When your phone dies and that’s a good thing

Hi All,

As you may have ascertained by the title of today’s blog post, our phone died. We bought a phone with a Testra contract years ago. We were suckered into buying a Nokia Windows phone (yes…don’t wince) because it had a 40 megapixel camera and we figured we would be able to take good quality images without having to lug Steve’s Nikon around with us everywhere. We were wrong. The camera lasted all of 10 images before it packed it in and refused, point blank, to take any more photos. As what remained of the phone was next to useless and didn’t even allow us to download apps, we bumbled along with it for texts and actual phone calls (shock-gasp!) and not much else until a month ago, it decided to call it a day and cease to exist at all.

This is the start of the Paper Beach pathway. It’s around about here that Earl REALLY starts to pull me…

I think that these are old oyster beds. We walk past this area on the Paper Beach walking track. It runs parallel to the river and is a really lovely walk.

Earl standing near warrigal spinach plants. This is where I dug up my two small plants that are now threatening to take over Sanctuary.

Pretty pathway on the Paper Beach walking trail

We now know the value of NOT being under a phone contract and have gotten used to how lovely it is to not be paying an exorbitant amount for sweet buggery-bollocks all and so we decided to buy the cheapest phone that we could find with a 4g network. It turned out the salesman had no morals (are we REALLY surprised?) and told us that yes, indeed, the cheap phone that we were looking at in the catalogue (for $99) was 4g ready (it wasn’t) but so far, we haven’t had any problems getting reception with the Huawei that we bought. Unlike the prissy Nokia, this little Chinese beast works hard to make life easy for you. When you want the camera it’s there, ready to go and you just tap a little circle and “click” your image is saved unlike the Nokia where you had to stand on one leg, point towards Mecca, squint into the sun and wish on a star just in the vain hope that it MIGHT work just this once…

The reason why I am still wearing gumboots when it’s almost November

Some romantic soul created this right next to the old pine tree

When the bush track finishes you end up walking along the beach or along this nature strip at the front of the beach cottages. Earl prefers this nature strip as he gets to sniff EVERYTHING.

I often wonder who lives down this lovely bush track and what their home looks like. There are some very lovely houses in Paper Beach and the people who choose to live here seem to have a lot of character

So todays post is brought to you by our cheap Chinese phone and it doesn’t take bad pictures at all. Earl would like it known that he isn’t particularly enarmored of me taking photos on his favourite walk and that he has to sigh heavily to remind me of the sacrifice that he is making having to stop and wait while I muck around waving a piece of plastic at trees. “I”, on the other hand, would like it known that I am NOT a great fan of being hauled bodily down vinca lined tracks behind a determined dog who wants to pee on everything.

This is Rogers garden. Roger is one of those wonderful eccentric Paper Beach gardeners.

Here’s a bit more of his garden. This eclectic mix carries on right around his house and echoes Rogers artistic talents.

This is Rogers front gate. As you can see, his eclectic tastes aren’t confined only to within his fence and I, for one, am most glad that he spreads that eccentric love around 🙂

This house belongs to a lady who makes metal sculptures. Her house and garden have a wonderful mix of whimsical metal creatures where you would least expect them. She has called her house “Whimsy” and rightly so.

So what have we got for you to see today? Well, spring has finally sprung in lower Sidmouth on the Wey and the days are absolutely lovely. I have been beavering away in the garden trying to think of a place where we can put our poor potted persimmon that would dearly love to stretch it’s roots out and start the growing process and hopefully keep growing till it produces more persimmons that I can even imagine scoffing (and that is quite a lot for anyone who is interested). Everything is growing like crazy and I am beaming with joy about how amazing Sanctuary is at the moment. Everything we have done on what was a barren piece of compacted earth has paid off and the soil is dark, rich, full of worms and most importantly, productive. I have been shoveling holes to plant out perennial flowers to attract bees to the mix and I am happy to see that there are bees joining the throng in Sanctuary.

I LOVE rugosa roses

Another touch of art on the walk in the form of this drift wood Christmas tree complete with lights hanging on the branch of a tree. I might just pinch this idea.

