Blue Lagoon

Well, I've picked a good time to have a few days off again weather-wise.  Actually, I didn't pick the time - it was my weekend off and I swapped today for tomorrow to cover a colleague's holiday and so ended up with a four-day-weekend which has been very nice indeed.  After sleet when I was driving home on Thursday and getting absolutely soaked walking home from the pub on Friday evening the rest of the time the weather has been absolutely lovely.  It's raining again now though, so time to go back to work tomorrow - perfect!

On Friday morning we went to pick up the Yew to make a coffee table for the people we spoke to at the Ludlow market a few weeks ago.  We sat with them with a cup of coffee and talked design options before going to pick out the timber we needed.  All very civilised and, I think, just how Bob would like his business to develop.  It's nice when the customer has some input into the design of their furniture.  We then had a nice lunch in Church Stretton and a mooch around the antiques market.  Luckily there wasn't anything we wanted to buy as we couldn't have got it home with the car full of Yew.  We had a flat tyre when we got home - good job it didn't happen (or we didn't notice) on the way home because we'd have had to unload all that wood on the side of the road to get at the spare tyre!

On Saturday we went for a lovely walk taking homemade pasties for lunch partway.  We sat high up on Llanymynech rock looking out over Wales to eat them in shirt sleeves and I think I might even have got a bit of a tan from it.  We haven't walked round our quarry for quite a while and this was the first part of our walk.

I think, if anything, the colour of the water is
even more turquoise in real life than in this picture

There were some huge fallen trees which have now been dealt with and are on someone's log pile.  We met the farmer on our way back and he said that one of the trees was so big that he got 57 logs out of one single slice of it!  Amazing.  He had just helped a sheep deliver three lambs and we had a peek at them on our way past - soooo cute.  Some time ago they stopped working at the far end of our quarry and so stopped pumping the water out.  Over the winter it has filled up and now the water has settled it is an amazing colour.  When the sun's shining on the lakes, they just don't look real, more like a touched-up holiday brochure.  Presumably, there must be copper in the rocks to make the water this colour.


Yesterday we had quite a busy day - the good weather makes you want to get on and do things.  So we started off by cutting half a tree down.  Just next to our beer bench is a large Ash tree and a Sycamore with five reasonable-size trunks.  This casts quite a shade over our bench so we cut down three of the Sycamore trunks.  We'll see what that's like when the leaves are out and maybe cut the rest of them next Winter.  The shade from the Ash is quite nice and dappled, so that can stay.  So, having had that huge bonfire a couple of weeks ago and got rid of all the brash from the hedge-laying, we now have another big pile!  We also have more firewood of course.  I think we may have a look at hiring a log-splitter when we have finished cutting up what we can of the Oak across the lane - it'll take us ages to sort out otherwise.

As you can see, the hedge is a bit sparse-looking just now.
Once the rabbits can't eat it we'll put some more plants in
and then it should start to look better.

Once we'd cleared up from that job, we started our mega rabbit fencing project.  The little bunnies are such a pest that we really need to keep them out - they have acres of woodland to play in, dig up and eat, so they really don't need our garden too!  I have tried to explain this to them, but they just don't seem to get it.  Hopefully this fence will also deter dogs as everyone lets their dogs off their leads as soon as they get to our lane and think it's fine for them to run all around our garden playing with the chickens.  I guess the garden just looks such a mess at the moment that they don't think it matters, but hopefully before too long it'll start to take shape and then we will mind.  So, we have knocked some stakes in along the hedge to start with ready for the rabbit wire which we've had ready to go for a couple of years!  We then have to go up the slope, behind the beer bench and along behind that hedge, put a gate in then somehow fence or gate between out top barns and Bob's workshop and then again between the workshop and the house and then put a gate in next to the lean-to.  It's not an easy garden to fence at all.  Once it's done though, we can take away the bits of individual fencing we have round borders, etc and let plants trail over walls, etc.  Hopefully too, the hedge will start to do something - it really has been hampered by nibbling bunnies.

