The end is nigh!

Of all our hard work, well for now at least! The Gite is on the last lap, just a few painting jobs to finish and this week the Terrace will go up and we can get tidied up for Winter.

We couldn't find a bed at a reasonable price so my lovely man took the old bed headboard that we kept and made a frame himself at a fraction of the cost of a new bed!

The kitchen cupboards just need to be painted white and the tops varnished (that's my job!).

The bathroom is just about done, just a couple of items to add to personalise it.

The upstairs of our house will be decorated next year and all that's left to finish is the lounge which needs a new fire and a back boiler for our heating system. I'm not sure when that will happen as I'm just looking forward to a rest in between jobs. I need to start earning some money as the budget is coming to an end, eeek!!!

I was beginning to get excited about Autumn as we had a few cold and stormy days, but as seems to be the habit here, summer popped up again and I'm back to wearing vests and shorts.

That's just as well really because we needed to get the pond and grey water gravel garden sorted and neither my son or I wanted to be doing it in the cold and windy rain! I made so many mistakes and have learned so much from doing this. The biggest thing I learned was to thoroughly prepare and then prepare some more! I watched some youtubes about ponds and realised that we should have put more shelf levels in the dirt! Ooops!

Between the picture above and the one below, I frantically pulled the liner back and did a bit of digging and shifting earth, mostly with my bare hands as I didn't want to puncture the liner!
T came with me to get some bags of special pond gravel (no sharp edges) but it wasn't enough! The pond is looking a lot better now but I'll wait until a few plants are in before sharing the next pictures. To me it still looks bloody awful!!!
I'm excited about how it will look in a few weeks though and as I re-read my Moonheart book by Charles de Lint, some ideas formed about this magical little pool :D

On Rain's blog she asked about harvests. My Squashes are once again my biggest successes. My tomatoes either failed to grow or once again developed blight! The peas and beans have been amazing and I have a few tiny aubergines, but that's it!!!

 I'm so looking forward to having a bit of space and time soon to focus on my art work and to be able to get back to blogging. I'm feeling more calm now that I can see the results of all our hard work :D