
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.