Friday 1st January, decluttering and some garden jobs

Decluttering over the last few days..
Well here we are at the end of the first day of 2010, the sun is disappearing behind the hills to the west of us, Joe is watering the veggie garden and I thought I would make a start on the first blog post of the year.
Before I tell you of what we have achieved today I just want to tell you of a couple of decluttering and reorganising jobs I managed to get done with Joe's help. A challenge was set on the Down to Earth forum, click here(if you're not a member you will have to sign up to be able to read it) A couple of days ago Joe and I couldn't get motivated, Joe's not one for sitting around, so I compensate for him by sitting around for two! Anyway I had one of my bright ideas which Joe just loves to hear and follow through with, well for once he did and this is how it went. ;D
If you are a regular visitor you will know of the renovations going on here, it's been ongoing for a while now and we had intended to carry on with them over the Christmas break. Instead we've had a tidy up, the place in general is getting into a mess and sometimes I look at it all and it seems a bit beyond me, so I end up walking away from it and try to ignore it, in other words act like an ostrich, stick my head in the sand and hope it goes away on it's own. But it hasn't so we faced it head on and fought back.

Underneath the stairs on the ground floor there are 2 cupboards, a good size and very handy. And completely useless, they had no shelves so you couldn't really put much in them. Well that little problem had now been solved, Joe after some brow beating...oops I mean me asking him nicely.....finally(after 2 years of waiting, you can't rush these things apparently)I have shelves and very nice they are too, they were empty for about 5 minutes, here they are now.
Cupboard 1




Cupboard 2




And whilst we were in the mood the spare small bedroom which has been a bit of a dumping ground also got a tidy...



In the garden..
We've been tidying up out here too, the other day Joe was lacking any motivation, so I suggested we start clearing some of the driveway border, it looks such a mess as you drive in. Anyway 5 minutes later I heard the chainsaw going and a tree met it's fate. I wasn't quick enough to take a before pic, but you can see which tree it is or was in this photo, if you look to where the driveway forks it's the big conifer.

And there it was, gone!




The mulch will be used on the garden borders and the larger logs will dry off in the wood shed for the log burner in winter.

And finally to today..
The Dovecote border






We shall bag up the stones and use them elswhere, I want to plant some Acers in this border and I prefer mulch, river stones can be a pain to keep weed free and that's with matting.