Our goose is cooked

Well, we've celebrated our second Christmas here at Cumulus with roast goose.  As it was just the two of us here for Christmas Day, we are now looking forward to a January comprised of goose curry, goose risotto, goose au vin, steak surprise (the surprise is that it's actually goose).  Tonight it's going to be goose noodle soup.
On the garden front, a Christmas thank-you to John and Paula for augmenting the orchard with a Badsey Peach, and to Marcus and Penny who have supplied not only a mixed juniper shrubbery but also some liquid juniper product to toast it in its new home.  Today some of the slabs on the west patio which were just fouling the bottom of the bifold doors have been lifted and replaced (we hope) slightly lower down.  There have been a couple of frosts and some rain since the earth was topped up over the gabions, so hopefully it's settled a bit and once the soil is a little less frozen I can replant everyone made homeless - they're all in temporary digs in trays in the greenhouse.

One Year Out!!!

Happy Anniversary Cumulus - we moved in a year ago today. 
Small celebration with posh claret and nibbles then venison. Yum!!


Note the tasteful Christmas decorations (not) and the cake tin which contains a marzipanned but not iced cake, tasteful icing to follow (not).

Obelisk*

*...
Early in the spring, we decided on a design of obelisk we wanted.  But we couldn't find one like that anywhere, so we bought some steel, cut it to length and bent it up.  Then my plans for welding rather got put on hold but this week Peter kindly did the business for us.  Here's the bits and the jig (of course there was a jig - I'm a professional...) and below work in progress

 Here is a finished article more or less in situ:




Below is the first of two dumpy bags of soil being delivered for the gabion rectification work after the gabion fill settled leaving airholes below the plantings.  You can see in the pic that all the plants that were along the top of the gabions are temporarily on their hols elsewhere while the builders remove the landscape material from above the mesh and top up the holes below with soil - Monday's job along with some internal draught exclusion work.

Roll away the stones

One thing for sure - the soil where I'd remade the pond edges was definitely firm enough to put down the underlay yesterday - it was frozen solid as it plummeted to -7C the night before last.  We laid the underlay out - me in my socks so as not to get any mud onto the newly laid fabric - result = cold toes.  Then: how to lay the 7mx6m liner without dislodging the underlay but ensuring it goes right down into all the corners and with sufficient overlap at the edges?  We rolled the liner up from each edge towards the middle, put the ensuing sausage parallel to the patio down into the contour of the pool and then unrolled it back towards the sides.  Then we rolled the edges back under the underlay to try to stop any stones rolling down between the liner and underlay.  The simple instructions in the pond book 'weight down the edges and ease them as you fill the pond' miss two really key points.  Firstly, you can't do that if you have a bog garden as well as the main pond.  And secondly, we haven't dared put any water in it - last night was even colder, nearly -8C this morning.  You can see the frost on the liner!  So when it thaws we'll put a bit of water in the main pond and tuck the corners tidily, then let it fill up over the rest of the winter. We'll pump the bog garden (on the near right) out into the main pond to check and set the main pond levels, then fill and set the bog garden level - it will drain out of the back (back right corner in pic) into a rock-filled sump.  Two pipes - one near the patio, one at the far side - allow water between the two sections.  Sounds like a plan, eh?

The gliders are snoozing in the garage but time flies...

A year ago today the builders were laying the oak flooring and tiling the utility room, and we were worrying about whether or not we really WOULD be in for Christmas.  Now our worry is about whether the pond will dry out enough to line and fill before next summer...
Today I've harvested the first of the jerusalem artichokes (thanks to JP) and continued to plant up the shrubbery behind the greenhouse after a very successful raid on the 'reduced' section at Longstock nurseries yesterday...

Tidy!

Well, that bit of design worked then😊

Both gliders tidy and snug pending the next flying day or CofA.  I might post a time-lapse series of them coming out and going back into the trailers, it was a bit wolf/sheep/cabbage at times...

 


 

And the trailers are tidily tucked next to the hedges in the veg garden.

Like buses!!...

...you wait three weeks for a blog post and then two come along all at once.  For the answer to 'how long will the weather hold?' see below. 


 While I've been working on the pond, Alan's been busy making a path from the patio down past the greenhouse so we can get down to the stableyard on hard standing.
<<Here is is finished


 

So... - the answer is 'not quite long enough'.

We bought the pond liner yesterday but there's still a small amount of setting out to do - the left-hand top edge isn't quite in the right place yet. And this is what happened today:

Ah well!

How long will the weather hold?

