Friday, 11 April 2025

A Week of Sunshine ☀️

Hi there everyone 😀

We are still in our stretch of being at home … on new grass sitting duty … and whilst we’ve not really been anywhere or done anything exciting over the last week, we do seem to have been really busy. 

We have been blessed with good weather and lots of sunshine and we have tried to make the most of it while we can …

☀️ Saturday … there was sunshine, plenty of gardening and the repotting of an agapanthus …

☀️ Sunday … more sunshine, more gardening and the grass is starting to come on well …

☀️ Monday … supermarket shopping, batch cooking and just loving the new filing system …

☀️ Tuesday … more sunshine, more gardening and a half price Easter leg of lamb in the slow cooker …

☀️ Wednesday … a busy foodbank shift and these bringing a smile to welcome me home …

☀️ Thursday … yet even more sunshine, but a break from gardening, and chance to just sit outside and chill out, looking at what we’ve planted, messing with Chat GPT, replacing the workings in the solar lights and Easter fudge …

☀️ Friday … should be a housework day but making the most of the sunshine with a bit more gardening and giving the grass its first cut since seeding …

So although we would say we’ve not done much we have actually been pretty productive. We are now on countdown to our next trip over to North Wales. We just can’t wait, though I think we will have missed the best of the weather. 

Fingers crossed the lawn doesn’t miss being pampered too much and manages to keep living its best life whilst we are away 🤞🤞🤞

☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️

Saturday, 5 April 2025

Lodge Life :: March 2025

Hi there everyone 😀

It was so good to get back over to our lodge in North Wales. It had actually only been about six weeks since we were there in January … but it had been a long, wet and cold six weeks.

Our arrival for our first visit of the season is always with a bit of trepidation. So far we have had no real problems but this last year there have been some pretty extreme storms and we never really know quite what to expect.

We had a good journey over and all seemed well. We got unpacked, had a nice easy batch cooked tea and settled down for a Sunday night in front of the TV … only to find … no TV signal 🙈

This has never happened before and no amount of unplugging and replugging or resetting of the dish helped. It seemed no one else had any problems … just us. Eventually we gave it up as a bad job and opted for reading for Martin and Dancing on Ice on the phone for me.

Monday morning and we enlisted help and, after lots more plugging and unplugging and one of the site staff crawling under the lodge to see if there was any problems with cabling, we got it sorted. To this day we don’t know what the problem was … probably just us not knowing what we were doing 🙈

So … TV sorted and it was time to head off to the new local Aldi for a bit of a shop to keep us fed. Other than that we didn’t do much else on Monday.

Tuesday ended up being a bit of a write off too as Martin had been up most of the night with some kind of nasty bug so we had a very quiet day. I spent most of it preparing to be interviewed in my capacity as a school governor by Ofsted the following morning

Wednesday and the sun was shining and Martin was feeling nearly human again so, after the Ofsted interview, which actually wasn’t too bad, we decided to try and have a bit of a short walk. We headed just up the coast to Trefor, one of our favourite spots for a little bit of a wander … 
From there we headed to Nant Gwrtheyrn for a cuppa and another short wander … before calling it a day …
Thursday was another lovely day and we had an afternoon tea booked at Caffi Largo in Pwllheli … but first we headed into Criccieth to see all the usual sights …
On the way from Criccieth to Pwllheli we made an impromptu stop at Abererch Sands. It’s somewhere I went on a family camping holiday when I was younger and have never been back since.

I could remember the camping field and the tiny railway station …
We didn’t stop long … just had a look at the beach, which was lovely. Definitely somewhere we will come back to …
Finally it was time for our afternoon tea and to say it was epic would be an understatement. There was loads of food and it was all very tasty …
The top layer was just a bit too much for our tummies …
… but we didn’t let it go to waste …
Friday was not quite so bright but we fancied another little walk. This time we parked part way along the beach front at Dinas Dinlle and had a breezy walk …
We were heading for the airport cafe and we were chuffed to bits to finally get to see a bit of airport activity …
Saturday was our last full day and it was another bright sunshiny day. We decided to head for Aber Falls, with the view of just really sussing out the parking arrangements in readiness for a future visit.

In the end it took a while to get to the car park, which is down a single track road, and after lots of reversing, and there being just one available space, we decided to park up and have a bit of a walk.

It was a bit further than we would normally walk and we weren’t sure we would make it to the waterfall but with plenty of pitstops along the way we were really pleased to make it all the way … and it was very much worth it …
On Sunday we were heading for home and we decided to stop off in Llangollen on the way. I really wanted to have a wander by the river and it was such a lovely day it seemed like the ideal opportunity  

It was pretty busy but we managed to park up ok and got to have our wander, which was lovely …
This time we also managed to have a closer look at the steam railway station on the other side of the river …
There was just one more thing I wanted to see in Llangollen before continuing with our journey home … the crocuses at Plas Newydd … so we had a very quick stop off there too …
It is a lovely spot. We were just sorry that we were a week too early in the season for the cafe to be open as we’d both been looking forward to an ice cream 🙈

It was finally time to make our way home … where a good stretch of gardening was on the cards 😀

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Wednesday, 26 March 2025

The Garden in March

Hi there everyone 😀

This year we seem to be on a bit of a mission in the garden. Last year we were away so much that it got a bit neglected.

That, coupled with the fact that a lot of the planting has been in for a long time and had gradually got less and less impressive, had left everything looking a little sad.

Whilst the weather in February wasn’t brilliant we did have a couple of sessions out back and managed to clear a good portion of the autumn leaf fall and prepare the grass for seeding … it’s certainly looking better than it did this time last year …
We also managed to rejuvenate the strawberry bed …
… and repot the blueberry …
We had a week at the lodge at the beginning of March but now need to be at home until Easter time so that we are here for grass watering to give the seed its best chance. 

We’ve also made a start on some jet washing and cleared the pergola area and finished clearing the leaves and I finally decided to risk taking the flower heads off the hydrangea …
At the weekend it felt like time for a bit of a treat so we headed off to The Garden Warehouse, where we managed to find pretty much everything we were looking for, and came home with a boot laden with goodies …
We were then blessed with a lovely sunny day so finally got to planting the new raised bed that we built last year …
We’ve planted a clematis, delphiniums, peonies, scabious, foxgloves and a couple of ground covering plants and I’m hoping for a real summery display of pinks and purples …
For now, we have had to try and ‘fox/cat-proof’ the bed to protect it from digging whilst everything establishes. I know it looks a bit strange but I just couldn’t face coming down to find dug up delphiniums to be replaced with cat or fox mess.

It’s definitely a work in progress but it is slowly starting to come together.

And following just that little bit of sunshine we’ve had things are starting to come back to life …
The magnolia is looking pretty spectacular …
… but as you can see … this does come at a price …
Right now … Martin is getting ready to jet wash our little bit of front garden so I’d best dash to help move the pots out of the way. Bye for now 😀

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