Pick any colour

The dark side of the house (chimneys still to be done)

This is the first time we've lived anywhere where we could choose the house colour. For most of the cottage we've opted for a yellowish cream colour called Cornish Cream, but we've decided to experiment with the south side of the house. This gets a lot of sun, but is currently the coldest part of the cottage. So we've gone and painted it black to see if that'll make any difference.

Prep, prep, prep

Luckily, the weather has held and last week we've been able to put in eight hours a day repointing (Jim) and painting (me). The patching up of the plasterwork was seemingly unending - Jim had been hard at it for at least five weeks - but yesterday it was finally done. The house is about half painted, with a first coat on everything but the north face. Unfortunately, the third tin of Cornish Cream was a markedly different shade to the first two so now we'll need to paint another coat over everything.

Hence, not much time for gardening. Just some quick harvesting, which is very colourful these days.

Toms, cucumbers, chillies and one tomatillo

The first of the Emir melons was ripe and absolutely delicious. I'd been wondering if melons were worth all the space they take up, but we wouldn't be able to get melons like these here otherwise. So they're on the list again for next year.

Emir melon

The chicks are now the size of Bantam chickens and are enjoying their forest life. Only two months to go until they start laying!

Soruss will be our new cockerel and hopefully a bit friendlier than Russ

I'm trying my hand at some seed saving this year. So far I've dried some peas and broad beans and I let the kale and land cress flower and go to seed. I had way too many kale seed pods so I left the spare ones lying around next to the compost bins. Now I've got a kale lawn there! At least that proves the seeds are viable. And we're going to have enough kale this winter.