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Taking a short break from the coffee lounge, here is my bedroom vase. Still in situ are two stems of the carnations I was given as a thank you for my services and care given to Betty, added to these are daffodils from the garden.

Back to the coffee lounge...and this is the decor wall coming along fine. In the next shot you can see - well, other than me - the untouched tools alcove and brown cupboard, along with some completed Egyptian Cotton and Timeless white - walls/ceiling.

The window looks small - as it is - but is painted other than the over-hang. The next shot shows the finished wall and the one after the finished decor-wall.

We are now at the second weekend, mid-April. On the Saturday, I tried to fit in as much as I could - and that included turning out the pantry!

Above you can see the back door - awaiting undercoat and top coat in similar shade of white, prior to adding some color to the rest of the door. Also seeable is the 'mineral mist' blue I used in my bedroom, also adorning the 3 over door sections of the room.

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Here you can see that I also began to paint the back door. This is also going to be a decorative artsy display - not plain painting. I have 7 cans of gloss paint to use up and here we see the first can being used. Below, you can see how I spent the final Saturday of March - undercoating, waiting 5 hours, then top coating the coffee lounge ceiling. This is the undercoat almost done.

Here you can see the fake-glass panel - I am of two minds whether to paint over it or not - it might make the room darker, but prettier...

Alas, you can now see that this took me far longer than expected - one undercoat was nowhere near enough to cover BRIGHT pink brickery. It was going to take 2 undercoats and two topcoats...

I progressed - painting, painting, painting.... and almost finished the decor wall - but using the pale pink for the extra undercoats meant using the ceiling white paint on the decor wall instead, as I had more of that spare.

my final picture for today shows the walls after 2 undercoats....

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Liz suggested that I use the vacuum rather than a wet cloth after observations on my slow progress with cleaning down the walls. Here I am ready to vacuum the ceiling and walls and wipe down the mucky bits in the coffee lounge.

Before I could turn to painting however, I had a polyfilling job to be done. A lot of the brick wall that had been painted over was in tact - but in many places a little pre-paint attendance was needed. Cracks in the joints and surface cracks and holes where mortar had dropped were my three main tasks with the polyfilla tube.

I left the cleaning alcove and chunks of brick that were gone from its surrounds and a half tube polyfilla for another time. As March drew to a close, and the rains had wet the ground earlier in the day, I tossed on the CD of the musical Liz and I had gone to see recently and began...

...to fill in my 'blank canvas' of pink and white decor while sipping a peppermint tea. The wall above was to be filled with odds and ends of paint left over from the rest of the house decorating, of which I have now done everything except the bathroom and this coffee lounge.

I started by seeing how much of each color I had left - by shaking the tins and weighing them in my hands. I then began to apply the undercoat of beige, green stuff, and yellow which adorn my hallways and stairs, my sons bedroom, and the toilet.

I then proceeded to apply the mauvey-purple that covers the upper rim and ceiling of my spare room, before calling it a day and waiting for paint to dry. The idea being to recover each color and then fill in the rest of the wall with the paler pinky-mauve I used in the lower part of the spare room, paint the ceiling with left over kitchen ceiling paint, the rest of the walls with the full tin of paint Liz gave me that is the same color as her hallway, and gloss the door in a mosaic design with left over gloss paints. If there is any wall paint left, It will go in the cleaning alcove in stripes after that area is cleaned and polyfilled last of all.

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By 5.20pm, the poly tunnel was covered successfully. Around the outside, Liz had insisted we clear the ground further than I had thought necessary - leaving me some dirt/roots to turn into a pleasant hedge along the fence and a small growing area beside the poly tunnel.

We had 3 jobs left to do - some other day. One is to place 2-3 wooden batons across the poly at the rear to secure it; two is to refasten the latch; three to reverse the poly on one door post at the front.

A couple of days later, and we took a trip in the snow to the garden center for me to stock up on compost. Liz insisted it would be better for me to tip out what was in the tubs and pots already and start over.

I went back to the plot to see if there was enough snow to build 2-3 1-foot snowmen - but alas, the wind had taken most of the snow away. Hopefully it also killed off some of my weeds in my weed pile, though!

The poly tunnel now has the batons on the rear - well - 3 of them, although Liz thinks we should add a fourth. I was going to spend a half hour fixing the door latch in place - but the dry weather caught my mind and lead it elsewhere.

The side of the poly tunnel was now cleared and Liz had suggested I move the bush from sticking out near the door to the edge - which I agreed would be beneficial, and plans to make a sort of border along the fence began.

