Weekend Wonders.

What a weekend! 

Friday afternoon - weekend starts there here! - I finally, I keep saying it I know but I think I mean it this time, finished that flippin' flower bed I was weeding/digging.The weather was wonderful and I thought I had to get outside. I thinned things out and put aside some daffodil bulbs to take to my sister at the end of the month. I have just too many and even found a tonne of bulbs buried in a corner that hadn't even grown, they were just lying in the soil not that far down. 

After Jon came home from work we all went food shopping and then took Jake for a walk on the beach whilst we waited for our Chinese takeaway we'd ordered. It is a treat every six weeks or so and when we do have one it makes sense for it to be on the day we do the food shopping as it means the boys don't have to wait for tea too long when we get home.

On Saturday morning after breakfast we went into Aber to buy laying pellets and corn for the chickens, get fuel and a few things we didn't get last night; we need to find some suitable receptacles to put the chicken food in now. 

When we got home the boys checked for eggs; we already collected four in the morning, one of which was mahoosive as you can see! 

 and there was one more - our best day yet with a total yield of five then we had some lunch and headed out to the garden. l did the final dig over of the veg patch and Jon helped me take up the root of a bush or something right in the middle. I think I will make a sign to stick on that spot of the patch as we won't be able to plant anything in a circle about a foot across, but we can work round that.

Jon was busy digging a space for the strawberry patch. We LOVE strawberries in our house and it was Jon's only stipulation that we had a sizeable area to grow them. Therefore we used the last four of the railway sleepers from the far right corner of the garden to make wonderful space. We put a membrane down, that Jon suddenly remembered he had in the shed, and filled it with compost.

We decided to head to Sky's Garden Nursery, which opened a few weeks ago not far from us, and we bought eight traditional red strawberry plants and two called Pineberry that are white and apparently taste like pineapple.

I feel a little bit of a fraud as I was trying to keep to the grow your own thing but if we were going to have enough of them for the summer this was the only way. The owner of the nursery was very helpful and is popping round one Monday to get one of the bamboo bush root balls once we have dug them up; I plan on snidely getting as much free help and advice out of him as I can whilst he is here! 

On the way home from Sky's we stopped off at the river Ystwyth near to where Jon works at the saw mill and just ten minutes from the house. 

We call it Skimmer Island as the boys love to skim stones down there and they had put on their shorts and flip flops being determined to get in the water, as was Jake! 

I stood on the sidelines taking pictures whilst enjoying watching them having a wonderful time and declaring they would spend all the summer holiday there and who needed to go abroad - that's my boys! 

(We put the strawbs in the greenhouse when we got home and gave them a good watering as we didn't have time to plant them.)


This morning was my turn to let out and feed the ladies. We've been really busy over the weekend but still had a lot to do. I got a pot of tea on and the yeast sitting for some bread and fed the boys. Jon had already eaten and was outside pruning trees and cutting back unwanted, over grown ivy etc in the corner near the veg patch where the apple tree is; the blossom is looking fantastic. 

We plan on getting a few more fruit trees when the ground it clear; I KNOW it will be soon.

When the kids had eaten they set off with Jon for near to Aber for straw bails for the chicken bedding and a small amount of top soil for the strawberries. The plan to get top soil from Lampeter was shelved when it transpired that the man getting rid of it did not have a digger and Jon would have had to put it on the trailer by hand!

I finally had my breakfast at 10am and put the bread to prove again. The weather had started off rainy and a bit miz but soon improved and it quickly turned into another wonderful day. I scrubbed the kitchen table whilst waiting for the bread then went to iron during the last prove - I still had the boys' things to get ready for school!

I cleaned out the chickens and managed to start clearing some of the cut and pruned branches before Jon and the boys came home then we had lunch and set to again. This is where the bedding has ended up for now.

I planted the strawberries

and Jon was sorting out containers for the chicken food and doing some shed tidying whilst the boys added more branches to the fire pile. Because it was so hot, 25 degrees, there was only one thing for it; we headed off to Skimmer Island, again, and I'm sorry I didn't take my phone as the boys were swimming but no photos. Watching them in the water we know this was one of the things we signed up for when we moved here, a wonderful pace of life. I can see sunny days being down there with the dog and a picnic and having to drag them home! When home we were all a bit goosed so me and Jon are enjoying a beer whilst the boys veg out on the sofa.

As Jon and I were looking out from the top kitchen window on the chickens, my washing blowing in the wind, all be it around Jon's trailer, and the greenhouse we thank our lucky stars we are where we are.

Lou.x