Steel Kitten

300th post blogiversary and a giveaway

Check out the new Steelkitten blog banner above! Isn't it wonderful! The superbly talented illustrator Kat Whelan over at Shoestring Garden did this design for me. It was my present to myself - this is my 300th post since I started this blog back in April 2007. And I'm in the mood to celebrate and say thank you to you all for reading (and not running away screaming) with two little giveaways:

1) A blog banner by Kat Whelan. Kat will work with you to decide the three main elements that most represent you and/or your blog and which would work well in the final illustration. She'll then put her talents to work creating the perfect blog banner for you. As Kat owns the copyright on all the final artwork, she provides you with a high resolution jpg of the final illustration which you can resize for your blog.

2) A copy of John Seymour's Guide to Self Sufficiency and Joy Larkom's Grow Your Own Vegetables  plus a stash of non-hybrid seeds (Kitchen Garden and Salad Garden Collection) from the Real Seed Catalogue (If you live in Australia or another country with strict laws about importing seeds, I'm happy to sort out a seed order for you from a preferred seed supplier within your country.)

The giveaway will run until midnight 20th November 2009.

All you have to do to enter is leave me a comment below and let me know if you want to be entered into one or other, or both giveaways. If you don't have a blog, please leave me an e-mail address so I can contact you, but don't worry - I will keep it confidential and it won't be published with your comment.

I'll be pulling the names out of a hat on 21st November 2009. 

Good luck all!

***

Now, before I forget, I must say a big thank you to Fiona and Danny over at Cottage Smallholder. Do you remember I said I won their competition? Well, they are clearly mind readers, because these great seed envelopes turned up the morning I was sat in the living room sorting out my motley collection of seeds from the garden. 

I'd been making do with a flimsy assortment of envelopes. 'Making do' mostly involved grabbing the envelope, forgetting seeds were in there and tipping them all over the floor. There are notable food crumbs among my seeds now after scrabbling around on the tiles and under furniture picking them up. I've dropped my delphiniums twice, but no more. Not with these sturdy little numbers. 

Thanks Fiona and Danny. Much appreciated!

***

Nope, you don't have double vision. There is now a second chicken who looks remarkably like Marybelle. Except her name is Georgia. She was Marybelle's pen mate at the poultry centre and we bought her as Marybelle looked a bit lonely and scared trailing after Bisto and Oxo.

And this is Dusty and Lulu, 16 week old White Sussexes. We just wanted them because they're white and they looked so scared in the poultry centre!

All six chickens are now forgaging and sleeping together. The frantic pecking and pained yelps have calmed down now they have arranged their pecking order. The hysterical forays into next door's garden has stopped. Harmony reins. Oxo and Bisto are moulting. Oxo has no feathers on her head and the subject of much mirth between me and Martin. She's all beak and baldness.

***

Isn't this such a cute picture of Blossom.

Both her and her brother Filbert have made the weight for winter and were released into the garden over the last couple of weeks. Twinkle still remains and although doing well at 488g, will not make the 600-700g weight before the really cold weather sets in. So once again this winter we're constructing a warm hibernaculum in the conservatory for a hedgehog.

***

Finally, I got up close and personal with my knitting machine again recently and these were the result. Long fingerless gloves - literally fingerless.They just roll over my knuckles and I love 'em.

I even wear them in the house. It's like having extra long jumper sleeves. Fabulous.

It's all pogs and veggies this week

We found a baby hoglet in trouble a few days ago. She was lying on her side in some long grass not far from the nest. She was barely moving apart from a few spines twitching when the breeze blew across her. Martin brought her in and we administered some first aid - a warm water bottle to lie on, a little warm water to drink and some quiet rest in a cat box.

She became quite perky after about an hour, enough that we could examine her. She was smaller than the others- only about 50g so possibly the runt - and had some nasty ticks behind her ear which could have prevented her from putting on weight. She also had an swollen eye that started oozing pus. 

