Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
After a busy couple of weeks with a trip to Fuerteventura and then a week at a conference with work, the spring garden was looking a little overwhelming. Things—namely the goosegrass, dandelions, and stinging nettles—were getting out of hand, and I’d yet to get Hector, our robot lawnmower, up and running. Robot Mowers Harriet, the...
What a lovely day today. Spring has finally sprung! The garden has another new shed as well, and there are lots of new gardening tools on the way. Hopefully, if I find the time, I’ll get the garden looking nice again. There’s certainly plenty of signs of life out there. The bees are busy, the...
It seems as though the start of the garden chores gets earlier every year. It was the first day of February at the weekend, and I was out working in the garden before the sun was up. The first job was to finish off some edging around the new shed. The wooden edging wasn’t high...
Having harvested some honey a few weeks ago, the bees fought back and stopped us taking any more for a while. One of the hives had honey that, at the time, wasn’t fully sealed, another decided to sting us and prevent us getting any off. So, we left them for a few weeks and then...
This weekend was all about the honey harvest! Anna collected the extractor on Friday afternoon and I’d already put clearer boards on a couple of our hives. The ‘Bedroom’ Hive was huge with 4 completely full supers and a fifth that was half full. ‘Dyfi’ hive had two full supers and ‘Leri’ had a couple...
Our pottery classes are coming to an end so it’s been a little difficult to decide what to do next as there doesn’t seem to be much point starting new projects as we won’t have time to finish them – it takes weeks what with drying time, firing time, decorations, glazes and a second firing....
Most of our time was spent decorating some of our pottery creations whilst at out pottery ‘class’ this week. I’ve decided that Anna’s is better at this part of the process than I am!
Seeing as it’s now been just over a year since we decided (on somewhat of a whim) to create a pond in the garden, I thought I’d update you on its progress. It was always intended as a ‘wildlife’ pond. That’s an excuse for letting it go a bit wild, leaving it to do its...
Just a few photos of some garden colour to cheer things up. Oh, and a silly cat!!
Our pottery lessons continue and are quite good fun. We may never become experts, but that’s not important. The process is quite time-consuming, partly because we attend just once a week. Additionally, there are drying times between each stage and two firing processes for each piece too. Yesterday, we finally brought home our first completed...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
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Fuerteventura – Days 4 & 5: From Windsurfing to Wave Watching: A Coastal Escape
Monday, March 31st, 2025
