What's been happening?

What news? you ask. There must be lots of news from the last couple of weeks, but is any of it interesting..? It is currently raining - that's news for Devon. The rain is only light, but it's the first real rain we've had since May 29th. We've had the odd drop since then, but never more than 2 minutes worth. We've been watering the garden every day and in some cases twice a day so it's a huge relief to see some water coming from the sky. Not sure how long it will last, but I'm rejoicing at the moment.

Just over a week ago we had a lovely day at the beach. We hoped it would be quiet because we went the day of one of the England matches, but there was a cross-country run on, which meant that it was much noisier than any other day of the year - typical. Still, I went in the sea for the first time in my life (that I can remember). I cheated and wore a wetsuit (which I'd bought very cheap from sainsburys the night before), but it still took a good half an hour of acclimatising to get me up to my shoulders.


We've done various jobs in the house and garden including boxing in lots of pipes in the kitchen (that was entirely Ian, although I did pass him the odd thing while he was stood on a chair if that counts as helping), concreting in two more posts for the deck, moving lots of gravel from the front to the back (again that was Ian), weeding and planting lots of plants in the front garden.

I've spent most of the last two weeks doing odd jobs whilst watching the tennis. I've organised two years worth of photographs, done lots of ironing, cleaning and sorting and have photographed and described several unwanted items to get rid of via freecycle. Most of these have now been picked up, but we do have a few items waiting to go.

Today we had the not so wonderful men from south west water in the garden for most of the afternoon. Unfortunately the mains sewer runs under our garden and it had backed up. They decided to unblock it from the manhole cover next door, but since next door have no uncarpeted access through to the back of their house they came through the building at the side of our house and over the fence with the pipe. They refused to listen to Ians instructions regarding various things, damaged a couple of plants (admittedly only slightly, but they showed no care at all and that bothered me more than the actual damage), squashed all the plants in the small pond and nearly broke a drain pipe, and all that whilst I was trying to watch the Wimbledon semi-finals. Grrrr.

This weekend we're off up to Hereford for a family birthday trip. No doubt there'll be some photos to post when we get back. Have a good weekend everyone.