Petal,as she's now called, has probably been poked in the eye by something when snuffling in the under growth so we bathed her eye with boiled cool water and a cotton bud and put in some antibiotic eye drops (we've collected quite a medicine cabinet for the hedgehogs!). After a good scoff on some kitten food she wriggled down into some warm fleeces and went to sleep.

She was so tired after what was probably a harrowing night for her she didn't even wake up when I sorted out her ticks and bathed her eye again. Just lay on her side gently snoring while I cleaned her with a cotton bud. She's put on 40g since Saturday, so hopefully it won't take any more than a month before we can get her to 600g hibernation weight and and then we'll release her.

Then last night, we had the surprise addition of her THREE siblings (Twinkle, Blossom and Filbert), who are now tucked up in the conservatory asleep in a rabbit hutch. Two weeks ago we weighed one of them while it was snuffling around the garden to get an idea of size and age (they were all roughly the same size so we figured it was a good starting point). At 100g we estimated they were about 3/4 weeks old. Then we weighed one of them again a couple of days ago and it was still hovering around the 100g mark. Despite feeding them every night right outside their nest, they've put on no weight. At 6/7 weeks old it's not good enough and they'll almost certainly perish in the cold.

Hedgehogs only hibernate once they hit 600g in weight, a sort of physiological failsafe. Unfortunately, it means many autumn babies never hibernate and are left searching for food all winter during a time when there is very little food out there. Eventually they perish of cold and starvation. So to ensure they get to the correct weight in time for winter hibernation, we removed them from the nest yesterday and have started feeding them up on kitten wet and dry kitten food plus peanuts and fruit.

Hoggyopolis here we come again!

****

Been trying to get some serious veg gardening out of the way this week in addition to pog rescuing.

The potatoes are up and they're not half bad either. Considering we've already eaten about half of what was in the ground this year, this little lot will probably see us through until Christmas (we don't eat a great deal of potatoes). That means what I planted will see us through six months since I started digging them up in June.

The bed was given a good dig over and some dried grass, compost, fire ash, and blood fish and bone were dug in. After smashing up the big chunks of soil, I transplanted the pathetic specimens of beetroot that had been attacked viciously by the chickens too many times and planted some more fast baby beetroot, kale,baby spring cabbage, baby carrots and mange tout. I reckon that I can get a bit more veg out of the bed before the cold weather really hits. I have fleece to cover the bed when it does and some more to wrap around the fencing.

The tomatoes are impressive and provided the base for one of the most tasty pasta sauces I think I've ever cooked. These big meaty numbers will certainly be on my growing list next year.

I also wanted to show you my Swiss Chard. I took a picture a couple of months ago when it was bursting with vigour and ready to pluck.

Then like an idiot I wandered off to download the picture and forgot to fleece it back up. The chickens moved in for the kill and had possibly one of their most exciting days since they arrived.

Rather irritatingly, despite scoffing 7 Swiss chard plants, none of them suffered with tummy upsets. I was severely miffed at their ability to handle so much illicit greenery without punishment.

Clearly crime does pay.

I've also been bottling greengages and pears like a fiend for quite a while now and adding to the jam store. I've found we have a yellow plum tree in the hedgerow over the back field of all places and am in the process of picking some for jams. Unfortunately, they are riddled with coddling moth larva so preparing them is hard work, but still. Free food and all that so I persevere.

Talking of free food, my mother has discovered a secret stash of filberts. Like any good forager, she won't reveal the source, BUT luckily for me, her teeth are playing up and she's not risking hard foods at the moment so I get them. Yippee!

****

Finally, Martin and I went to Barnsdale on Bank Holiday Monday and I was adopted by the resident cat. Note the delicate part of my anatomy he's sticking his claws in!

 

Lovely, but barmy

Work has been barmy lately. Lovely, but barmy. The 60-page website morphed into an 80-page and I managed to get it to 3rd draft stage in just over three weeks. The client is over the moon so I'm a happy bunny too, but it did mean that all I've done for weeks is work. I've seen far too may 5am starts and 12am finishes. 

