I think our garden is probably at its best at this time of year, although this photo doesn't really does it justice. The lavender and rosemary have filled out nicely, and that part of the garden looks lush and colourful, and the bees are having a great time. 

Other bits of the garden have been looking a little, well, dry. I don't water the garden as a rule, which means that sometimes it looks a little neglected.

​Not any more though. I've spent the last two days out there, weeding, pruning, and lopping the unweildy willow hedge.  

An elderly neighbour stopped today and said 'is that bamboo? It sure can grow!' No, but if you look closely you can see a small ash tree growing (needless to say, it's not growing any more). I've been to the tip with garden prunings twice in the last two days, which is quite impressive given the tininess of our garden. 

I've spent a good deal of time clearing out the profusion of containers that had multiplied on our little terrace. 

Dead plants have gone, weeds have been evicted, home made compost has been added, and topped up with leftovers from redundant and broken tubs that have been discarded. Today I ambled round the garden centre and bought an array of autumn flowering bedding plants, herbs and perennials and spent a happy hour potting them all up. I've even watered them with plant food, which is something I've never used before. They might just live. 

Of course, you can't see the results of all this activity as it was going dark by the time I finished, but hopefully there will be some plants that have escaped the ravages of slugs and snails and I'll be able to take a photograph or two in the coming days. 

So now the outside of the house is ready to sell - it's just waiting for the inside to catch up... 

Last week, a friend and I abandoned the office and took our work out into the countryside for our own little writing retreat. Writing is something we need to do as part of our jobs, but we sometimes struggle to make time and headspace for it in the rough and tumble of a normal day.

However, we're very fortunate that some aspects of our work can be done anywhere, with a laptop and occasional access to the internet. We're also very fortunate that our bosses have no interest in the 'bums on seats' model of working, and are quite happy for us to be anywhere we like, as long as we get things done.

And so last week we booked ourselves into a youth hostel, and spent three days doing nothing but writing, occasionally surfacing to compare progress over a cuppa, and spending our evenings making food and wandering the local lanes.  

I confess it did feel quite like a holiday. The surroundings were beautiful, we had the room to ourselves for some of the time, and we had plenty of evening and break times to just hang around. There were enough public rooms in the hostel that we weren't in anyone's way (and most people were out in the sunshine all day anyway). 

It had never occurred to me before to go away to work. I do appreciate a change of scene, and will often take myself off to do a specific piece of work in a cafe, or a library, or a park, but I've never retreated like this for several days. We'll definitely do it again. I'm wondering what else I can turn into a retreat.

We're back to reality again now, although with a four day long weekend we're being broken in gently. I'll have house and garden progress to report in the coming days... 

This week, I threw my hands up in the air and declared we were never going to move unless we made A List. 

A big list, of all the things we have left to do to the house (and garden) before we can put it on the market. All the things we have left to do, to be accurate, before 26th September, which is our (self-imposed) deadline.

We sat in a cafe and wrote down everything we could think of. We were there for a long time. 

I put everything into a spreadsheet (it may surprise you to know that I'm rather a fan of spreadsheets, as long I can use lots of colours). We allocated names to each task and allocated tasks to one of the next five weeks. Then we printed our list and put it on the kitchen wall (where it will stay until week four, when we're due to do something to make those cupboard doors less hideous). 

Hmm. You can see why we're not quite as calm as we might be at the minute. Most of the contents of the bathroom are in the bedroom. Half the contents of the bedroom are in the attic. Someone appears to have emptied a skip into the spare bedroom. We're in an odd mix between old and new colour schemes, so at the minute royal blue and gold door frames sit jarringly against putty grey and soft cream walls. Washing is hung up wherever it will fit, and there hasn't seem much point in hoovering for weeks now. 

Will we make it? You might think it unlikely, but we have A List, and with A List anything is possible. Watch this space... 

This is quite ridiculous. I had to go all the way back to March to find a photograph with a book in - and this is one I didn't even get past the first chapter of! I used to read all the time (apparently as a child I once fell down the stairs because I had my nose in a book), but lately I've found myself wandering around the internet on my phone instead. 

Of course, that has its merits too, but it's really just not the same. 

So I'm trying to get back to reading. I got a book out of the library - and then had to renew it after three weeks because I hadn't started it, and then had to renew it again after another three weeks because I'd only read the first chapter. Not a good start. Only holiday I bought four books in charity shops, and even read one of them (as well as the library book!) but it seems I didn't take a single picture. 

I love reading, but I've never been much of a one for book clubs or talking about books. I never feel I can say the 'right' things, whatever they are. I want to sound intelligent, but often can't get past 'but I really liked it!' This feeling has always put me off talking about reading here until it dawned on me this week that I don't have to say anything at all! What a revelation! I can just tell you what I've been reading, I don't have to provide intelligent analysis and witty commentary. 

So here goes - what I've been reading in August:

Simon Garfield - A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt
A friend bought me this for my birthday. I do love a good diary, especially one set during wartime. I love reading people's accounts of everyday life (which may explain my enthusiasm for reading other people's blogs), although I've never been particularly good at keeping a diary of my own. I confess I didn't really warm to Jean Lucey Pratt at first - she's obsessed with whether she'll be successful, whether she'll find a husband, whether she's doing the right thing or should be doing something else, and her diary contains (I'll be quite honest here) the kind of thing I write when I do try to keep a diary - inner anxieties and vanities and things that are best left unread. However, it seems that Jean did intend her diaries to be read (she mentions it quite frequently...), and, since they start when she is a young teenager and run through until a few weeks before she died sixty years later, by the end I'd become rather fond of her. It made me start thinking about keeping a diary of my own again, but, needless to say, that idea stopped as soon as it started. 

