Storm Arwen

End of November, and I managed to coincide a visit to my parents with the first named storm of the season!

Travelled over the day before the storm hit; opportunity to catch-up with family, take in the local Christmas lights, and help out with some bits and pieces.  

Had to delay my plans to return by a day though, in light of the weather, which meant leaving Martin to cope with the fall-out from the storm.

And this was a bad one - Storm Arwen hit Wales on the Friday, and by Saturday morning it had pretty much wrecked the smaller of our two greenhouses, with Martin spending a good couple of hours clearing up broken glass.

So we now have a glassless frame - the plants that survived the night having been relocated to the larger greenhouse (which itself suffered some minor damage.)

Will have to see if replacing the glass is worth the investment or if there is something else we can do to best make use of what's left.

Phil the Pheasant

We've had a new visitor to the garden recently, he's rather fond of peanuts, can be a bit noisy, but is a very fine fellow:

He also visits our neighbours and they christened him Phil . . .

He's providing Martin with some opportunities to get the camera out anyway, and me too I suppose, although I was more interested in Martin's approach to capturing the perfect shot here! 

Woodshed Developments

For a while now we've been thinking about the possibilities of adding a garden room / office to provide a bit more space for home-working among other things.

Martin is more sceptical about it all, but did raise the possibility of doing something with the woodshed at the bottom of the garden (pictured here). 

Somewhat to his dismay I ran with the idea - with builders due onsite in December to start work (after some months of trying to get people to quote, and then keep in contact afterwards!).  All of which meant that something had to be done with the firewood, random collection of other wood, and gardening supplies stored in there currently.

So today we got started on clearing out the contents - Martin did most of the heavy lifting bless him, while I did some cleaning out after.  Still have the shelving and some other storage to move out, but it is now a much clearer space and surprisingly large once all the clutter has gone.

Unfortunately the same can't be said for Martin's recently tidied out garage - which has become the interim repository for stuff, as well as storing the flooring, log burner, and futon frame eventually destined for the re-developed woodshed.

Hoping it all works out as planned - at the very least it has made us look at what had become a real dumping ground for all kinds of things - but it has already been christened my 'folly', so it will become a she-shed, housing all my spare time projects / home office once up and running.

Watch this space for further updates.

Remember, remember . . .

 And as it is the 5th November, what better day for a bonfire?

Got rid of the accumulated garden debris anyway!