Still...a few things have happened that I want to share.

1) I had a house guest. My niece - fashionista and fan of all things vampire - came to stay for a week (hee hee, she's going to kill me when she sees this picture!).

She very graciously accepted an uncomfortable blow up bed on the floor of my hobby room, the latter of which disappeared under a storm of clothing and shoes as all girls' bedrooms do at that age. In fact mine still does and I'm more than twice her age. She had a go at sewing. She sniffed through my bookshelves. She got to squeeze the chickens and feed them naughty things. She cooked her own food.

She left behind this hideously squeezed tube of tomato paste that I felt obliged to try and straighten out and squeeze neatly from the bottom. I failed. The tube was too far gone. These damn fist grippers - they drive us neat bottom squeezers mad ;-))

2) My leeks got planted...finally. I heard them whisper their thanks as they eased their cramped and starved roots into the moist fertile soil.

3) The lavender and buddleia in Zone 1 got a stay of execution. They were due to be ripped out and replaced with a design I had planned about 18 months ago based on dwarf Thumbelina lavender and standard roses, but the bees and the butterflies were going mad for them. I've never seen so many feeding at once -I counted around 30 butterflies one morning. To hell with the Zone work that week. In the end I left everything alone for nature to enjoy.

4) Martin and I were forced to clear the back of the kitchen garden in a hurry yesterday when this cute little girl was found out in daylight choking to death with bindweed wrapped around her throat.

She weighed 450g, so she's not Fozzie or Gonzo. She's definitely a spring baby, but whether she came from our girls or the existing mother we don't know. After a bowl of beef cat food and a good day's sleep under fleeces in a box in our bathroom, she was released into the garden at dusk the same day.The last thing we saw was her little spiky bum wriggling at high speed into long grass by the compost heap.

5) Finally, Martin and I attacked the fireplace today to replace a broken throat lintel, which guides the smoke up the chimney and provides support for the bricks above the gap. It suddenly fell into the grate last winter and you can see how badly the smoke has damaged the wallpaper as it escaped up behind the mantlepiece without the lintel to guide it.

Just as an afterthought, I cleaned up the soot with sugar soap. That led to giving the chimney breast a lick of white paint...

...which unexpectedly morphed into a paint job on the alcoves on either side of the fireplace because suddenly I passionately hated the previous owner's choice of colour (orange) and happened to have a tin of Ecos organic paint in Zucchini under the stairs and a paintbrush to hand...

...and then I brought in my favourite painting by New York artist Albert Camurati. This is an original oil and was commissioned by someone at great expense for their kitchen.

Quite why the former owner chose to put it into an auction, where I paid the staggering sum of £3 (and got an ink sketch by the same artist thrown in), is still unknown. I know the former owner was gutted because he stopped me afterwards on the way out of the auction hall to tell me about the painting and sketch, and he looked gutted. I'm sure he thought they would go for more money. But not many people are interested in veggie pictures.

It's not painted yet behind the TV - that happens tomorrow when we'll be pulling the TV out to sort out some of the cables...and of course we have a huge amount of tidying away still to do as evidenced by the amazing amount of belongings crammed into that side of the room!

Now of course the rest of the room looks shabby, so this week I'll make my way slowly round it replacing the magnolia walls with fresh white paint. This room is due a major overhaul next year, but until then this will do.

I love spontaneous painting. Great fun.

No garden last week...

...No chance.  Zone 4 - the front garden - was supposed to be my focus for last week, but I was caught up in doing this 60-page website for someone that there was no possible way I could get out there. I only managed to water the hanging baskets and even then they had to have their tongues hanging out before I noticed. But I've no intention of going out there and trying to 'make up' lost time. That moment has passed and it will have to wait until next month. You see! Perfectionsim under control. Just.

