Sunday 20 April 2014

Animal room

As promised this blog would also be about the animals that I keep as pets. When we moved into the bungalow it had a single garage which I decided to convert into an animal room come office where by I could escape from the family and keep the animals secure without them actually being in the house. We split the garage into thirds with the front half being used as a storage shed for bikes etc and the back two 3rds is my office.


This is the crested gecko tanks - Scully, Salem and Bob live here
On top of them is my Pacman frog Dexter on the left & my Anery Corn snake Merlin on the right


Top left:  normal leopard gecko Osiris, Top right: Pastel Royal Arwen
Bottom Left: Empty (at the moment), Right: Super snow leopard gecko Angel



The two large vivs house our Bearded Dragons with Blaze on the top and Hermione and Ron in the bottom


Heres my 3 Rats, Smokey, Bandit and dusty



The wild bird food and nest box camera monitor along with my telescope.




My desk with all my OU text books and other paraphernalia.

My next blog post about my pets will have some close ups of the menagerie so you can get a sense of what I actually have. 


Monday 14 April 2014

Greenhouse and potatoes

Another lovely day today so decided to do a bit more on the veg patch. So me and my daughter planted the main crop potatoes, which we decided to go with Maris piper this time and Autumn king carrots.


And as promised the greenhouse tour.

Firstly my seedling stand. Starting at the top down. We have
  • Sweet peas
  • Sweetcorn and pumpkins
  • French beans and foxgloves
  • Savoy cabbages and lettuces 
  • The two bottom shelves are marigolds ready for companion planting with my tomatoes.






Next we have the staging on the right hand side. Once again starting on the top
  • Runner beans
  • Leeks and spring onions and tomatoes normal and cherry












Sunday 13 April 2014

All dug over!

As I finish half day on a Friday, we decided to go and do a bit of shopping at the new The Range store that's opened in Gloucester. It was extremely busy but I did manage to get the chicken wire I wanted so that I could fence off the veg patch from the dog. 


So once it was fenced off I dug the patch over and placed a raised bed on there for carrots and potatoes.
I dug in some well rotted manure which I got from a friends horse, so now its all ready for planting when the seedlings are ready/ the threat of frosts have passed. ( I will do a post of what I have grown soon and give you a tour of my greenhouse)


As you  can see the raised bed has orange fencing on it so that the local cats don't use it as a litter box! I am waiting for a crop cage to arrive which will look a little better. Down on the right hand side of the photo you can see the 'spring garden' ( hey if Monty can have one so can I lol) This will stay as the lower part of my veg patch and is full of fritillaries, primroses and what I think is bluebells.  

I also had my ten hawthorn bushes arrive which I purchased on ebay. I wanted a wildlife friendly hedge down the bottom of the garden so that a) it gave us a bit more privacy and b) stopped the dog jumping the low fence. I They came all wrapped in paper and cellophane, so I unwrapped them and soaked the roots for a few hours before planting them. Not a very good photo but you get the idea.


And finally for my birthday at the end of March I was bought a nest box camera, we put it up on the side of my office but thought that it was too late for any takers this year. However, within 5 mins it was being checked out by a pair of blue tits, but they then seemed to disappear for a few weeks until this weekend when I turned the tv on to find that they had started to build a nest.







Saturday 5 April 2014

Living the good life!

I've not written for a while as the last 18 months have been pretty hectic. We have finally moved house into our own bungalow, and have discovered we are having another baby who is due any day now and we have both turned 30!
My priorities have obviously had to change for the time being due to my situation and this blog will now feature posts mainly about my garden and attempts to live as much of a 'good life' as possible,
To start off with I suppose I better show you the garden as it was when we purchased the bungalow.
The lady who had it was elderly and had managed the garden so it needed as little maintenance as poss.
This included a lot of boulders, shrubs, trees and lots and lots of bark chippings. Now although it looked nice it wasn't what we wanted but we could see the potential and began making plans for chickens, a veg patch, a wildlife area and a lawn for the kids and pets to enjoy.


This is looking from back garage door and as you can see there is a lot of shrubs overgrowing the path, two huge buddleia bushes, loads of primroses and bark. This are is where we plan on having our veg patch.


This is the same area from the other direction where you can see a small tree in the foreground which was some form of apple tree. The large tree in the background is our boundary and this is where we plan on having a wildlife area with pond.


This is looking down the right hand side of our garden with yet me shrubs and trees. The left hand side of this pic will eventually be where the lawn starts. Towards the back fence is where the greenhouse, compost bins and chicken coop will be.


This is looking up from the bottom of the garden you can see from the previous pic. The right hand side of this pic is where the lawn will extend down to.


A closer view of the corner where the greenhouse, chickens and compost bins will be.



And finally the view from our back door. The dirt on the left hand side is where the lawn will start. 

As you can see we have our work cut out for us and we have made a start. Having cleared the area in the above photo we have now laid the seed for the new lawn. 


You can also see we have put the greenhouse up and the compost bins down in the corner.