Well, where has that pesky first week gone? Feel like I’m hurtling into a time vortex, it has just flown.

We’ve had super hot glorious weather all week, with the exception of one torrentially rainy day yesterday. The rest of the time it’s been between 26 and 30 degrees or so. The sun rises directly in front of the house, so given until the fencing is complete we can’t open the French doors, we quickly invested in a tower fan which is doing the job nicely. We’ll be glad of the warmth of the morning winter sun through the glass in a few weeks as our heating will be just the wood burner when it gets chilly.

Dog Alcatraz will hopefully be finished later today, meaning we can let a little more air in, and we can sit outside without having to hold on to 3 leads. Then we will pretty everything up with gravel and pots and it should be a nice place to be. Regretting not buying the patio furniture cover now but hey ho!

We’ve been gifted loads of lovely produce over the last few days, tomatoes, sloes, carrots, chillies, plums. It’s been fab pottering in the kitchen with them and making stuff. Roast tomato tart, sloe and vanilla gin, Slivovitz, and spiced plum compote done. Plus a really lovely potato and aubergine Rendang for tea last night, with leftovers tonight. Awesome!

This means half the house smells divine, the other half on occasion is suffering from grumpy fosse. Think the smell of 40 school kids with egg and cress sarnies on a hot coach to the Science Museum. That. I have lit many oil burners and thrown a load of Eparcyl down there to try to appease the mighty drain gods. It doesn’t take well to not being used for a few months, so takes a while for all the bacteria to wake back up, the Eparcyl is like a starter that helps it do its thing. I think it’s getting progressively better but certainly not there yet.

The forecast is in the 19-23 degrees region for the next week, still sunny, so I think it’s jungle taming time. Craig has discovered a couple of ant hills in there during his strimming yesterday, which we’ll need to deal with. If we can clear the ground under the chestnut and walnut trees then I’ll be able to gather the windfalls daily. Both trees are too big to pick directly from the branches.

Right, better go and fettle, TTFN xxx