Nope this week it's onto Zone 5 and the kitchen garden. Tons to do here as ever. I've leeks to plant, potatoes to dig up, weeding to do, beds to edge, brambles to dig up, compost to turn, raised beds to demolish....the brick raised beds did not do well. The ants moved into all three and killed just about everything. I've already removed the strawberries into pots and the rest I let the chickens scratch over.

I cannot reach many of my targets for this year on the harvest front. I've found it very hard going and had quite a few failures thanks to the girls and other problems. But I'm just going to focus on what I have and make the best of that.

That means taking care of the existing plants and beds and starting to think about propagation, such as the strawberries, which have set out runners so they've to be potted on. I was bright eyed and bushy-tailed at 7am this morning lifting the onions and digging over the bed ready for the leeks (technically they should go in after potatoes, but they are not ready to come out). I cannot do crop rotation very effectively because it depends on growing something from every veg group to work and I don't).

By the way, check out my prize-winning onion! The other veggies call him "Mr Onion".

Arches and barley twists

Behold a nude rose arch. My second goal for Zone 3 this week has been accomplished: to get it up.

While flinging things around in the shed last week I found two rose arches I bought from Argos online last year. I only wanted one (which was reduced to a measly £7.50), but they made a mistake and sent me two. When I phoned, they told me to keep it and didn't charge me.

Unfortunately, I had to nick a straight bit from one arch to give the other one a bit more width at the top, otherwise it would never have got over the width of the path. The raided one will be a little on the short side wherever it ends up, but will probably be fine. Now all that's needed are climbing roses.

The turfing in Zone 2 is also now done. But instead of taking a couple of hours, it took me 4.5 and left me a wreck. There was dirt in my eyes and up my nostrils, my vocal chords were squeaky and my back was aching so much,to stand up I had to adopt a series of poses uncannily similar to the evolution of man from a crouching chimp to a modern day upright human.

Dragging my knuckles long the floor, I climbed into a huge hot bath with rose bath salts and a strawberry bath bomb and strawberry bubble bath, and then sat there for an hour reading Country Living's Shoestring Chic from amongst the bubbles.

I emerged upright and a new woman.

Which is just as well because at 10pm I had a sudden urge to clean out my hobby room. Two hours later, the room was clean and my old warped oak barley twist table has been removed to make some more space.

It won't go to waste. The quality and age of the wood is so good it's going to be re-purposed in the kitchen. Each plank of oak on the table has separated due to damp from its previous home in some daft person's basement, so they will go for shelves:

The barley twist legs are going to be stripped and sprinkled liberally around the room on the edges of the cupboards, as towel rails and..well..wherever I can find a spare space to put them:

When I look at things now, I don't see individual items. I see the the basic elemental structure. I see materials to be re-used. A dress or curtain is just fabric. A table is just wood.

It's a great thing when that midset clicks, because suddenly everything you look at has endless possibilities.

And that's a nice way to look at life as well. 

Dinner a deux - and an unruly bed gets a beating

Just for our Anniversary, Martin took a night off from doing the car last night. I laid the table on the patio and we ate take away Chinese in style.

The House Special Fried rice glistened in the evening sun. The waft of aromatic crispy duck was in the air.

The only sounds to be heard were forks clinking against plates, the soft cluck of a hopeful chicken and the rampant scoffing of two humans. The animals hovered looking for scraps.

 

They were out of luck.

We ate the lot then wobbled slowly to the living room to drink dark Italian cappuccinos and pick on chocolates while watching Snakes on a Plane.

What a lovely evening.

*******

Ok....Zone 3 looms this week. My least favourite garden bed - bed 4 - is in there. I promised to tell you why I hated it didn't I?

It contains every allergen I have a reaction to, bringing my skin up in hives and causing every mucous membrane to swell. I have to have an anti-histamine, decongestant and two puffs on an asthma inhaler to get in there.

