290 days ago
Gosh how the wind howled last night. It seems to rush down the lane to the Welsh Hovel and the first bedroom it heads past is the one where the Mrs and I sleep, when not being disturbed by one of the cats sheltering from the storm. Maybe we hear it a bit more loudly than others as there is part of the end wall in out bedroom which is a bricked up window tax window and so the wall is thin at that point.
294 days ago
First up are the trees, another five apple trees: a late fruiting variety. These should be harvested, in a few years time, in November. If the 23 trees I planted by the river survive, I should thus be harvesting from August right the way to the run up to Advent. Sadly, following my visit to the Countess of Chester on Tuesday, I have stitches in my back and hard exercise is forbidden and so they will not be joining my two peach trees, at the top of the area once known as the jungle, which is now the vegetable garden, for a good two weeks.
610 days ago
I am ordering a stack of Discovery apple trees to create a colonade along the path by the river. I am not sure how they will do in what is a flood meadow but I shall stake them firmly and see. The stakes I put up by the river with some oak saplings last year have survived even if the oaks have not. And the trees I have ordered are already 5 foot high so I hope they will flourish. My orders were divided as my normal supplier had only nine trees left and so I had to use Beechwood Nurseries for the rest. Buyer beware: Beechwood are shysters!
1026 days ago
As we used lime mortar, the pink stuff between the Sandstone will eventually, it being Wales, dry and turn almost white. What I could really do with is a week long dry spell so that the last puddle disappears from the lawn and we can then level it off, filling in the slight dips that allowed two puddles to form, And then we can level out the barn side bank at the front of this picture with earth lapping round the edge of the steps so that they are invisible from either end and grass over the remain bit of the construction. There are some weeds to remove with poison, a bit of reseeding on the river side of the lawn and we are there. Next up…
1138 days ago
Unlike Eleanor I do not want 50p from you to help plant a tree. Nor do I want to cover the whole of Wales and much of England with trees in the misguided belief that this will save the planet. Instead I just buy my own trees with my own money to make this place where I live a better place. Here are the latest two which will soon be joining the 22 tree new orchard I have created on the upper field above the barns.
