Final clippings removed

The last five bags of garden clippings were taken to the recycling centre this morning – it took approx 1.5 hours to cut the bush clipping down and insert them into the five bags we bought earlier in the week.

There is probably a further half bag to go along with the existing stuff that had been already dumped in the corner before we moved in. So we decided to buy a metal waste burning bin from the garden centre while we were ordering our new garden furniture for the front garden.

When Simon comes back from Australia we will have some little garden fires to begin to eat our wat through the compost content – the decomposed stuff can be spread out onto the garden beds and we will hopefully gain access to more space down at that part of the garden,

Leaf raking 🌲🌳🍃🍃

This mornings no daddy decided that the leaves in the back garden needed raking and collecting up. Strangely enough, the boys were not so keen – however, this was to be a no choice option. It had dropped to a couple of degrees below zero overnight so the garden and leaves were nice and frosty so would perhaps be easier and certainly cleaner to pickup.

We now have 2 x 1m cubed bags full of leaves 🍃 at the end of the garden.

Olly basically whinged for almost two straight hours, Elly whinged for the first 30 and then realised no whinging was stopping it happening 🙂

Daddy has two large blisters on his hands – suck it up buttercup….

So, just got the ivy to pull from the wall on the side of the house and the new floodlights to install – maybe this afternoon or Friday….

Cock up in the garage….

Yesterday, Simon installed the first of the new garden lights that are supposed to switch on as somebody approaches them – or a series of three of them so that we can walk from the house to the office / garage or vice verse with illuminati n of the path when it is dark. 

The first one was installed yesterday morning and then left to test later in the day as darkness appeared. Sadly, the light didn’t work but then neither did the other lights on the gate posts that these were wired in series from….

So, before we went out for a Drew a Rusty Box dinner out, Simon went to the office and flipped the fuse back on since it had blown – nothing happened and no lights came on, so he flipped the switch again – only this time it tripped the entire garage electrics.

This caused a pretty big issue since the garage fuse box is in the garage part of the building, the garage door was down, is the only means of access but is slect if and has no other handle…. shite…..!!!!!!!

So, this morning it was down to the office with a torch and a hand saw – the only approach that could possibly work was to go into the loft space above the fuse box and saw a hole in the ceiling to give a small access hole into the garage. The next problem was being able to reach the damned fuse box and pull the main switch back on…. 15 minutes later and with a broom handle, we were back on.

The issue ended up being that the black cable in the pre-existing external cable was actually for earth and not neutral as Simon had believed – the grey one was the real Neutral….. Once that was figured out and swapped over, the fuse stopped blowing out each time it was switched on 🙂 yay

Then Simon fitted the remaining two lamps in the garden and tested the sensitivity etc once it got darker tonight so we should now finally be all set, albeit with a new hole in the ceiling of the garage (why the garage ceiling was plastered we are not entirely sure) although if you didn’t read it here, I suspect you would never know / notice…

We also managed to get out and take Hugo for a nice walk this afternoon before it got dark, with the boys and Paula and Cayton (who have come to stay over Christmas incidentally) – we all hope to sleep well tonight – the red wine with no doubt help – three nights on the bounce…. 😳 🍸🍺🍷