HUZZAH - our living room no longer looks like the opening frame of a Hoarders episode!

Oh dear - Paul is shocked and horrified at the size of my craft supplies stash. The stash now jumbled into ten large Simply Useful plastic storage boxes (yes, the brand is expensive - worth it and bonus: Homebase is closing the store in Dundee and we got the boxes at something like 35% off) and two file folder sized Simply Useful boxes for a total of 12 boxes of crafting material.

And I have a use for every single item in those boxes - and now I've got it all into boxes I can -

1-spend the winter sorting the boxes back into the organised system I had before Paul decided in the moving process I was wasting space so he un-packed my organised and labelled boxes and re-packed the lot before the removals team arrived. SOB - doing so, he scattered it all from one end to the other - grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! So I will be spending the winter sorting it all back out again. dammit

2 - get going on my craft stall. I realised a while back I love to make things - useful, needful things that happen to be pretty at the same time. It took Paul nearly eight years to come around to the realisation that needful things can be functional AND beautiful. He sees that now and is mildly enthusiastic about my crafting addiction. And BONUS: now he understands other people think my needful things are the bee's knees and will (GASP) pay money to own those needful things, he's happy to load the motor with my stock to drive me to car boot fairs and local craft markets.

3 - order MY shed! Yes, the shock of seeing how much 'stuff' I have to use for making needful things prompted Paul to decide he needs me to have my own storage shed. Less than a third of the size of 'his', it should be here in two weeks and the neatly stacked craft materials boxes can go out of the corner of the living room into the craft materials storage shed. He's not especially thrilled to be ordering yet another shed but he's feeling marginally better about the size (and prospective use) of the stash...

***SIDEBAR MOMENT*** Thing is, (and I did tell him this yesterday), most other men with wives who have craft supplies stashes will ask him 'Dude, wth is your problem - my wife's stash is like 20 times your wife's, and we've only been married two years!'. Which of course he WAS asked/told by other husbands/partners last night. Online. At his F1 chat group site in the 'off-topic lounge' area. He also found out from the other men that most of their spouses refuse to part with any of their stash, even to make and sell - but the men with canny spouses say the 'egg money' the ladies generate with their crafting is rather good. So now he's more on-board with the money-making aspects of crafting. 

I came to the realisation that I will always feel driven to be making things but at this point I've pretty well made all the needful things for our actual home, too. So the final realisation was I could make more needful things AND THEN SELL THEM TO PEOPLE WHO LIKEWISE APPRECIATE BEAUTIFUL NEEDFUL THINGS!

On a somewhat different note, Paul whacked down the weeping willow in the postage stamp garden under my kitchen window to the left of the front door. I'm reasonably sure the previous owners were promised (meaning they were lied to) that the little weeping willow start was a dwarf variety and would never present a problem. HA.

That thing was ginormous by the time we took possession of this cottage. Clearly the former owner would whack it to the ground every year and by the end of summer the thing would re-grow to around six foot high with copious branches weeping onto the common path sporting full sized foliage making it obvious the tree is of the 'I'm gonna grow OVER your rooftop when you stop whacking me to the ground ever year' variety.

Oh. It's a weeping willow, btw - SO THE ROOTS ARE SECURELY AND STUBBORNLY WRAPPED AROUND THE DRAINS FOR THREE HOUSES THAT RUNS RIGHT THROUGH MY FRONT GARDEN!

I feel like a murderess but we've nailed copper nails into the 10in stump+poured some drain pipe safe root poison down the middle of the stump as well. It's gotta go but digging it out at this stage of development isn't on according to the professional advice we took (plumber, gas company, water company, tree surgeon). They gave us advice I was dreading to hear but is what we've done with the nails and poison - the roots will die and decay, falling away from the pipes without needing to be dug out.

I really felt horrible about that willow. Flourishing Weeping Willow Trees are a gift from the garden faeries - by removing it we're in effect snubbing their gift. YIKES!

And I also feel horrible about the camellia also inappropriately placed, this plant in the back garden - again badly placed - right next to a thick concrete slab (originally placed by the council to be a bin storage pad) AND an auxiliary drain, ffs - how many drains are there running through our plot?!

Here's where I confess I am a three-state (USA) Master Gardener - fully trained and certified in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia - so I knew just by looking there was no hope in trying to dig that camellia out for transplanting to a more appropriate spot - the root ball was going to be so small I would have had to prune the drip line and top down to such a shocking degree there simply was no hope of the plant surviving the horror. Camellias are not good transplant candidates under the best circumstance and these are not the best so again, Paul whacked the thing to the ground level and we spiked it. Sniffle. I was now even more convinced we'd brought down the wrath of the garden faeries on us...

Still, we soldiered on getting the cottage and gardens ready for winter (which is trying SO hard to arrive way early - we had sleet and ice at the end of last week lasting, well, still lasting.). Planning for the crafts shed this weekend included clearing (raking off debris, and removing a trellis I knew was rotted timber under the soil level) the space - AND WHAT DID WE FIND RIGHT WHERE THE CRAFTS SHED IS TO BE PLACED???!!!

Two, count 'em, two, holly bush starts! One is barely 6in high and the other about 18in - and both small enough and well placed for digging out and putting into pots! Pots we have already!

We're hoping finding those two starts is a sign the garden faeries understand in proper land management, one must occasionally sacrifice a few to save the many.

Now, here's a thing. Before we moved into this cottage we were informed the property had never been named so the option was open to us should we choose to take it up.

I love holly, have since childhood (Paul is indifferent) and knowing I wanted to make lots of needful Christmassy things to sell, I immediately began pushing the name 'Holly House' or 'Holly Cottage'. Paul was not enthusiastic.

Until we found the holly starts. The name has gone into consideration, once we decide between 'house' or 'cottage', the name goes to the council and Royal Mail for inclusion to our postal details.