We’ve made it to November, which means that Spring has not only officially arrived in NZ, it’s almost over!  My cherry trees have shed the last of their blossoms and are now boasting a full display of bright green foliage.

Is it just me, or was this year’s winter a jolly long one?  And we were fortunate enough to miss out on four weeks of it, so I feel a bit naughty grumbling.  We did have our fair share of rain whilst in France though, and overall it was a lot cooler than we had anticipated.  In fact, the weather didn’t really improve that much until we reached the South, and then, oh me oh my, it was glorious!

As the weather here improves, so do the chances of getting work done around the house.

So what’s next for our West Auckland chateau and surrounding quarter acre estate?  Cough.

A new patio is sorely overdue.  Our existing concrete patio is over forty years old and has developed some large cracks in the concrete.  Not the best look for the front entrance of our house, and also probably not the safest (trip hazards and all that).

The plan is to fill in the cracked concrete and then lay wooden decking timber over the top.  This will be in keeping with the main wooden deck a few steps up.  Not very French, but definitely very Kiwi, bro.

I was hoping this could be our new project.  It really should be.  It’s our entrance way, and entrance ways are important.  They say “Haere mai, bienvenue, welcome and please come this way.”

But to be honest, our focus has changed over the last few weeks.

Mine has been somewhat distracted by the desire to build my own stacked stone wall as a border to our front garden.  I loved stone walls prior to France, and now I love them even more.  I’ve watched the You Tube “How To” video (thank you American garden guy) and have been dying to jump into action.  That was until I started looking at the price of rocks.  Hector, they’re expensive!

So after moaning to my gardener-extraordinaire father about my first world problem, he suggested I consider using bricks as an edging.  He even sent me some photos of our old family garden, where he had done a lot of brick edging.  I’d forgotten how much I love bricks – not quite as much as I love stone-stacked walls, but one needs to be sensible.

So, despite my No Buying Only Selling regime, I hopped onto Trade Me and managed to get a whole lot of bricks for $75.  Bargain! They’re old and covered with splodges of mortar – and I love them, each one.  There is a lot of brick cleaning still to be done, but it’s almost a mindfulness exercise – out there in my garden, enjoying the sunshine and the birdsong, chip-chip-chipping away.

Clive doesn’t quite share my love of gardening, and that’s fine by me.  He has many items on his “To Do” list.  But although the patio is still sorely needing attention, our plans have evolved once again.

Whilst once there was talk of adult student boarders (apparently we live too far away from the city), and even school-age student boarders (not so keen to be weekend tour guides when we have a ton of home projects waiting to be done – in the weekends!), we have now moved onto a new idea.  We are working on getting the back half of our house ready to AirBnB.  It can easily be separated off, and turned into a self-contained area.  It even has its own path and entrance way (without any broken concrete!).

New lists have been made and tasks are under way (even as I type).  Our plan is to use what we’ve got now to fund what we want to do in the future.

So as le printemps gives way to l’été, you’ll find us primping and preening our back half, and preparing ourselves to give our new idea a go.  And if you can’t find me doing that, then I’ll probably be under the trees, still chipping away on my precious old bricks.