Travelling

We've had a very pleasant weekend, although one with rather a lot of driving: we went down to meet our new (and first) nephew in Surrey, travelling down on Thursday evening (with much roadwork and traffic caused delay, sadly). After lunch on Friday, we went around London to David and Ann's, and stayed with them until Sunday. Marvellous barbecue on Saturday, and a good walk around their area, with hogweed foraged to boot. On Sunday, we went home via Cambridge, and had lunch at a reunion event at college, which meant we also saw a lot of other friends.

Irrigation

Having got the taps ready, today we installed the irrigation system for the two patios (kitchen and dining room), and the front garden. The colour wheel is simply a hose leading to a bar sprinkler. We didn't have time to do the herb garden, other than to lay the supply hose. The 4mm branches, and associated sprinklers/sprays will have to wait. The other big achievement was to finally repair the leak in the dining room hot water pipe, by doing the bypass I explained yesterday. This seems to have worked, and now means that the leaking pipe is no longer used, and the route hot water takes through the house is much shorter, which should also make it hotter. As a side benefit, the pipe we've taken out of the circuit also appears to be the one that was making the water mucky, as it's now running clear. The repair might have taken six months to solve, but we're finally there, and with a much better set-up.

Plumbing

We spent a rather long time on Saturday morning working out how we were going to finally fix the pipe that's been dripping from the ceiling of the dining room. It's been doing so for five months, and all my attempts to fix it have been thwarted by poor access and adjacent pipes. That's made re-making the pipe, re-brazing it, or properly applying external sealant, impossible. We applied brain power to the problem, and, with a bit of investigation of the pipes hidden in the floor beneath the old house bathroom (now the sewing room, above the back half of the kitchen), we think we've worked out a plan.

At present, the cold water main goes from the kitchen, along the front of the house between the floors, then cuts across, goes into the loft of the porch, and gets to the boiler room. Here, it feeds a garden tap, as well as the top-up loop for the central heating, the emergency quench for the boiler, and the cold supply for the domestic hot water heat exchange built into the accumulator tank. The hot water so generated runs down the pipe that used to be the hot water circuit feeding the hot water cylinder, meaning that it runs the same route back to the other end of the house, where it was plumbed into the hot water circuit...running all the way along the house to feed the taps.

Thus, hot water coming out of the taps in the downstairs toilet had gone along the full length of the house three times, twice while hot: this was noisy, and thermally inefficient, as I suspect you would never get piping hot water out of that tap.

What we've figured out, with the benefit of opening the floor in the back guest room to pass cables along on Wednesday, is that we should be able to bypass some of this. The hot water coming from the boiler can be fed into the hot water circuit from the opposite end, near the downstairs loo, in the loft above. This will feed—in order—that loo, the guest en suite, the master en suite, the kitchen and utility room...and then be capped off.

The leaking pipe is the pipe that would have run from where we're now going to connect to this lot, all that way to the other end. Although it'll be redundant, I won't try to remove it—it's not worth the effort.

In further plumbing exploits, we installed a pair of outside taps outside the utility room, taking a valved spur off the cold water tap. That's in order to hook up an irrigation system to water the kitchen patio; the dining room patio; the front garden; the herb garden; and the colour wheel, as well as leave an accessible tap for filling watering cans, and so on. We also planted out the last of the dahlias (Bishop of Llandaff and Twynings After Eight) and cosmos (white Purity), in the colour wheel beds, and near the beech bench.

We've also acquired a new sofa bed from the latest neighbours to move out: it's gone into the converted garage, which can now function as a guest room.

Cabling

Today's been a mid-week day off for us both, which we've spent running a new power cable from the electricity cupboard in the utility room, up into the loft, all the way along the house, down the back of the guest room, into the floor space, through into the loft of the porch, and then into the garage loft. We also ran a shielded Cat 6 cable at the same time, as well as a second unshielded cable as far as the LAN nexus in our dressing room. In doing this, I also changed the route of the telephone extension cabling, and the LAN cables going to the garage, to take advantage of the way into the porch loft we found. Previously they'd gone along the edge of the floor in the dining room, which I didn't like: this is much neater.

The unshielded LAN cable is so that I can have an LAN port in the utility room (I don't have anything in mind, but while I was messing about, it seemed sensible, as there's not one in the kitchen already). The shielded cable is in order to hook a sensor up onto the main incomer from the national grid, to measure the electrical import/export; and to do the same on the cable from the solar panels, to measure generation.

These sensors will then be used by a controller to modulate the power going to an immersion heater in the accumulator tank, so that only electricity we're generating, and would otherwise be exporting, will be used: we won't import electricity to heat the water. The rest of the work will be done in a couple of weeks time: the job today was getting the cables through the house, which was always going to be a tricky, dirty, and time-consuming job.

Chippings and Chopping

Earlier this week, I had a large load (about 6m³) of chippings delivered by a tree surgeon. He was very accommodating, as well as offering a good price, and they're split between the driveways, meaning they've been easier to move. The first task has been weeding the hedge up the side of the orchard, and giving it a thick layer of chippings. The plants are looking better than we feared, actually, and hopefully the hedge will grow on well over the next twelve months.

We also weeded the apple walk, and finally spread a good layer of chippings over the weed membrane that goes up the centre of it. More still went around the beech trees at the edge of the games lawn, and over the path in front. We've finally laid out membrane along the two paths of the herb garden, and covered with more chippings, and done the same up the two bare paths through the Colour Wheel to the future patio. We then topped up the paths through the kitchen garden, and, finally running low, used the last to weigh down some membrane in the copse, which we're going to slowly start bringing into cultivation, and not leave grassy.

Today, for a change, we chopped firewood.

Holly Tress

The main work this weekend's been taking down a stand of holly trees in the middle clearing of the hillside, which have gradually died. We can't find any evidence of disease, only signs of a rabbit warren under them, which I'm blaming. We felled the wood and burnt the brush wood as we went. The main trunks we've cut, chopped, and stacked.

Although it's a shame to have to fell them, the stand was definitely not adding much, as it's been dead, or dying, for a couple of years, and the clearing is now rather a nice space, which we'll have to work out a plan for.

Gadgets

I've had a day off today, and have got on with a number of jobs. Firstly, I've made myself a couple of gadgets to help guide cables or hoses around the garden, prompted by the fact that there's nothing stopping the mower cable falling into the pond as I go round it. The guides are made from a 60cm length of dowel, 25mm diameter, which I've sharpended at one end (to push into the ground). The other end has a 12cm slot cut into it, leaving two arms. Between these, at the end, is fixed an old horseshoe, which is free to rotate, fully, between the two arms. The effect is that you can push the rod into the ground, then trap a cable or hose in the horseshoe, against the rod, but take it back out easily. I've painted the rod with the same green as the sheds, and the horseshoes black gloss.

I've cut back the ivy and Virginia creeper on the front of the house, and also cleared the gutter at the garage end, which was blocked and overflowing. That, admittedly, has been a problem for six months, but I've not got round to it. The over-flow has probably been most of the reason for the bike-shelter roof's paint wearing off.

The last of the rubble from the work on the house has gone, off to Chris's silage storage ramp: there's some tidying up outside the back door to do, but it's very nice to have seen the last of the backs of plaster and rubble.

The high winds over the last few days brought down a largeish branch from one of the silver birches above the Colour Wheel garden. It hadn't broken entirely free, though, so I've got it down, using my very long pruning saw, and tidied up the break. Hopefully it'll recover reasonably quickly. I am conscious that silver birches aren't the longest-lived of trees, and we may, in our lifetime, have to fell these trees, and work out how we replace their function of a visual, noise, and wind barrier along that boundary.

