Notes from the week

Edition 15

We are in full renovation mode here, and it is sucking away all my creativity. I'm loving having such a big, meaty project to occupy my time, full of practical, physical tasks like ripping up old carpet and stripping wallpaper, but the decision fatigue and overwhelm are real! I'm very grateful to have such a quirky, unusual house, with such a beautiful garden to my name, but I finish each day too tired to even knit. As a result, my creative projects have really taken a back seat, in favour of DIY and trips to the dump.

Here are a few things that have been bringing me joy over the last few weeks.

The clematis that came with the house is in full bloom and she is a stunner! We're planning on moving the fence over which she's growing, so I'm really hoping I can salvage her when the time comes. But for now I'm just taking half a dozen photos a day, like any normal person with a camera roll full of plant pics.

Old man Badger is enjoying his retirement home, puttering around in the sunbeams managing the Labradors. He's a bit too lame these days to manage the same walks as them, but he still comes to the river with us, eats compost in the garden (despite being repeatedly told not to) and accompanies me to the dump and B&Q. He joined us for my mother-in-law's birthday barbeque recently, and spent the whole afternoon pulling logs out of the wood store and shredding them.

We spent a classic British bank holiday buying supplies at B&Q, to build this set of steps. The dining room window opens out onto the front patio, which gets full sun until the early afternoon. In time we're going to have French doors installed, but in the meantime a bench under the window on the inside, and this set of steps on the outside, means the dogs and people can access the garden for coffee, without having to go round the outside of the house (which isn't yet dog-safe, they could get onto the street quite easily). The steps themselves are square, but the patio sadly isn't, so they're very unprofessionally propped on some wood remnants to keep them from wobbling.

The azalea is in full bloom, in all its gaudy pink delight. The smoke bush has grown babies, so I'm hoping to be able to move them to other parts of the garden. I love a smoke bush, they’re so pretty in the autumn. I'm excited to have potentially unintentionally multiplied my inherited collection.

My rescued strawberries are flowering, which is an absolute miracle, given they've been moved twice and significantly trampled when we took down a holly tree. Fingers crossed for strawberries!

I've finished my Barbara balaclava and I've written the associated blog post. I'm just waiting to take photos, it's been such lovely warm weather recently I haven't been motivated to put on wool head gear! Hopefully in the next week I'll get that one published.

In the meantime, I hope your creative projects are serving you well. If you're in a similar period of overwhelm I'm right there with you, we can muddle through together!