Man vs. To do list

I have been fixing and building a few things recently for the house and garden. We have had a week off so that has given me time for bigger projects. A couple of weeks ago I got a load of wood off Grandad and made some planters for Jess:

Also made little bedside bookshelf had promised months ago

 A cat tower (which now has offcuts of carpet we got free from a local carpet shop who said we could take what we wanted from their skip)

 Media unit for LPs CDs and tapes. Although record player is still broke :( have spent several hours trying to fix it to no avail.

 A vote green poster in both windows. We stood as local candidates and I got 333 votes, Jess got 384!
With no leafletting either. Just goes to show there is support for greens out there.

 Bought Jess bike lights that run off a dynamo. Made in Germany so they still work. I will stick to my LED ones for now as I have them already. We had bought some nice looking ones from Halfords that were quite expensive but really badly made. The front one was too heavy for its bracket and the back one stopped working. So I went on ebay and found these nice old ones:

 Also now we have a water butt!


Water  Butt

But there is no watering can yet to distribute the water. I just had a thought though we could always connect the hose to it.

Here are some plant pots Jess made for the shed that have nasturtiums in

I think that is pretty much it for now. The garden is going crazy, will put up more pictures soon.

-Will

BEAN there done that - Going cold turkey on the evil bean

Well, today is quite a big day as it's today that I am finally going to QUIT CAFFEINE.
I decided to do this at work yesterday as I stared uninspired at my computer mid morning and considered popping upstairs for a black coffee, while half wondering why I felt so pants in the office.
Of course the office does make you feel pants, its too hot, too cold, too light, too dark, and you  have to sit there for 9 hours a day pretending to know what you're doing. But there's a possibility also that I feel pants because the working day for me is just one long comedown from my morning hit of caffeine (which FYI is pot of coffee.. every morning)

Now, the reason that I drink a pot of coffee, every morning, is that I love coffee. I mean I really love it. I love the taste, I love the smell, I love the routine, and honestly it's what drags me out of bed at 10 past 5 every morning (an hour and a half earlier than I need to get up, especially so that I can spend that time sipping coffee.)

But unfortunately, and a part of me, a big part of me really feels that, I've reached a point where not only do I feel terrible enough (everyone who knows me knows that 'my tummy hurts' Is practically my catchphrase - could that be the BUCKET of coffee you religiously consume each morning, hmm?), but I've read enough bad business about not only the ethics but the damaging properties of coffee that I can't really defend my so seemingly harmless and normal bad little habit any more.

So, goodbye my 5:30 cup of coffee. Goodbye my 5:40 cup of coffee, goodbye my 5:50 cup of coffee... I guess this morning I'll enjoy a delicious pot of... hot water. mmm
I'll keep a diary over the next week or so of my exciting adventure into caffeine withdrawal  (if I'm coherent enough) as well as a little investigation into what coffee does, why it does it, and WHY I'M RIGHT & hopefully it won't be too long before I pop out the other side bouncing and full of energy and not missing coffee an ounce (yeah right!)

Until then, perhaps I'll just have a little nap...

April

Well once again there's not a great deal that's changed as we muddle on towards a simpler life.
Will and I are now running as candidates for the local elections, and for a short while that has kept us busy.
The garden is a changing place at the moment with everything planted in March springing up now, and we have an exciting range of veg on its way, although only very small amounts of everything!
Even the gooseberries which we'd just about given up hope on after a round of disease last summer have returned and are in full flower, and bluebells creeping over from next door's garden have brightened up ours while we're waiting for our marigolds and cornflowers to grow.
The perpetual spinach from last year is still perpetual, and has made a couple of good meals and continues to sprout, and our small flower patch has brought a great number of bees into the garden already.
Will continues to build things out of wood, and after a week off work a great deal has been achieved, but I'll leave him to talk about his creations.
We are still looking to the future, and hope that next year will be the year that we can buy a property with some land, and really get started on our journey. It is unhealthy here and frustrating not having any space to grow.
Finally, last week we welcomed two little rescue cats into our family. They are both two years old and have never had a home or much contact with people, so they are very shy and frightened, but have already made incredible progress in a startlingly short amount of time. They are amazing.
Will report back with updates when there are some, but for now it's just more of the same. Cheerio! Jess

More pictures of things that we done

Well it's been a little while since the last post (I can't even remember what or when it was, but I know it was still hot when I wrote it). This is because I've sold out and have started working for The Man - yes, Jess finally has a JOB. I'm a research assistant for the company Will works for, so not only do we get to go to work every day and have our lunch together, but it's actually a job (the first) that I like. I've been learning a lot about contaminated land, planning policies and green belt guidelines, and it's really opened my eyes to how we view land, and how monstrous developments (like the one which is to tack itself onto our little town) can possibly occur.
Well, there's no way that I can possibly remember what we've been doing for the past few months, so the best way to update this is to probably stick in ALL the pictures that I have to make it look like we've been up to something. So here we are.
The first thing which doesn't require pictures is we've joined the local Green Party. We've only had a few, rather odd, meetings so far, but we've put our money in and Will has started a Facebook page for the local group which now has a total of 12 (12!!!) likes, and it has also led us to do some research and find some rather encouraging discoveries about the rising popularity of the Greens.

I made a LOT of jam, jelly and apple butter over the summer with fruit that we foraged, and now have unfortunately completely gone off it, so it's stacked up in our fridge while I will it not to go moldy.

Apple and Plum butter (apples from the cemetery, plums from the park)

Pear Jelly, dubbed pear nectar (pears from a stranger's garden in Dorset)

Fortunately I don't have pictures, but I also made 10 billion billion jars of apple and pear Jam, and Apple and Onion Chutney that will last us 'til we're dead. 

In September we went to Dorset with my family and spent the entire time in the sea. 

No pictures of us frolicking in the sea, but we did.

My birthday came and went. We had a little party and Will baked me a strange and magnificent cake out of millet grain.

We walked in the wood and collected chestnuts in abundance.

Halloween Happened, and it was Horrible.

I bought myself a new set of wheels, so we can now whizz about effortlessly and cleanly.

Lookin' proud

Will and I have been around for Two Damn Years and celebrated accordingly.

We looked damn sharp on several occasions, bimbled around the garden, and bought the board game of our dreams

We adventured with the apple press that was given to us as a magnificent wedding present. We don't have an apple crusher, so we just beat the apples with rolling pins until the were squishy. All in all making apple juice was bloody hard work.You can keep the pulp and use it in flapjacks etc, but I just ran it through our electric juicer a couple of times to get the last, and got another pint out of it.

And that is pretty much that. Now that I've run through everything we've done for the last few months we can commence again with regular posting. BYE