Autumn Update

Apologies to the thousands of loyal readers ;-). This year seems to have been a bit of a stretch so far and ths Autumn is no different. Having moved into the the new Fat Cat’s Patch HQ in December 2021 we seem to have been on the go ever since. Our recent work including replacing the oil fired boiler, after a mere 6 weeks without hot water. We are currently in the midst of a full house re-wire. No stress their then. Because no Autumn is complete without 4 weeks of disruption and repeatedly moving boxes of belonging you don’t need or want from one room to another. Then back again!

In the garden EmmCee has gone all Hannibal Lector or some other metaphor. And has been chopping back years of overgrowth from teh borders. The ducks are still as disagreeable as ever and productivity has dropped to Longbridge in the mid 70’s levels. The chickens remain chicken-y and whilst egg production has slowed a little they still show the dusck a clean pair of heels,

The Autumn higlight so far though is Jupiter. I finally worked out what that bright light in the sky was I gave up on my death cult and got out the telescope. It’s only a cheap little thing EmmCee picked up in a charity shop but with little fiddling we got a decent view of Jupiter and more astonishingly could see 4 moons. The Monsters loved this and it was a little bit of a family first.

As I’ve probably promised before I’m going to try and be a little bit more diligent in my posting. We have a few projects in plan Stir Sunday being foremost amongst them but a variety of others too.

Enjoy your Autumn.

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Jubilee Update

So the Jubilee weekend is upon us and life has been all go.

The Terminator has a lovely case of Jubilee chicken pox. The ducks and chickens are producing eggs at a prodigous rate. So far I’ve cooked a BBQ outside on the coals. A pork and aubergine curry accompanied with cauliflower and beetroot curry and home made naan bread. A beef pot roast and home made vanilla ice cream, but not together. That would be horrible.

The A-Bomb prepared a little Jubilee tea party in the living room. The weather took away thoughts of holding it outside. Which included tea cakes, rose infused tea, strawberries and scones.

These were all nice variations on life as normal. But we have also started off a 10 litre batch of elderflower champange. It’s been a long time since we did any home brewing so this is a nice return and hopefully the product will be up to scratch.

There has been a lot of preparation work taking place to get the house tidier and unpack further following our move. We’re hoping to get some substantial jobs done this year including air con in the bedroms and a complete re-wire of the house.

We have some new arrivals in the form of 3.. no! 4.. no! 5 guinea pigs. Which apprently don’t hunt and eat rabbits to my great dissapointment. Other solutions for the rabbit menace may be needed.

I have a new toy, a lovely red tractor and I’ve enjoyed taking it out to mow the paddock. It’s only small 16 hp 3 cyclinder with a flail mower. But it’s easy to use and does the job in keeping the paddock in check until I can get around to making a wildflower meadow out of much of it.

I’ll try and follow some of these up with dedicated posts in the near future.

Tree House for Horrors – part 1

Partially clad treehouse with complete decking

I recently posted about partial completion of a treehouse for my kids, A-Bomb and the Terminator and committed to writing a little more about it. As to how many sections or how long it will take till I write them all, I guess that is dependent on how much I do to the tree house and how long it takes me. But I’m in a good position to describe how I got the basic strucuture up so here it is.

Continue reading “Tree House for Horrors – part 1”

Living La Vida Lockdown

A small monster waving a bit of tree.

So at the time of writing the Great British Lockdown is imminent. The international CoVid-19 pandemic is striking us all and we at Fat Cat’s Patch are no different. A-Bomb and the Terminator have been off school a week already because one of them had a cough. Now schools have closed with no clear view as to when they will open again. So the responsibility has mostly fallen on EmmCee to do some home schooling, which is no easy thing. EmmCee and I are both working from home and our productivity has dropped a fair old bit. Having two children in the house requiring attention tends to do that.

Continue reading “Living La Vida Lockdown”