While Liz was weeding, I've made doors to the two ends of the newly re-covered fruit cages. These are designed to slot onto the top of the door-frame, meaning that there's no gaps for birds to find. Hinged doors would have been nicer, in some ways, but the unlevel ground, and nearby vegetable beds, made it unlikely to work, so I found another solution. Each one's a frame of 2" wood, with corner braces and a 'handle' plank half-way up; they're then covered with 2" chicken wire.

Potting Up

We've just done a few bits and pieces this weekend: sorted out the two patios (dining room and kitchen), mocked up a fence along the edge of the herb garden (which we want to put in as a windbreak: the asparagus and beans would probably do much better), and potted up a load of things. They include tomatoes, chilis, peppers, hostas, catmint, edible brassicas; and sowed two things— Lysimachia atropurpurea and Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm'.

Renovating the Fruit Cages

Over the last couple of days, we've been doing some work reconstructing the fruit cages. When we built the raised beds, we put 3" square posts at the corners, 8' tall in the raspberry beds, and 6' tall in the others. We then ran wire between these, and draped bird-proof netting (knitted 1" nylon stuff) over them, secured at the bottom, and sewn together at the seams and ends. It worked really well, from a bird-proofing perspective, but had disadvantages. First, it was a real pain to get in and out of the beds, and so we didn't weed as much as we might. It was similarly awkward to pick the fruit, prune, and mulch. Secondly, the 1" mesh worked really well to catch snow, and the wire supports weren't strong enough to carry the weight of the loaded net, and broke; or, the netting tore under the strain. This meant, every spring for the past few years, having to sew up the netting, and repair the wires, and it all got a bit too frustrating.

As we've been left with quite a lot of spare timber from the construction of, mainly, the wood shelter, which has been lying around, we decided to change how the fruit cages work. We've used some of the 3" laths to build a ring beam around the posts, and across the span in key positions. Onto that, we'll roll a roof of chicken wire, and staple walls of the nylon mesh onto the beam, posts, and raised bed walls. Hopefully, the chicken wire roof will be strong enough to carry a load of snow; the disadvantage is that the mesh is 2", which will be wide enough to allow birds in. We'll see if that's a problem, but if it is, we'll need to place bird net on top of the wire mesh, so we have the strength of the latter, but the bird-resistance of the former.

Filling the Pond

We left the pond filling on a timer until about 0100 this morning, but found, when we got up, that it isn't full. We set it going again: in total, it took about 13 hours to fill. A quick test showed that the hose was delivering 12l/minute, which means the volume's around 9300l. We've spent the day sorting out the edging of the pond: the ends of the retaining wall transition to looser stonework, which is more informal, and at the shallow end we've got a number of 'emerging' stones, which, in addition to the innumerable crevices, nooks and crannies, means there should be a good variety and number of habitats for wildlife. The water is very chlorine-rich, and will need a few weeks to out-gas before it's attractive to plants or wildlife. We'll get oxygenating plants for late June, probably, once the water's stabilized somewhat.

Pond Lining

Today's been spent lining the pond. We started by tidying up the digging: forming a solid and flat base around the edges where a retaining wall is needed, laying cement blocks and bricks to reinforce this, and smoothing and picking over the surface to remove stones and refine the shape.

Once we were happy with this, we used the waste carpet we picked up yesterday to cover as much of the surface as we could. The carpet should prevent any sharp stones or glass that we missed from reaching the rubber liner. On top of this, we laid a complete layer of 200gsm non-woven liner, which has the same purpose, and then, finally, spread out the EDPM liner (8 x 6m).

We then built the retaining wall, which goes around about half of the circumference, where the ground level is considerably different to the water level. This went rather faster than I feared, and we were finished by about 1900. We've left a hosepipe running, sprinkling water into the pond...it's filling very, very slowly.

While this gradually filled, we back-filled the space between the earth bank and the new wall with soil, and have put in the few pond-edge plants we have: a Rocket ligularia, a rodgersia, a houttenyia, two purple ligularia, and a few hostas. The hostas may need to be moved to a shadier position: we'll see.

Moneywort

We've had a weekend in the Midlands, staying with Liz's grandmother, but going over to her parents' new house for Saturday, and Sunday lunch. Saturday was a pleasant walk across the hills to Croft Castle and parks, where there were lots of bluebells out. On the way back to the house, we called in at a church in Yarpole, which happened to have a small plant stall. As a result, we've come home with some golden moneywort (Lysimachia nummularia), which will go in/around the pond. On the way home to Yorkshire, we called in to pick up some Freecycled carpet which was being thrown out; we'll be using it to line the pond.

Plumbing, planting, potatoes

We've had a pleasant couple of days in Scarborough, with the obligatory beach-front ice-cream. Back home, we've been checking that we're happy with the pond construction and layout, because we plan to line it in a week. As we were using the very fast and effective, but relatively imprecise minidigger to excavate, it does need a degree of manual finessing, to get the shape and depths we want. Hopefully that will only take a day or so to get right, and we can then line it, build the retaining dry-stone wall, fill it, and sort out the edges.

Today, we've had a day of smaller jobs. Inside, the dandelion wine is now in its demijohn. We spent the first part of the morning connecting the two outside taps (near the greenhouse) that I started to do last summer, and never quite finished. This means that there are now two watering points which don't require the workshop door to be propped open, which is much better—it means that the kitchen garden irrigation can be left automatically running, which is critical when we're away during the warmer months. The second hose point will let us set up automatic drip irrigation inside the greenhous (much better for the tomatoes during the summer), which is a later project.

Because we only made about half of the climbers' supports 'properly' last year, we've put up a further five that are more rustic, shall we say: lengths of poplar, tied together at the top. Less attractive, but functional. I hope to make more proper frames in the autumn.

We've planted out the tulbaghia, chives, coriander and parsley into the herb garden; as well as the agapanthus into the long border, as frosts should be past, now. I've taken a number of cuttings from the dahlias in the greenhouse, which are starting to grow on well (Bishop of Llandaff and Twyning's After Eight). They go in a propagator in the dining room for a few weeks until they've rooted, and will then grow on in pots this year.

Down in the kitchen garden, the beetroot are now planted out (a rainbow mix, this year: we found the flavour much superior to Boltardy, and really pretty, too). The cauliflowers are also out, and we've planted the second half of the mini salad bed. I think these plants have been in modules for too long, though, so they might not thrive.

The potatoes are doing well, and almost all needed earthing up. The scorzonera has germinated really well; almost every station has a couple of seedlings. The parsnips, inevitably, are much slower, and will probably be less reliable. That's fine, though, we don't need many.

Tidying

Two minor notes: I pitched the yeast for the dandelion wine yesterday, which now needs a few more days in the bucket before moving into the demijohn for several months. This evening we've managed to get a couple of hours outside, mowing & edging the lawn (me) and weeding (Liz).

Sweetpea Supports

Last year, I made a number of timber-framed wigwams for growing annual climbers up, but only added the woven willow sides to those for the sweetpeas. They worked really well, though, and it was only time (that is, insulating the walls of the house!) that stopped me doing so for the pea and bean supports in the herb garden. They had to suffice with strings, which didn't work nearly as well. The beauty of the diamond-woven willow is that the tendrils seem to latch on very readily, meaning that they only need a little help to get started, and then the climbers just take off by themselves, with very little twisting in.

Yesterday afternoon, we worked together to get the willows put on the sides of the six remaining supports in the herb garden, spurred on by the growth the beans and peas are putting on while on the dining room windowsill. We're hoping to be able to plant them out next weekend, if the weather's looking stable.

