I spent most of my time today running errands- which isn't too bad back home, but here it involves the stress of navigating the streets, parking lots, etc, as well as determining which places actually sell what you want to buy, and then where in the store are the items that you want. :) It's sort of a guessing game as to whether or not they have it.
Our little cottage garden needs a severe amount of TLC- the previous tenant let it go wild, and the tenant before that mainly wanted a big patio space, and didn't care about planting. So we have a lot of bare dirt, some weird small landscape rocks where there should be mulch, and we had a gigantic English Ivy vine taking over the Eucalyptus tree and the fence post and creeping it's way across the patio. It took me about 3 hours to clear out the ivy, using just my hand pruners. But I discovered tons of snails living under the ivy, so I left some on the fence for them to crawl/scoot under. I love snails, and I'm so excited to keep finding them all over the garden! It's better than having pet snails inside. :) The garden is damp, which they love. I plan to take up some of the patio stones to make the planting beds bigger, and we're hoping to borrow a stone cutter from someone so we can make the patio thing more like a path. There's a nice little table out there that we can eat at, and once things are shaped up I hope to eat breakfast out there. But right now I can't stand to eat out there because when I look around I see yet another thing that I want to do. :)
Whoever painted our cottage last didn't really know how to do a professional job. :) So I asked the landlord if he minded if we painted- in fact in places the plaster is flaking off and needs to be puttied over, and there are cracks and things which just happen when your house is 300 years old. He had intended to do it himself, probably this week, but since we needed to move in so soon I told him we'd just do it ourselves. Some of the rooms were painted sort of a dirty cream color with hideous yellow trim. I don't know why. :) But we'll take care of that. :) I'm also going to strip off the paint from the wood bits in the house and stain them a dark mahogany color to match the big logs which are in the walls and ceiling and stuff. I think we can return it to a proper cottage state by the end of the week. I say we, but really it's mostly me since G is working. :) And I don't think Nelly will be helping scrape paint off the wood or use the paint rollers. :)
I had a visit from a neighbor across the way today- the people on our street are very neighborly. She brought us a little magazine that Swavesey puts out which has info about the village, the local merchants, and clubs, and stuff like that. We're in a great location for hiking too- Swavesey is right on the edge of the fens (marshes) which used to comprise almost all of East Anglia. I'm sure there will be great photo ops. Anyway our neighbor brought over some hot baked scones for us! It was very nice of her.
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