Out, out, OUT...!

Yes, I want to spend all my waking hours outdoors now, 

quietly ignoring the needs and musts of normal life... 

How can you stay in, when the sky is so hypnotically blue!?!

I have not shown the exterior of our house for some time, 

so above is a photo of the back of our house, 

taken from behind the pond, just behind the scruffy, old fence.

And there we have it, the scruffy, flaking, in-quite-a-sorry-state fence... behind our frog-infested pond. I am amazed the fish have not signed a petition yet to have the loud jumpers evicted, both on account of noise level and spawn extravaganza, but they all seem to live in perfect pond harmony...

Our house is a semi-detached and the window to the very left, just above the conservatory to the left, is part of our neighbours' house. And no, our house is not The Leaning Tower of Pisa, as it appears in the image below. I am afraid blame will here be cast on the photographer... Next on the agenda is to get rid of the "motorway" running down the middle of the garden...

Wishing you all sun, suN and SUN...

...and a lovely Easter weekend!

Helena

Don't judge the book by the cover...

Good morning, dear blog readers.

Some of you have expressed a curiosity about what our house looks like from the outside, so today I thought I would step outside and invite you to join me.

Our house is from the early part of the Victorian era (ca 1850), built in the local Bath stone. It is a semi-detached, i e, we share one wall with another house. The front of the house (below) is a little deceptive, as, over the years, the house has been extended at the back. In the picture above, taken from the garden at the back of the house, our house is to the right of the chimneys on the first and second floor, and includes the conservatory on the ground floor, and of course the recent extension with the arched doors.

When you travel through the UK, you notice how the exterior of the houses change, as the building material, particularly in old properties, will depend on what stone can be found in the local soil of each area. Around here, Bath stone is the most prevalent, with its beautiful, softly sand-coloured hue, but you only have to go a few miles south of here to see the majority of houses built in red brick. Coming from the land of wood, I am slowly beginning to love the stone here. There is something very solid about it.

I might even go as far as to say that - oh, do forgive me the appalling pun - stone rocks.