October Treasures in and around the Smallholding

Autumn Gratitudes

The Summer disappeared in a flash of festival fun and weekends of renovations. 

Autumn seems to be rewarding us with an extended Summer, a blessing with the plans we have for the gardens here.

The eldest son has flown the nest for new adventures and is studying in Brighton for 3 years and each of us now have the sanctuary of our own spaces to sleep.  The basement (as posted yesterday) is now bedroom 4 for Oscar's visits.  

There are plans for more space to grow food and flowers to attract wildlife.  The dead wood and trees need pruning.

I am making lists of seeds to buy, need to move the greenhouse and Kirk is looking at small tractors on eBay.  We have a digger to borrow and tree stumps to uproot. 

But this week feels like a settling is occurring, the cottage itself is almost done. The dust and mess is reducing. A clearing has happened. Space. Sanctuary. 

Basement renovation

Did we say we moved from a 4 bed bungalow to a 2 bed cottage? Well we now have transformed it into a 4 bed family home.

We would not have been able to do this in such a short time without the help of many friends.  

We would like to say a huge thank you to Paul and Alison Houston, Neil, Lesley and Elliott Hanney, Jon Ryall, Andy Sturgess and Eric Jolley who helped us turn this house into a home.

So the basement went from this...

A dumping room full of stuff the last owner left behind.

To this...

We still have pictures and curtains to hang but it is cosy.