Brightening up of the Weather, Major Gardening Works, Cottage Refurbishment

After several days of damp grey gloom there is at last blue sky appearing this morning for which much rejoicing.

There has been great activity here over the last few days with major works going on around Elder Son's cottage. The great thing about having boys who own diggers & other useful machinery is that when landscaping work has to be done we can just get on with it.
 Elder Son & KT have decided to remove a somewhat tangled shrubbery and make a larger lawn for their baby daughter to have a safe play area so I spent most of Thursday replanting large shrubs and other plants in a cleared raised bed and fortunately they do all seem to be surviving the transplants well. I guess the damp cool weather has helped. Once everything is finished it is going to look very good and should be easier for KT to maintain.

I have been busy also with refurbishing elements of the holiday cottage (http://www.penyrallt.co.uk/) while  it has been empty for a couple of weeks before the mass of summer visitors start to arrive this week.
I have had a new carpet laid in the bedrooms, a new sofa, rugs, lampshades and have made new curtains for one bedroom & the bathroom. It is all looking very good and comfortable. The new carpet is lovely...I just hope I don't regret my decision to allow dogs in the cottage once more! I do ask people not to let their dogs in the bedrooms but short of putting a gate across the small passage to the bedrooms it is difficult, though most of our visitors are very good about the small house-rules.
As well as putting new furnishings in the cottage it does also act as my overflow book storage, hence the over-filled bookcases and books attractively placed in the bedrooms in lieu of any other decorative items (I don't really 'do' ornaments) and after all 'books do furnish a room'.This use of the cottage is justified however when on occasion I have guests arrive who walking into the sitting room say thing like, 'Oh, how lovely, lots of books!' or 'I needn't have brought a bag of books with me!'  I make an effort to put in really good childrens books and we have had requests from children (& grown-ups) on the day of departure to take a book home with them to finish. Also books are left behind, including some written in Dutch, which is useful as we get at least one  family from Holland  each year.