bit mind boggling. I, G, the woman who has spent the last 18 months living with family and in half way houses, has an oven, a real life oven with which to cook and it is pending instalment in a brand new kitchen which is also mine... It was one of those moments where something twigs and you think 'oh crap I forgot I'm an adult' and I have a mortgage and I do adult things like own an oven'.

I can't imagine what I'm going to be like when I get to buy knives and forks...

With so much going on I think I may start posting in picture form - mad snapshots of the daily craziness that this project provides. One most assuredly should be of myself and the plasterer dancing to his odd Romanian music with wall scrapers held aloft in place of cans of beer... It's definitely been educational this little journey!

Have a pleasant week all.

Come rain or shine, it'll still be mine.

G

Inspiration and installation...

I spent this weekend over at my mums. It was a lovely break from the constant stream of goings on at The Keep and an inspiring one at that. We spent most of Sunday having a tea and cake filled snoop around other peoples fabulous gardens thanks to the 'open garden' events that the NGS organisation put on. They are charitable events and you basically turn up on the doorstep of the advertised addresses, pay a few quid to step through the gate and off you potter around someone else's back yard creation - genius really.

Having, rather ashamedly, never done it before I wasn't sure what to expect, but got a genuinely pleasant surprise. In a way it takes quite a lot to open your garden to complete strangers - it would for me anyway, I'd worry about the critics who'd want to comment on what I was getting wrong... - but these gardens were just amazing. Truly, they were... well maybe the pictures show you a little of what I'm gushing about.

One particular garden was how I always imagined 'the secret garden' to be - lots of little nooks and crannies and hidden bits that just had to be discovered. Another was a continuous festival of smells, it was like the owner had made it their mission to give you a different scent at every turn. Roses flowed into honeysuckle then into lilies, nothing overpowering it's neighbour, just complimenting each other perfectly. Then there was a vegetable patch Monty Don himself would have envied... The whole event was a feast of inspiration and started ordering I seeds as soon as I got internet connection again.

While I whiled away my weekend taking note of every flower, fruit and fern that caught my eye, D kept the ship sailing back home and I returned to a house that now has rooms I hardly recognise. A stunning new fireplace now sits proudly in what will be our living room, complete with an aged sleeper mantle and space for a little log burner. Our Bathroom, having been re-plastered, has it's brand new suite waiting to be installed. We now only have one room left to strip and skim before the whole house has been taken back to the brick and made good. At one point last week you could stand on the earth that was beneath the old kitchen floor and look all the way up, through the holes in the floors and ceilings right into the rafters of the roof. The Keep has no secrets from us, we've seen it's bare bones. Moving in has become an idea based firmly in reality now rather than in pipe dreams and I get butterflies just imagining it.

So, I've promised myself that, when we are fully established, when I've got the garden the way I want it, OK maybe not fully matured but a clear, beautiful work in progress, I'm going to make cake by the shed load, put a £2.50 entry fee on my gate and invite strangers round to have a look at what we came up with! Just because maybe someone like me will pop round, they'll ooh and arrrr at the flowers and run their fingers over the leaves and take from my garden something they might imagine in their own.

Inspire others to install something beautiful on their own little patch... I like that idea.

Come rain or shine, it'll still be mine (really soon too!)

G