Cheshire, England, Manchester

3 Months On

Some times it feels like an eternity ago, other times it feels like yesterday.  I can certainly remember it like yesterday.  I still have yet to upload the photos, I think.  I will try to add these once life is not so very hectic here.  What am I talking about?  Well, yesterday was 3 months to the day since Stuart and I left the UK.  Friday will be 3 months to the day since we arrived in Australia but that is another matter.  3 months?  Where did the time go to?

Do you remember these?

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Where did the time go to?  I have no idea.  7 weeks were spent living in Braddon, Canberra.  1 week (roughly) was spent living in Sutton, NSW before we moved into here where we have been for 6-7 weeks now.  We are still not straight.  We are still not sorted.

  • I haven’t yet cleaned all of the house, let alone the studio which is an outbuilding (and ironically cleaner than most of the house here).
  • I have finished the bedroom (bar painting one of the cupboards before we use it – that is on next week’s jobs list).
  • I haven’t quite finished  the kitchen.  The tops of the cupboards still need a thorough clean and the oven still needs a good clean (it has won 2 rounds so far but it does not know what is coming!).
  • I have finished the sitting room with the exception of the huge curtain that I can’t get into the washing machine, so that is going to have to be a dry cleaning job, and I need to put a touch of fire cement around a brick I put into a hole in the fireplace where mice were coming in and out (doesn’t that sound rather familiar – Keeper’s Cottage all over again).
  • I haven’t really started on the sun room, other than a quick hoover to get it clean enough to use.
  • The chook house floor still needs finishing – it is almost there, but not quite.  Then I need to nail a piece of wood into place so there is no gap under the door.  I have the wood, so that isn’t an issue.
  • The veg plot will need fencing in.  We have rabbits in the area.  Tell an Australian that and they want to see one.  Apparently they are rare and most have not seen one!
  • And then there is the garden.
    • The 3rd pond is now cleaner and fuller and no longer stagnant.  I’m not certain what the tadpoles or the newt think of this but I hope the plant growing in it will appreciate it!  I think it is a Water Iris of some form, but until it flowers, I won’t know, but the leaves and roots certainly look like it.  It has been divided and some put into the pond with the goldfish in it.
    • The bamboo is being subdued slowly.
    • The ivy tree has been pruned (it literally is ivy that has grown over an old tree, killed it and is now a tree in its own right).
    • Various paths have been found and are in the process of being reclaimed and dig out.
    • Leaf litter is being raked up slowly
    • Hundreds of rocks are being rounded up and removed (these are the bed rock which has broken into small pieces and makes underfoot conditions interesting in places).
    • Fences are either being removed or repaired, slowly.
    • Planters (hollowed out tree trunk sections) are being hollowed out properly, lined and replanted.  Herbs are going into them.

I expect it will take most of the year to get the garden into any kind of order/shape but that’s half the fun.  It took years at Keeper’s Cottage, but at least we don’t have to worry about cutting the grass here.  We don’t really appear to have any!