Thursday 30 June 2011

over grown, home grown.

hello there me again the ninja (Matt). weather is awesome hear in north Devon, so if your reading this and i use to work near you and the weather is poo out side, ha ha ha ha ha. 

any way gloating over, we have the oddest wwoofing blog going, as we have not actually started yet were still working in Sophie's parents house and garden. we will be leaving for our first wwoofing house soon i just forget the dates. Sophie's parents garden its one hell of a wilderness, some days it seams like i shall never tame it ( i wont there is too much for just me) but ill keep trying, hacking meter after meter in to terrace after terrace, i have found seven so far and I'm not half way up the garden!!!!!! to give you some idea of scale, the forth terrace higher than our bed room and were in the attic. it is hard to explain how steep this garden is some days. the house is cut it to a old quarry behind the house is a sheet slate wall higher than the house, its quite impressive really, it has been reclaimed by the wild so the local birds nest all along the wall,  with out worry of predators. the garden is very hard work most days i cannot wait to wwoof in a garden with a tamed flat section ha ha .
 
above is a picture of the house in the woods. 
hear are some home grown Gooseberries, red currants, black currants, raspberries we "found" in the garden. the gooseberries were hidden in a mess of knot weed that almost faced the wrath of a brush cutter. this fruit was made in to yummy jam that is now in my tummy so no you cant have any.

while we were bored one day we went for a bike ride, hear is proof that Sophie can ride a bike, she still claims she cannot turn corners. Sophie's brother Carey helped her with some confidence games to help her ride more confidently, which helped. 

on my last blog i told you about the untamed terrace hear is some photos. 

i have now found the boundary wall 2 meters further to the right of this photo. 

hear we have a rare photo of the lesser spotted smudge (sopeus longestmonkeyestoedst ornatus) in less educated times this fine specimen would have been shot, bagged, stuffed and mounted above a fire place to make delightfull after dinner conversation.

this is our next challenge its a raspberry patch gone wild 
well i hope the next blog i write is about wwoofing in another place i could keep working hear for months/years trying to tame it but i would like to explore other places 
hope you enjoyed reading this and if you were looking for a little joke
"if ignorance is bliss the government must be in a constant state of orgasm"
email us if you like 
sophieandmattmonkeys@gmail.com


Monday 20 June 2011

WWOOFing ......... at home?

Hehe, I have only just realised that me and Matt have really already started our WWOOFing journey it just took me a while to realise it. Matt and I have already made a swath of destruction and restoration in the garden. We are now really (mostly due to the extreme monsoon weather that we are currently having) getting the house back into shape. My Mum has got us starting with the hall (the house has three floors, so this is no mean feat), which has so far taken 3 days and we have only sanded, knotted and primed the woodwork and today after six hours of painting we have done the emulsion part. Only the ceiling and the gloss (x3 types, firstly the undercoat on the panelling, oil based gloss on the door frames and skirting and low VOC waterbased gloss on the rest!). Phew its seems a lot more to say than to do, however, I cannot wait to get back to it already even though it is 22:12 and I should probably be in bed due to the slight aches and lack of coordination due to being shattered! But before I go here are a few piccys from yesterday (there will be more in the morning when I can take some day time piccys of what we have been upto today).

We mostly painted the primer on the panelling in the hall but I missed the opportunity to photograph it, but it looks very much the same as the day before except the spots are a little less obvious. But I did get a few piccys from what I got upto in the garden while Matt went for a very long bike ride (I got a little restless).
Here is the part of the garden that we restored the other day, long ago in the days before Uni, my Mum and I cleared this little area, we then added some membrane over the bed and covered it in bark. Now over time this became over grown to the point where it was just a solid mass of weeds. So me and Matt restored it to its past glory (when we found the membrane was still intact, weeds had just grown over the top of it, and we then added some elderly bark from a bag we found in the garden. It now looks nice again and ready for more pots, the other pots contain two of our blueberry bushes that we wil be repotting soon.

 Now this is the Hydrangea root hub that I spent half an hour removing, years ago we tried to remove it to place newer shrubs in its space, however it came back and took over so I decided that it was time I took the lot out. I put the cat in for some scale, it felt a lot bigger when I was trying to remove it!

Here is the hole where the hydrangea once filled!

This is the new view through where the hydrangea used to be! you couldn't see over it before!

This is a piccy of the rest of the bed after it was weeded and more membrane and bark was added! The cherry tree now has no competition from the grass and hydrangea, although we have competition from the female blackbird who keeps eating the cherries!

Anyway, I better go now as sleep is beckoning me
Byeeee x x x x

Saturday 18 June 2011

Degree!

