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Posts Tagged ‘garden’

Day Off Joys

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 27 March, 2020| 1 Comment »

It’s strange in this time of weirdness that the Vicar is still working and is keeping the rhythm of having a day off. But today was the Day Off and so we did things a little differently. There was gardening and fridge cleaning, and the boys started addressing a Google Keep list of chores that the Vicar has drawn up to save us all from killing each other going nuts.

And it turns out that a sunny afternoon in the garden is a thing of beauty and joy. And even better is standing in the sunshine with a cup of tea, talking over the wall at the bottom of the garden to our dear friend Dreamer, as she sat in her front bedroom window. And following that with throwing a frisbee around the garden to entertain a loopy Vicarage Hound.

Me and the Vicar peeking over our six foot red brick wall

Another joy today was also courtesy of Dreamer, who took an upholstery course during her sabbatical last year. She took pity on us a few weeks ago and offered to repair our disgraceful piano stool, which has totally lacked any sort of padding or cover for far too long. And today she delivered it to the front door and the Vicar reattached it. We are very pleased with it.

 

And the newly covered stool enticed the Engineer to continue playing and practising the ragtime he has discovered over the last few months. And then the Vicar recorded him so you can enjoy it too.

 

I was also going to mention the joy of discovering a short video on Twitter with instructions about how to cut your fringe. Seeing without swiping my hair back is a delight. What a great Day Off. Simple joys.

Eyes with fairly amateur fringe above

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Vicarage Views

Posted in Vicarage, tagged , , , , , , , , on 6 October, 2016| 1 Comment »

The lovely sunny autumn days have inspired me to get out and about around the Vicarage with the camera on my mobile phone. I’m enjoying finding beauty in the detail. Victorian brickwork seems particularly good for this.

 

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A Sunny Sunday Afternoon in the Vicarage Garden: a barbecue, a picnic and shenanigans with Gone

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 2 August, 2015| Leave a Comment »

All the usual things happened this afternoon:

1. We had a barbecue. Rev Ted and his family joined us, together with Dreamer, for a lovely lazy lunch to celebrate the Queen’s 14th birthday. (FOURTEEN! HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?). We ate lots of salad and fruit as well as the obligatory meatfest. Because it’s after camp where we’d overindulged in carbs in a big way. Our insides need to recover a bit. There was lots of laughter and many tales of teenagers in Devon.

2. The family from over the road who have no garden and lots of children had a picnic in the churchyard. I’m very glad the churchyard is there for families without grass outside their house. They asked me where we’d been and I told them I’d been to Devon with lots of teenagers. They looked enthusiastic when I told them that the twins (aged 9 now) would soon be able to join us.

3. Gone let himself into the garden, very drunk and smelly. He talked at me for ages about how hard he’s finding things, and the Queen brought him some crisps to eat (he didn’t want a cup of coffee). Then he asked for food to get him through the next few days and I rummaged through the cupboards (which haven’t been restocked since camp) for some things he can eat. He’s not able to prepare much because he broke the microwave. So he says. Then I came into the house to get him a new notebook for remembering things.

Whilst I was in the house, he stripped off his TWO fleeces and started to help himself to the Joker’s damp t-shirt from the washing line. When we let him know that this wasn’t totally acceptable, he stormed away, swearing as much as possible. He took the bag of food, but thankfully not the t-shirt (it’s a favourite Dr Who one). I’ve put the washing on again. And I’ll see if I can get some cheap t-shirts next time I’m shopping.

So it’s good to be home. Tales of camp to come next week. Spoiler: we had a great time.

The garden is the place to be today

The garden is the place to be today

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Unusual Finds in the Vicarage Garden

Posted in Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , on 24 February, 2013| 2 Comments »

We get a few things chucked over the wall into the Vicarage garden – mostly it’s stray footballs and wrappers from fast food that greet us on the rare occasions we venture into the borders with gloves and trugs. But yesterday I spotted something a little more unexpected as we spent a day with a few friends from theological college. I gazed out of the window as we were chatting and saw A DOG.

Scampy dog

Since our garden is fenced in pretty well, this is not something we’ve encountered before. And you’d think someone would have missed the poor thing. So we went out and found a rather smelly, but quite friendly hound, who’d obviously been sleeping under a tree. It may have been there for a day or two, although the Vicar thinks he would have spotted it when chopping wood yesterday. And although the garden gates were open for a while, it seems more likely that someone had sent the poor animal over our wall. He had no collar on.

We called a couple of doggy local friends to see if they recognised it but nobody did. So then we called Sandwell Council’s out of hours dog warden. Who was with us in less than an hour. He told us that our canine visitor was about 4 years old and not microchipped. Then the warden popped him on a lead whilst he wolfed down some dog food that the Queen had run out to buy for him.

