Catching Up…

… with a couple of weeks worth of posts.

Easter Saturday we went over to Bacup to see the world famous Brittania Coconut Dancers (also know as the coconutters, or just the nutters.) They were on fine form and drew a pretty impressive crowd.

We wanted a cup of coffee while we were there, and although most of the cafes in the town didn’t look like much to me, there was one that had tables outside (mismatched, with even more mismatched chairs, always the sign of a good cafe, in my experience) and the inside proved to be one of the most eclectic, not to say bizarre, cafes I’ve ever had the pleasure of. It seemed to be a junk shop also, with various piles of used goods, carpet squares, furniture for sale (too new to be antique, maybe just about retro if you were generous) and a handful of locals enjoying conversations about local happenings. Fantastic.

The tree above is the one we are going to cut down to make way for our spiral driveway. Simon says he can come and have a look whether he’d be happy to get his harness on and help us take it down. I’m certainly happier with someone with a harness and a bit of experience, rather than Elmo just swinging around up there with a little bow saw and not much in the way of H&S.

Val came over and helped with putting the topcoat of clay on, as well as joining me for a mooch round the market (Thursday is junk day, we found lots of good stuff, including a new double pulley wheel that will do nicely for the bed.

We’ve managed to get a lot of the bed/living room half of the room done. Looking really good.

I picked up the first 14 buckets of a 48 bucket order of lime render for the exterior of the building. Those buckets are SO heavy. I managed to get 12 of them down behind the house before I gave up.

Aquilegia and snapdragons I couldn’t resist planting, even though it’s definitely not past all risk of frost.

Blueberries promising a harvest of some sort, at least. Hopefully blueberry pie this summer.

Anji delivered a mattress she’d spotted in a local newsletter, and I thanked her with a bowl of red pesto spirals. She stayed for a lovely long lunch of conversation.

And I figured out what the wren we could occasionally see peeking in the window was up to. The above hole was neatly packed with moss and other wet bits of soft stuff. I’m afraid I took it all out, before it rotted my walls, and the poor wren will have to start all over again.