Nearing Final Sign-Off/ What a difference a day makes #2

As I write, all the final bits and pieces needing rectification are very nearly done.  Although I may have written that before.... With any luck, the windows are now air- and water-tight.  We're only waiting for resealing a bit of the shower where internal wall movement meant new sealant was required.  Outside, as you can see, the primrose and hellebore bank is coming on nicely as the spring gets going....

but then.... the Beast from the East arrives.

It's hard to tell as it was so windy the snow drifted everywhere, but we think we got somewhere around 7" of snow on Thursday.  There's a video on Facebook of Charlie next door skiing round the village...

The reason there's no snow on most of the rear roof is not that it melted - it was just blown off by the gales.  It's drifted 18" deep in places as you can see below

 

 There's a pond under that snow above - gabions middle right of the pic are completely hidden - compare it to the pic here where you can see them at the back of the pond.  Admire the new matching ones around the box balls against the back fence which replace the broken pots they were in and give them a direct planting into the soil. Stylish, eh?  And finally we have the new border-to-be you can see laid out with black plastic here to show where it will go - a nice bit of turf-stripping to keep us busy as it's 18m x 2m.  Plan is big grasses and trained fruit.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

...well, it has been snowing thickly more or less everywhere north of here today and so our plans to feast wildly with my sister have been thwarted as they can't get out of their village.  No snow here, but it has given me a spare half hour to catch up on what's been going on since I last posted in September.  I have been getting a bit of gyp about this, so just imagine this post as the Archers' Omnibus edition for the last quarter!

So starting with the pic on the right from some time in October, with nearly half an acre, nobody can say there ain't mush room in our garden 😀😀

On a sadder note though, see below, the obelisk and below right what I found when I peered at it more closely yesterday. 





I think the kingfisher must simply have landed there and then died - he wasn't trapped in it, just sat there.  We've seen a kingfisher in the garden before, so clearly they are around.


Either that or it was a dastardly plan by the fish to get their own back.

More happily, here is an aside as to how some people in the village go down the pub on a Sunday lunchtime
and
beneath is a pic of Alan wrestling with Charlie's cultivator to rough out the Asparagus Bed.  Pics of the finished bed to follow...







 And here is the finished re-roofed stableblock






with below the weathervane in its full glory

Happy! Sing along if you feel like a room without a roof...*

...actually not any more, this photo was taken a few weeks ago when the first bit of re-roofing started.  Since then the middle stable has also been repaired - a fairly major job - and reclad, and after a delay for roofing supplies, now has most of its roof back on.  Two down, one to go...

*what was that lyric about, anyway?

Meanwhile the greenhouse has produced our best ever crop of tomatoes and cucumbers; lots of other veg doing well and between us and next door we've been feeding the village on beans.  The borders are looking nice and I've stocked up on plants from friends & relations to populate borders (thanks to Pat and Pete), the pond (thanks Rose), and the bog garden and hellebore bank (thanks Helen). 

Pond life - a fishy business

Carpomath:   If Alan buys 5 goldfish and I buy 2 shubunkins, how many fish are there in the pond?
Answer seems to be (sadly) only 6 large fish (cat? heron?) but (happily) quite a few very small fish :)

What a difference a day makes (reprise)

 Now doesn't that look nice!  A glorious summer's day...

...umm... well, at least the pond/bog garden is now completely full and we've retested the 'full' level setting and drain point.  Please may we have summer back now?

Breaking rocks in the hot sun...

...I fought the law, oh no, I filled the gabions.

And it has been hot work over the last few days!  The blue snake is the conduit for the pump cable; and the black snake is the hose which will carry the water from the pump round the back into the gabions and then out through a rill back into the pond.  Once, that is, we have found someone to do the stainless steel fabrication to make the rill base.  So I guess I'd better produce a drawing or two...
You can see the bog garden is now apparently all mud but the pond water level is a bit low so we have to find more topsoil from somewhere...




If you look at this view it looks pretty much finished.  Good eh?

Alan meanwhile has completely dismantled two of the the three stable panels that formed the end stable, we hope this will provide enough framework and cladding to repair the rest of the block.

Veg update - still got some of the last of the spring cabbage; french beans going into full production mode; courgettes en route; cucumber glut; garlic harvest very disappointing.  Salad stuffs various about the place.  Strawberry harvest (now over) was excellent.  International Kidney new pots possibly the best flavour we've ever grown apart from Pink Fir Apple.

Gonna tear your playhouse down

Finally the running-around level has declined just far enough to allow time for a post - and indeed for some post-worthy activity to have occurred.
We got back from the Worlds in Zbraslavice to find that the garden was coming on apace - particularly the weeds, which I just had time to wrestle into a bit of submission prior to departing for the Club Class.  We're very pleased with how the patio flower bed is looking:

July is planned to be a 'rest month' so it's back to heavy gardening again. But first, since the pond has become crystal clear, we visited Porton Garden Centre...












and here they are in the pond.

The excavation at the far end of the pond is for the gabion run to go across; this also provides some earth to fill the bog garden which as you can see still has water visible. We're filling the gabions with all the 'reclaimed' flint we've dug out to get to this point!

And in the stableyard, things are (literally) moving.    Stable:

Unstable.
No neighbours were harmed in the removal of this stable (but it was a close-run thing).