Completing gardening tasks, and indoor drying

The last of this summer's potato harvest cropped this morning

This morning found N and I focussed, motivated and out in the garden being very pro-active.  N gave the shed a coat of wood preserver (it certainly needed it as the wood soaked up the liquid in front of our eyes), and I finished sieving the bark chippings from the paths into the raised beds.  We've also added a couple of bins/bags of compost that we had lying around the garden and now find we won't need the extra compost thought we would need to buy.  Two or three bags of farmyard manure should be enough, so we've certainly saved ourselves on that.  Even better, our neighbour is doing a bit of work to one of his garden beds and was more than grateful to have three large bags of left-over bark from us. Winners all round.

Very smart shed wearing it's winter coat!

Thankfully we finished all our gardening tasks by lunchtime when the grey clouds finally produced the rain they had been threatening.  It will help the new beds settle if nothing else.  The end of the week has seen cold and windy weather, and there have been mutterings about the central heating going on.  I'm hoping we can manage for a little while longer before taking that step (my children will say that when they were little, I wouldn't allow the heating on before the end of October!)

We had notification this morning that our energy provider is increasing its prices - gee, thanks guys.  I want to write more about this but forgot to take the necessary photos, so I'll leave it for the weekend.  Needless to say, it is a topic close to my heart.

With the cold and wet weather, I can't always get my washing out on the line, although I will try if it's dry outside as even just a short time in the fresh air is good.  But if it's raining, the washing has to be dried off indoors.  We don't have a tumble drier although I admit to having one many years ago when the children were younger and yes, there were times it was very handy.  However, not only do I now know just how much energy they use and therefore how expensive they are to run, we just don't have room for one, so I have to be creative when it comes to drying washing indoors in a small space.

The rail is just visible as the grey line across the white ceiling

We have made use of a combination of high ceilings and a 'spare' recessed area in our hallway to provide a drying area that is conveniently out of the way.  I have put an extendable curtain rail across the recess up near the ceiling and from it I can hang shirts, t-shirts, fleeces etc. 

Washing hanging (apologies for the blurred photo) 

N fixed up a length of dowel with a hook on the end which I use to hook the coat-hangers on and off the rail.  The system works a treat and it means that at least some of the washing is drying out of sight.  The rest has to be spread out over a standing drier overnight. 

I meant to record the fact that the car has been cleaned!  This doesn't happen very often, in fact nowhere near as often as it should do, but I was nudged into action by this post by MeanQueen which I read recently.  As the car is one of our most expensive possessions it makes sense to look after it properly, and that means making the time to keep it clean.  

We brought quite a bit of the football pitch back with us last Sunday!

I will confess I actually really enjoyed valeting it and it looks a lot better for the attention it was given.  Now I just need to keep it like that ;-)