We also managed to sow a number of seeds; some more legumes (to account for germination losses), and a tray of brassicas: cauliflowers, swedes, and turnips.

Today we've mown the lawn, and edged it (have adopted shears from my parents, who don't have any lawn, now), for which it's looking immensely neater; weeded (well, Liz did this), and have started putting a timber frame onto the fruit cages to replace the wire net supports. The nets, and wires that carried them, have gradually deteriorated, mainly because of the combined effect of wind and snow. I'm hoping that timber framework, combined with chicken wire mesh roof, will be longer-lasting. We're about half way on the frame: adding the net/mesh is going to be a bit time-consuming, though.

At lunch, we started a batch of dandelion wine, using flowers picked before I mowed the lawn. The combined yield of the lawn and paths, fittingly, is about perfect for a one-gallon batch. The petals stew (with chopped raisins) until later this week, when lemon and yeast are added. Five more days in the bucket, then it goes into a demi-john until autumn. We've also got round to bottling the two gallons of elderflower, and one of bramble-tip, that I made last year. All very good, so we're planning to make more of both in the coming weeks.

Small Steps

A weekend of maintenance, mainly, with a lot of weeding...and even more potting up. One of those weekends with little visible difference, in as much as things merely look neater. Never mind.

Asparagus

We've managed to pop out most of the evenings after work this week, and have finished the deep-weeding of the herb garden beds that we've been getting ready to plant asparagus into. These arrived yesterday: compost-block grown plants (which are easier to plant that bare-root crowns, and which can be planted any time of year) from Victoriana Nursery. They're a variety bred in New Jersey called Jersey Knight, and we're hoping their origin will mean they're well equipped for our weather. They're meant to be a heavy- and long-cropping variety, producing thick stems; and they're an all-male variety, too.

We've thoroughly weeded the beds, and tonight we planted them out, putting a thick layer of mulch down. We can't crop from them this year, and only very lightly next, but in two year's time, we're hoping that they'll make a big difference during the hungry gap between the last of the over-winter veg coming out, and the new annuals being ready.

House History

We've had a lovely weekend, not doing an awful lot until this morning, as we had Katherine visiting us, and it's been a marvellous reason to sit around, chat, and drink a lot of tea and coffee. We also made use of Katherine's considerable social history knowledge, and made some real progress working out some aspects of the house's history. We looked back at the census records from 1841 to 1911, and managed, eventually, to pick out the house, and find out something of who was living here until a century ago. More on that when I've had a chance to pull it together, but we're hoping to fill in some of the next period, from 1911 until about 1970, when we once again have some idea of who's lived here. As the census data won't (all) be released until I'm nearly 90, we'll have to resort to other methods, I think.

Orchard Maintenance

A day off, for us both, and we've had quite a varied day, on the hillside and in the garden. We've sorted out most of the patio pots, and planted up a number of things that were a bit crowded. The mulch that Liz moved onto the hillside a while ago has now been spread; on top of cardboard in the nursery bed and apple walk, and under the membrane around the small Hessle, and the mulberries, sweet chestnuts (which didn't actually have membranes, we realised...), and walnuts. We've then used some part-rotted chippings to cover the rest of the nursery bed, so the whips don't get swamped. These have been really succesful: there are three Hessle pears, two each of Crabbie's Seedling, and Crimson Superb (that's 100% of the apple and pear grafts, as I took three of each of these, and one of each apple went straight into the apple walk); as well as one of each quince Ivan and Vranja, and a medlar Dutch. That's not bad: I need to decide whether to try again with the medlar Royal, or buy a Flemish Giant, instead.

The quince in the garden is coming into leaf: I have hopes it might not only flower (which it did, lightly, last year), but perhaps set some fruit.

Tubers

We've had quite a busy weekend, and spent almost all of yesterday weeding the long border, and the herb garden, both of which are looking a lot tidier. While Liz was starting with this, I mowed the lawns, and pulled a couple of areas of moss out of the wood shelter's green roof out. The lawn, after a rather shaggy-looking winter, is much smarter now. I need to find some edging shears that work, in order to tidy up the boundaries, though.

We've also planted out the potatoes: Lady Christl and Red Duke of York. We're only doing those two this year, though more of them—two bags (40&ndash50) Lady Christl, and one bag of Red Duke. Maincrops have been a bit blighty the last few years, and we've had disappointing yields, so this year we've got the Jerusalem Artichokes (Fuseau) and early potatoes, instead. We also planted out the onions: about 200 Red Piroska, and 200 Stuttgarter. I had to re-cut a membrane to plant them through, as the one we used last year was ruined when deer more-or-less danced on it.

The dahlias we potted up a month ago (22nd March) have now gone out to the greenhouse, as the weather seems warm enough overnight to allow this. Some are starting to show shoots, but not all. I'm not, really, expecting them all to come up. One border-planted specimen was badly eaten last year, and I'm not sure it was strong enough going into winter. Similarly, six pots are new garden-centre bought tubers, and while I hope at least half will come up, the shop-bought ones aren't utterly reliable, so I expect some losses. We'll take more side-shoot cuttings, and increase stock. That way, we can afford some losses each winter.

The last thing was a load of seed sowing, meaning that the windowsills are, once more, full.

Kentish Spring

We drove back up this afternoon from several wonderfully relaxing days in Kent: filled with brioche, games, a couple of films, and a daily walk, including one longer one along part of the South Downs way, past an episcopal palace (Otford) and through some pretty, vernal woodland. Sadly, it's back to work tomorrow.

Watered In

It's been dry for a week, and having moved a lot of earth around, things are actually pretty dry, so, having planted out a lot of plants yesterday afternoon, I've watered everything again. We're now about to drive down to Kent to see David and Ann for a couple of days, calling in to see the cats' friend in Cambridge on our way.

Bobcat

Last bits today for our week of work, as we're off to visit David and Ann tomorrow. We started by moving the last of the topsoil we needed down to the veg garden. There's still a small heap on the driveway, but not very much. There's a mound of mulch on the hillside for the nursery beds, apple walk, and trees, which we'll need to top up with chipping mulch. The rest of the driveway heap is probably going to be used topping up the two beds to the sides of the beech bench.

That done, we had just enough time to plant up some of the herb garden extension and the colour wheel beds, though it did mean we were finishing off, watering in, by moonlight. The box that remained in the herb garden (having moved several into the long border) have neatly delineated the corners of the colour wheel beds—there are similar plantings in the herbaceous borders at Harlow Carr, which I've long admired, and this mimics that. The Tail Feathers grasses (Pennisetum macrourum) that we sowed in January 2014, and grew on all last year, have gone around the outer edges of the beds, to give some boundary and height. We've then planted out a lot of perennials that, mainly, we've been growing on from plug plants for the last year or so, and which overwintered in the greenhouse in 9cm pots. We also put about nine Deschampsia cespitosa that have outgrown the beds near the beech bench (planted 27 Mar 2014?). As a result, the beds are looking much less empty, but there's space we're planning to grow some annuals in, particularly ones that can be useds as cut flowers.

Mid afternoon, though, we also had to say goodbye to Bobcat the mini-digger, after seven days of hard work. It's let us come on leaps and bounds in the garden construction—in fact, structurally, the garden is now all but complete, as the beds are all where we want them. A little more work in the copse, the laying of the patio, and the construction of the pergola around the access ramp, and the Big Things will be done.

Last Excavations of the Pond

Back to the pond today, with a lot of time spent sorting out the edges, and making sure I'd taken out enough for the various levels. We wound up needing to take out about a dozen more 'scoops' using the minidigger (now affectionately known as Bobcat, after all its hard work), but I think the depth is now right. There needs to be more work getting the footings of the retaining wall properly placed, but that is, necessarily, careful mattock/crowbar/spadework, rather than excavator.

