Roofs and Vegetables

Wednesday, 5th July, 2023

The scaffolding has been removed from the top part of the cottage and from the laundry block. The laundry room now has a beautifully rebuilt roof over it, removing all fear not just of imminent collapse of that whole section of the house but also of ingress by both bees and rain. This unscheduled exercise took attention away from the rebuilding of the cottage for a while, but now work can resume on the lean-to sections at either end. Most of the interior plastering has been done, so the next big milestone of the project will be the fitting of the windows, which have needed five coats of brown paint to fully cover the white primer that had been applied to their wooden frames at the manufacturing stage. I wanted the windows to blend into their surrounding woodland environment, hence the tree-trunk colour.

Rain has fallen at last in recent days after a long dry spell, and the veg patch has been thankful for it. I wasn’t going to bother with trying to grow vegetables this year, partly because the patch is on a building site and partly because it is destined to be ripped out and completely redesigned and deer-proofed, but in the end I couldn’t resist putting in a few plants. Keeping things simple, I am limiting them to a few tomatoes, peppers, beans, courgettes and potatoes. In the empty square between the courgettes I sprinkled some seeds from a few packets that were past their use-by dates. I am amused that tiny plants are coming up in two neat rows, but I have no idea what they are. The building-site barriers are proving to be a wonderful substitute for deer fencing.

Orchids in the Wild

Tuesday, 20th June, 2023

This year, the wild flowers in the lanes around here are bigger and taller than in previous years. Perhaps our late spring is the reason. Behind the house are woodlands big enough to get lost in. Few guests, or even humans for that matter, ever venture there, so rare plants have a chance to grow undisturbed. This beautiful orchid was in full bloom right in the middle of one of the paths. It literally stood out from other smaller specimens dotted around. Behind it is the blurry outline of thistle, which was shoulder high. The lower photo shows the path into the woodland from the garden.

 

Yet More Battens

Saturday, 10th June 2023

The rebuilding of the gardener’s cottage is making good progress and is well ahead of schedule. That’s a good thing, because it was discovered that the pitched roof above the laundry room (on the left in this photo) was in danger of collapsing as a result of a construction error when it was built in the 1970s. Built on top of what was a flat roof (still there, complete with ancient satellite dish), it did not have enough cross-bracing timbers to support the weight of the tiles, and over time some of the timbers detached themselves from the overall framework. The whole structure needs to be rebuilt urgently. So the tiles have been removed and the timbers taken down. A growing pile of battens is waiting to be recycled as kindling for Colin’s woodburner. Colin is our temporary gardener until the cottage is occupied again. He is the creator of the magic circles on the front lawn, which are visible from Google maps. He is delighted to fill his van with these awful battens full of nails!

Direct Hit

Thursday, 8th June 2023

Apart from rebuilding the gardener’s cottage which adjoins the house, we are also having to take down the roof above the laundry room and rebuild it. This involved finding a new home for large colony of bees that lived in the roof space. Two huge boxes full of bees were taken away after many decades of residency by successive colonies.

This week, one of the men inadvertently went through the ceiling, scoring a direct hit onto my basket of freshly laundered towels which were waiting to be sorted, folded and put away.

This Year’s Rhododendrons

Friday, 2nd June, 2023

This year’s rhododendrons have not been the best. They suffered terribly during last summer’s drought. Some of the bushes have refused to flower at all. The pale pink one is now very old, bent and frail. It may not survive much longer, but it certainly gave a good show.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Monday, 15th May, 2023

Today, the wisteria blooms are already faded. This photo was taken on Saturday, 13th May, two days ago, just before the blooms started to wilt. These blooms last only a very few days. As a symbol of life’s transience, I dedicate them to the memory of my mother who died on 13th May seven years ago, and to my very good friend Catherine who died on the day when this photo was taken.

Blooms in May

Thursday, 11th May, 2023

The rhododendrons this year are probably not going to give us a good display. They suffered terribly in last summer’s drought. Many died and others have not fully recovered and are reluctant to open their sparse buds. I hope there will be something to show later this month. On the other hand, the wisteria is thriving. These are the blooms to the left of the front door, which is just beyond the right edge of the picture. There is a mirror image on the other side of the door! Once the blooms have faded, there follows vigorous growth of leaves and fronds throughout the whole summer and autumn. These require weekly trimming, taming and tying back. This wisteria dates back to at least 1948, when the house was restored after a lightning strike set fire to it and destroyed its upper storey. Who knows whether it was planted before that fire?