Hello,
After many days of believing that my degree classification was a 2:2 (which was very good!) I was pleasantly surprised to be informed by a friend from Uni that actually I had a 2:1 instead so I am extra surprised and very happy! So I can officially completely forget about education for a while and go WWOOFing hehe! We have had a little change in our plans (one place changed their dates which turns out to really work for us) we are all but sorted to go! Just need to pack and we will be on our way!
so bye for now x x x x x

Friday 17 June 2011

too much rain pretty soon boo hoo

hello well its very rainy, my what a pain, my waiting in vain for dry weather. not sure you can see the rain on this photo but its their trust me nice view from our lounge area. as it has been raining today we have found other ways to entertain our selves one solution is plants vs zombies a simple but very addictive game that make time pass unnoticed. sophie is currently playing it talking about cob cannons and collecting sun and spud downs? she mentioned some thing called stinky so i took the hint and had another shower. then told me a huge wave of zombies are coming i could not find my cricket bat and panicked. my zombie apocalypse kit has gone.  i have just moved in my stuff is all missing? aaagh....... ........................................turns out it was the game.
as the weather was poo we decided to paint the hall way, but were given tiny pots of paint and told make it last, so we decided to give the house a liver colour Dalmatian effect. as you can see below it suites the house well, it leads to the red zebra dining room and to the orange snake skin kitchen, all very in keeping with the general atmosphere with this victorian house. 
ps if you cant guess i don't take life serious. the paint is knotting solution after the last owner did a poor job of painting. and no it dose not tie your shoe laces as i hoped, i was very disappointed after i tried. but on the bright side i have sticky laces which i shall never trip over again.
wheres wally game can you spot me? 
(no i'm not the cat)

up the stairs




around the corner

and away

 hear is some of my work before the weather turned. when i first walked on to this terrace i did not know there was a wall their. as it was VERY over grown since this photo was taken i have cleared another 2-3 meters. i may get another photo if i can get my climbing gear out, and i feel i can ascend it safely. the last trip claimed a brave fork, a orange, two gloves, and a small blue whale. they were buried unceremoniously on the slope.

congratulation on reading this i was feeling very monty python when i wrote it. 
hope to be wwoofing soon as the monkeys tell me i may be suffering from cabin fever.

Sunday 12 June 2011

Luxembourg and piccys!

Hehe,

we have been having great fun keeping an eye on who has been looking at our blog but also how many different countries these viewers are from. Although, recently (in the last two days) we have been surprised by just how many people from Luxembourg (32 different views) have been having a look. It's so exciting to see how many people actually look at our blog. If anyone wishes to say hi or comment on anything on the blog, please feel free. It would be lovely to hear from anyone wishing to know more about WWOOFing since by the end of August we will have been to two places already and on to our third, I cannot wait to get going hehe!

Anyway other than that here are some piccys from the last few weeks!

Here are some of the wind turbines that have been going up in Devon recently, the council finally gave the go ahead and 30 odd will be up and running by September! Yay!
Here are the guys (Isaac, Kez and Matt) about to demolish the old chicken shed.
This is just a very silly picture of my cat, Dodger, doing what we call cat yoga, he does this kind of thing frequently and completely under his own steam.
Here is a piccy of the baby jackdaw, we reckon he was at least a week to a week and a half off leaving the nest properly as he has still lots of baby feathers and he can't yet reliably stand or move using his feet or eat by himself. However, having said that he is a fast learner and is starting to use his feet properly and is so inquisitive.
This is the quilt that I am making at the moment.
Here is Dodger as always at the moment on our bed.
Our shed up, but due to the amount of rain its empty at the moment but it will soon be a home to many books, kitchen stuff and Matt's bikes (he has 4! which I am told is the bare minimum).
This the area that me and Matt are clearing ready to be partially paved and a new potted herb garden to go there when we can.
Woogo (AKA cookie) chilling up in the flat.

Anyway, thats enough writing and piccys before I run out of room hehe
Byeeeee x x x x

Saturday 11 June 2011

Exams, leaving jobs and moving house!

Phew it seems like so much to have done at once but we have done it! I have finally finished my exams with a huge sigh of relief and am now trying to fill my time with random bits of housework and helping out my family. Matt has left his job and with the help of Chris has transported all his stuff to Ilfracombe! It was one hell of a move, since the drive is incredibly steep and everything had to be lugged up the full length of the drive as well as up two flights of stairs! However, we have finally sorted most of the stuff into what can go and stuff to keep. The Matt and Dad (I have been banned from helping due to bossiness) are currently putting up a 6’ by 8’ shed to store our stuff while we are WWOOFing hehe!
I am currently working on a patchwork quilt that I started at Christmas, its eventually going to go on our bed but its not quite big enough yet and needs backing and stuffing. Me and my Mum have also been looking after a baby Jackdaw, it seems to have totally imprinted on my mum, she reckons as he has trouble using his legs he must have fallen from the nest. The parents were very protective but he was too young to regulate his temperature and was exhausted from lack of food. So we have put him in a cat carrier with my mum’s heat pad and she has been feeding him every hour and a half with cat food and water and he is fast perking up so far. We are having to be careful not to get to attached as he isn’t really out of the woods yet. But he is terribly sweet and completely unafraid of us and is very inquisitive.
Other than that all has been quite calm since the move, I am anxiously waiting for my results to come back on Wednesday. Since moving back home two of the four family cats have taken to sleeping in the two rooms we are staying in. Woogo (a tortie) is mostly found on the futon in the lounge area and Dodger can be found frequently on our bed.
Other than that, me and Matt have been helping clear the house of excess clutter and furniture for my parents, as my Mum is moving back from Winchester after having been there to do her MA in Creative writing. She is actually back, but my brothers are finishing their last few weeks at college and then we will bring them back in two weeks (and a whole 3 bed house worth of furniture). Me and Matt have also been tidying up the garden trying to get it back from the huge weeds that are trying to take over the garden while my mum has been away. The herb part of the garden is our main focus at the moment but will also be trying to weed the drive as it is smaller due to the weeds around the edges. I shall hopefully be putting some piccys of our progress tomorrow hehe!
Bye bye for now, Soph x x x