It grows weeds rampantly even though it has weed suppressant membrane. The plants are floppy and unruly despite staking. The shrub rose has the thickest stems and biggest thorns I've ever encountered - it's ripped my skin, given me deep splinters that took days to work loose with a needle, torn my clothing and even snagged one of my ears and drew blood across my scalp once.

The couch grass is tough and has to be painfully and slowly dug out, only to grow back in less time than it took me to weed it out. The creeping buttercup has almost taken over. The ground is hard and compacted no matter how much good stuff I dig in. There are bitey insects and many spiders lying in wait.

 

(from the back)

It's a ruddy horror story. I hate it. 

Yet its rose is beautiful, the white peony breathtaking when in bloom and the lavender bushes fragrant for months on end providing a food source for the bees. There's a thornless blackberry with the hugest fruits you've ever seen. The Hollyhocks are giants too.

But....I've decided the continued agony is just not worth it. It has to go. 

*****

Martin and I are hatching a plan. A plan that involves a triple garage (one double and a single behind) right over the top of half of bed 4 and a third of bed 5 in front of it. The best of the plants are being moved  - the roses, peony and lavender - while the hideous horrible bits are being dug out to make way for the foundations. I'm giving up my double greenhouse so the existing workshop/garage can be put on its base. 

This will be the final part of our building plans. Once this is complete, we will have room to store all the cars Martin restores as well as various trailers that look ugly cluttering up the drive. Then the front drive can be done.

*****

In the meantime, I gave in and attacked it yesterday. Deadheading, weeding, removing unruly self sown plants and generally kicking it into shape. Which roughy translated meant 90 minutes of swearing, ripping, tearing, blood, blisters, hacking back and stamping.

There are two large and highly satisfactory piles of rubbish now.

 

(from the back)

 

That'll teach it to mess with me.

I'm in love with Abraham Darby

The majority of the outdoor work last week was all about Zone 2.

As you can see, the area is cleared and being forked it over with compost and fertiliser. All that's needed is the turves to lay, which will be in at the end of this week (supposedly, although perhaps not if this rain continues). The greenhouse frame and fencing found good homes on freecycle and will shortly be gracing allotments, and the rustic poles are at the end of the garden to be re-used as a pergola.

I've been trying to get the bindweed under control, but really I'm fighting a losing battle. It's running underneath the weed suppressant membrane. This is immensly galling as it's supposed to suppress weeds, not provide them with the ideal conditions under which to thrive. But at least I can now see the base of the shrubs, which is an amazing achievement.

***

:: I found an excellent tip in a gardening supertips book yesterday. If you want to kill a climbing weed like bindweed but don't want to spray in case you damage the plant underneath, fill an empty roll on deodorant bottle with weedkiller and roll it on the bits of weed you can see. Inspired!!

***

A clematis growing through the shrubs was also suffocating under the weight of bindweed, so out it came and was planted by the pergola by Bed 4. It does not look happy. It hates me for doing it. To assuage my guilt at trying to hasten the demise of a perfectly healthy plant, a good sniff around a garden centre revealed a beautiful David Austen English shrub rose called Abraham Darby, which gets to about 5ft and has numerous heavy sprays of blooms on it.

I'm hopping with excitement at the thought of training it across the patio fence along with the Ville de Lyon clematis. And the smell is incredible - fruity and lemony. Absolutely out of this world.

The log roll in bed 3 didn't come up in the end because of a lack of time, but when the slate chippings arrive for the patio this week some nice fresh new bark chippings will be coming too for a good thick layer of mulch to tidy it all up.

So that's the work in Zone 2 almost complete.

Zone 3 ahoy.....and it's not my favourite. I'll tell you why another day.

I promised you a patio...

...and this is it so far. Bit of a difference from what it looked like two weeks ago, with empty animal hutches, bricks, algae, dead trees and weeds:

The rest of the slate chippings will be laid at the back on Thursday when the stone merchant takes delivery of his new stock.

