It's been a while since I've blogged but life has continued a pace, days have merged into weeks into months.It really doesn't seem like six months since we spent our first Christmas in our Irish house.
Hubby has been working hard both on the house and also on our house and garden in UK, whilst I have been working two jobs meaning usually only having one day off every ten days.
It's been exhausting and family and friend catch up time has unfortunately gone by the wayside.
We spent the full month of April in Ireland and the weather was really kind to us again, meaning that we made great progress on painting the outside of the house.
We have just had another week there with equally favourable weather and we've finally finished the outside.
When you compare it to what it looked like when we first voted the place, the difference it makes is so heartening and hopefully it looks a lot more friendly and welcoming than it did.
As well as trying to get some decorating done we have also welcomed quite a few guests already this year.
It's great to be able to entertain at last but it does mean that decorating has taken a bit of a back seat, the house is in the sort of state now that everything has been painted and needs its top coat and final touches. To the unknowing guest it looks ok and I suppose it sort of means we don't feel the urge to paint so strongly! To be honest its nice to sit and enjoy it rather than be working all the time.
With such good weather our attentions have also turned to the outside space. The site our house stands on is apparently 1.3 acres. Essentially it was a field with house built on it and as such it still looks like that. Over the winter everything had obviously died off but when we came back this last time, with the recent run of hot weather, it came as no surprise that everything had grown slightly.
It can be a bit daunting but we have enlisted the help of a local garden designer. He runs a local garden centre and we first came across him when we were listening to the local radio station on a Saturday morning. He does an hour long gardening Q&A show and as his garden centre was fairly local we decided to pay a visit. We found out he offered a garden design service and we decided it would be a good idea. Hubby and I like a nice garden but we are no experts. We have a fairly small garden in the UK which doesn't take too much work to maintain and have over the years developed some raised vegetable beds.
With such a large area of land we knew we needed some help and really felt that we would end up saving ourselves money too. Trees, plants and other things for gardens can be so expensive and we could easily have bought loads of things and found that they didn't grow properly resulting in a large waste of money.
So Padraic from the garden centre has visited and we have discussed our ideas with him. He seemed very positive and we await his first set of plans. Once we have agreed on a design we like he will put together a 3 years plan for us to follow in order to achieve it.
So hopefully we wont be looking at this 'field' for too much longer.
Maisie has enjoyed exploring the garden. She runs off and hides and waits for you throw her ball, sometimes its a bit hard to see her properly.....
