Anniversary Weekend

This weekend (well, Friday evening) is the third anniversary of moving to the cottage. I don't feel that we've accomplished as much in the last year, in house and garden, but here's a round-up, nonetheless.

Our first successful crop of cauliflowers started last August.

It was a good year for cut flowers (in contrast to this year: the gladioli are nowhere near flowering).

We had an inspirational visit to Witley Court, and bought the 'seed' plants for the box edging to the herb garden. 

We made our first sausages!

The autumn preserving was productive, with jams, chutneys, and jellies.

We bought and planted a quince, and other fruit trees, making the garden, technically, an orchard.

I installed FreeSat, meaning we've had working TV for the last nine months.

We had a 4kWp solar PV installation, meaning we're now a net generator of electricity.

We've had two big house parties, at Christmas and summer.

We eventually got started on our leafy quilt.

Several poplars came down.

We put a stove in the sitting room.

Our biomass heating system has been a disappointment, and has diverted a lot of time and energy towards making it workable since March. It's still unmanageable at the moment: the last few weekends have been spent constructing a proper wood shelter for seasoning, and it'll still take several more weeks. With that built, we're still looking at a lot of wood, far more than planned, but hopefully a split-able amount when spread properly over the year.

We laid out a plan for the seating corner of the garden, which was later fleshed out with a top-level planting scheme following RHS Tatton Park.

We were very pleased with how the front garden looked this spring, and it's continued looking good all summer.

The top bank of cotoneaster was finally cleared, and we uncovered the pond outline by clearing the chippings sat upon it.

The shed came down, making the space for the rose garden.

It's been a good year for brewing, new plants, and visits to other gardens. It's been a difficult growing year, with poor weather and too many slugs. Yields are down on last year, and some things (peas, beans, courgettes) have almost entirely failed. On the other hand the soft fruit (especially the currants) have done well, and the new rhubarb has settled in and grown strongly.

Perhaps not that bad a year. In the next twelve months, we'd like to dig and drain the seating corner, start the herb and rose garden, and maybe (start to) dig the pond. It'd be nice to also start the beds in the copse, but that might be too much. Less significant, but really useful would be getting the weed suppressant membrane down in the vegetable garden's paths. And maybe, just maybe, we can get the heating sorted.