Houses, and sleeping and gardens and grass.

I am so tired all the time at the moment, it’s just insane. I think I’m getting plenty of sleep, despite the heat, but the driving lessons are just screwing with our routine, and myself and Greté are all about the routine! Driving seems to wear me out as well, even if it’s just the 30 minute drive home, so by the time I sort food and then settle down I’m knackered and just want to sleep. Everything else is taking a back seat – including the garden which is now officially out of control again.

We’ve half managed to stay on top of the grass, and I actually did get rid of a patch of moss on the front lawn and get it replaced with grass (which now looks nothing like the rest of the lawn, obviously), but otherwise, the borders have gone crazy and the grass is patchy and full of weeds.

Despite that, we’re loving the wildlife in the garden – we’ve got pigeons nesting in our tree (which we were thinking of cutting down until we saw the nest), we’ve got dragonflies the size of small birds, and when I do cut the grass I’m often picking up and moving frogs out of the way.

Sadly, the snails and the slugs eat just about anything we put in the ground, and they’ve worked out how to climb up the side of the water bucket thing and are eating the lilies and their flowers. I can’t feel too angry at them, since they’re officially wildlife as well, but sometimes I wish they’ve give the stuff we plant a chance.

The sudden bout of insanely hot weather is doing the garden some good, drying it out after the first half of the year and the willow tree is really flourishing. There are ants nests all over the bloody garden as well, and what used to be a flat lawn is now a small mountain range!

On the house, we noticed toward the end of March that the window sill on the outside of the bedroom window was warped, and we got a joiner to come and quote for a replacement. He was great – except we had to chase him about 4 times for the quote, and then it took him 8 weeks to come and do the work (he kept pushing us back due to other stuff). We got him to pull down the woodwork between the bedroom window and the downstairs window as well. The brickwork behind it isn’t bad but it needs re-pointing. £315 for the pleasure of replacing a single wooden window sill, and taking down the rest of the wood. Could have done without it, considering how much I’m spending on driving lessons, but there you go. The joiner also thinks we’ll need all the window frames treated, so we’ve asked a guy to come over and quote for that too. That’s the royal we, obviously, since Greté actually sorts all this stuff out for us, I don’t.

We’ll need to try and remember which bricklayer we used for the re-pointing last time and give him a call as well. Looks like the previous owners did some ‘repair work’ with their normal quality.

I have a question, does anyone have any idea what the following bugs are? They’re in the willow tree, and there’s loads of them. Nearly every leaf has what looks like a tiny one underneath curled up, or larger ones moving around. They’re black with a shock of red and they look spiky!

EDIT: They’re ladybird larvae. Awesome.