Garden makeovers and Autumn approaches

We have been living at the farmhouse for a year now, I cant believe it! This summer we have been working on the outside and garden; it resembled a builders yard/tip when we got the keys- generally a mess of junk and rubble. With a little mechanical help and a summer of hard graft- we have build a vegetable plot, a sandstone retaining wall around the back of the house where there is a difference in ground levels, 3 news sets of steps, laid a smart patio at the front, tidied up rather a lot of crap, built a new roof on the porch and dug out some flower beds.......I feel knackered just typing it!

Its not quite finished - the top step isn't done in front of Miss Molly there and a few other tweaks to make but it started to rain today and I think that's the beginning of the nasty winter weather so we may not get much further now this year. But hopefully the grass seed we put down here will grow a bit. I bought the old Cart Wheels on Ebay.

We are so thrilled with it now- its been just a mess for the last year...it still looked like this 3 months ago when the digger made two distinct levels and believe it or not, it looked even worse when we bought it!

** wee update 8th November**

The awful weird patio front doors that you had to walk sideways through are gone....a weekends work had us make a new door frame, fill in the gap left by the old doors and fit a lovely proper front door. Even the Postie was excited about having a letter box to use!!

Excuse the compost bag in this one....I was just about to put in the buxus cones either side of the new steps ( Buxus £15 each- bargain in B&Q) 

We were lucky in that the gorgeous sandstone was everywhere in the garden and so we had just enough to build this retaining wall the whole way round the house. I have become a champion cement mixer let me tell you!!

We had been stepping on a wobbly breeze block to get to the front door but no more.....lovely steps!

And here is the veg garden! We are growing an amazing crop of weeds at the moment but next spring- we will get stuck in. There is 7 raised beds in it with little gravel paths between them.

 

Inside, I have put out some little decorations for autumn, a few wee pumpkins here and there, twinkle lights on our mantle piece. I know I put on too many pictures of the living rooms but they are the only almost finished rooms!
Plus, I look at my blog from work and wistfully pretend I am at home......

 

Its been an amazing summer up here in Scotland, the best I can remember for several years and we have been thankful for it. Now that the weather has turned, we will be starting on the kitchen! Yikes xxx