ooh those veggies

How lucky are we? We've had a dry and sunny summer so far, with much needed rain and cooler days (lower 20's) the last couple of weeks. I'm hoping the weather fairy will be in a good mood when we go away to the Norfolk coast for a week with Mr Fluff's lovely parents and the wacky whippets later in August... she does owe me a few favours :0)

Having a garden has been such bliss, I don't even mind the gardening! And I love mowing the lawn with my sexy monster - not that I've had to do it much with the dry weather we've had.

During spring and early summer we had our fill of the strawberries that were already planted in pots when we moved in. The huge cherry tree in the garden gifted us delicious cherries, and now we are waiting for the plum trees and apple trees to do their magic. Our veggies have also been doing splendidly - too well in fact - and we have been eating home grown food for a while now. We have so many courgettes and cucumbers it is difficult to keep up, and we are already struggling with the tomatoes. There are so many that we will run into some serious glut soon. I'll have to dry the extra tomatoes to Mr Fluff's delight. And don't let me get started on the salad leaves! YUMMY. We had so much and for such a long time. We just recently planted more seeds, so the new leaves should be ready in no time.

We have also had super-sweet peas, and the pepper plants are finally producing tiny peppers. The corn will be ready soon and I can't wait! We've even had potatoes (that we didn't plant). The only plant that seems to be struggling is the butternut. I'm not convinced that we will have any at all. Oh well, not a bad outcome really.

This veggie-planting experiment of ours was a fantastic idea, and we have learned so much. Next time, I will know to leave PLENTY of space for the courgettes, and not to plant 20 tomato plants at once, and to space them out a lot more. I'll also attempt more corn, and we need to plant way more peas than we did, and less salad leaves at a time. See? Now we're super clever.

The only problem with growing your own food is all the bloody pests, but I think in some ways we have been quite lucky, because none of our plants got completely destroyed, and many just shrugged off the ruthless bug & slug attacks.

One horrendous experience we had was while the new boiler was being installed: Attack Of The Thrips! Oh my gods it was awful. Thrips are also known as Thunder Bugs or Corn Lice, and they are these tiny 1-2mm black insects that can fly (but not well or far), and they are the little buggers that cause the silvery patches you sometimes see on plants and leaves. Anyway, as you know we are surrounded by wheat and barley fields, and these evil little bastards were having the time of their lives harassing us en masse. For about two weeks they would appear in the morning and only leave early evening.

The first time I saw them was when the boiler guy was busy upstairs in our bedroom lifting the floor boards to check out the water pipes. I was downstairs. All the windows upstairs were open because it was a very hot day. Anyway, at lunchtime the guy left to get some food and I went upstairs to the bedroom to have a look, when I discovered that every inch of our bed, pillows, walls and curtains were covered in tine black insects. I freaked! My first thought was that they came from under the floor boards, but then I didn't see any where the boards had been lifted, so I realised they must come from outside. I closed the window and got the vacuum cleaner in a panic and started sucking the tiny freaks up from every surface. They even got into the pillowcases and bedding. I nearly died. If you know me well, you know that I have no problems with insects, but i can't stomach swarms of anything, and this was beyond my worst nightmare!

So, after spending an hour sucking them up and sweating like a crazy freak in the stuffy, horribly hot house I got ready to go downstairs, only to realise that the buggers were all over the staircase walls, and bathroom too. (I'm actually calming myself down as I type this hahahaha)

To cut a long story short, I had to keep the windows and doors closed to keep them out, but even just going into the garden would mean getting covered in them. The poor boiler guy was oblivious as to what was going on around him, until the day he had to install the piping outside the front door. He came in and told me that he has been itching all day and there seems to be these little black insects all over him, and all over the walls. I told him what happened to me and then Googled to find out what the pesky insects are, but when I told him he nearly freaked out. Poor guy had a tough time with them all over him, in his hair and crawling into his ears. I had exactly the same experience when I vacuumed them up. YUK

Thankfully they are now mostly gone, and the farmers are harvesting, but next year they will be back... I'm just glad we won't be here to deal with them!

Here are some recent veggie pics

Alula munching on the courgette leaves

 Kaya munching on the cucumber leaves

peppers and even more tomatoes

the cucumber plant moved to the trellis

 courgette & cucumber plants

the small courgette plant and the struggling butternut plant

This really is living the good life. Too bad it won't last!

Now all we need is that letter in the post requesting our passports so that we can start to properly plan our next chapter.

Much love to all of you, until next time. xx

that country cottage..