He seemed like a very sweet even-tempered dog, and I might have been tempted to keep him if I hadn’t known that the Vicarage cat would object outrageously. So he’s been taken to City Dogs Home in Stoke – they’ve not got his pic up yet, but we’re going to keep an eye on it and give them a call to see how he’s doing. They take 7 days to check them out before starting the rehoming process. It’s sad to think someone abandoned him, and a bit annoying that they were so cheeky as to leave him in our garden, but we were impressed with the warden and the system which enabled him to be taken care of so quickly.

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Tree Surgery in the Vicarage Garden

Posted in Garden, Vicarage, tagged , , , , , on 16 May, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Today the tree surgeons came and took down a tree at the end of our garden that had started to lean rather precariously.

Here it is before they did their stuff:

And here is a short video of the tree coming down ending with a lovely clip of the tree surgeon’s local accent.

We’re glad the tree’s now safe. And particularly pleased at the fuel it’s supplied for next winter…

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Of Tables and Trampolines

Posted in Church, Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , on 16 April, 2012| Leave a Comment »

We came back from a week’s holiday in Scotland late yesterday afternoon. We couldn’t get the car on the drive to unload it as the drive is full of skip for debris from the attic renovations. So we parked near the back gate so we could take our stuff in through the back door. Tired and happy, we planned to unpack as fast as possible and get everyone into bed ready for school and the start of a busy term.

As soon as we’d emerged onto the pavement, just next to the churchyard, we realised things might take a while longer than we hoped. The half dozen or so kids playing there were very excited to see us and wanted to fill us in on all the things that had happened whilst we were away. The most prominent episode had been some naughty kids hopping into our garden over the wall and causing some damage to one of our (thankfully) cheap plastic tables. All the kids wanted to tell us the same thing at the same time and transmit their information in those squealy high pitched voices they save for important communications.

It took a while but we managed to convince them that we’d soon come to terms with our loss. After we’d unpacked. Our kind neighbour was also annoyed on our behalf about the vandalism and garden invasion and came to tell us the details. We were just relieved that the Vicar had packed the trampoline away before we left for our holiday, as we’d have been quite sad to lose that. When we go away in the summer we pack away the monkey swing too. Maybe that’s what attracted the cheeky table-destroying monkeys into the garden in the first place…

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The Reading Rule

Posted in Fun, tagged , , , , , , on 3 August, 2011| 4 Comments »

Last month the Vicar and I spent some Nectar points on a garden swing. Sitting on it is incredibly relaxing but we had to make some rules about usage by children as we anticipated that over-vigorous swinging might ensue.

So the rule is:

You can only sit on the swing seat IF YOU ARE READING

This is working very well. I occasionally break the rule myself, but as it’s my rule I think that’s okay. Sometimes I just sit there with the Vicar or a friend and talk. But today the kids were on the swing, obeying the rule, which I found very heartening:

Reading (from L to R) Dr Who, Roald Dahl and Harry Potter

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More Vicarage Garden Theft

Posted in Fun, tagged , , , , on 13 July, 2011| 3 Comments »

There’s been more stuff nicked from the Vicarage garden this weekend. I think this is worse than the coping stones – it was done right before my eyes outside the kitchen window. I was so outraged I took a photo…

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The Vicarage Garden is busted (in a good way)

Posted in Garden, Vicarage, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 21 March, 2011| 2 Comments »

Despite my desire to become Alys Fowler (including the Pre-Raphaelite hair), things in the Vicarage garden didn’t go brilliantly last summer. I planted out, but didn’t really give things the attention they needed. I was too busy fire-fighting the clutter in the house.

But this year I’m hoping for more success. I now have a cleaner, who comes every couple of weeks to help me to conquer the house. I have a schedule, which means I am strangely (to me) doing a little more housework than I used to. So there may now be some time to water and weed.

And to start us off, last week we had the gardening team from Betel in to clear the beds and get us on the road to a manageable and (hopefully) edible garden this year. The team comprised four men – one was Gav Burnage, Associate minister from Aldridge Parish Church, who is living and working full time at Betel. The other guys were members of the Betel community in Birmingham, learning to live and work free from substance abuse.

God was kind to us, and the sun shone. The Vicar and Rocky joined the Betel team. I skived off the digging, but supplied regular tea and cake. They sorted out our main beds, nuked some brambles and the evil blue weeds and left everything looking tidy and ready for planting. Now we just have to keep up the weed-free look with regular forays in our wellies. The money we paid for the work helps to pay for Betel’s accommodation and keeps this amazing organisation going. If you live in the Birmingham area and need a garden blitz, why not see if they can help you out?

 

The Vicar with the Betel team. Note the tidy flower bed (and still-absent coping stones).

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Sweet Garden

Posted in Garden, tagged , , , on 30 June, 2010| 4 Comments »

I just picked my first ever home-grown sweet peas this week. They look a little pathetic climbing the plastic trellis we have up – mostly they are sprawling around at knee height. I think I probably need to work on my gardening (and photography) techniques, but I’m still rather pleased with the result. Look:

They smell heavenly and remind me of my Yorkshire Grandpa, who grew sweet peas and lots of edible things in his long garden.

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