Optimism II

You might remember the chook pen garden?

Things have progressed.

The self-sewn tomatoes have teensy fruit on them.  They're unlikely to ripen - it simply won't be warm enough for long enough, but you have to admire the spirit of the plants.
The pumpkins are about to flower, but they're all male flowers.  Regardless, they do provide rather good protection for all the leafy greens around them.

The sunflowers, also, are unlikely to flower, but this one has an interesting mutation.

Little tarts

Marmalade Cottage didn't have any citrus when the Reinventors moved in.

Now it has tangeloes

which make sublime marmalade, and grapefruit

which would make good marmalade, but the Practical Reinventor eats them all fresh.

The perfect thing.

There's been some decluttering at Marmalade Cottage of late.

The Practical Reinventor is thoroughly sick of the 1930s furniture that came with the house.  It's lovely Art Moderne, but too modern for a lady of 1917, who's more suited to Art Nouveau, or at a pinch Art Deco.

So it was out with this:

Which is a fairly large sideboard that had seen better days.  There had been plans to sand it back and revarnish...

Anyway, the Creative Reinventor's mum was delighted to load it up, take it to her workshop and lavish the shabby chic treatment on it.

In its place we have this:

A very simple telephone table with storage - that little drawer and a box under the seat.

And this detail:

Much more appropriate to the era of the house.  Also not in perfect condition, so it fits in beautifully.

Every house should have one!

In a spontaneous act of... spontenaity, the reinventors picked up a pizza and a bottle of plonk and went to see an outdoor movie.

Paddington.

It's so terribly English, with rather lovely quirks and some pretty amusing CGI.  Nicole Kidman is completely wooden as the baddie, but you can ignore her.

Best of all, it features marmalade, and in a big way.

Every house should have a marmalade day every year.  Perhaps even more than one.