The above photo shows my start - I moved not only that bush, but a couple of clumps of bluebells, 3 pieces of fuchsia, a cut off shrub like thing, a bulb that may be garlic and may be a flower, a seedum, and 2 of the purple spotted leaf plants - then replaced the old palm tree trunk....

I have gotten as far as the broken plant pot.

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Here we see the iris flowers that fell off the bulbs when I brought some home from Liz's gardens recently - I plonked them into my kitchen soil tub of odds and ends 'in case' they decide to grow.

Well, here we are back on the subject of redecorating the coffee lounge - and here is the paint stash. Liz giving me a tub of paint to cover the walls that are not going to be done in the artsy mosaic mixed color design sort of persuaded me to 'get started'.

I removed the spiders and swept the floor. I tidied the stuff and got a good look at the available paint. The plan is to use up all the odds and ends in the tins that are left over from painting the rest of the house in a decorative mosaic mural on one wall, paint the ceiling with left over ceiling paint from the kitchen, and the rest of the walls with the tin Liz gave me.

First, I had one more corner to sweep up. I decided to dump the two smaller pieces of linoleum, just keeping the larger piece as the base for the coffee lounge - which will enable me to mop the 'pathway' from kitchen to back door with ease. This pathway gets very dirty with muddy gum boots and dripping washing.

All done - no spiders, tidy room, swept floor - it was time to do the grotty chore that would take a few hours if done properly - washing the ceiling, walls, and floor. I figured it being about 8.30am, and my being free til 5pm, and the weather being iffy - although sunny - I might as well begin at least. Perhaps if I cleaned the room before lunch, I could hop down the allotment, or walk round to the mailbox, or potter in the poly tunnel after lunch...

I began - wiping over a part of the ceiling and upper wall with a cloth soaked in water with a little washing up liquid added. I was not really that enthusiastic - but determined to get this boring part over and done with, so the more fun bits of actual painting could occur. I kept seeing the sun shining brightly through the window at me, though...

Here is as far as I got - as the phone rang. The option of walking a local beach with my best friend - along with the inevitable coffee we usually partook of on our trips - had saved my day from dirty cloths and the coffee lounge was once again 'postponed'.

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Looking across the onions I am growing to seed/sets, you can see my internal weed pile - a necessity as the weed bin got overly full and there were more weeds coming. The far reverse corner is pictured below - showing my compost bins, garlic, shallots, and fruit area close to and the rest of the plot beyond.

In the other corner, beyond the neatly trimmed and reshaped edges, is my rhubarb - already spurting out ready to grow for me in 2018. It is surrounded my more garlic - not grass/weeds!

Late February, and finally it was time to start work on the poly tunnel project back at home. Above is a quick reminder of how it WAS. Below shows how it became shortly before my best friend Liz arrived one Sunday late in the month.

I had light-dug around the exterior and rip-cut the poly off. This exposed my tubs of soil, pot of parsley, and tools.

Liz arrived and we began our work around 9am - here is a view just before coffee break, as Liz trotted home to fetch a smaller spade and stronger stepladder. Our task was digging a trench round the outside, while mine was to cut out/back the brambles further along the fence than I had done and hers to trim the apple tree/trees above the poly tunnel a bit further with her saw than I had with loppers.

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This shot taken late November shows my new rhubarb, which successfully grew into a plant this past season and is currently fading away for winter. Hopefully, with a surrounding of horse muck, it will provide amply rhubarb for the next 3-5 years. Also in view are some raspberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries...and the shallots and garlic that have surfaced.

Looking back towards the shed, you can see that I have weeded my raspberries and blueberries, and have several onions shooting through - as well as a few stray 'spare' garlics that I planted around the fruit area.

Here we are - I am all ready to get planting in the poly tunnel and allotment plot for the 2018 season - seed wise that is. As January faded and February arrived with a full moon and mostly sunny day, the poly tunnel had still not yet been recovered and the plot not yet dug over for the new season.

Spring has sort of arrived though - here is the first snowdrop of the year in my garden - 3 more have since followed, while Liz has a carpet of them along with primrose and iris and....

Liz is sharing her spare wheelbarrow with me - so the shed down the plot is now quite full! As you can see below, it is now mostly dug over ready for the 2018 growing season - finally. There remain just a few weeds around the shed and raspberries at the close of February.

Above you can see the front patch - which is where I hope to begin planting in March/April. Also, one of my three raised beds. I plan to use 2.5 for strawberries and 0.5 for nasturtiums. the other two are pictured below