A hunt about the garden last week for interesting object d'art to liven up the patio area revealed numerous ceramic pots, a stained glass window, some driftwood (picked from the beach by the lighthouse in which Martin frightened the life out of me by proposing), some shells and bits of tiles rounded smooth by sea, and an old mini wooden boat.

 

 

 

On the days it rained last week, I took to my craft room and knocked up four cushions for the patio chairs (only two shown) and a long cushion for the iron seat. I have another long one to do for the stone seat, as well as recovering an umbrella for the patio table.

But in terms of outdoors work, bar laying the chippings, I've done as much as I Intend to do in this area this month.

The Glory of the Garden by Rudyard Kipling

Our England is a garden that is full of stately views
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye

For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall
You find the tool-and-potting-sheds which are the heart of all
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dungpits and the tanks
The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks

And there you’ll see the gardeners, the men and ‘prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words

And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing “Oh how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner knives

There’s not a pair of legs so thin, there’s not a head so thick
There’s not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick
But it can find some needful job that’s crying to be done
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one

Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders
If it’s only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden
You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden

Oh Adam was a gardener and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees
So when your work is finished you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!

Nice poem huh? One of my favourites.

****

Well, the work in Zone 1 has finished for now. I'm not ready to show you a complete picture yet, as I'm still painting the top coats on a couple of items I found at the car boot sale Sunday, and I have not found any bedding plants to go in at all. I think I may have missed the boat there, so I'm gradually digging up and moving some garden plants (at a rate of one plant a day) into the area in a desperate effort to give it some interest.

I will show you a picture soon - promise! In the meantime, you'll have to content yourself with the above picture of the lilies with the (undercoated) bird table in the background.

****

So the work has kicked off in Zone 2 this week, which is Bed 3 and the rest of the main garden, the latter of which is shown below (Bed 3 is directly to my right and out of shot).

 

First thing first, throwing rubbish away. Monday morning I was out picking up rubbish and managed a full bin bag in under 10 minutes. Tuesday rain stoped play. Harumpf.

The main aim of the decluttering work this week is to move all of the garden paraphenalia away from the side of greenhouse and re-turf the area.

 

This paraphenalia consists of a frame for a 6x8 greenhouse (no glass), and tens of metres of green plastic-coated chain link fencing plus 6 to 8 large rustic poles that we dug out when we removed one side of an enormous 10 foot fence which divided the garden. The poles we will keep for finishing off our pergola so I'll move those down to the bottom of the garden (I call this the Infrastructure area now!), but the fencing and greenhouse frame is going on freecycle.

I've rung the local garden cenre and ordered 3 sq metres of hard-wearing grass turves. Unfortunately due to the shocking thunderstorms we're having, their delivery will be delayed as turf is not lifted in bad weather. However, I can still give the area a fork over, add some fresh compost and fertiliser and tamp it all down ready.

With such bad weather I think I'll probably have some time left this week. I plan to nip out between rain storms to weed Bed 3 and add fresh bark chip, and I may even rip out some of the log roll around the edges, which is starting to rot, and give it a nice neat edge with some clippers.

That's the plan anyway. Many a slip though. And thunderstorm.

In the meantime, sit back, keep reading and I'll update you on my efforts. Here, have one of these while you're waiting.....

Just what is the Flylady programme?

Just in case you've never heard of Flylady after my post yesterday, I thought I'd talk a little about how the basic programme works and how it will work in the garden. 

Flylady is designed to split housework down into manageable chunks of time and organised routines so you don't have a house in CHAOS, that is Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. First, you set a routine for the morning, afternoon and evening. For example, my morning routine is:

Make bed

Feed cats

Make invalid chicken food for Paxo and open up chickens

Have cup of tea while checking calender for the next couple of days ahead and making to-do lists

Shower

5 minute swish and wipe in the downstairs bathroom (Wipe round sink, swish toilet bowl, wipe round toilet, clean cabinet mirror and every other day swish floor with microfibre mop)

Get dressed

Put on load of washing

Take vitamins

Wash up

Do Flylady 'mission' for the day 

 

What's a mission?

