Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025

This year we have not seen many of the colourful English Summer butterflies. There have been one or two Red Admirals and Peacocks but no Painted Ladies. Mostly it’s been the less welcome — when you have a vegetable patch — Cabbage Whites and some yellow Brimstones plus lots of the smaller Meadow Browns and occasional Tortoise Shells. Today, however, a Comma came to settle on a rhododendron leaf. It’s a strange name for a butterfly, but its punctuation mark is only visible when it has its wings folded.

Tuesday, July 15th, 2025

Mid-July is lily time. Lilies are said to be highly toxic to cats, so it’s a risk to have so many in the garden, but so far, none of our cats has ever died of lily poisoning. The scent from this gigantic tiger lily wafts for many feet across the garden. It and its yellow counterpart on the other side of the steps shine like torches when dusk descends (see below). We have all kinds of other lilies in the garden, including mauve and white Nile lilies (Agapanthus), crimson arum lilies and, down by the pond, yellow and orange day lilies. For my birthday I was given three pink Oriental lilies in a pot. We’ve planted them in the front border, which is very much a work in progress. Until recent years it was impossible to raise many types of flowering plants because there were so many rabbits. Now there are none, as whole colonies were wiped out by disease and they haven’t come back. Deer are more of a problem, but they don’t seem to eat lilies.

Saturday, May 10th, 2025

For the past three weeks land drains have been created around the property. After last year’s wet winter, during which water kept pouring into the grounds and underneath the house from ever-rising underground streams, springs and seeps, we decided that something had to be done because the garden was turning into a spongy bog and sand bags were needed to stop water running down the back path into the house. Old pipework from the days when the house was built had long since ceased to work. We put in a small local French drain which helped to some extent last year, but what was needed now as a better and more permanent solution to our changing climatic conditions was something much more extensive.

After much thought we concluded that we should install a ring drain all around the perimeter of the garden (see bottom photo) with a few spurs to catch and drain water near the house. Our contractors have dug a deep trench up to 5 feet in places (top photo) in the clay soil at the bottom of which they have laid a perforated plastic pipe encased in a textile sock (middle photo). On top of that, they have poured in tons of stone and gravel up to the top (see video). A gentle incline from one end of the drain to the other ensures that water will drain away.

Tuesday, April 29th, 2025

The azalea bushes usually start to open their flower buds before the rhododendrons, though both varieties spend a long time in the process, dotted around various parts of the garden, from the end of April right through the month of May and into June. Interestingly, the order of flowering of the different species varies from year to year. Here is an azalea bush at the top of the big lawn.

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025

After a long run of very sunny days, the wisteria decided to make its appearance in mid-April, almost a whole month earlier than last year. Here is the western side of it. On the eastern side of the front door (not visible in this photo) it is less exposed to sunlight so is a little less impressive in terms of abundance of blooms. Early rhododendrons are about to flower too. In this year’s photo you can see the beautiful replacement windows that were fitted throughout the house last summer.

My little cat Peonie escaped onto the road a fortnight ago and was hit by a vehicle. She survived but needed specialist surgery to put her shattered leg back together again with metal implants. She has to live in a cage for several weeks. I myself had scheduled surgery last week. We are recovering together and hope to resume normal B&B business by the second half of May.

Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024

I cannot believe that on Sunday it was time to bring down the Christmas tree from the attic yet again. This photo looks almost identical to last year’s, but there is a big difference — the new windows behind it. Last year (and presumably every year from the time the house was built), whenever the nighttime temperature fell below 6 degrees, by morning water would be pouring down the glass in rivulets from top to bottom and creating pools on the windowsill. It was a major job to get the breakfast room looking reasonably inviting for the occasional guests who come at this time of year, and reaching behind the tree to mop up or use the window vacuum cleaner was not possible. Trying to keep the windows dry was soul-destroying because no sooner had the last window been mopped up than the first one was already building up a layer of condensation. This would continue until midday and sometimes all day if the humidity levels were high. With these new windows, the condensation problem is all but eliminated as long as the indoor temperature is not allowed to fall too low. As we approach the darkest weeks of the year, it is important to make this isolated rural house feel cosy.

Friday, October 18th, 2024

The fig tree has had its hair cut while it still has its leaves on to make it easier to shape and style. If it were not pruned back vigorously every year, with light trims in between, it would soon overwhelm the turning circle to the extent that vehicles would no longer be able to drive around it. Before they drop off, the leaves take on a luminous lemon yellow hue, casting a golden glow into the breakfast room.  We will enjoy the tree’s autumn colours for a short while only, as the leaves are easily dislodged. Fortunately the garden is very sheltered from winds at ground level, being enclosed on all sides by a thick ring of trees that keep getting taller as the years go by.

Saturday, September 28th, 2024

I am not sure that I ever posted a picture of the rebuilt Annexe in its finished, white-coated state.

This second photo shows how the removal of the Thuja Pliccata tree (see previous post) has allowed the rear of the Annexe to benefit from a lot more afternoon and evening sun.

For the sake of comparison, here is the front of the Annexe as it was in 2023, before the rebuild. The footprint is exactly the same, and all the brick walls up to the ground floor ceilings were retained. Only the middle portion of the building was extended upwards. A very detailed account of the reconstruction has been given here.

Tuesday, September 24th, 2024

Just outside the house on the west side was a huge Thuja Pliccata tree. It was already there, in the form of an overgrown hedge, in 1960 when my family came to live here, thirty years after it was planted. But the Thuja eventually grew taller than the house and its enormous trunks and roots threatened to break the sewage and waste water pipework that run underneath it. It was a crazy idea to plant such a species right on top of the house’s main drainage system in the first place, but I don’t expect the residents in the 1930s ever imagined that their small hedge would still be alive almost a hundred years later.

The vast tree was taken down in sections earlier this summer and today we hired a stump grinder to flatten some of its stumps, along with many other stumps that are dotted around the grounds. The larger Thuja stumps will have to stay to let nature deal with them.

Friday, August 9th, 2024

I don’t go away very often, but when I do I always keep an eye out for anything that I might usefully implement here at Bressenden. While staying at a Premier Inn recently, I looked around my room for instructions to access the WiFi, or a code or password. I had not stayed in a hotel since the days when a hotel receptionist would hand you a piece of paper with log-in credentials scribbled on. The guest information leaflet told me to scan a square-shaped box that was filled with tiny black and white squares. I’ve never had to use one of these QR codes before, though they came into their own during the Covid pandemic. QR stands for Quick Response. Most adults now apparently own a smartphone or tablet with integrated camera and built-in software that is able to recognise and use QR codes.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do, or even whether I needed a special app. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I got the camera up on my phone and pointed it at the patterned box. A message came up inviting me to join the WiFi network, and that was it. How simple and convenient! It was so quick and easy, compared with fiddling about in my phone’s settings, choosing the correct network and inputting a password, that I decided to look into the possibility of having a similar system for use by Bressenden’s guests.

Back home, I set about finding out how to create a QR code. It was surprisingly straightforward and, best of all, it was free. I have now put QR codes in all the rooms — not just for accessing WiFi, but for phoning me or sending a message. This is easier than having to key in a phone number plus, for overseas guests, a country code.