Since our return from hols I've been frantically working on the pond to try to get it done before the weather breaks.  You've previously seen the roughed-out hole in the ground, but of course when it comes to where the edges need to be and sorting out the levels, there turns out to be a lot of work in getting it from rough to fine!  This is exacerbated by the fact that we have designed a pond-and-bog-garden combo with flagstoned edges round the pond - so there's a mid-rib in the whole thing which needs to be set exactly at the top water level all along.  See levelling device:

Happily the until yesterday we'd not had a frost and so I've been doing this with the flowerbed looking lovely.  The cosmos was very late coming into flower - you can just see one dark plant with one flower which opened on 1 Nov...



This is what it all looked like on the afternoon of 2 Nov, but sadly overnight the frost took out the cosmos and the nasturtiums. 

The candytuft (I think that's what the white stuff is!) and other hardy stuff is carrying on - and still smells delicious.

Good Gourd!

JP who came to visit last week pronounced himself rather disappointed by the size of my melons, so instead here is a picture of my delicious Potimarron chestnut squashes...

Meanwhile external works are continuing apace - Alan has excavated the footings for the path from the house past the greenhouse towards the stables; I have built two of the three bays of the main compost heap.  The third awaits my clearing several hundredweight of flints and slate pieces.  The slate was reclaimed from the broken bits left over after roofing and doesn't yet have a home/use, but hopefully most of [this pile of] the flint will vanish under the new path - if any reader needs any flint, we are prepared to sell at very reasonable prices.

 

Ginger Spice

Well done Tim - it is indeed part of the Ginger harvest - obvious in the pic here - never done ginger before, it didn't do much above ground but was yummy in last night's stir-fry:
Below is the start of Chateau Cumulus thanks to Kristina. 

And here we have some of the Mara des Bois which are like alpine strawberries but 2" across and are everbearers, along with some of the Badsey peaches which having lived in the same pot for the last 15 years are not 2" across any more.  I at the raspberry (there was just the one) before I took the pic.  Delicious on our morning muesli.  I think the new year plans will include a new peach so if any of the Badsey contingent are watching, please note the hopeful request...

Quiz of the day

What's this then?

Looks like something that might be crawling around somewhere nasty in Dr Who, I reckon.  Guesses?

A View to a Hill

We swapped the spectacularly good views from our holiday cottage in the Eden Valley for this also-rather-splendid view - the gaps filled in while we were away and it's starting to look like a garden rather than a number of plants plonked into mud.  The pic below doesn't really do justice to the flowers but does remind us why we bought this plot.  I haven't spotted any slow worms or lizards living in the gabions yet, but I bet the word is getting round...

The Michaelmas daisies from Pat and Judy are doing exceedingly well - this pic doesn't really convey the range of outrageous magenta hues or the buzzing of the bees, and a number of butterflies got camera-shy and vanished as I clicked the shutter.  But the daisies are definitely the current stars of the show. As are the schizostylis from Pete in the foreground above.  And the nasturtiums.  And the cheap annual seeds from LIDL.  Thank you all....

More restrained to the eye but a sumptuous feast for the nose (if indeed noses can feast) is Blush Noisette, strategically placed on the north wall so that when the bifold doors are open the house is filled with the scent of roses.  Currently only a couple of feet high, by this time next year she will probably fill that bit of wall.  Now I need to get the welding done on the obelisks so I can get the other climbing roses and clematis into position...

Hedghogs in our gutter!

Here is Alan modelling the latest fashion in drain-blockage prevention.  Why do they call this a Hedgehog when it's clearly a Boa? 

Here it is nesting safely in the gutter - we hope this will stop the gutter filling up with walnuts. Mind you, the squirrel seems to be having a fair go at dealing with the walnuts her/himself...

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Well, in fact our days haven't been lazy at all - we've been so tied up that I see that we haven't posted an update for over a month. So here's a quick trot through what's happened since. 

This is the first tomato to emerge from the greenhouse a few weeks ago... as as for the cucumbers, beans and lettuce, we're in serious glut.  Beans are a particular issue as next door have gone away instructing us to pick theirs as well, so we've spent several hours in the last few days trying to wrestle them into submission.  Alan has pickled, I have blanched and frozen.

The garden is starting to fill out and look a bit greener, even the grass is mostly green now (on both sides of the fence).  No horses in the paddock at present - there are rumours that the stud farm is closing / changing hands - doubtless we will find out at some point.  What's not a rumour sadly but a fact, is that our neighbours down the road have put in a planning application to build a new house on their garden - ie between us and them.  If it goes through as per the current design, our house will be shaded by the new house for about half of the year and the vegetable garden will be affected nearly all year.  They are trying to fit a family house onto a small plot - it's nearly all house and no garden, and is in fact a higher roofline than all the other houses around it.  The village is up in arms about the proposal for a number of reasons, overdevelopment and groundwater flooding being just two amongst many others, so we're not alone in our concerns. 
But who can predict the outcome of the planning process?  We have made our objection and will just have to wait and see what transpires.