Building the Colour Wheel Beds

We took a break from the pond, today, and have spent the day, mostly, moving topsoil around. First thing, a delivery of 6m³ of topsoil arrived from the ever-dependable Tommy Topsoil. Unfortunately, the ground's still pretty wet, so it couldn't all be delivered onto the access ramp into the garden, and two-thirds are on the driveway, instead, which means barrowing it further. Never mind.

Before getting the topsoil moved, though, we first marked out the edges of the new beds in the corner 'Colour Wheel' garden. For this, I bought hand-cleft chestnut stakes, 15" long, which we've put in the ground every 2'. Between these, we've woven cleft chestnut laths—they're usually used to create a matrix onto which lime plaster is applied, in restoration work, but they've worked beautifully here, four courses high, to make 6" edges/retaining walls.

We've then barrowed in topsoil, to cover the soil we've moved from digging the pond. It's actually reasonably good, but a couple of inches of new topsoil will, if nothing else, be less prone to weed germination, and will help to gradually enrich and build the soil.

Once the four new beds were made and topped up, we had enough stakes to mark the intersections of the edging in the herb garden, which is, following Saturday's work, now twice as large. That, in combination with some sticks marking the edges (as well as the intersections), means that the layout is a lot clearer. We've added topsoil here, too, to the squares that will be planted, but not to the areas that will form a path. We still need to decide on a planting plan for the edges: our original plan of box made way to a combination of box, lavender and apples; and then to lavender and apples; it might yet become just step-over apples.

The other place we've moved topsoil to is the vegetable beds, which need an annual topping up. Still need to spread it around, but it's heaped in roughly the right places.

The Bulk of the Pond

We had to use the headlamp, mounted on the side of the digger's boom, in order to get there, but we've finished the main digging of the pond tonight.

It's taken all day, but we've made the ramp from the apple, the deep section across the middle, and the large shelf around the back, as well as cutting the planting pocket that will soften the retaining wall, and tried to create the shelf on which the wall will be built. It's going to take, probably, most of another day to check the levels and tidy up the sides, but the bulk of the hole is now dug.

Working on the Pond

For most of today, we've been working on digging the pond, which is going well, and I think will only need one more day of digging in order to have the basic shape completed. We took a break for a couple of hours to dig over the bed we started creating in the games garden. This runs alongside the septic tank (where it's already planted with hazel, willow, achillea, geums, daffodils and snowdrops), round the corner, and in front of the lower bank of shrubs up to the path and steps down into the kitchen garden. We ran out of steam when digging this, several years go (June 2012), and only got as far as the end of the septic tank. We've now done the wider bit round the corner, and along the back as far as the rhododendron...and it's been considerably faster than the day spent digging about a quarter of the area. Needless to say, the micro excavator pulls big stones out of the ground with, essentially, a wave of the hand. We've lifted several really large rocks out of here, and the pond, which would have each taken hours to extract, if we'd managed at all, so it's definitely been worth it.

Digging Over the Herb Garden

Having got the land-drains in the new garden sorted out yesterday, we were able, this morning, to break ground on the pond. My plan has been to dig it out from the bottom apex, near the apple tree, and work back to the top corner, at the entrance near the sweet pea bed. I've had to change my mind, though, as the reach and depth of the digger, and the risk of overbalancing, are problems. Instead, I'm going to do the bottom corner, then the far corner, and work back to a position roughly half-way up the side (basically, sat next to the plum). I think I'll have to then take the digger along the path next to the long border, to finish off, before driving out.

We only got a bit of this done before Katrina and Dan arrived: they're up for a wedding near us, and we're B&B'ing them. After lunch, Dan was immensely useful in helping us dig over the herb garden. We did the first half of this by hand last summer, and it turns out we did the harder half. The remaining area, we'd covered with weed-suppressant membrane, and it's actually had all the rubble from the house renovations sat on it. This has totally wiped out the grass, which has rotted down into lovely topsoil.

Dan ran the digger, turning this over, and we picked out the stones we found. We've also moved the last of the big stones from last time down to the growing piles around the pond, where I'll build them into the retaining wall we need behind the pond (the path along the long border is about 60cm higher than the apex at the apple).

The herb garden's now completely dug over, and tomorrow we'll return to digging the pond.

Draining the Colour Wheel

The minidigger arrived yesterday afternoon, and as the evenings are lighter now, we managed to make a start. We discovered that we'd made the path down the drive wide enough, which was good, and got the digger down the ramp, turned (first bit of lawn chewed up!), and over into the corner of the new flower garden. I started by digging up the topsoil and turf, depositing it in the newly marked beds, which revealed the expected clay subsoil. I then moved the heaps of hardcore/rubble, which had been sitting in the beds, back into the corner. We wound up doing a lot of this by hand, as the digger—in my inexperienced hands—was picking up a lot of soil as well as stones.

Once we'd got the stones into the corner, I took the digger to the back of the furthest bed, having dug up the soil in the other sections, to level out and dig over. It sounds quick, now, and in many ways it was fast to do, too: the topsoil there isn't very stony, and the digger made quick work of it.

However, the messy work was only just starting, and unfortunately, so was drizzle. The rest of the day has been tiring, wet, muddy work, digging three trenches across the garden and laying land drain (in geotextile sock, as before), to improve the drainage. This corner of the garden's always been really wet, with standing water and waterlogged soil through the winter, which has always limited its usefulness. The landdrains are the first part of trying to fix this. There's an old clay pipe land drain, which is broken off at the top end (we think, at the site of an old milking parlour), but does drain away into the lower parts of the garden. It goes into the copse, which, if anything, is drier than needed, so diverting water to here is no bad thing.

We managed, before collapsing inside, to get an L-shaped pipe along the top of the beds, and down into the old pipe; one across the garden just under the bottom edge of the patio, and one two-thirds of the way down the garden. Between them, they should sort out the drainage, but we'll also be raising the ground level with the spoil from the pond, which we anticipate being gravelly (that is, better draining) soil.

Marking Out

This weekend hasn't brought anything particularly exciting, but we've managed to get exactly through the list of preparations for the mini-digger's arrival that we drew up at Christmas, which is pleasing.

The last of the patio flagstones are out of the way, and the arbour has been dismantled and moved to the seating area in front of the beech hedge bench (well out of the way). It'll be there for some time, and the arbour is far too heavy to move intact: stacked neatly there, it won't kill any grass, and we can give it a good clean, and a coat of paint, before reassembling it once we get the patio relaid.

We've moved the two dustbins and packing crate, which have been filled with water in an attempt to keep a number of wet/pond plants going since being pulled out of Jenny's pond when she filled it in. The irises are clearly alive, though I remain unconvinced about the others.

Once these were out of the way, we've used a number of poplar rods to mark out the planned edges of the pond, and flower beds in the new colour-wheel garden, and the patio that will form the corner of this. We're happy with how they're all looking, but we've got a few days to consider them from different angles, before the digger arrives on Maundy Thursday.

We've had a bit of a potting up session, putting tomatoes, peppers (sweet and chilli), and cauliflowers into pots from their sown modules. The caulis always look quite sad for a couple of weeks after transplanting, but should be fine, and we've got more of the others than we need. There's a third sort of tomato (Black Russian) still to go, but these two (Maskotka and Alicante) are ready to pot on.

Finally, we've sawn the wood from the shed base (mostly requiring sawing, rather than splitting, as it's drier than we usually split wood, and I think it's oak, to boot), and that's allowed us to lift the base (sawn up and flung into a corner of the orchard, where I'll make a compost bay later this year). It's a relief to discover that there are just three cast-in-situ concrete beams on which the base was supported, and not a whole slab of concrete.

