Monday 29 June 2009

Salad and Corn

You may remember a long time ago that I started off on the challenge of growing some fruits and vegetables. As an attempt to link the gap between the current house and the new one. And as I didn't want to get into too much over the top landscaping in a house we were about to leave I went for growing things in pots. Well it has all been a great success!!

You may well remember the 'Lettuce and the Ants' post. Well, after rescuing the lettuce seedlings from the ants and bringing them inside you can see that they have really appreciated it! We now have a great supply of mixed salad leaves, and the pot actually makes quite an interesting display for my coffee table!!

There isn't enough for making a whole salad, I'll admit that but they leaves are great for sandwiches and have already received compliments. It is also very handy having them inside as no hiking down the garden to get a leaf or two!

The other challenge I set myself was to grow Sweetcorn plants in a pot... well.....


They seem to be doing very, very well. I have shocked myself at how easy it has been so far and how well the plants are doing! This is even after a shakey start, like the lettuce. The lettuce may have had ants eating it but the poor sweetcorn, I discovered, that the cat was eating the poor sweetcorn! But they seem to recover and are now doing great. Really hoping that they will produce some corn later in the year.

Thursday 25 June 2009

Apologies All Around

I apologise, I apologise! I have been rubbish at the posting, I admit it! But It has been so hectic since my last post and I have SO much that I can tell you about on all topics here! I will start with the house situation. We have seen two other properties since my last post. The house we thought we had done well in finding turned out to have issues. Not with the land itself but the more you delved into what you were getting, and more importantly what you weren't getting, it began to look like something that we didn't want to get into. The first house since then was a complete derelict property and although was the most amazing situation would have taken a lot of work. We were however seriously considering it and it was as we were trying to work out how to manage it that we were sent the particulars on a house that to be honest we went to out of a feeling of 'I suppose we should look, it'll do as a back up if this 'fixer-upper' falls through'... we were blown away..
One reason I have been keeping quiet is not to jinx it! But our offer has now been formally accepted and it is a case of sorting out the paperwork now. It is a farm house with a whole host of outbuildings, with some planning already in place. It also has a stonking 14 acres of land! This is more than anywhere else we have looked at and has actually turned out cheaper than many of the other places before it!! The house is very old, dating back to at least the 1800's. It is a 3 bedroom house, two public rooms (see how all clued up I am on house speak!!) and bathroom. The kitchen needs work but that is great as that was a big factor in our house list, I wanted something that I could basically create my own kitchen how I wanted it!
We are currently awaiting the survey results but are not expecting anything major. We are possibly going to work on extending into the barn straight away so that'll be the big project!! This could 'in theory' convert the house to 6 bedrooms, more than we need so I expect we will go for something more interesting. There will be more on the development as we go through it and I can explain in more detail what we are up to and why!!!
I will give more details as I get them and will also post on some of the other topics... wait till you see the corn....!!