April Garden and Home Round up 2019. Dubai and the UK.

It's been raining in Dubai in April, we've never experienced this much rain there over such a long period of time. It started raining in February and I think since then we've only had 1 full week without it.

This has meant the indoors has looked like this most days as we drag everything in when the rain starts again.

The temperature at this time of year is perfect though (when it's not raining) for sitting in the garden, leaving the doors wide open, walks and swimming in the sea.

However with a change of seasons comes the sand. It's in the air, the rain and gets everywhere. Coupled with the rain it's been harder to clean up as it sets like concrete and with the weather being so varied it's involved sweeping up outside everyday, cleaning the cars daily and sweeping piles of it out the house daily.

The garden has been prepared now for summer, pruned, weeded, lawn re seeded (Bob does like to dig) Just the climbers to continue training and a bit of lawn edging to keep up with.

The garden furniture is weather resistant between -20c and 50c. It was purchased in South Africa where winter temps do drop to below zero in Johannesburg where it's at altitude. The umbrella will be stored indoors as the last one disintegrated after 8 years and every year Peter strips the wood back and repaints it.

Soft furnishings just live by the dining room door so we can grab them as we go in and out and in a funny way feels like we have a bit of the outdoors inside.

There's been a bit of colour added to the house to try and tone down the reds, but only in the form of a sprig or two of artificial yellow flowers.

The summer will drive us indoors soon, but having created this welcoming space on the mezzanine, it'll give us a change of scenery in the evenings and weekends.

We were in the UK last week and loved the bank holiday weather which was very similar to how Dubai has been the past few weeks.

I'm not back in Dubai for long. May sees me travel to South Africa and in June I'm back in the UK, before heading off to Australia in July and back to the UK in August. The dog and the cat will be spending more time in boarding while Peter also travels with work. Walking the dog at this time of year is difficult, so there will be play parks for him to enjoy, until the rain comes again at the end of the year.