Having got to end of our excavation-preparations, we've been able to do a bucket-worth of plastering, meaning that our bedroom's back wall, and most of the sewing room's bathroom-wall, are now done. Slowly getting there!

Stones

Liz had today off work, and has done sterling work clearing the last of the stones from the pond location (now forming a growing stack around the periphery of that garden, between the fruit trees), as well as lifting almost all of the patio stones (I've helped with the last, heavy, well-adhered/trapped-by-grass ones) and putting them well out of the way. She's even managed to move all the pots off the grass in the herb garden, so we're onto the last bits and bobs to be ready for the mini-digging in ten days.

Planning to Dig

Over Easter, we're hiring a micro excavator (mini digger) to dig the pond, and also do some heavy (quick) work preparing the base for the arbour patio, turning over and creating the beds in the colour wheel, and—time permitting—break the ground for the last of the herb garden.

That's lead to us spending a lot of this weekend (and, for me, today) clearing the colour wheel beds, and the pond, of the collected detritus. For several years, although the colour wheel beds were briefly marked out in April 2012, it's not been much of anything, and has had several heaps of brushwood, a few bins of rescued pond plants, and gradually amassing heaps of stones dug out elsewhere. The pond was, for a while, a huge heap of brush from the trees and cotoneaster we took out, until we shredded that over the weekend of the Royal Jubilee later in 2012. It's been misused in the same way, to a smaller extent, since, though, and Liz has spent a good bit of the weekend running things through the smaller Archimedes Screw chipper we have.

In incredible news, we even managed to mow the lawn, with Liz raking ahead of me, which has really helped, and the lawn looks almost respectable for the first time in months. The wet but mild autumn meant that my hoped-for 'last cut' of the year never happened, meaning a scruffy lawn since September, really.

Inside, we've potted up our various dahlias, and chocolate cosmos. When we were weeding in the herb garden, I discovered that the runner beans tubers (or are they corms, or rhizomes?) had survived the winter. They're a perennial, strictly, but not that hardy, so they're usually grown as an annual in the UK. However, we thought we'd pot them up, too, and see if they come into growth as the year warms up.

We've had to do some more wood chopping, too, to clear a path down the drive for the mini-digger. I think it's wide enough, now, but we shall need to do some more, including a few last pieces on the old shed base. If we have time, digging that bit over with the excavator is on the list, which means I need to clear the firewood off it in advance, and check there's not a huge slab of concrete hiding under the timber...

Rearranging the Fruit Beds

Over the last couple of years, pruning the gooseberries, and then picking the fruit, has been a rather painful, thorny proposition. In addition, the plants have always tended to grow out into the path, which has made the journey along the fruit garden a little perilous when wheeling a barrow, and the wide handles almost always bring you rather close to the gooseberries spines.

Enough of that: we've dug up the nine gooseberries, and replanted them: the three red and green are now spaced out along the centre of the bed where all nine were previously, meaning they're much further from the edges. The three golden/yellow ones are where the bottom blueberry was. It's never really got going, in many years, so we're cutting our losses.

At the same time, we've lifted all the raspberry canes, and replanted the strongest along the centre of those beds: we were finding that the double row wasn't cropping well, and was a pain to weed and pick.

The revolution hasn't ended there, either. We've taken off all the nets, too. Over the next couple of months, I'll be replacing the wires which ran between the posts to support the cages with timber bearers. The roof is then going to be chicken wire, and the sides will either be netting, or wire. However, we're going to have doors at each end of the passage, making it one big contained cage, rather than four. It ought to make weeding, mulching, pruning, and picking an awful lot more pleasant, which seems sensible.

Today we've sawn, split, and stacked a load of wood, and spent this morning sorting out the garage, which now looks like a room once more.

Tidying the Green Roof

I've had a day off today, though Liz has been working. I started by making a couple of trips to the tip, taking the old bathroom suites, and some other bits. I tried Freecycling them, but there weren't any takers, unfortunately. That out of the way, I did a bit of spring maintenance to the green roof, using a three-pronged hoe on the end of my 4m extendible pole. It's usually deployed for pruning trees, but is equally effective horizontally, for reaching across the green roof, rather than walking on it. That's allowed me to dethatch a lot of last years dead and dry material, with minimal disruption to the new shoots coming up, and has avoided the need to climb on to the roof myself. The green roof's looking an awful lot neater, now, and is starting to come back to life. There were only a few small clumps of grass, which is good, and I was able to uproot them.

This afternoon, I've finished connecting the ethernet cabling, and tested it all, so we now have functional Cat6 ports in the rooms I wanted them, and a few of them can be connected to the four switch ports on the router, meaning faster wired ethernet when needed.

Mulching

As planned, the mulch arrived on Thursday, although it had to be left on the drive proper, rather than the ramp into the garden. That'll make it easier to shovel, as it's on concrete, not gravel/sawdust/woodchip, but does mean further to take it with the wheelbarrows.

My time's been split between helping Liz weed, and moving and spreading mulch: suits me better, as I'm quicker at shovelling mulch and spreading it, and Liz is much better at weeding. It's a long weekend's work, but we've spread two thirds of the 6m² load, and the long border, quince, sweetpea, copse, willow arch, and herb beds are all looking massively improved for it.

As part of the mulching, we've planted out the three variegated and one spiky-looking hellebores we picked up in Thirsk around my birthday, and a three sedums (S. spectabile 'Crystal Pink') that were much reduced in the garden centre in November. The former are in the copse bed; the sedums are in the front of the sweetpea beds.

Clearing Rubble

A day off, and we've spent it on the ramp, more-or-less, shifting several tractor buckets of rubble with Chris, which has really broken the back of that job. The remainder we've managed to bag up into the bags from the gravel for the land-drains, and it should now just take a couple of hours more with Chris taking the tractor back and forth, and we'll have reclaimed our herb garden.

After lunch, we've sawn, split, and stacked a load of firewood. It appears we still know how to do it, fortunately, although this is only the second load in months.

Mulch Preparation

We've got a load of mulch arriving this week, ready to spread on the beds. That means that the first weeding of the year is now urgent, because the mulch does an excellent job of reducing new seedlings, but just gives existing weeds a boost, which isn't quite what we want. As well as weeding, we've also pruned the apples and pears on the hillside, tying in the slow winter growth in the apple walk as we go; pruned the fruit bushes; and admired the emerging snowdrops.

We also potted up ten new hellebores that arrived this week, which are now in the front garden growing on; six Chocolate Cosmos; and the 20-odd tender yellow things I can never remember the name of. Argyranthemum/margeurites, possibly. We take cuttings of them each autumn to over-winter, and they're out-growing their modules, now.

The other thing we managed was to tie together the willow growing down the sides of the septic tank, to start forming the arched tunnel over the mini-sheds. There's some way to go, admittedly, but you finally get an idea of what it will eventually achieve, which is nice.

Seeds

It's been a long weekend off, enabling us to spend Friday in Scarborough with Liz's grandparents, and then staying with my parents until Saturday evening. All very relaxing, and set us up well to get back into some wood chopping. We've been burning wood all winter, but haven't been tackling our backlog of firewood for some time, distracted by work on the house, and put off by bad weather (swinging a splitting maul in the snow isn't the safest activity). The weather's been better, though, and so we spent a few hours yesterday sawing and splitting a couple of cubic metres worth, and stacked it today. We're also making progress on getting the rubble from de-plastering the house walls bagged up and carted away, to build a terrace/silage access ramp for a neighbour.

