lazy bones

 
Lucky Henry Cat. He has a lovely, lazy, pampered life. We expect nothing more from him than to enjoy his life and let us love him. If he can not wee on the floor it's a bonus, but if he does, oh well.

How I would have loved to have spent the weekend like this, but no such luck. As always, we had a date with the dump on Saturday. I have to say that the staff at the Ipswich Recycling Centre (as it's called these days rather than the dump, but old habits die hard) are superb. They are so friendly and helpful that they make it an enjoyable experience. Years ago it was the opposite and I hated it when we needed to take stuff there, but now it's such a good experience that it has spurred us on and we have continued with our best purge ever.

A while back I mentioned that I wanted the Fairy Tower to go. It hadn't been used as a playhouse for years, and despite my intentions, I never sat in there with a magazine on a hot day. Instead it was nothing more than a cat hotel, mainly for Oscar, a neighbours cat. He would sleep in there and shelter from the rain. With it starting to go rotten at the base it really was time to take a deep breath and knock it down.

The Fairy Tower has been shown many times over the years, so I'll spare you from another photo. Instead I'll show you how the garden looks without it. Bill spent time yesterday putting our own homemade compost on the ground to help build up the level and nourish the soil, then put back the teeny bench with a blanket and arranged the Fuchsias around it. Eventually we'll get some proper planting done, but for now this looks adorable.
With all the bits of wood and rubble from demolition, the front garden was once more full of rubbish. So ...... we're off to the dump again today. We'd already booked an appointment for this coming Saturday, but we thought we'd see if we could get in today and there was availability. Slightly surprising as it's a Bank Holiday and you'd think it might have been fully booked.
It's good to not only see the Fairy Tower gone, but know that in just a couple of hour from writing this, all traces will have left the garden. We've kept the Saturday appointment as I've decided that I can get rid of some more stuff in the garage, including one of the storage solutions. Violet laments that we are turning into minimalists, and getting rid of 'everything', but that's not true. We are ditching a build up of rubbish from the past 21 of living here, something that's too easy to ignore, but once you actually get stuck in gives such a wonderful feeling.
As for Oscar, don't feel too bad for him. He often sleeps in the greenhouse, and when it's rainy I leave the window open in Mulberry Manor, though to be honest I'm not sure if Mulberry Manor will be around for much longer. I'm enjoying the extra space in the garden, and MM is another unused playhouse that has become nothing but a place to store vases and swimming pools.