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?