Meanwhile, our lovely neighbours at the top of the hill celebrated being in the village for 25 years yesterday.  We partied wildly till it ended at 9pm - they're our kind of people! - and we've been recovering from that for most of today.
This afternoon I've finally found time to plant the trachelospermum that Fiona and Simon brought us when they came to visit.  It's already delighting the patio with a heady almondy scent, so think how good it's going to be when it's properly settled in.

What do you do on the hottest day (if you're a boy!)?

It's 32C in the shade as I write and Charlie and Alan decided to have the biggest bonfire possible.  Of course.  It was the remains of the hedge behind the stable block and made a linear bonfire the entire length of the stable block by about 2m wide and 1.5m high. In some feeble nod to healthandsafety, they do each have a hose in hand and were squirting down everything INCLUDING the bonfire to stop it getting totally out of control.  If any of our gliding friends found the one good thermal of the day just east of Salisbury, I think I know why...

We've fitted vine eyes and wire to the top fence, so all the climbers that are there now have somewhere to scramble, and I can start to buy some other chaps to fill the rest of it.



And finally on the right are two views of stuff in flower to prove that there is at least some.  In fact things are coming on nicely, although it's all a bit still things-stuck-in-bare-earth-ish in places.  I think 'lush' is going to have to wait for September, or perhaps even next year.  Although the beans are definitely going for it, so veg plot pics will follow.

Is this the dawning of the Age of Aquarius!?

Yesterday I plumbed the big (1000l) water stillage into the stable roof gutter - although the plan is to reroof the stables and demolish the end two (probably), I thought it was maybe worth putting it in place to collect at least some water.  Today I bought a normal 200l waterbutt and popped it under the greenhouse downpipe. 

Now, you might think that would guarantee a drought for the next few months, but here's as fitted at 7pm last night >



< and here's 4pm this afternoon when we seem to have collected nearly 300l...

High summer indeed...










The gabion wall now has a bed along the top...

(see the proto-lavender-hedge, the trailing geraniums and the alpines, all of whom should love the sunny, dry (hah!) conditions.  Although we may need to replant as the guys put landscape material to retain the earth on top of the gabions, but the stone beneath has settled in places, leaving an air gap which I think we will have to deal with otherwise it will just be too dry)

...and some things which are obviously wallflowers planted in it:

Indoors, Alan has been busy building the workbench.  You will recall how solid we said the staircase is, well, I wouldn't like to bet either way on who would win if it came to a fight! 

Glorious weather!

Erratum - actually, in the last blog, it's 5 months not 6 since the 'before' picture.  So that's ok then...

Anyway, as flaming June continues and the pond has filled itself up in spite of not having a waterproof lining, I thought I'd post the gardeners' equivalent of kitten pictures to cheer us all up.

Oh, and there's one bit of house news as well which is that the Building Guarantee Man came round last week and did his final inspection so we probably now have a comeback if it falls down tomorrow.

From the Alpine bed alongside the patio, here's the delospermum and the alpine pink

While climbing up the temporary poles (I'm about to implement Plan B for getting the obelisks welded up) on the terrace are clematis - here is Ooh La La and below is Niobe.





Of course the great advantage of the current weather is that stuff doesn't need as much watering-in as  might otherwise be the case...

What a difference a day makes...

...well, 6 months anyway!
Our regular reader was kicking me gently as we've not posted for nearly a month.  A couple of days ago I took a pic from the standard viewpoint in the NW corner of the plot, and looking today I see the last time I took a pic from there was exactly 6 months ago.
'Before'...

 'After'...

Well, 'during' actually.  Progress, I think you'll agree!

The lawn is now very good in places but pretty bare still in others, and the planting is gradually getting its toes in.  This is the top bed where the perennials are now looking reasonably well established and are starting to grow away:

Along the patio the alpines are enjoying the sun although as you can see, there's a lot of grass still germinating in what is now a flower bed

And it won't be long before we're eating our own cucumbers and tomatoes.  Less sure about melons though!








 

The main veg plot is coming on nicely - salad is ready, and broad beans won't be long.  My hopes that as it's a new plot there won't be too many pests have proved unsound in the case of slugs, who have got most of the cornichons and are having a go at the courgettes - although the latter may be Alan pretending to be a slug in the hopes of not having to eat up the courgette glut later on...