Fast forward 18 months...

...and somehow it's now the 1st June! I'm not quite sure how that happened.

We moved into the house at the end of April last year, exhausted from working here at Crossways during the week, selling the house back in Hertfordshire and packing it up, and travelling 100 miles between them every weekend. But it's done! However, once we moved in here, we found that we had just about two of everything from living between the two homes!

A year on and the upstairs of the house is just about done. 3 big bedrooms sorted and decorated, new bathroom, landing and stairwell decorated. A hundred spindles painted with four coats of undercoat and two of eggshell, the stairs stripped back to natural wood and carpet fitted. Wow!

And of course, the garden. Moving in last April meant that the garden was beginning to sprout at speed, weeds and all. DH made 6 raised beds for veggy growing to begin, which it did, and also the grass cutting. I'd managed to cut the grass which had reverted to a meadow, using an electric flymo - it was the only and best thing as the grass was so long and weed infested, and once short enough, we raked it and cut it and started digging out the many thousands of weeds. A year on and it's looking pretty amazing. We now have 11 raised beds, so much vegetable growing happening this year.

The 'Unsunken Garden'!

Also, DH started to dig out the sunken garden (sounds amazing doesn't it - how many people have a sunken garden!!!) which in our case was unsunken as it had been filled in! The good soil was used to fill our raised beds and to create two large flower beds - nothing is wasted at Crossways!

The Sunken Garden

A foot down and a formal pond was discovered! A sunken garden and a formal pond, I hear you cry! We were so excited! But then we discovered the asbestos...nooooooo, I'm sure you're now saying. Sure enough there were ten sheets of cement bonded asbestos nestling in the bottom of the pond wrapped in the pond liner. What are people like? Instead of dealing with it, they bury it three feet under. In 2008 when the deed was done, the Borough Council would have dealt with asbestos, but oh, no, not in this day and age. My conversation with the environmental officer at the Council went something like this:

Me: 'Hi, we've discovered 10 sheets of asbestos buried in our garden. Can we take any action again the people who did this?'
Her: 'No, I'm afraid not. Not everyone knows what asbestos looks like'.
Me: 'Seeing as it's wrapped in polythene and buried three feet down, I think they knew exactly what it was!'

Hmmmp. Anyway, I will carry on with the asbestos story another time.