Toni Morrison - A Mercy 
The only other Toni Morrison book I've read is Beloved, which at times I found distressing and quite hard to follow. This was more straightforward, and marginally less distressing, although it's still definitely not a cheerful read. 

Bill Bryson - The Road to Little Dribbling 
I read this with some trepidation - in his previous book about Britain he visited a place a mile from where I grew up and was not very complimentary. However, if he did say anything about my current city I obviously wasn't offended by it as I have no memory of him saying anything at all.

Albert B Robillard - Meaning of a Disability: the Lived Experience of Paralysis 
I started reading this for work, but rapidly found myself drawn in. This is a true account of the author's experience of developing motor-neuron disease, becoming paralysed and losing his speech. The first few chapters deal with his frustrations at medical professionals and acquaintances refusing to communicate with him, which is both distressing and a good lesson for the rest of us. Again, not a particularly cheerful read. 

There, that wasn't so hard, was it? I'd love to hear what you've been reading if you're willing to share. 

The last week or so has been a flurry of outings and goings-on, and it's really felt quite summery. Of course, the decorating has been sorely neglected, but, well, it's not going anywhere. 

I'd quite forgotten that our city centre has a 'seaside' event for the whole summer. We're just about as far as it's possible to get from the coast in Britain (about 75 miles), so each year the city centre takes on a festive air of a seaside town, with a helter skelter, stalls, sand, and an array of stripey deckchairs around the fountains. 

Of course, it's not quite the same as being at the real seaside, but for people with young children, who can't easily travel over to the coast, I think it's a brilliant idea. Much of the entertainment is free, and I imagine if you took a picnic it could be quite a thrifty and fun day out. 

My next bit of summery sunshine came at Idle Valley nature reserve, in Nottinghamshire. I'd not been there before, but I met a friend for lunch and we spent a happy few hours sat in the cafe and wandering around the lake. 

Our next outing was a little longer - we spent a gentle few days staying in Lincolnshire in one of the most fabulously-decorated holiday cottages I've ever encountered.

I must say, it was quite a tonic to be somewhere so colourful, after we've spent some time painting our own house various shades of white. I don't think I've ever stayed anywhere with leopard-print curtains before. 

We spent a few days bimbling around market towns and cycling along little trails. 

On our final day, we were looking for somewhere to eat our picnic, and came across a brass band playing a park by a river. It was really most pleasant, it looked like half the town was there with their folding chairs and flasks of tea. It was all rather unexpectedly cheerful. 

So finally, I feel like I've had a bit of a summer. I'm not quite ready to give it up yet though. There will be more painting, but I have promised myself I'll spend a good bit of time in the garden this weekend. Watch this space... 

This is the current state of our bedroom. I'm posting this so we can look back in a few weeks and laugh. However, the cladding (source of the wood, sawdust and tools covering the floor) is now finished (hooray!) and today we'll be making the room look more like a room again. 

We sleep up those steps, and each night is a perilous traversing of a sea of nails and wooden shards to get into bed. But no longer! We will sleep in (relative) comfort and luxury like normal people for a while. 

Elsewhere the house is in a similar level of chaos. 

But slowly we make progress, although you might not think it from those pictures. I'm in a flurry of painting at the minute, and it's actually starting to make a difference to how the place looks. 

Yesterday I ventured outside for half an hour, and tried to shield my eyes from the shrivelled destruction littering the garden. Barely any flowers, plants dried up, soil bare and grey. Oh dear! 

I'm going to get back out there again this afternoon and see what I can do to make it look better. I fear there's no hope for the apple tree, which after several years of growing and growing has finally managed to produce a couple of apples - which I have killed through lack of watering. 

I'm so cross! I grafted this tree myself and it was just a twig when I brought it home. I've nurtured it in a pot in the garden for about four years now, and finally, finally we get apples, and I cause them to die! Aarrgghh! I have fed and watered the tree but have no idea whether it will recover. Fingers crossed. 

There's still a little place to sit though, even if it is surrounded by Things That Need Doing. I ate both dinner and tea out there yesterday and started to rekindle my love for being outside in this little space. I just need to get out there a bit more often. 

Not right now though. I'm off back upstairs to paint the landing ceiling. Just as soon as I've finished this cup of tea. 

We're not having a big holiday this year, but we have managed to sneak away for a day or two, here and there, to visit friends or new places. 

Last weekend we disappeared up into the Welsh hills for a birthday party.  The house is alone, at the end of a long gravel track leading up a hill. I found myself dreaming of living somewhere like that myself (although I admit living in a different country is not really very practical for getting to work). 

Coming back to urban reality was a bit of a nuisance after all that space and quiet. 

But as my mum always said, if you don't go home, then you can't come back, and there are, as ever, things to do. The bathroom looks more and more like a bathroom with each passing day. 

I've painted that plaster today, but it still looks patchy and needs a third coat. That green wall on the left is proving somewhat problematic as well (no surprises there). 

I'm off work again this week, so hoping to get a good deal done in the house. I even ventured out into the garden today, and was met with shrivelled, brown disasters everywhere I looked. Hmm. It's been warm today but once the sun goes behind the houses this evening I'll be out there, trying to salvage what I can and make it look a bit tidier. 

I'll be posting progress reports this week as I'm in need of a bit of encouragement - hope to have a nearly-finished bathroom to show you very soon...