catch up...three whole sunny days!

It's been all systems go here lately. M and I have spent every spare minute painting a house, and not even the one we live in. 20 litres of magnolia emulsion later (and 100 other DIY jobs) and we ached from head to toe. Saturday was the day of potential tenant viewings so we finally had a day off house maintenance duties.

We dropped one teenager off in town and took the other to the cricket club to watch an adult match for a change. It was tempting to just stay at home and potter about but I needed the rest so I joined the men. They 'parked' me on the boundary with a blanket, flask of tea, crochet magazine and knitting and went off to bowl a few balls in the nets. I couldn't have been happier. A picnic suits me just fine on a sunny Saturday afternoon and the cricket suited them.

Sunday was spent in glorious sunshine at a cricket match for the boys under 12s. Another picnic, another leisurely day. A lovely drive through countryside there and back.

Today, was a day of solid work. It's a bank holiday here in the UK and the sun was out. Never a good idea to do anything that might be popular on a sunny bank holiday, like drive to the coast or something daring like that. So we drew up a list of house maintenance for our own home and steadily worked through it from 8 in the morning until early evening. The lawn got mowed (after a trip to the garage for petrol), a visit was made to the local tip, a gutter got fixed, paths were cleared, my dog proof picket fence (for my herb patch) finally got installed, stinging nettles were pulled up, logs and railway sleepers were repositioned, a rogue plum tree bough was chopped down, broken old garden lighting was unearthed and ripped up, wheelbarrow upon wheelbarrow of weeds were taken up to the bonfire, a space was cleared for the basketball net (Jake's third favourite sport after cricket and football), tennis balls and sticks were thrown for the dog, M's workshop roof finally got felted... oh and I got tough with our mad bamboo and hacked it right down so we can at least see over it now!

In fact we probably did even more than that little list but in between there were lots of cups of tea and a little standing back and admiring the improvements. We ended the day with a big bonfire, but not before another drive to the neighbouring village with the sludge monster, who was too black to venture in the house let alone the shower! He enjoyed his 'play' in the nice clean river (actually Harvey it was a B.A.T.H hahahaha) and is now all fluffy and white once more.