Workshop chicken

Well, the Roundup is definitely working and the whole garden now has a sickly yellowy tinge to it and the nettles are drooping.  There are some little oasises/oasii/oasises (what is the plural of oasis?) of rampant bright green which I obviously missed with the sprayer, so a job for another evening.  We have to shut the chickens up early before we spray as they do like their greens and they probably shouldn't be having a roundup dressing on them.  Trouble is we can't shut them up too early at the moment as their house is a bit toxic just now. 
Bob has re-creosoted the inside as a measure to prevent red mite infestation (doing that once a year seems to be the only thing that really works).  The chickens don't seem to mind the fumes, but we don't want them feeling woozy and dizzy!  One of the chickens has taken a liking to Bob's workshop and makes a beeline for the back corner of the shelf under the bench and settles herself down nicely.  The other day Bob looked underneath and heard a 'donk' and there was a egg . . . . with a flattened end where it had fallen on the hard surface!

We now have a proper lounge door instead of the chipboard temporary thing we've had since we first moved here.  We had to take the old doorframe out so we could clean it up properly and attach new bits to the bottom where it had rotted.  There was also a separate piece of wood across the top which was more like balsa wood than anything solid which we have replaced.  It was a bit awkward to get all the old stuff out as it had been built in quite well, but with a lot of wiggling we managed it and no major stones or bricks fell out, so that was all good.  The bricks are now re-pointed and patched up so it all looks much more solid.  From this photo, it looks as though we'd better seal the bricks with our turps and linseed mix - it does bring them to life as you can see.

Here's the door frame back in place - just look how bent it is at the bottom!  Luckily, the hinge side is much straighter otherwise we would have had real trouble getting it to open and shut properly.  There is now a new arch-shape piece of oak above the frame, so it all looks tidy.  The holes for the bolts into the walls are all plugged except one at the bottom.  Graham, my brother-in-law, gave me an old sixpence ages ago and the plan was to wedge it into the crooked oak beer bench in the garden.  All very logical to my mind . . . my thinking was along the lines of the old nursery rhyme about the crooked sixpence and the crooked stile.  However, I never got round to wedging the sixpence into the bench which is actually probably quite good because bits keep crumbling off it (it is made of ancient roof timbers), so I would probably have lost the sixpence.  So, Plan B = put the sixpence into one of the bolt holes and it was an exact fit, so that's where it'll stay.  We'll have to see if anyone notices it!

 

And here's the door.  This was an old door of Phil and Ann's which we had stripped.  Originally we were going to use it outside for the lean-to door, but that will be painted and so can be made using new softwood which would be far too bright and white for inside.  It is harder to get the much warmer, mellow colour of old wood and so we thought this one would be better inside.  Luckily, we had to cut some off the bottom which meant we got rid of most of the rotten wood and a dab of wood stabiliser on the remaining bit has it sorted.  It is strange the amount of difference a proper door makes.

 

 

Now that those bricks have been pointed, Bob has been able to put our corner cupboard up.  This is a cupboard Bob made ages before we moved from a lovely, burry piece of Elm from a village called Shelton (our surname, so very apt and the woodyard man saved it specially for us).  This was supposed to be a spice cupboard for the kitchen of our cottage.  Trouble is, at that point we hadn't seen the cottage we were going to live in let alone the kitchen.  As it turns out, the kitchen doesn't actually have any corners where you could mount the cupboard . . . . . in fact, there aren't really any suitable corners in the whole house and, believe me we have wandered all over trying the cupboard in place!  So, this is the only place we could think of.  We will put some triangle shelves underneath, graduating in size, which should settle it into its corner better.  Not sure what we'll keep in the cupboard (it's not an ideal place for the spices really!), but you can't have enough little spaces to hide things away.

 

We had a lovely weekend off last week. F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C weather!  It was like Summer - go on you remember them don't you?  Now, you won't believe this, but I actually dug out a  skirt and some flip-flops and wore them for a whole day, right from getting up to going to bed.  It felt really, really strange - almost like a normal person!  I never thought I'd ever be able to wear flip-flops again!  So, anyway, we're back to Winter again now, socks and a jumper and I think I'll be lighting the woodburner shortly - ho-hum.

 

Look, we have things growing in our raised bed!  We just turned
around and these lettuces had sprung up as if by magic . . .
 . . . well, OK, not really - Phil and Ann had a couple of spares
and gave them to us.