Next job was to do another rise of the steps next to the house.  So, I cleaned the bricks up and Bob laid them.  Most of them were from around the range in the kitchen and had a really thick layer of very bright red paint to scrape off.  Most of them have the maker's name stamped on them and come from a just few miles down the road which is nice.

So, tree-felling, fencing and step-building - isn't that what everyone does on Mother's Day?!  We slept well last night I can tell you.

Snow!

You know I was saying how lovely the weather was and how Springlike it felt . . . . well, when we opened the curtains this morning it was snowing!  Quite heavily too and in the time it took me to have a shower and get ready for work the garden had a thin white covering . . . . 

. . . . and here it is - can you believe it?!  Actually no - it did really snow and cover the garden this morning, but this picture is the view exactly one year ago today when it took us four hours to dig our way out so I could go to work.  Strangely, it was hot the week before this happened too and I got sunburnt shoulders in the 25 degree heat.  How bizarre, eh?

Bob and I have been doing some furniture-making together which is quite nice.  Almost a year ago, we were frantically trying to get the house ready for Mum and Dad bringing their friends from the Netherlands to stay and we needed an emergency coffee table.  We had a very burrey piece of Elm which we wanted to use, but didn't have time to do the rest properly so, as a temporary measure, we stuck some spare chair legs in it and dah, dah one coffee table.  Not actually ideal - when Ben was here at Christmas and wanted to move the table he picked it up rather than drag it so it didn't scratch the floor (what a good boy).  Course the legs promptly fell out and he was left with a surprised look on his face holding a table top complete with magazines, TV remote, etc while Bob and I fell around laughing.  

Since Bob is now making chairs again, he really needed the chair legs back and so we thought it was about time we finished the table properly.  We wanted an organic look as the top is very natural, but that certainly made doing the joints a lot harder with curves going in all directions.  We're really pleased with the finished article though and hopefully it won't fall apart again!

Bonfire success at last!

I'm here on my tod at the moment while Bob is over in the east helping his sister to fit out her new shop.  They are putting timber cladding up on some of the walls and he just rang to say he drilled through a cable in the wall this morning which wasn't the best of starts.  He didn't get electrocuted or anything, but it limited what they could do as the shop's quite dark without the lights on.  So, the electrician is coming first thing tomorrow and they were out looking for a cable detector for tomorrow!  It's strange being on my own here as it doesn't happen very often . . . . must remember to lock the door when I go out (I don't usually need to think about that!).

Bob did the Shrewsbury market by himself last week as I was working.  He didn't sell a chair (just as well really as the new batch aren't finished yet!), but he did sell every single coat peg board we had.  He's going to call at our old woodyard again on his way back from his sister's to get some more interesting bits of wood - surely there must be somewhere nearer than Northamptonshire to get this wood from!  He has a couple of commissions from the two markets so I think he's made a really good start.  He is still doing the scaffold board furniture, but just not quite so much.  I found this picture of one of the table ends where he was having a bit of trouble with the wood splitting and it made me laugh because it does look a bit over-clamped doesn't it? 

I had a couple of days off last week using up bits and bobs of holiday before the end of March which meant that I had nearly a week off in total.  What a good week to pick too - apart from the fog on Wednesday it has been just lovely.  The daffodils are well and truly out and there are lots of primroses around and plenty of bluebell leaves.  Do you know, each year I collect the seeds from our bluebells and either sprinkle them in pots or just strew them over the garden.  Last year I hoed the bed where I'd thrown them the previous year forgetting what I'd done and it was only as I was finishing that I noticed new little bluebell leaves in one corner - darn!  This year though I have remembered and won't be hoeing and there are loads of tiny little plants.  They just look like twin grass stalks at the moment and it'll be a few years before they flower, but the ones I didn't hoe last year are quite sturdy little things.  Won't that be nice when we have an eye-achingly beautiful carpet of bluebells?  I did throw some around in our little wood, but they'll be far too tiny to notice among the leaf litter.  I guess in a few years I'll just have a nice surprise when they do their thing.  So, just now our garden doesn't look too bad (this is relatively speaking of course) if you stand back and fuzz your eyes up it almost looks cultivated.  I'm putting this on record because I know that in about three weeks the nettles will have taken over and everything will be waist-high.