A Better Loaf

Monday, 1st May, 2023

I make bread several times a week, alternating between white and brown. My sourdough starter dates from 2009, and if I don’t keep making bread, it will die. The same principle goes for yoghurt, but my yoghurt starters tend to last a couple of years before gradually weakening and needing to be replaced. This year, because of high electricity prices, I have been experimenting with more economical ways of baking bread. To switch on the big oven for 50 minutes just to bake a single loaf seems very extravagant. So I’ve been using my mini-oven. Unfortunately, this doesn’t result in as good a loaf as baking it in the big oven. The top of the loaf gets overcooked and the rest of it dries out too much before being cooked through. Baking it at a lower temperature for longer does not work. In search of a solution, I stumbled on this lidded ceramic  bread pan from the French brand Emile Henry. Reviews were mixed and it’s an expensive product, but I decided to order it anyway and try it out. The results far exceeded my expectations. That lid, with its all-important holes, is what produces the magic. It traps just enough moisture inside the receptacle to produce a good rise and prevent dehydration, but not so much that the loaf would come out soggy. I now have the most perfect loaves I could possibly wish for, cooked in my mini-oven. I wish I’d discovered this wonderful earthenware bread baker earlier. My lidless metal loaf tins will now all go to recycling.

 

Colin’s Circles

Wednesday, April 5th, 2023

March was wet and cold, and April is brighter, but still very cold. Undeterred, the grass is growing apace and Colin the gardener decided to make his lawn artwork as neat and perfect as possible when I told him I needed a photo item for the website to reassure visitors that we hadn’t gone into total hibernation. “I’ll do a double cut,” he said. “One cut today and another tomorrow.” So this is the result, viewed from upstairs yesterday evening. I’m sure you could take a compass to it and Colin’s geometry would be pretty accurate. This morning, however, the frozen dew had painted the circles white.

The rear of the property looks very different. It is an active builders’ yard, with a team of half a dozen workers, who work from 8am until 4pm. They do not disturb B&B guests, whose rooms are on the south and east sides of the house. The building work is on the north and west sides, well away from guest bedrooms and the breakfast room. The Annexe was essentially demolished during March, leaving little more than a bare brick shell. At the beginning of this month the joists for the upper storey were put in place, which immediately makes it look more like a house.

 

 

Raise the Roof

Tuesday, February 28th, 2023

February always races by, thank goodness, as it is my least favourite month. Tomorrow work officially starts on the annexed cottage. The architect’s drawing shows what it will look like in seven months’ time and the photo below shows its current, dilapidated state. One minor change to the drawing is the window under the porch roof on the left. This will be removed and replaced by a new dedicated front door to the cottage, which is at present accessed by a door at right-angles to it. There will be two matching doors, one for the cottage and one for the service areas of the main house. The current crazily  spread-out bungalow will become a compact two-storey west wing, joined to the main house but also neatly blocked off to conform with fire regulations and also to enhance privacy on both sides instead of the current arrangement whereby the cottage’s kitchen protrudes into and under the main house via a long corridor, creating a lot of wasted space and a major heating problem for the cottage.

The roof of the central part of the cottage will be raised to make space for two bedrooms and a spacious bathroom. The chimney will be replaced by a modern flue serving a wood-burning stove. The internal walls of the cottage’s ground floor will be removed, creating a vast open-plan ground floor living space from what is currently a living-room, a small corridor and two bedrooms. The cottage’s new kitchen will be at the northern end, which will retain its current single-storey status. The cottage’s old kitchen and associated corridor will revert back to the main house and will be repurposed as a much-needed storage area, utility/laundry room and boot room. I will be able to relocate one washing machine, a dryer and my rotary iron and linen press there. I will also be able to set up a large sheet-folding table, which will be much better than using a bed as a folding surface for superking sized sheets.

In days gone by, the main house did not have a kitchen. The cottage was built as servants’ quarters, and its occupants (groundskeeper husband and cook/housekeeper wife) were expected to cook meals for their masters in their own kitchen and pass it through the serving hatch (which still exists) into the pantry, whence it would be taken to the dining room. This room, along with most others in the house, still has a bell to summon the servants. The bellboard still works in parts and is in the pantry. The pantry, with its original swing door, is now the secondary kitchen, which is used by B&B guests to eat takeaways or to have early self-service breakfasts if they want to check out at crack of dawn.

I will post updates and photos of the works to the cottage over the next seven months.