I Can't Stand The Rain

The rain, whilst doing wonders for the plants, has reeked havoc with general garden progress.
How is a man to lay his grout when no sooner is it down, the rain is washing it away. When a task is as tedious as grouting you really don't want to be doing it multiple times. Oh it's been a fun week!

Still with a little help from Ken the DIY/ Gardener (complete political rants a plenty) we have a garden, well except for the 2 missing slate slabs which we failed to buy to complete the space and the right hand bed which needs populating, and the furniture, and the whole bit down the side of the house.

Veggies are coming on a treat, in a competition the mint would be winning hands down, rhubarb a close second followed by cauliflower, the basil, alas, appears to be drowning.

Tomorrow sees the fateful return of the builders, I am avidly baking in preparation (I find bribery works wonders). And so commences some of the finishing tasks -downstairs WC, leaky roof, loose guttering, and painting the front of the house.

Samples have been liberally applied and colour chosen, a light khaki as inspired by a splendid looking house up the road. Possibly risky due to hideous white plastic windows which I would move heaven and earth to not emphasize but what's life without a few risks! The previous owners, who spent literally no money on the house, had delightfully invested in staining the bricks around the top windows a tasteful bright red!!! This must be dealt with, I don't know how, but I know a man who will....

Light up

Loving the Plumen bulb, which won the Design Of The Year 2011. Just saying!

http://plumen.com/

Singing In The Rain...

I don't know how it happened, I'm not sure when or even why exactly, but somehow it crept up on me and I can deny it no longer. I am officially middle aged. How do I know this? Well during the recent bout of relentless rain my first thought was not, well there go my plans for sitting in London Fields drinking warm white wine out of plastic cups and talking about which party to go to.... no no no, I found myself uttering the immortal words "Well it will be very good for the garden". Dear God save me!

Moving swiftly on. This week has all been about wallpaper, hardly less middle-aged I hear you cry, but not so, my wallpaper inspiration comes from wayyy more cutting edge/ teenage sources.

Stripes - long been a fashion staple but hadn't entered my consciousness for walls, until that is, I found myself wandering round a Jack Wills store in Stratford Upon Avon (so not middle aged!). Entirely unimpressed by the teenage, frat boy clothing (middle aged), I was, however, very impressed by their interiors. An interesting melange of bold colours and styles, modern and vintage (of course) but also pinks next to greens, via blues and purples, stripes next to damasks, with the odd spot in to boot. Somehow it worked, personally I was most taken with the bold coloured striped wallpaper.

This then led me onto stripes more generally, actually it seems, a long time wall classic through the designs of legendary designers such as Sue Timney, love, love, love her simple black and white stripes, bold, classic and contemporary all at once.

I also paid a visit to the uber, uber House Of Hackney, a fantastic new husband and wife interiors design duo. I am not alone in my admiration, they have been all over interiors and main-stream press and rightly so. I visited their brilliant pop up in Dalston a couple of months ago and having decided to plump for their Dalston Rose in my downstairs loo, went to their house/ office/ show-room just off London Fields. A beautiful house, of which the front part acts as a show-room for their designs, the rest is their office and home, taking live-work to the max. All in all very impressive, I was personally most taken with their chosen hue on their exterior render!

I am very excited about the soon to be redecorated WC - floral walls with deep blue wood panelling. It is a tiny room and some schools of thoughts would argue should therefore be kept light and simple to make it seem bigger. I couldn't disagree more. Embrace the smallness, embrace the darkness, and use it's size as an opportunity to make a statement. I predict a dramatic, bold, amusing room which could otherwise be a tiny, nothing space..... we'll see.

Enough of this tittle tattle, back to the important stuff, the tomatoes are doing well, the lettuces at the back thriving, we have 2 little green strawberries and the rhubarb may well need re-housing to a bigger pot... ROCK.... AND.... ROLL!