SUMMER SLOSHING 11

I decided to remove it. So, instead of painting, I did this task on my next free day. Ripping away the bubble wrap was easy enough - but that left me with a dusty, dirty, flakey-painted partly worn out wooden framed window. The first thing I did was wipe it over as best I could. It then looked brighter, at least.

I was slightly concerned about the state of the wood, so decided to put a layer of polyfilla over it. Now before you stare in horror at the result in my next picture - I must tell you that I did not care too much about being neat and tidy, as it will be hidden behind the bright pink curtain anyway - so I just slopped the polyfilla on carelessly; providing it covered the risky bits, I did not mind what it looked like.

I actually thought it looked rather nice done roughly, like lumps of snow.

SUMMER SLOSHING 10

As you can see, although not very clearly in this shot, I have now completed polyfillaing the upper hallway. I got to the stage where I could not squidge out a single blob more of the dried up polyfilla, so used the new tub of Asda-polyfilla along with them old canister of semi-liquid polyfilla.

Then, it was onto painting. I broke the Cookie Dough areas down into 2 - the wall/ceiling and the blanket box area, and painted the first, repainting a day after. An additional job was to fix a small paintbrush onto the end of the roller and fill in the unpainted gap as shown above, that resulted when rollered ceiling and painted wall were left unjoined. Here it is at the undercoat stage ...

My next task was going to be to Tibetan Gold gloss the trim, window, toilet door, blanket box and loft cover - but this was delayed. When I took down the curtain to prepare the window area, I remembered that my late father had made a fake double glazed window when most of the house windows were replaced with double glazing. I therefore had to decide what to do - leave it and paint around it or remove it and paint the wood behind it.

GARDEN GLIMPSES 19

Here is a shot of the front yard, taken the second week in May. As you can see it too is a bit of wilderness amidst a village in natural decline. As the council steal more country from our countryside village, I turn more built up area back to nature. SOMEONE has to care more for wildlife than human pleasure.

I have the pretty yellow poppies flowering, along with grape hyacinths and a single bluebell. I am not sure how the bluebell arrived in the front yard - wind or bird no doubt are responsible. Sea-bells, aquilegias, dandelions and flowering weeds all grow together in peace here, circling the pieris tree which is currently yellowing.

This shot shows the back yard again - and the area where lily-of-the-valley are begining to bud and bloom. It will be a day or two before enough are flowering to scent the air, however.

We move on to summer months, and as June began I took some photos of the yards' progress. The first were of the large fluffy yellow roses, which were the first to bloom this season. The next photo is of the olde fashioned pale pink rose in the back yard near the patio - along with some blue weed-flowers and bird poops.

A shot of the 'overgrown mess' of my wildlife-loved back yard shows the foxgloves now flowering.

SPRING CLEANING 35

The first shot in today's piccies is of my windowsill. It demonstrates how large my geraniums re growing, despite having just come through a British winter. I seem to have a flare for growing these plants. Back in Australia, my son picked up 2-3 broken discarded stems of geranium and we placed them in soil. When we moved to Wollongong, these THREE STEMS populated the entire front and back garden edges with strong shrubs of bright red year-round flowering plants within 2-3 years. The plants were so good, we had 3-4 passer-bys and neighbors ask for cuttings or rooted pieces over the next 4-5 years.

In this country, geraniums are rarely left outside over winter and are generally considered to be a pot plant suited to indoors, or indoors winter and outdoors summer. My dad had a couple of plants he had bought and took cuttings. A few of the discarded stumps of shoot that he wanted to throw away, considering them to be of 'no use' ended up in pots on my windowsill - and the above photo is evidence that what a professional gardener discards as useless, can be grown by those of us with the geranium flare!

On to more serious matters - via the turned out wine closet and pantry. You will see that along with wine, I have a few beers and oddities along with some Indian Tonic Water which doubles as a mixer for the vodka and on its own as a medicinal fluid for sinus-caused fevers.

This time, the pantry turn out has resulted in my ordering it with jarred dry stuff at the base - flours, beans, grains, dried fruits etc. Next are two stages with similar items stacked in best before date order with spices at the sides, with drinks and sugar/rice milk/salt at the top shelf - or at least the next to top shelf - I cannot reach the very top one without a stool.

Finally, back to the task of the upper hallway. As June arrived amidst a burst of energy, it began to get tackled - finally. I began by polyfilling the 3 large cracks.