We've also started sowing seeds in earnest: I did a load of sweet peas at the start of the month, most of which have come up well, so today we've sown all our RHS seeds, some cauliflowers (All The Year Round), some more sweet peas (Orange Dragon, more Fragrantissima, Cream Southbourne), and the broad beans (Witkiem Manita and Green Longpod). We also potted up some bareroot shrubs that have arrived: two Viburnum 'Bodnantense Dawn', two winter honeysuckles (Lonicera fragrantissima), a mahonia 'Charity' and a winter box (Sarcococca confusa).

The RHS seeds:

• Orlaya grandiflora or white laceflower
• Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea
• Agastache rugosa or Korean mint
• Angelica archangelica
• Cephalaria gigantea or giant scabious
• Chaerophyllum aureum or golden chervil
• Erodium manescavii
• Scabiosa columbaria
• Succisa pratensis or devil's bit scabious
• Succisella inflexa
• Thalictrum delavayi or Chinese meadow rue

Lastly: the snowdrops are doing pretty well, considering that it's their first year. Quite a few are up, but still small, so we're hopeful that this year will be them establishing themselves, and they'll be even better next February.

Land-Drains Completed

Having got the dining room wall plastered, we've got it painted: a watered down sealing coat on Friday night; a proper coat of white base on Saturday morning, and the 'Timeless' topcoat last night. It looks really good, and Liz's plastering is excellent. You now wouldn't know that that wall was newly insulated, boarded, and plastered, when compared to the two unaffected walls next to it.

Almost all the rest of the weekend has been spent installing proper land-drains on the hillside, to drain the orchard. When we planted the trees, two years ago, we only had time (and money) to dig open trenches to drain the ground, and they've remained so. That's been a little unsightly, but also made it awkward (even dangerous) to walk around the orchard, so it was only ever a temporary measure. The winter's the ideal time to do something about this, as the grass is dormant and shorter, the mess of sorting it out will be grown over in a short while, and the ground is wet—making it easy to check things are working.

The land-drains comprise an 80mm pipe, which comes with 15mm slits in it (two opposite each other, offset 90° with the next pair, about 10mm apart). The pipe gets covered in a polypropylene geotextile sock, which stops large particles getting into the drain and blocking it. Small silty particles pass through and get carried away, and the idea is that a permeable layer of larger particles builds up, improving water flow. Once this is laid in the trench, we've partly backfilled with 10-20mm gravel, and then covered it over. It looks a bit of a mess now, where the spoil stacks next to the trenches have been removed, and the trench is obviously bare soil. However, the grass will start growing quickly soon, and soon the lack of trenches and hummock-y spoil heaps will be a massive improvement. More important, practically, will be the much safer footing as I cut the grass with the brushcutter!

While we've been out, I also popped up to the birch clearing, and saw that a number of the snowdrops we planted last year have started to come up. Hopefully there'll be even more by next weekend.

Ethernet

Before we plaster the walls, it's an ideal time to mess about with wiring in the house. We've sorted out switches and sockets as we've insulated the walls, meaning that there are more sockets (and in better places), and more logical switches. However, I also wanted to install ethernet cable, wiring the house up for a working LAN, because the walls (two feet thick sandstone) have always made wifi signals too weak to penetrate into the kitchen, or out to the garage (more of an issue now that's converted into a living space). That's been compounded by the insulation, which appears to have the effect of a Faraday cage (it is, after all, metallized PET), and has even caused problems with the wireless doorbell and smoke alarms. I had considered using Powerline adaptors, and using the power circuits to propagate ethernet connections, but our multi-fuseboard wiring makes me fear that this might never work well.

Secondly, although we have a broadband connection, it's not exactly broad broadband, as we're on the edge of a rural exchange. Because of that, I'm keen to maximise the capacity of the connection we do have, rather than throttling it by passing data through mains wiring, or too many wifi repeaters. It seems to me that the best way of doing so, long-term, is by hard-wired ethernet; and the best time to do that is now, before plastering the walls.

Thus, I've spent today, and we've spent this evening, putting in UTP cables emanating from the back of our dressing room and running to the landing/study, sewing room, sitting room (front and back), dining room, and towards the garage (to be finished later: I've taken them as far as the porch).

I need next to punch the cables into Cat6 sockets in each room, and then I can fix all the cables into a patch panel at the back of the dressing room. From there, I'll patch a few of them into the router, which is also a four-port switch—and later, when we need more than four active ports at once, I'll add a 24-port switch. The sockets in the sewing room, dining room, and garage will mean I can put wireless access points in these 'compartments', if range extenders can't get to them, so that there's wifi throughout the house. Similarly, the Cat6 cabling to the back of the sitting room and to the landing mean that fixed equipment (putative future smart TV, or NAS and printer in the landing office) can benefit from a fast, stable connection.

Now I just need to check that the cables all work...

Plastering

Over the last couple of months, we've done a bit of plastering here and there, but normally only a batch (~10kg of plaster, pre-water) at a time. This weekend, we've both been plastering (instead of just Liz), and we've made good progress. The sewing room is now finished, the external wall of our bedroom is done, the external landing wall is done, and all the external walls of the front and back guest rooms. The external wall of the dining room is also finished, which will be the first bit that we paint. That's only because our new sideboard arrived this week, and we want to get the wall around it plastered and painted before positioning it, as it would be a pain to unload, move, paint, replace, and re-fill.

Houseparty

We weren't able to schedule it for Advent, or for Epiphany, which were our first choices, but this weekend's been one of our biennial houseparties. Only David & Ann, and Philip, Rachel & Luke were with us (Katherine had last-minute travel problems, and Liz, Robert and James were in Florida), but we had a wonderful, relaxing time with them all. I was worried that the snow would cause difficulty getting them here, but it was rained away on Friday evening, so it wasn't too bad.

Snowy Weekend

We've had a weekend at home, with a couple of short trips to see people, as we've had Liz's sister staying with us. There's been a lot of snow in the last week, and everything's looking very picturesque—although it does always make travel that little bit more trying.

[photos from top circuit walk in snow]

Christmas 2014

???

Quick Trip

At about this time last year, we went for a quick weekend trip to Cambridge, and we've done the same again. We stayed with Philip and Rachel, and had a nice time with year-old Luke, who's grown again since we last saw him. I'm told they do that. Very relaxing, and we called in to see our old neighbour on the way home, too. We're back to work for a short week, and have made our cooking plans for the holiday...we're doing quite a bit of entertaining, actually, so it's going to be fun.

Decorating for Christmas

We've had a long weekend, with a very pleasant two-night stay in Scarborough, before coming home yesterday morning. We've turned our attention to decorating for Christmas, which is always a two-day affair, and which is now finished...it did involve wiring up the new outside socket, in order to put lights on the acer in the front garden, and also replacing the double light switch on the hall wall with individual pull-cord switches in the cloakroom and downstairs toilet. That's been on the to-do list for years, so it's nice to get it done. It means that the little bit of wall where the switch was, which is about the only hanging space in the hall, can now have something attractive on it, instead of a two-gang switch. While were in Scarborough, we visited the excellent Stained Glass Centre, where Liz's grandparents have bought her a lovely stone-effect arched mirror, which now graces the space—the final impetus to moving the switches.

Master En Suite

Yesterday we connected the new bath in the master en suite (waste and both taps), levelled the tub and fixed it down, and then tiled around the bath. That was followed, this morning, by grouting the tiles, which now look really good; we've also attached a shower-curtain rail that doubles as a normal curtain, and installed the glass shower screen.