Here we are, back in Blighty and not exactly disliking it. It has been an interesting two months since driving ourselves and the pets out of the Eurotunnel and back onto English soil.

The first thing that struck us was the traffic - cars and people everywhere! The motorways are awful and always cramped. Never mind, we were pleased not to be heading for London and could not wait to see Chelmsford and surrounds, where we will be spending the next 6 -12 months.

Turns out Chelmsford is lovely and traffic is a doddle, even when busy. We collected the key for the house from the estate agent and signed documents and finally headed for the cottage we're renting but have never seen. What a lovely sight it was! Situated 7 minutes drive outside Chelmsford in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by farm fields. Too lovely for words. I will not go into detail about the amount of cleaning we had to do to make it livable even though it was apparently professionally cleaned, but I will mention cobwebs everywhere and having to scrub all the kitchen cupboard doors and shelves and counter tops, and shower... ok I'll leave it at that.

The place is very small (but we expected this) , but has a huge kitchen (YAY! finally!!) and we had a fun time (not!) trying to figure out what to bring into the house and what to store when the moving company arrived the next morning. The space issue turned into a nightmare when we realised just how much of her own stuff the landlady had left in the house.

We also found out very soon (the day after moving in) that the gorgeous Rayburn cooker in the kitchen, which heats the house, does not work, and never will. We are still waiting to hear when it will be removed and replaced with a modern boiler, which will take some days as they have to install pipes and stuff. So, during most of April and May, we were frozen solid!

To keep our minds busy and not focussed on us nearly freezing to death we started planting seeds to later plant in the garden when it gets warmer, and to mow the huge lawn. The seeds did very well, but not so much the lawn. Unfortunately, half way through mowing the mower died and that was that, no amount of sweet talking, hugging, singing or threats of petrol dousing and lit matches could convince it otherwise, so poor Mr Fluff had to mow the rest with a manual push mower which we brough back from Germany, and it doesn't like long grass one little bit. This went on for a few weeks when we told the landlady bugger this, we will buy our own bloody lawnmower. This turned out so well, I'm totally in love with my new mulching, rumbling petrol mower! It's my new favourite toy. And this coming weekend we will be using our new petrol edge trimmer as well! Woo-hoo!!!
And yes, we plan to take both with us when we leave.

Here are some pics of the cottage, garden and veggies we've planted.

Our single lane street at the front of the property. Busy, innit? HAHAHA

We do get the occasional car, tractor, horse, fox, pheasant, bunny, duck... and many great-big-bloody birds that have no shame where they crap, or how much. We call those wood pigeons. Watch out for them, they're evil. Oh, and let's not forget the size and smell of pheasant shite! They have bigger poos than the dogs! I didn't sign up for picking up dog AND pheasant poo in the garden! It is really quite funny.

This is the front of the house and the view from the front

The front garden and side, facing towards the back

The back garden and patio area

View from the bathroom at the back of the house

And now some pics of some of the veggies we're growing:
The veggie patches from start to finish

We are attempting garlic, spinage, broccoli, peas, tomatoes, cucumber, courgette, butternut, sun flowers, a selection of other flowers, sweet pepers, chilli peppers, corn, herbs and salad leaves, and we also have potatoes, spring onions, strawberries, rosemary, sage, rhubarb, cherry trees and a few other unidentified fruit trees growing. Some of the good food will be grown in pots

Inside the house:
The front door

The kitchen

The first reception room which is now our study

The lounge/tv room

The conservatory

where Alula just can't help herself

The bathroom has thick carpet on the floor (eewww!), the bath is only half size and the shower has been renamed 'the dribble', so we squeeeeze ourselves into the tiny bath when we bath together, and believe me it is not that easy. Once the bubbles are in there is no space left for us! This is where yoga would come in handy.


I'm very surprised, but delighted to say that we are happy here. Would we reconsider and stay forever? Well, if the sun was a regular visitor, there were mountains nearby that we could snowboard on, and the population decreased by about 50 million, then we would probably consider it.

Anyway, it is great having a large garden as you can see from the pic below

And the pets have never been happier. This is pet paradise! And we like it too.

Mr fluff is contracting in London, and I drive him to & from the train station every day, take care of house & garden, and we have both joined the gym which we are really enjoying.

We love the fact that people speak english here (yay) and that everything in England is so easy and convenient. We are completely rural, but everything is between 5 and 15 minutes away. We have been to the cinema, fun fair, parks and country pubs, and we can't wait for the rest of summer to explore more.

So with that, I'll leave you with a couple of pics of a recent sunset