Saturday

The Garden Clearance Man had re-arranged his visit to Saturday, and said he would arrive at about 8.15am. He turned up at about 9am, the worse for wear!! Apparently his sister had visited him last night and they shared some bottles of wine, which he isn't used to drinking and he was feeling slightly "delicate" lol. He got no sympathy for his self inflicted headache!! It didn't stop him working his socks off again though. I asked him to concentrate on clearing the patio where the Playhouse will stand, it needed the ivy growing up the wall behind the patio clearing, the patio itself clearing of leaves and debris and jet washing. He didn't bring his jet washing machine with him, so he'll have to do that next time. He did finish clearing the rest of the space though, and made a very good job of it. He also managed to dig out and level half of the space where the trampoline will go. The excess soil is now piled up on the other half, ready to go in the skip when it arrives on Tuesday. During his clearing he noticed a strong smell of oil, and found that where the pipe from the oil tank connects to the safety valve on the house wall that its leaking!! I managed to get hold of a plumber who is coming to look at it on Mon/Tues - perhaps our fuel bills will go down once its fixed!!!

Little Prince and Princess Lollipop were a LOT of hard work all day, they both obviously wanted to be out in the garden, but it wasn't safe while the Garden Man was working out there working! On the occasions I had to go out and discuss what Garden Man was doing, they went wild in the garden. Or started fighting and throwing things if I left them inside!! It was such hard work trying to keep both of them calm and playing nicely, and I got more and more frazzled as the day wore on!!

Garden Man also managed to trim some more of the ivy on another wall, it now looks like an ivy hedge rather than an overgrown ivy monster!! A huge improvement. He also pruned some more of the apple tree, and it doesn't look so leggy and overpowering now, although there are still some more bits to prune, he'll probably have to go over the other side of the wall to finish those so he didn't get them done today. Garden Man also apologised profusely for under estimating how long it would take him to sort out the trampoline space! I'm not bothered in the least, as I thought he'd underestimated it lol, he works very hard and its obvious he's not trying to scam me, so as long as it gets done I'm happy.

We also discussed options to make the run down cottage safe and secure from Little Prince, and have come up with the idea of building vertical slatted gates to close off the huge open front and replace the falling down garage doors. This means that we don't have to fence off the front of the cottage and we get another small patio area, and it will make getting in and out of the cottage a lot easier than if we did have a fence and small gate set up :-) I'm really pleased with the way Garden Man thinks through the problems we currently have with the garden, and comes up with solutions that will not only look aesthetically pleasing, but are safe for Little Prince :-) And I really can't wait to have a usable, safe garden again for the littlies to play out in - and neither can they!! Most days Princess Lollipop will gaze longingly out of the patio windows, saying "My go outside garden finish. My play wheeee bump slide."

Anyway after such a frazzling day, I was overjoyed when Mr Messy suggested going out for tea, I didn't feel like cooking, not that I do very much at the moment as Mrs LMS does most of it so she can practice for when Mr LMS arrives :-) But the thought of getting out of the house with the littlies and not being stuck in all evening was very appealing too :-) Drama Teen had been at a Geeky convention all day, and decided to go back to her boyfriend's house rather than come out with us, so it meant we could go in just one car rather than two. I would have rather gone in two cars and had all my family together, but she is growing up and becoming more and more independent and I'm trying hard to accept this.

The meal was lovely, even though the restaurant was very crowded and understaffed, so the service was very slow! Mr Messy found this irritating, but I enjoyed the slow relaxed pace of the meal and spending time with the family. Little Prince had been told he had to try very hard to behave himself, and although he did have some pretty major blips, he mostly managed to behave :-) When we got home the littlies went almost straight to bed, and Mrs LMS wasn't far behind them. She gets up extremely early each morning to be able to chat to Mr LMS on Facetime and is constantly tired, poor love. I stayed up long enough to go and collect Drama Teen from her boyfriend's house before going to bed myself. I left Mr Messy downstairs watching The Dirty Dozen, which seemed to be very cheesy and almost a comedy!!