While Liz grouted, I've properly hung the door between the guest room and that en suite—it couldn't be done until the blockwork wall was down, because the door couldn't open. That's now up, and allows access as intended. On the landing, we've put up the last section of plasterboard in the lobby, as well as finishing the stud wall separating the side guest room from the en suite, and plasterboarded the unfinished guest room side. That also meant hanging a wall light (reusing the cabling for the shaving light from its bathroom incarnation.

That really does bring us the end of major operations, which has meant that we've been able to clear the dining room, which has been the staging arena for tools, consumables, and building material for months, now—since August. We've been able to return tools and the small remaining amount of materials to the workshop and garage (as was), and collect up the waste, which is broadly either scrap metal, wood for recycling, and a small amount of 'domestic' waste. It's lovely to have the dining room back, which now feels like a big room again.

We've also resorted to turning on the central heating, as the stove is starting to struggle as the only heating in the house. Not bad, turning on the boiler right at the end of November.

New Hostas

New hostas arrived today, barerooted and looking more like multi-tentacled aliens. I've potted them up, and popped them in the greenhouse to overwinter. Although they don't need the protection, I prefer having them there, where I can keep a better eye on them.

They are:

• Wide Brim
• Sieboldiana 'Elegans'
• Francee
• Halcyon
• Pizzazz
• Snow Cap

Front Guest Room

This weekend's been a bit of everything, getting the front guest room more-or-less finished. There was some electrics (moving the lobby light; adding a wall light above the head of the bed; and getting a switch wire from inside the stud wall into the ceiling space of the bathroom, ready for the electronic lock).

We wanted to put a little niche into the side of the chimney breast, instead of a bedside table (there's not room in the alcove created by the chimney for the bed as well as a little table), which meant propping the wall, taking out some brickwork, and replacing with a lintel and wooden frame. These things take time...

Once that was done, we put up the wall cupboards, which in turn meant we were able to get the contents of the room a bit more rational. With the space that created, we've been able to put up the plasterboard on that side of the dividing room, and do the electrics in it (the PSU for the locks; the lightswitches, and sockets); as well as the plasterboards in the en suite that were missing. We've also put up the plasterboard missing from the sitting room wall, and the kitchen, which have been long overdue. Slowly getting there!

Last Walls Insulated

It's a little frustrating, really, how long it takes to get electrics sorted. It took a long while yesterday, finishing the wiring in the new guest room: new sockets, changing the light switch to a rocker switch (it was a bathroom pullcord), removing a wildly unnecessary coax cable that passed from ceiling to floor, disconnecting the old cable for the shower, and re-routing a wall light (necessitated by removing the wall it used to live on).

Never mind. One advantage of doing this room's work, and having the floor up in several places (and no shower monolith) was that I could rectify a design error in the kitchen. Since re-designing it in 2010, we realised that when stood at the sink, you were in your own shadow, which made washing up out of daylight hours (the sink's under the window) rather gloomy. Our solution has been to add a recess mounted LED light above and slightly right of the sink, which entirely remedies this.

Pleasingly, it's the only thing we've wanted to change in the kitchen, after four years.

Back in the new side guest room (old pink bathroom), we then set to insulating the room, throwing up the battens, insulation, and plasterboard rather quickly, actually—it's showing, now, that we've done some 250m² of this stuff. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it: because we wanted to start plastering today, we wanted to give any dust kicked up by demolition as long as possible to settle, and the two messy jobs we knew we still had to do were the fireplaces in our bedroom, and the front guest. (There's some plaster removal in the front guest, but it's minimal, and the room can't be plastered for ages, and only one wall is plasterboarded.)

Our bedroom's fireplace is in the same stack as the working sitting room fireplace, but obviously off-set. It was an extremely unpleasant job, but I stripped the breast of plaster, and broke out the stone/brickwork blocking the mouth of the fire. I looked as though I'd been coal mining when I was finished, as there was an enormous amount of soot, ash, and dust in the chimney. I was working in a confined space; a tent we'd put up to protect the room. It worked to protect the room, but I was horrible by the end.

The front guest room's fireplace was a lot better, partly because I knew what to expect, and had the vacuum to hand to suck up soot as I went. I found, unexpectedly, a letter lost in the stonework, which was from the summer of 1937: more on that another time, but it gives a date around which the fireplace was probably last used, before being blocked up.

That drew to a finish a long (0430 finish on Sunday morning) day, but the last of the mucky work. Today, a comparative lie-in (we only started work at 11: the laziness!) was followed by putting up the triple wardrobe in the side guest room, doing a variety of sorting and cleaning, and then, while I used expanding foam to finish the landing and master bedroom's walls, Liz started to plaster the side guest room. It's amazing, the difference it makes, even though it's only 70% done. We hope to finish it tomorrow evening, or at least get another bucket of plaster onto the walls.

This weekend sees the end of major operations, in a way, with the remodel/insulation. After this, the job list has the following, which, compared to what's gone before, feels much more manageable. I misquoted Churchill a while ago, but now I think we're able to say that we're at the beginning of the end.

• Plaster everywhere (sounds awful, but each room should only take about three hours, making about 27 hours work);
• Skirting board everywhere (ditto: there's only 90m or so to do);
• Paint everywhere (yes, this is awful, I admit);
• Tile the two bathrooms;
• Wire up the electronic locks for the bathrooms;
• Put up the cupboards in the front guest room;
• Put in the sockets in the diagonal wall dividing the guest rooms;
• Strip the last of the wallpaper upstairs (not much of this, in the master bed, and front guest);
• Single last plasterboard to go up in the sitting room, the landing, and kitchen;
• Window reveals & boards in the front guest room.

And I think that's it. By the end of our Christmas break we should be there, or thereabouts; the painting will probably take us beyond that, realistically, but let's say 'by my birthday', we'll be done.

Last of the Old Plaster

In preparation for the weekend's work, which is mainly focussed on the old house bathroom, we spent some time this evening stripping the old plaster off the old chimney breast. We hadn't really registered that this existed, until we started work on the other en suite bathroom, which it jutted into, just, next to the toilet.

Before we did this, I had to finish up some of the plumbing, removing a few pipes that were connections to the hot water cylinder, when we had one, and which ran up the front of the fireplace. Once these were out, we dismantled the brickwork blocking the mouth of the fire.

After doing this, I removed as much of the old toilet waste pipe as we could from inside, and rebuilt the wall where it came through. There was a bit of a cavity, which has been filled with mineral wool batt, and I've used expanding foam to consolidate the section.

The Pink Bathroom

After, I think, five years and three months bemoaning it, we've finally demolished (as it were) the pink 'house' bathroom. Tiled lovingly from floor to ceiling in a pink rose pattern, with monolithic shower plinth, and 'cosy' loo in the corner (tucked between said plinth and the wall), it's never been much loved. The tiles were augmented with two mismatched white tiles at some date, too. Anyway, it is gone.

We started on Saturday by taking out the sink, and then took the ceiling down. It sounds drastic, but it was a false ceiling, with the 'real' ceiling hidden a couple of feet above it. We're not entirely sure why it was put in: it's got some quirkiness to it, though. The upper ceiling is higher than any of the other first floor ceilings, with a sloped section at the front/back of the house. However, the finish matches the ceiling material in the far end of the house (~15cm T&G planks)—where, in fact, the ceiling is lowest. The lower ceiling, which is at the same sort of level as the middle compartment of the house (master bedroom and landing), matched the finish there, which is a kind of long panelled effect.

We decided we had to take it down, because, oddly, the master en suite and house bathroom had the false, dropped ceiling, but the airing cupboard, between them, didn't. Because the new guest room was going to absorb the bathroom, airing cupboard, and a slice of the master en suite, the ceiling had to be consistent; and as it was, it was carried on a beam affixed to the wall we were going to take out.