That last one needs a bit of explaining. As part of the Flylady programme, you mentally section off the house into 'Zones" and work on decluttering and cleaning a new Zone every week. There are also little 5-15 minute missions throughout the day to clear hotspots where papers or clothes or shoes have built up, or accomplish a small task you might not ordinarily do, such as clean out your handbag or get rid of the rubbish in the car. I usually do these missions in the morning. 

Anyway, back to the basic programme; one of the first things you do every week in a Zone is a 15 minute declutter. This is usually accomplished by a) walking around the Zone with a bin bag throwing away rubbish b) the next day grabbing items to give away to friends or charity then c) the following day picking up and returning objects that do not belong in that zone to their rightful places around the house. That's a bit simplistic but essentially everything you do boils down to those three things. 

So for example, if you're in the bathroom you might be asked to go through your cabinet and fling away all the out of date stuff, then the next day collect all the opened things you tried a couple of times but didn't like and give them away. If you're in the bedroom you might be asked to pick two pairs of the your rattiest old shoes to throw away or pick the most unflattering item of clothing and put it in the charity bag.

 

The last few days in the zone is then spent doing some cleaning that perhaps doesn't often get done (for example light fittings, behind furniture, under beds etc). Over a period of months you end up completely decluttered and then each week in the Zone is just spent deep cleaning or doing projects that need to be completed. 

This week was Zone 1 

In the house Zone 1 is the porch, lobby and dining room. 

This week most of the junk in my house in those three areas has been cleared, either by throwing away, giving away or returning to their rightful homes. The front door, back door and internal doors in between have been wiped down, the light fittings cleaned, and the windowsills wiped down. It all took less than 15 minutes a day in addition to my routines. 

Tomorrow I do the main cleaning in the house for an hour: clean the upstairs bathroom, dust the lounge and master bedroom, hoover the house and change the bed. Then I have the odd bigger jobs to do when it crops up every now such as cleaning the car, washing the windows, washing carpets and upholstery, wiping out the fridge, cleaning the oven....you know the sort of jobs I mean. 

It seems to work ok for me, but I am not strict Flylady. I do not do my washing up at night and shine my sink, as I'm stink tired at the end of the day and can't be bothered. I'd rather have a bath and read a book in bed! I also do not get dressed down to my shoes, as I prefer to run around in bare feet to give them a rest, and I'd trash my carpets very quickly if I wore shoes in the house. 

Flylady in the garden

Flylady has also translated very well to my new garden Zone plan too. 

My morning garden routine:

Check all pots and water any that need it

Water hanging baskets

Check tomatoes in greenhouse

Pick up any rubbish that crosses my path

Check over plants for obvious problems that need looking at later during evening routine

Very quick weed (usually of bind weed) while the watering cans are filling up at the water butts

Then there's the decluttering and missions - so far in Zone 1 this week I've thrown away dead plants and empty pots, emptied and cleaned out a water butt with Jeyes fluid, cut back and fed the herbs in the butler sink and planted a new clematis against the fence.

 

The breezeblocks and small rectangular pavers have been dragged off the stone seat and up to the end of the garden, and the seat scrubbed down with algae cleaner. 

 

 

By the end of the weekend I aim to have some new bedding plants in the patio bed and the dahlias staked and tied back. I have even made rumbling noises about finally making up the seat cushions with this fabric I bought last August:

 

Personally I blame Carol at Boxwood Cottage for all of this. Click on her Flickr pictures on the right hand side of her blog and check out her garden pictures. Pure inspiration. I now have some leads on wonderful climbing roses and plants I want in the garden. And thanks to her I've also made up my mind that - yes - box hedging in the beds is the way to go to contain everything neatly. My bank balance may not recover after this.....