Reflections on turning 30

I turned 30 a couple of days ago and i've spent the last few days pondering which things i've achieved that I put on my list just over a year ago. It's interesting to see how much my priorites have changed within the year, for example, over the past 365 days there hasn't even been a moment where I felt any desire to experiment with affirmations or learn to play the didgeridoo. Yet I have spent vast amounts of time growing my own veggies and focussing on turning my house into a home.

As a comparison I've come up with a list of 30 things I did before turning 30:
1. Became a solo home-owner
2. Grew my own veggies
3. Decorated the hallway
4. Decluttered lots of junk from my home (though this is still ongoing)
5. Planted a plum tree
6. Planted an apple tree
7. Created a driveway
8. Built a fence around the back garden (well, I paid someone to do it)
9. Bought some chickens
10. Adopted some fish
11. Bought new blinds for the bathroom
12. Learnt how to make rhubarb crumble
13. Became financially independent
14. Overpaid on the mortgage
15. Bought 2 new cars!
16. Ate healthly, home-cooked meals
17. Read more books
18. Got to know my neighbours
19. Started a new relationship
20. Spent more time with my family and friends
21. Made a 5 year plan (though i'm aware that this may change)
22. Painted my front door in fabulous blue
23. Took on the overgrown ten-foot and won!
24. Saw Tim Minchin live
25. Learnt that I actually enjoy DIY
26. Brought out my table's inner funkiness
27. Realised that i'm stronger than I ever thought I was
28. Started to learn how to pickle and preserve my garden produce
29. Blogged infrequently
30. Discovered and keep discovering different facets of myself

With all things taken into consideration, I think it's been a rather immense year...I wonder what this year will bring?

Potatoes in the compost heap!

Look what I found growing in my compost heap:


I suspected there might be something going on when I saw the stems emerging from the top of the bin but I didn't expect to unearth such fine, perfectly edible specimens when I turned the heap.

It's been almost a year since I took over the role of head (well only) gardener and I have learnt so much along the way, for example, don't be too eager to start off your seedlings or they will, as I have found, die and you'll be back where you started. Also, that fleece isn't the best way of protecting cabbages when you live on the windy coast. There's still so much to learn too, especially as i'm a bit of a magpie when it comes to gardening and I like to try out everything at once instead of learning a little bit at a time. It's exciting though and I felt so proud when my Nanna, a seasoned gardener, commented that my veg patch was doing well.

This year, I've fallen in love with the Real Seeds website and have purchased most of my seeds from them, in fact i've bought so many that I think I may even be able to set up my own shop! But I like the fact that they encourage you to save your own seed from what you grow and use it in future years, so in theory you only need to purchase the seeds once. They also have lots of unusual varieties such as the exploding cucumber, which i've chosen to stay well away from!

The magpie in me is also being enticed by the moreveg website, although, so far i've managed to refrain from ordering anything from them as I keep telling myself I have enough seeds and I don't need any more. I do think their monthly sowing offers are great though and if I found I had enough space i'd probably opt for one. I'm also tempted by the funky veg gift set with it's blue cabbages and purple carrots!

So yes, a year on and I think i'm even more enthused about growing my own veggies than I was when I started. Long may it continue!

I never thought I could get so excited about pulling up radish - but they are just so much bigger than what you find in the shops!

I have chickens...well hens!

As part of my focus on turning my house into a home i've taken the next step towards self-sufficiency and have bought some chickens. They arrived just over 3 weeks ago and are some of the most fabulous and quirky little creatures i've ever come across - i've lost count of how many times i've had my toes pecked, they just don't seem to realise that they're not edible! I bought the complete starter package from Chicubes and opted for the extra large run as I knew I wouldn't be able to let the chooks free range while I was at work. It came with everything I needed to get up and running, right down to the hens, which were three rescued ex-barn hens. So far my chooks seem very happy and I seem to average about 2 eggs per day from them, though I suspect that one isn't laying yet. It doesn't matter though, so far they've provided me with hours of amusement simply by their quirkiness, and it warms my heart to think that i've given them a better future than they would have had, the eggs are just a tasty bonus.

Anais and Violet on their first day of freedom - Lilly is still hiding inside!

Having a nosey around the garden (once again Lilly is being camera shy).

Lilly comes to say hello.

Busy, busy, busy

I've been meaning to post for a long time but there always seems to be something else demanding my attention. My life has been very much centred around my home for the past year, I suppose that since i've had to take on sole responsibility for the house i've been much more proactive in getting things done as I know that unless I do it no-one else will.

