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.