Fog in the park

This year has been a bit of a one for weather, hasn’t it? And it keeps on coming.  The latest instalment was a bit of a pea-souper, or fog if you’ve no idea what I mean, and it made yesterday’s walk to work through Greenwich Park just a little bit more tranquil, and mysterious, than normal.  So much so that I couldn’t help but pause, just for a moment and capture it with my trusty iPhone. 

Somehow the fog makes the trees look more delicate, and more beautiful than they would against the usual morning sky, don’t you think?

As my route took me through the park I was curious to see how the fog had enveloped it, hugging it’s contours and softening the distant views. 

But, even so, it’s still not what I’d call cold, and that’s something I’ll happily take, but just so you know weather, colder isn’t needed, and nor is any more of your extremes, if that’s ok... 

The Wellness kitchen at Grand Designs

I saw this kitchen by FincH at Grand Designs earlier in the year, and it was clear from those also looking at the room set that it divided opinions. I was impressed by it, and while I might not go for this colour, the idea of a single colour throughout appealed, whereas for MOH and others close by us, they were less wowed. For MOH it was one element of the design that he thought impractical, but strangely it was one that I liked, even if on the whole I agreed with his impractical assessment.

But we’ll come onto that.

The units and walls were all dusky pink, the worktops provided contrast with a soft white finish. The units are made from Jesmonite, a gypsum-based material in an acrylic resin, which makes it a versatile material. The cork flooring, was one of my least favourite elements, but I know that’s down to my inbuilt dislike of the material on floors and walls - yes, I’ve seen it on walls and that just makes me shiver.

I liked the unfussy lines and clean spaces, although in reality my kitchen is unlikely to ever look this clear - but a girl can dream, hey? As well as liking the clean spaces, I’m also a fan of stuff and I’m learning that these two things aren’t compatible. What tends to happen is it’ll start off relatively clear like this, and over time stuff accumulates and I get used to seeing it, and so it becomes part of the “furniture” - until I remember my plan was to keep the worktops clear, and so a tidy up follows. Only for the whole process to repeat, I do think that’s a good thing, or otherwise I’m not sure I’d have enough room to use the worktops to actually prepare food…

Ah yes, the living herb wall. I liked it, MOH thought it impractical. I agreed, but I still wanted one. Even though our kitchen has very little, if any, natural light. I knew it wouldn’t work in our space, but I liked the idea of walking to the end of the work bench to add herbs to my cooking. Often, gathering herbs is one of the tasks that I give MOH when he regrets asking if there’s anything he can do. And that’s usually followed by a description of the herb and its location, how much simpler would it be if the herbs were at the end of the kitchen?

I know, I’m living in a dream world…

The other thing I admired in this kitchen was the tidy concealed cupboards. Mine would never be this empty, but they’d also never likely to be shut, or if they were it’d be because I’d crammed stuff in and wanted to keep that illusion of a clean, clear kitchen.

How would you cope with cupboards like these, or a one colour kitchen?

My garden in November

In a word, my garden in November, has been all about the leaves. Lots of them. But we had some time, and relatively decent weather last weekend so our job was to tackle as many as we could and to prepare the garden for winter, although with the table wet we weren’t sure if the latter would happen.

Did I mention we had a few leaves to collect?

Yes exactly. The good news is that leaves make great leaf mulch, but after filling two black sacks it was clear we’d run out of sacks much sooner than we’d make headway with the leaves. So another plan was needed. Luckily we hadn’t got rid of all the builders bags - you know the big ones with the handles on, the ones that when they’re full are almost impossible to move? Yes, one of those, which once MOH had finished was full of leaves. Whoops. But on the plus side, it’s the first time we’ve moved one of these builders bags easily!

HELP WITH COLLECTING LEAVES?

And that was just leaves from the grass, we haven’t tackled the leaves on the beds yet. Although the yucca is lending a point or two and spearing leaves as they drop. It’s just not as quick as I’d like.

There’s leaves on the greenhouse too, and the moss has gone into overdrive too - already there’s a job for Spring! Much easier to tackle though was removing the leaves covering my succulents, which have continued to grow and spread over the summer. I’ve moved them into the greenhouse for a while as the soil was quite damp, I’ll need to remember to check on them as I don’t want them to completely dry out.

I’m sure you get the idea about the leaves. Picking leaves up is the dullest job in the world. Blowing them about the place though, that’s something entirely different and much more fun. But thankfully there were other jobs to do while leaf picking up was required, and so I busied myself covering up the agapanthus with fleece and moving pots into a more sheltered position, and freeing up some space to store the table over the winter. Cunning huh?

On the patio the white rosebush is continuing its best to flower, with a few rosebuds appearing. It’s been so mild here it’s not really surprising but it’ll be interested to see how long they last.

There’s still some colour in the garden - even with all of those leaves gone - and just as we were heading in I snapped one of my favourite garden shots. There’s just something about it that makes me smile, and manages to sum up our afternoon gardening.