Lockdown week 18 - furlough Margo 🍽️

Days 122-128 (23rd-29th July)

Welcome to the latest instalment of my furloughed life...I'm starting to feel a bit like Margo from The Good Life, except I do housework. This week has involved mask wearing, a fridge freezer delivery, a river dip, plus bats, cats AND rats.

I didn't make this collage, I wish I did (found it on pinterest).

Last week I mentioned that I had cabbage whites munching on my nasturtiums, well here they are, first as eggs and now as little caterpillars (absolutely ravaging those poor plants, grown from seed I might add). Excited to see some metamorphosis action though.

I feel like I've got to know our new local area a bit more this week as I had to walk into town a couple of times (hello post office and ALL the admin that occurs when you get married and change your name). Some of the things I discovered on one rainy walk into town were some big, juicy blackberries, some beautiful hydrangeas, and one meowy black cat which was desperate for my affections.

Hydrangea season is the best season.

Ed and I are slowly getting back into our evening walk routine, even better when the sky is this pretty. Last time we saw 8 (or was it 9?) cats around, we also saw some bats as it got dark and they flew so close and you could see their transparent wings against the streetlight glow.

The sky from our garden.

This one literally ran over to us to say hello.

Spot the 🌛.

On Friday I was cleaning the house and I had an accident involving the hoover which left an impressively colourful bruise on my knee. I'm quite proud of it.

Our first sourdough loaf as a married couple! A bit over-proved so it's quite dense but makes good toast of course (we are yet to make sourdough we don't like).

On Tuesday we made the most of the sunshine and swam in a river, it was flipping freezing. Ed took this pic of my siblings and I attempting to walk back over the stony riverbed but it was so slippery that we kept falling over and laughing so hard.

We have been doing lots of productive bits and bobs, here is Ed testing our newly installed water butt as the sun begins to set.

In other news, the snails laid another clutch of eggs...so that brings us up to 8 during lockdown. I'm pretty sure they aren't growing anymore, this seems to be full sized (phew). Also, they have been enjoying pepper this week, and lots of lettuce as always.

My current reading material...one of these was a birthday present from Ed, and the other I donated 20p for off the charity bookshelf outside B&Q. Can you guess which is which?

The rocking chair has become my crochet spot. A granny chair for a massive granny square.

We had an exciting trip to a garden centre this week, one of the plants I found was this really sweet, pink syngonium, couldn't resist (as usual). 

The wedding cards will stay up as long as we can get away with. A lovely decor feature.

I wandered around the house yesterday and took some square snaps of nice, little snippets that caught my eye. A home is like a continuous work in progress art installation project that you can just add to or completely change around every day, very fun.

Ed's childhood dinosaur eats unidentified plant rescued from garden centre reduced shelf.

I'd wanted a pair of staffordshire dogs for ages before finding this miniature pair in a charity shop.
The ultimate Victorian status symbol 😆

A cardboard stash growing, forgotten trinkets unpacked.

Our sourdough child.

🍑

My dad made the log bird table, many a sparrow has visited, plus the odd pigeon and blackbird.

Courgettes!

Cucumbers!

Tomatoes!

Sweet, pastel pansies!

We finished season 4 of Doctor Who, i.e. the end of the David Tennant era! Emotions! We're also rewatching The IT Crowd (much laughs) and I introduced Ed to the wild ride that is Thelma & Louise...some quality viewing this week. Our new fridge freezer arrived so now we can consume ice lollies! And we discovered that the disposable masks are much easier to breathe in than fabric ones (sorry environment). ALSO - I went to a church prayer meeting on Monday so social interaction is slowly resuming! 🎉 Finally, a shout out to Ainsley Harriott whose recipes we have been enjoying 🍗 (adulting means getting out of the pesto pasta comfort zone once in a while).

🌟🌟✨🌈🌞🌅🌀🌀🌂🌛💢👫😽🍰🐦🐛🐛🐛🐛🐬🌷☕☕💫🌱🌱🌱🍕🐌🐌🍲

Lockdown weeks 16 + 17 👫 a little catch up

Days 107-121 (8th- 22nd July)

I don't know whether I should still be referring to this particular period of time as ''''lockdown''''...are we still in lockdown? I guess we are in the transition out of it, I don't know, I haven't seen the news for ages. I'm still off work so maybe I will just keep documenting lockdown until I go back, I'm still mostly at home anyway.

I didn't post last week because, well, I got married! 🎉🎉🎉 It was a fun and special day despite not being what we originally planned and the weather deciding to absolutely tip down with rain whilst we tried to have a celebratory picnic on Dartmoor. C'est la vie, it was memorable, that's for sure! We could only have a small number of people which made it quite intimate and sweet, just a few friends and fam focused on the most important bit.

Here are some pics from the last few days before the wedding:

Matching with the cherries on my dad's tree.

I picked nearly 2lbs in the first batch.

Packing up my car with plants to move house.

The snails enjoying some tomato.

Our last evening walk round this area.

We saw a kitten that looked like Tom in his youth.

Here he is.

Took this at 6:16am, then went back to sleep.

Found yet another running route, just a few days before moving away. Listening to Dawn French's Desert Island Discs.

Tom loving his very own blanket.

Me loving Tom.

More morning sunlight, this time at my mum's house.

We haven't got all our wedding photos yet, but here are a few I took in the run up and afterwards. Lots of flowers gathered from my grandparents' garden the day before, which I fashioned into a bouquet last minute, using washi tape to hold it all together and a ribbon from a recently opened present. If we were to have had our wedding back in April as we planned, all these lovely flowers wouldn't have been around so it was nice to be able to make the most of the summer blooms. My bouquet got lots of compliments so perhaps I have discovered my new career as a florist.

Elli gave me this little bride and I kept her in my pocket throughout the day.

I accidentally dressed as a peach.

My mum took this one.

Kate's perfect confetti 😍

I even managed to pop in and see Tom and show him my new ring.

An accurate depiction of how the afternoon went weather-wise.

Post-wedding walk the next day with family.

Life is fun, we're loving settling into our house and making it cosy and colourful and homely. We've even enjoyed building flat-pack furniture! I'm looking forward to sharing more creative interior design things in the future, once all our plants and books and trinkets have found their places. 

I almost forgot ~ it was my birthday last week too...busy, nice times.

Elli got me a doily (Anne of Green Gables fans know) 👰

Documenting our humble beginnings.

Went for a walk and met our first local cat.

First husband and wife trip to IKEA.

Some excellent wedding presents.

Courgette flower.

We have local hedgehogs!

A little snippet of garden featuring geraniums and baby bonsais.

Sweet bee.

We are very happy to have a garden! At the moment I am most excited about my little tomatoes, courgettes and cucumbers which are emerging, also that I have a colony of cabbage white caterpillars munching away on my nasturtiums (gotta help out the butterflies!), AND we have lots of birds around! Buzzing to transform our little patch into a flourishing jungle. 

These final pics are from a spontaneous Dartmoor walk yesterday...very sunny, nice to be out and about but we lost our frisbee.