We've been in our very own home now for almost two months. It's gone so quickly! We're still working out how some of the rooms should work - the living and dining rooms aren't really working very well at the moment - but we feel we've made good progress on the bedrooms. Ours is now furnished, and the built in bookshelves in the spare room are now out. This weekend we'll be washing the walls and ceilings, caulking gaps here and there and ripping up carpet and underlay in preparation for polishing the floors and painting the rooms. Very soon now we'll have pleasant and fairly neutral rooms in place of the violence-and-nausea-inducing Barbie-meets-Mortisha-Adams pink and black wallpaper.

In other exciting news, we've been eating our own lettuces for the last week, all the new strawberry plants are starting to produce fruit, the beans, peas and courgette are all starting to flower, and the tomato plants are struggling under the weight of the fruit. I've ordered some heirloom tomato plants, too, (the others being common all garden red varieties) which should arrive soon. I'm really looking forward to eating them! I admire a tomato that determinedly sticks to be pink and fabulous in the (red) face of peer pressure.

The rest of the garden is starting to take shape, too. We spent much of the first few weeks clearing the garden, and the last couple planting some of the non-vegie beds. We're going properly English, with lots of lavendar, roses, honeysuckle, hydrangeas, bulbs and jasmine. In a couple of weeks when they are available I'll be planting ludicrous numbers of bluebell, snowdrop and wild garlic bulbs to cover the area under the very large tree in the back corner. Hopefully with all these flowers, we'll be able to find some friends for the solitary robin who's been eating the seed from our bird feeder.

In completely unrelated news, we've booked flights to Australia for a trip in Oct-Nov. We'll be in Canberra for a few days leading up to 25 Oct, Melbourne very briefly around 26-27 Oct, Adelaide for the weekend of 1 Nov, and south east Queensland after that until 18 Nov. We'd love to see you!