After a month...

It's now been exactly a month since we moved in to our new home. Can't believe time has gone really fast. A lot of things has happened good and bad --

Good is business still doing well although we would like to get more busy than now and get more work in for the China company. We're also enjoying the feeling of finally living in a house and esp. afternoon breaks in the conservatory.

Bad is the cats has been driving me crazy and have been defecating under the big tree right near our office window! Ugh! Have tried putting lemons, still now use or if there is, they now go through under the gate to come in to our gaden. This morning, I bought a big climbing thorny rose to tie around the big tree and hope to deter the cats from climbing down the tree. Tomorrow we're off to OBI to purchase some wire mesh to cover up the ground and again hope to deter the cats.

Enough of the cat saga...

Having Simon home all the time is still a bit strange. It feels like he's on an extended vacation from the office. For me, nothing changes since I still have work to do and household matters to sort out. We talked about going around Shanghai on a bicycle and now thinking of really learning how to ride one though I may need to get them 'trainers' first. I know, it is embarassing telling friends that I don't know how to ride a bike!

... continued.....

Having a garden to finally putter about is actually a lot of work. Ended up at the nursery on Saturday and bought some flowers and ornamental grasses. The weather has fortunately held up even with the forecast of rain over the Labor Day holiday. So took the chance to do a lot of planting and clearing up. A gardener came to help cut the grass and do some bits around the yard.

And now with rain and rain forecast up until tomorrow, a lot fo clearing up is needed once again as the tree in the yard has been dropping its leaves on the yard! I've already done a lot of clearing up this morning and had to do another one this afternoon.

One of the setbacks of living in this new house is the way the conservatory has been designed and built. Not very good actually. A lot of leaks, damp areas, and above all constant clearing up fallen leaves off the gutter. We learned a lesson a couple weekend ago when we had water all over our hallway and some in the conservatory when water in the gutter was blocked due to a lot of leaves clogging the drain! What a mess!

Anyway, after all the hard work, the garden is starting to look nice. Just can't wait until the seedlings have grown more... the giant sunflowers I sowed last week is doing really great! Hopefully after tomorrow we will be blessed with some warm weather again...

I've taken photos of the garden before and after which I will upload shortly... :-)

Settling in

Unpacking takes quite a lot of time. We are on our second week in the new house and still not finished unpacking. The first week was flurry of activities - work-related and also trying to get some things organized in the house. Troublesome of all was getting internet connection at the new address; I had to go to the telcom office about 4 times before we actually got connected! There were several issues that had to be resolved... In any case, I am pretty confident that we will have our home all sorted out by the end of this week after a trip to Ikea and the antique furniture shop.

To top it all, I had the garden all revamped and it was a lot of trouble because the company I hired was not living up to the professional standard I was expecting from them. Now that the garden is all done, I need to start planting seeds... or probably buy some potted plants and flowers first while the seeds are germinating.

One thing I dread is the cats in the neighborhood. They are not house-trained and have been using the garden as their loo! Knock-on-wood they have not made that mistake since the garden has been revamped. Now I am in desperate search for stuff to repel cats!

There will be some new photos soon....