Down it came, in not too horrible a fashion.

Next, we started to dismantle the walls: the walls separating the bathroom from the master en suite, and forming the airing cupboard between them, were all coming down, replaced by a new stud wall that made the en suite slightly smaller, but the soon-to-be-guest-bedroom a better size.

Eventually, by mid-morning today, we had all the walls down, generating a huge heap of cement blocks (breeze-blocks) outside the kitchen. It revealed a number of pipes and cables we'll need to sort out, that were previously hidden in the airing cupboard. We've then taken out the toilet, and attacked the shower plinth.

I described it as monolithic above, which proved unexpectedly accurate: when we took apart the tiled ply exterior, we discovered that the shower tray had been set into a three inch slab of concrete, itself held in a timber frame and on top of a foam base. Why, I have no idea. I managed to lever it up, and then break it into lumps, but it must have weighed around 200kg. In combination with the high-density cement block walls, the floor was carrying an unexpectedly enormous weight, which, to be frank, I'm glad it won't have to support any more.

By early evening, we had the contents of the room removed, now forming an absurd glacis of bagged plaster, tiles, and cement blocks outside the kitchen window, waiting an eventual skip/grabber truck plan. We then set to work stripping the plaster from the walls, with the remaining pink tiles. Eventually, we finished about ten, and the room is bare.

I'm going to try to sort out the pipes in evenings this week, and next weekend we'll insulate and plasterboard the room, and, with a little luck, start plastering first floor walls.

Christmas Cake

We started soaking the fruit for our Christmas cake earlier in the week, and it was ready, this morning, to make the cake. Last year, we used Mary Berry's recipe, instead of the Delia Smith recipe we've used for many (nine, I think) years. We've tweaked it slightly.

Dried fruit:

• 6oz glace cherries
• 1lb 2oz currants
• 7oz raisins
• 12oz sultanas
• 2oz mixed peel

Soaked with 150–200ml strong tea for three days.

• 9oz butter
• 9oz light sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1tbsp treacle
• 4oz flaked almonds
• 3tbsp marmalade

All beaten together, before folding in:

• 9oz plain flour
• 1tsp mixed spice
• 1/2tsp cinnamon
• pinch salt

The fruit is then stirred in, before it's spooned into a 9", double lined and greased tin. It cooked for 4:45, at 140°, covered from the start with a greaseproof paper lid.

Compost Turning

I've had a day off today, getting a few bits done around the house while Liz works from the sitting room. It's been a useful one, with reasonable weather, too, and we finished the day with a trip to our local garden centre's Christmas preview evening (with 15% discount on everything...irresistible).

A lot of this morning I spent getting the plumbing and worktop in our bathroom sorted, and now the sink is properly connected, and the worktop is in place, attached, and sealed. This is rather necessary, as the plan is to dismantle the pink (house) bathroom at the weekend, so we wanted a working toilet and basin, even though we'll be using the guest en suite for showering for a while yet (until we can tile ours).

I've trimmed the old hollow-core back door, ready to re-use in the doorway between the master en suite and the new guest room. For now, it's just secured in the frame: the existing wall prevents it opening, so (as I can't, therefore, get to the hinges) it can't be screwed to the frame until the wall's taken down.

I've finally got round to labelling the plants we bought at Tatton in July, before they die back and vanish for the winter—unfortunately, I've lost track of a eupatorium, and the two echinaceas ('Secret Love'), so I'll have to hunt again for them.

Over lunch, we set soaking the dried fruit for our Christmas cake, which we'll make at the weekend. It has loads of dried fruit, nearly three pounds, which we soak with a mug or so of tea for a few days.

Before dusk fell, I managed to turn the compost heaps, thus freeing up (kind of) the first bay, which promptly half-filled with the mound we'd formed nearby. It has let me empty the bin outside the kitchen, though, which is good. Hopefully the space will suffice until spring, when we'll start needing compost again, thus emptying the third bay, and creating trickle-down space in the system.

I also managed to knock a long-standing job off The List, and cleared a silted up corner of the drive, and the drainage channel between it and the track, so the drive will, hopefully, flood less badly this winter.

This evening's shopping trip was good, with a few Christmas decorations, including a long string of lights for the acer in the front garden, and a half-priced holly (the variegated form, 'Silver Queen'), which will go on the hillside, to complement the pure green hollies already well established.

First Frost

This morning saw our first frost of the winter—coincidentally, on the same date as last year.

Fortunately, it wasn't a hard frost, hitting only the windscreen of the car, and not quite reaching the ground, which is as well, because we've not lifted anything. A frost was predicted for Wednesday morning, but not last night, so we were lucky. The house, too, protects the front garden, where the zonal pelagoniums are: we only have a limited number of non-hardy perennials, and these are a high fraction of the total.

As a result, we went out after getting back from work to lift the other vulnerable plants, as well as the geraniums in the front garden. The variegated agapanthus, Tinkerbell, and tulbaghia from Tatton last year, the three chocolate cosmos from this year, and the Queen Victoria lobelia (also Tatton Park 2013, I realise) have all been potted, and are in the greenhouse. That extends the time they can stay outside, before we have to find windowsills for them to go on, although they can't stay out there over winter, as the greenhouse isn't heated.

We've left the dahlias (Bishop of Llandaff, Twying's After Eight) for now, as they can wait until a proper frost kills the top-growth, before we lift the tubers for the winter.

Solid Door

Yesterday, we spent a bit of time getting on with the 'left behind' insulation in the kitchen and sitting room. In the former, there's a patch of wall near the old front door, which is partly an internal wall (dividing kitchen from sitting room), partly a cross-section through the old cottage wall, and partly a cavity'ed external wall (part of the kitchen extension from 30–40 years ago). In previous years, it's suffered from condensation, and been quite cold, although it's not a proper solid external wall, so we thought it worthwhile insulating it. It's been left to do, though, as it's just a single metre width of wall, which we're not insulating to quite the same standard as elsewhere, due to the scale of the problem (limited), the stone arch that's adjacent, and the limited space. The insulation and electrical bit of this is done, and the plasterboard will follow: the stash of plasterboards is currently buried under adopted furniture in the garage, so it has to wait.

We've also put up the roller blinds we ordered: new, more durable ones for the kitchen, matching ones for the bathroom windows, and a very wide, insulated blind for the patio doors. That also required us to get round to putting back the curtain poles in the kitchen, and to hang the curtains, which are now back up, which is good.

Today—a short day because Cath and Jason came round for dinner—we've replaced the utility room door with a new one. The old one was, bizarrely for an external door, a hollow-core door, which was neither secure nor warm, so we've replaced it with a solid wood door. The hollow-core door will serve in the short term as a bathroom door upstairs: we hope to replace all the first floor doors with attractive natural wood doors in a few years.

The solid wood door came blank, so it took me a while to mount the hinges, cut the recess and holes for the handle and lock mechanism, and re-mount the rack bolts, as well as hang it. Fortunately, the size was off-the-shelf, so I haven't had to trim it down, which would have been fraught with peril.

Logs

Just a short note: after several months of not doing so, I've spent this afternoon sawing, splitting, and stacking a load (or thereabouts) of logs. Several loads have built up on the drive, and we needed to clear some space. Secondly, as we're now running the stove, we're starting to burn wood for the winter, so it's time to start filling the shelter as it's emptied. Liz was working today, but helped with transporting the wood down, and stacking. Light ran out after 19 barrows (25 is a full load), but there we go.

In other news, Jenny and Philip have properly moved out, their sale/purchase completing at noon, and the new owners beginning to move in.