This was right at the end, I didn't have time to take
a photo earlier

Finally, on the third attempt, we managed to have a good bonfire with all the brash from laying that little bit of hedge back in the Autumn.  Carol and Graham were here for a short visit so Graham could do a bit more to the rocking chair he's making.  So while he was doing that Carol and I had a go at the bonfire and once we got it going properly, we could hardly keep up with feeding it branches and we reduced two huge piles to one little, neat pile of ash in just over an hour - how satisfying.  In the process I singed my fringe when the wind changed direction just as I was trying to get a big branch right into the middle and both of us have arms covered in scratches. Oooh!  I nearly forgot to tell you, we finally own the piece of field Carol's standing on in the picture!  After almost 6 years of trying we've finally done it!  The sales details of this cottage said the land may be available by separate negotiation and we have been separately negotiating ever since.  This little bit of field will be really useful as we can park on one corner which will mean you can turn round and go out forwards (we have to reverse a surprising number of cars out for people), we will also plant some fruit trees, build a good-size log store and I think this bonfire patch will be a permanent feature so we might as well make it official with a stone boundary.  It's a real shame that, because the solicitor worked at a snail's pace taking 6 months to do the tiny bit of paperwork we hadn't already sorted, it is now too late in the season to lay the hedge and it wouldn't be a good idea to plant the new boundary hedge until we've finished dropping trees all over the place.  Hey, what's another year in the scheme of things?!  So anyway, we now own our surroundings which is a really nice feeling . . . . suppose we could try getting the quarry to let us have the wood across the lane next! 

We're in business!

This is the stall which looks rather cluttered.  When we use
our own stall it has a back and sides so you can see the
wares more clearly without looking through to the next stall.
Mmmm, we may have to work on that.

I take it all back, people do just nip into town with the cash in their pockets to buy a chair! Yesterday we did the craft market at Ludlow as I mentioned last time. Although it was really cold, it was a beautiful day - clear blue sky and sunshine.  We were alright after about 11am when the sun had moved round and over the old prison building (a lovely old black and white building) and reached our stall.  It was a strange day all in all - we sold one card, one slate picture and a chair (all for cash) and the people who bought the chair were going to take it home with them on the bus!  We had a couple interested in a dining table and chairs, another wanting a coffee table made out of a Yew tree they'd had stored in their barn for 12 years and someone else who needed some Ash bending for the restoration of a pre-war Jaguar!  What a mixture.  I think, in a way, Bob was a bit shocked to have sold a chair - it was his showpiece (the one on the table in the picture).  Now he'll have to make another and he's not sure when he'll have time!  

Our other piece of news is that we have finally got round to building a website.  Its address is:

www.sheltonfurniture.co.uk

if you want to take a look.  It's way, way down on the Google search, so probably best to type in the whole address or use the link above.  We have more work to do on the site to make it more interesting, but just wanted to get something done so we have an address to put on the leaflets, etc.

We're having a lazy day today (after a very long day yesterday) and so I'm in the middle of making crumpets.  I've been meaning to have a go for ages and bought some crumpet rings way back last summer I think.  The woodburner is lit so we'll be able to cook them on the top of that.  I'm not sure that they're going according to plan as, just now, the mixture doesn't look anything like I'd expected it to from reading the recipe.  Well, we'll know in about an hour's time I guess!

We now have violets, primroses and snowdrops out up by our beer bench and the daffodils are so nearly ready to come out that I have to keep checking on them.  Don't think they'll be able to hold out much longer and then it'll really feel like Spring is here.

Look what Bob did!  180!!
That's good apparently and he had to leave the darts
in place for me to see when I got home from work.
Now, how do I know they were thrown not pushed?!