Twickenham - Rugby Sevens

Andy is very well connected - and so we get invitations to all sorts of fabulous events, mostly sporting it has to be said! A number of the contractors and subcontractors that Andy works with have corporate boxes in football and rugby grounds around the country - so, at quite short notice back in May, we headed south for the rugby sevens at Twickenham. 

This is a fab family oriented event that takes place over a whole weekend and your ticket gets you entrance for the whole day and you can watch as many games as you can stomach!  The first game starts at about ten o'clock in the morning and the day finishes at about teatime at five or six.   Each team fields seven players and each half is for seven minutes.  It's incredibly fast paced with a huge number of tries.   And because Twickenham isn't that far out of London by train or tube, the crowd is made up of people of all the nations that play - so every team has its supporters.  

What makes me laugh about this event is the opportunity for fun and frolics - every time anyone scores a try, no matter whether it's your own home nation or not, everyone gets up and dances - it's hilarious!  There is a LOT of dancing!  Quite a bit of drinking, and an awful lot of fancy dress.  Brilliant day.

Other People's Gardens - August 2017

I get quite attached to the gardens that I've been working in, but realised that I needed to record some of the work I've done to see how productive I can be.  To that end, I've been half remembering to take before and after photos!

This is the before and after of a drive I've been weeding, and also a picture of my lovely helper!

I don't work in this next garden any more - I've loved working there all summer but the owners feel confident enough now to take out things they don't like and move things about to fill gaps.  The difficulty when moving to a new house and garden, especially when you don't really know what you're doing, is realising that you can get rid of things - you don't have to keep everything!  I loved tidying things up, clearing enough weeds and overgrown plants to be able to see daylight between everything and then advising my clients on how they can begin doing things for themselves.  The best thing about this garden is seeing their confidence grow - my work is done!

Now this next garden has had an amazing transformation!  The road this house sits on is a cut through to Norwich city centre and there has been an awful lot of rubbish dumped which is really sad.  Hopefully, now that it's been tidied up, it might deter people from chucking their litter over the fence.

My next job is to try and do the same with the back garden!

Seeds and Stuff - August 2017

I've been working so hard in other people's gardens that I haven't done too much in my own, and certainly haven't taken too many photos!

Here are a small selection of August's horticultural goings on!

Odds and Sods - August 2017

Looking back at these photos for this post, August was clearly a very random month!   I had lots of outings which will get their own individual posts, but other than that, it just seems to be about Finn, jollies and dodgy headgear!

I've discovered a new plant nursery - Urban Jungle west of Norwich - and have been there twice now.  This place is purely about plants - there's no souvenirs, no greetings cards, candles, or fripperies - it's just about the greenery here!  And the plants are very reasonably priced - which we assume is down to the fact there are no overheads.  They have a lovely cafe there too - Cafe Jungle - which is totally gluten free.  I love it there and am expecting to spend quite a lot of time there going forward.  (In fact, they are looking for people to work in the nursery and I'm so tempted to apply!)

I've been given a new magazine - Modern Gardens - which is fab and is full of all sorts of labour and cost saving tricks for the garden, including quite a lot of crafty ideas.  I'm not at liberty to openly declare what I'm going to be making because I think there'll be some Christmas gifts in the offing, but I have bought paints, stamps and have "borrowed" some modelling clay in the meantime.  Watch this space!

For my birthday I received a lot of gardening kit - probably to be expected - including some solar lights - Andy has said we can have no more as there will soon be 'planes landing in the garden - spoilsport!  I love this colour changing globe - it's fab!

We've actually been spending a lot of time in the garden lately and Andy and Finn have been having lots of love-ins on the hammock!  Sadly no photographic evidence of them both on there, but it'll happen!

I have been after something to keep my hair out of my eyes while gardening and have found a horticulturally- inspired buff/ bandanna/ call it what you will.   I know it looks ridiculous but it does the trick and I love the watering can/ wheelbarrow fabric.

And, as usual, it's all about Finn ...