Our first ever home grown broad beans! I ate them this morning and they were absolutely delicious and sweet. I LOVE broad beans ❤

A maple bonsai swallowing Steve’s gumboots

Earl went to Beaconsfield with Steve today to pick up some salad as we often forget about salad in burgers at the beginning of spring because we haven’t had salad all winter long and we are out of the salad habit. While he was away, Bezial and I headed up to Sanctuary to seek the duck. She was hiding in the raspberries down near the muddy puddle that she has been wallowing in and was most unimpressed that I found her. Bezial had fun sniffing around and eating the grass that Earl can no longer eat as we can’t let him into Sanctuary as he has a problem with duck…(cats, horses, fish, eagles, eels, insects, chickens, aliens…you get the picture…)

Snow peas! We already had some of these in a lovely stir fry the other day but they keep on coming and we will keep on enjoying them.

Oops that persimmon REALLY needs planting out!

Narnia after it was whipper snipped this morning

Happy strawberries and tomatoes in a fridge wicking bed

We are getting 3 cubic metres of topsoil delivered in the next week so that we can fill up the remaining wicking beds that have been breeding mosquitoes since we lugged them into place. Steve is not a fan of mosquitoes and as he is now vegan, they seem to have decided that “I” am fair game as well so I am not a fan of them either. We need to keep one bed for my long suffering water chestnuts that NEED to be planted out and a wicking fridge would be perfect. We will just add soil to the base of the fridge, plant the water chestnuts and then carefully fill the rest up with water and hopefully we will grow our own crunchy water chestnuts for our stir fries.

Meet Eggbert my Japanese finger eggplant

Much easier to walk in Narnia now

A wicking box with strawberries and tomatoes and a seed grown avocado

Happy chives

I have been wading through questions that we have to answer for our course this year. It’s getting to the pointy end and although I have filmed my drama, the flu has taken the wind out of my sails and I haven’t done much with the footage and sound yet. That will change over the next week or so as I finish up the paperwork that needs to be handed in to pass. Once that is out of the way I can get stuck into editing. I have learned a HUGE amount about what it takes to make a film and how much effort, time, energy and passion you have to pour into it. I also know that I won’t be making any more drama’s but I will be making documentaries and as soon as we save up and buy some sound equipment we will be sharing life on Serendipity Farm with you in vlog form.

Happy plants growing in harmony in wicking fridges. They overwintered in the wicking beds in much colder temperatures than we usually have and just about everything lived.

This is an experiment in regrowing celery. Well, to be honest, it’s me being too lazy to remove the celery roots but they all regrew from when I hacked them down and seem to be growing well so lets just say that I meant to do it 😉

Perpetual spinach in a fridge wicking bed

Mint regrowing after going dormant all winter long

Pink English gooseberries that I grew from seed. Most of these will be planted in Sanctuary when they get a bit bigger.

I am trying to tackle knitting. I remember how to knit, purl and cast on but casting off and everything else is a bit of a blur. I want to make socks. I want to knit lovely things but my wants and my abilities need to reach an amicable agreement. I have downloaded a nice simple shawl pattern that I will be attempting to start later on tonight when I finish this blog post. Wish me luck, how difficult could it be? 😉

Whipper snipped back yard

Whipper snipped side of Narnia so that Earl can walk down here again. Note the plum trees in the foreground. They grew here last year and I figured free fruit trees are not to be sniffed at so I let them live.

Steve whipper snipped inside the house fence as when we were walking at the park over the other side of the Batman Bridge the other day we saw a large tiger snake curled up basking in the sun and were suddenly reminded that whilst Bezial is wary of most things, Earl isn’t and the last thing that we wanted Earl to be meeting among the long grass is a large tiger snake. The grass is now gone and this morning Steve tackled inside Narnia and hacked down the mass of greenery that had invaded inside. It looks a whole lot neater in there now.

Jasmine and Clematis montana massing on the deck rails

The big old maple and the deck stairs. The possums are the main “users” of these deck stairs which reminds me, they need a good pressure wash this year!

Steve and I are thinking about the “C” word. I don’t want to say it as I don’t want to be responsible for giving anyone coniptions but it’s getting reasonably close now and we like to be organised. We are thinking about having a lovely luxury picnic in the park over the Batman Bridge. It’s lovely and shady, the boys adore it and even if it’s hot it will be lovely next to the river. Well I think that’s about all for today folks. I hope you enjoyed todays post brought to you by Huawei (“Who are we” as we like to call it 😉 ) and that everything is right in your world today. Catch you soon. I seem to have reignited my blogging desires as now I actually have things to share with you.