Reflecting on the things i've done I guess i've come quite a long way. Since taking over the house i've had the kerb dropped so that now I have a driveway, decorated the hallway, arranged for some new blinds to be fitted, had the leaky kitchen roof repaired, stripped down and painted the front door, renovated the living room table, had a fence built around the back garden, planted a plum tree as well as ventured into the realm of growing my own veg. Every weekend has brought new household bits and bobs that needed to be done.

However, recently i've felt a bit out of touch with myself and had a few low days and i've come to the conclusion that i've gone into 'house overload' and have been neglcting the things that I love. I need to find time for 'me' and give myself some space to regroup. I'd love to go on holiday for a few days but I can't afford it at the moment so i'm going to have to create some 'me' time whilst remaining at home. Thankfully, I have the six weeks holiday ahead of me (yep i'm a teacher) so that should give me a kickstart, but I know it will be all too easy to fill my days with housey things so i'm going to set myself a target of giving myself an hours 'me' time a day, minimum, and see where that takes me.

Wish me luck - I think I might need it!

30 things - Buy a plum tree for my garden

In this post here I listed 30 things I wanted to do before I was 30. I'm ashamed to say that I haven't been keeping an eye on the list but when I looked over it the other day I found that i've been doing lots of things on there already. One of the things on the list was to buy a plum tree for my garden, it's something that i've always wanted but when I was with my partner our plans were for this house to be more of a stop gap while we got some money together, paid off our mortgage asap and moved on to our dream home, so a plum tree was going to have to wait until we moved.

Looking back now, I realise that we really put our lives on hold and were forever living for the future. Strangely enough, since our separation, my views have completely changed and while a mortgage free future would be amazing i've realised that you still have to live for the present moment because, as cliched as it sounds, you never know what the future is going to bring. The fear of losing the house when we separated jolted me into realising how it had become a home for me, not just a stop gap. Needless to say, the first thing I did when I found out that I was able to keep the house was order a plum tree and bizarrely enough it arrived on the day I finally completed on the house.

Planting it was backbreaking work. The soil around here is a heavy, clay type the forms a rock hard crust if there hasn't been enough rain. I hadn't thought ahead to clearing the area of weeds and brambles so that had to be done before I could even think about digging a hole large enough to accommodate it's roots.

I suppose really this year has been a bit of a learning curve for me, previously the garden was largely my partners domain and i'd do the odd spot of weeding and pick a few strawberries or tomatoes but that was it, but to dig out a load of brambles, prepare the soil and plant a tree - that was completely unheard of! Anyway, I was quite impressed with the results, even if the plum tree (aka Twiggy) did look a bit wonky, i've even started to consider myself a bit of a gardener!

The plum tree look much happier now, it's started to sprout some leaves and hasn't blown away yet in the strong gales we've been having so I think I must have done an okay job.

Have a great Sunday everyone!

Table antics

I've been busy renovating my living room table and trying to give it a new lease of life. I started with this:

Which turned into this:

Which after painting with duck egg blue paint looked like this:

Then I added some funky sweet design paper to the legs and table top to create this:


Yummy!
Have a good Sunday!

Whoops!

Well I haven't been on here for ages, life and all it's busyness took over for a while...a very long while in fact. There were times when I thought about this blog and the posts i'd like to make but there has just been so much to do that by the end of the day i've been too exhausted and any attempts at 'posts' would have been nothing more than incoherent drivel! Over the past 8 months i've learnt that sometimes you've just got to stop, in fact I think that one little piece of advice has kept me sane. There really has been so much to do, i'm not quite sure how I managed fit it all in! I'm now officially a single homeowner after buying my ex out of his share of the house. Despite not being married there was still so much to do and the process of transferring the mortgage took a whopping 6 months to complete - the paperwork seemed to be lost at least 4 times which didn't make things any easier. Then the changing of names on bills seemed to go on forever and there were joint accounts to close too, combine this with various car problems and a nasty house leak, not to mention the actual process of coming to terms with the breakup and things seem to have been pretty much relentless.

However, it hasn't all been doom and gloom. In fact i've been quite productive over the last few months and i'm quite impressed with my efforts. I've redecorated the hallway, complete with a new carpet, and i've even made my own lampshades too! I've also had the kerb at the front of the house dropped so that I now have a driveway, plus i've bought a new car to go on it (yay!). I've managed to tame the garden, which sadly had been left to it's own devices since August, but which is now fully under control complete with a freshly dug over veg patch, a wildflower bed and plenty of seedlings sprouting in the greenhouse - i'm just keeping my fingers crossed that they'll keep growing. I've also kept myself well fed with plenty of home cooked meals, though I must admit that batch cooking has been a real saviour.

I'll update more soon, hopefully with some garden pics...but in the meantime here's what the wildflower patch looked like before...



and after my conifer clearing session...



I was quite proud of my efforts and I can't wait until the wildflowers start to grow!