Tuesday, September 01, 2009

3:15 project - six month update

Kathleen C. in her comment on Sunday's post suggested I show a "before and after" photo. This is definitely in the nature of a "before and during" photo; there's still a lot to do; but a recent conversation with a friend about different ways of working reminded me that generally, I'm really quite bad at living in the moment (yesterday afternoon's lovely couple of hours knitting and cat-wrangling-for-my-pattern was an exception), and also quite bad at looking back on a job and thinking about it as a whole; so I thought it might be a nice idea.

I also realised that Sunday's general photo (the one I started out calling the Abomination of Desolation shot) had been taken from a different angle to previous ones - I'd been standing on the patio, rather then next to it, so you didn't get the whole of the patio table - which is a much better idea from a photographic point of view, but wasn't what I started off doing, because the patio was way too slimy to enjoy standing on.

So I went out when I got home tonight and took a picture from as near the same angle I could, given that the first few weeks were taken with the little camera which has a slightly different picture ratio...

Here's where it was on March 1...


and this is the view on September 1. Some of the difference is obviously that it's summer; but a lot of it is hard graft.


And it's anyone's guess how dreadful it might have looked next March if I'd just let it go again this year... I hope the one-year shot will be even more dramatic.

And speaking of dramatic, this is what it looked like at the other side of the house 20 minutes after taking the photo above...

It's showering a little bit... All a bit film noir... Completely unadulterated by Photoshop etc., but I have a gold voile curtain instead of traditional lace/nets, which helps...

On a completely different tack, I heard an item on the news this evening about the service at St Paul's commemorating WW2 evacuees - all those people just a little bit older than my parents (who grew up in relatively rural areas) wearing their labels and gas-masks... Seeing someone like Michael Aspel with his luggage-label pinned to the lapel of his smart suit was almost unbearably moving. I wonder if anyone's ever done any mass research on those 3.5 million children to see how much the experience of evacuation changed their lives.

6 comments:

Daisy said...

After various house moves I learnt to take a photo of the house covered in boxes so that I then had something to compare it to later on when unpacking was complete but I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere! Your garden looks amazing.

Anonymous said...

The garden shots look truly impressive! Well done!

We've officially started spring yesterday here in the southern hemisphere and my daffodils are looking glorious despite the bouncings of two small dogs and my sheer and utter neglect because I'm too busy blogging and reading and knitting and spinning, to actually get out there and work.

There's actually an old farm house at Molong near here (rural central west NSW,Australia) called 'Fairbridge Farm', which received lots of British child evacuees during the second world war. David Hill, an ABC personality here, has written a book about his experiences there.

stash haus said...

Quite an improvement in the garden!

Many thanks for the link on the service at St. Paul's. I often forget to check in with bbc.co.uk and this was a heartbreakingly interesting story.

I can't imagine being that young and being placed with strangers for years. Or being a parent whose child is evacuated. 3.5 million. It staggers the mind.

Lydia said...

love the garden shots, and my mom was one of those children sent out from london during wwii, i'd say it's made her a stronger person.

Kathleen C. said...

Oh yes! What a marked difference! You should feel quite pleased and proud of all that work.
The stories of the child evacuees are known to us here in the US mostly as a sideline to other,rather fun, tales... such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks. These types of fare never show the difficulties...

Anonymous said...

Amazing improvement - you shoud be very pleased!

Melissa x