We spent practically all of last weekend in the garden and it was actually bliss. There’s nothing like a bit of hard slogging outdoors in the sunshine while the kids go feral in the garden, finally rewarding yourselves with the first barbecue of the year.
We had our yearly decking do-over to perform: an arduous task that involves manually scraping off all the green algae (and apparently all the sawdust as a result of the loft conversion works), scrubbing it with decking cleaner (we always use this Ronseal stuff and it’s pretty good), lastly getting on hands and knees with a paint brush and putting on a clear stain of Protek – if you’ve never used it before, it really is top-notch. Once it’s done, it’s protected for the whole year and it’s very satisfying – can you tell I’m about to officially enter ‘midlife’?!
One product that I’ve come across during my quest to get the garden ‘spring cleaned’ was this clever foldable and portable low-pressure washer from Karcher. It’s a genius product – as someone who hates faffing and just wants to get on with the task at hand, I love the fact you just fill it up with water and it’s good to go, plus the fact you can take it anywhere without having to plug it in – we don’t have a driveway, so this would make cleaning the car so much easier and quicker. It’s also ideal for giving the decking that helping hand (high-pressure washing can damage the wood fibres, but low pressure should be fine apparently), plus great for cleaning our huge sliding patio doors and also the kids playhouse and toys. What’s better is we don’t have space to store a bulky pressure washer so I love the fact this one actually folds down for compact storage. It’s a win-win in my book.
We’ve also just invested in a new barbecue – we’ve been hilariously cooking off my parent’s tiny portable Weber barbecue, but it’s not exactly designed for hosting, so we’ve gone for the Weber Master Touch (Martin wanted a classic charcoal barbecue). What we particularly liked is the fact you can buy a gazillion compatible accessories, but my favourite is the Weber pizza stone that simply sits on the barbecue. I’d wanted to buy a pizza oven for ages as the kids and I love making pizzas from scratch but feared that if we bought an expensive Ooni or similar that we just wouldn’t use it, so this feels like a good buy and easy to use (again, quick setups are a must for me).
Our Sainsbury’s sun loungers circa 2018 really had seen better days (the foxes had chewed the foam pads and they’d been somewhat neglected over winter), but the kids adore them so it’s time to finally find a replacement.
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