Garden wall

Here's the picture of the wall that Ben and Bob built between Christmas and New Year.  It needs another course of stones on this bit and will eventually curl up round the plum tree on the right getting lower as the ground rises and back along the side of the path behind (pretty much where the stones are piled at the back) and then we'll close off the left-hand edge in some way to make a not-square terrace.  Then there'll be a wheelbarrow path in front of this wall before another similar terrace bit.  It isn't really properly planned or anything - just see what looks right as we're doing it.

Seige machines and perfect eggs

Right, we're all back to normal now I think.  We took Ben back to Aberystwyth yesterday and took a look at the seafront while we were there.  It was high-tide and really quite dramatic with waves crashing up over the band stand and onto the promenade. Of course that was 'calm' compared to the last few days and I can't imagine what it was like at the weekend.   The road was covered quite thickly with shingle, block-paving bricks, stones and bollards.  There'll be quite a lot of re-building to do but, on the positive side, it is all clean debris - no sewage, mud or rubbish - and that has to be easier to deal with.  I think Ben was a bit disappointed not to have been there at the weekend with his camera, he is quite pleased that all the essay deadlines have been extended though!

Bob is back to work and getting on with more pub tables.  In his holidays he has done some stuff for us though.  We now have a new shelf in the kitchen for recipe books, CDs and one of the speakers.  That means that our new clock can go on the mantlepiece (just there, under the shelf).  It is made from a rusty old piece from the leaf-spring of a tractor which has quite a nice curve to it and has scrubbed up quite interestingly.  It is mounted on a piece of bog yew - similar to bog oak in that it has lain preserved in peat for probably thousands of years which gives it a beautiful rich colour and hardens it so that it polishes up beautifully.  It was pulled up from his fields by a farmer acquaintance in Lincolnshire and Bob made him a couple of chairs from it.

On just about the only nice day while Ben was here they built a retaining wall for the terracing in the garden.  I was at work so it was a really nice surprise when I got home - they got on very quickly with it, but unfortunately the weather's just been too horrible and wet to do any more to it, but it's a good start.  I thought I had taken a photo of it, but I can't find it and it's now dark so it'll have to wait.  Quite exciting to actually be doing something to the garden at last!  Bob has also built another step in the run up the side of the house so we are gradually, gradually getting there with that.  He has now hurt his back though so he'll have to take it easy for a while.

Our other project last weekend while I was off was to build a trebuchet!  A trebuchet is a medieval (I think?) seige machine which is like a giant catapault which is wound back so that, when it is released, it flings whatever is in the sling (rocks, dead cows or similar) over the wall of the castle you are laying seige to.  As we don't really need to attack a castle just at the moment, we made a little model one instead.  We were given the kit for Christmas before we moved and found it when we were unpacking a box a couple of months ago.  With the weather as it was it seemed like a good thing to do on a rainy afternoon.  Bob did despair a bit of the workmanship on the parts with holes not lining up properly, bent parts, etc, etc.  So he and Ben kept disappearing up to the workshop to do a bit of fine-tuning which I though was quite funny, but we eventually got it built.  This model has a wooden box to fill to act as a counterweight which we loaded up with rhubarb and custard sweets.  They aren't really ideal ballast material and we had to press down on the box to get any sort of fling.  So, there is the piece of red plasticine, provided with the kit instead of a dead cow, flying through the air down the hall.  We weren't really satisfied with the rhubarb and custard solution and so another rainy afternoon we went up to the workshop with it and filled the box up with scraps of lead - much better!  After much trial and error we found the ideal amunition to be a piece of blutak carefully shaped into a cylinder and with that setup we managed a record 20m fling out of the workshop door and down the path to the bridleway!  So, any unwanted visitors had better beware!  Once we got that sorted, we had a game of darts (round the clock, not proper darts - we can't do the maths quick enough!). . . what a way to spend an afternoon!

Yesterday, while we were at the sunny seaside, Lottie laid her first egg for us.  We suspected one was imminent as her comb, which had shrivelled up to almost nothing when she moulted, had come back and was nice and red which is usually a sign.  She is now a very samrt, very perfect-looking chicken and her egg was also very smart and very perfect-looking.  Smallish (but not as small as I thought it would be), very pale, very smooth and with not a speckle to be seen (it doesn't really look real!).  Let you know what it tastes like.  Maybe now the others will remember what they are supposed to be doing!

Stormy, stormy night!

So, did you have a good one?

Apart from me having a cold (I tried to deny I was getting a cold, but after two days of blowing my nose I had to admit defeat), we had a lovely Christmas.  After a bacon butty and present opening, we went for a nice walk, starting off in the rain and getting wet (probably not the best idea with a cold, but I survived), but then the sun came out and we were almost dry by the time we got home.  We walked up the Moelydd which is a hill near here with a stone on top showing the direction of Snowdon, the Long Mynd, etc.  On a clear day (and it was beautifully clear by the time we got to the top) you can see for miles across the Welsh hills which had snow on the tops, in one direction and across the Shropshire plains in the other.  It looked as though a good deal of Shropshire was under water as there were unexpected lakes shining in the sun.  We had a wonderful piece of steak (Chateaubriand) made into beef wellington in the evening - you hardly had to chew it it was so tender.  The leftovers made very posh sandwiches with homemade bread and sprout-coleslaw with horseradish the next day - yum!

This is my present from Bob made by a local Blacksmith.  It is
a copy of a medieval (I think) design for a three-way candlestick.
You can have it as it is with the candle in the top or you can jab the
spike on the left upright into something and put the candle into the
opposite hole or you can have it the other way up and hook it onto
something.  Clever, eh?

Laura has been busy and made us this felted picture of a moody
sunset over the hills with two little sheep.  It works really well against
the wiggly stones in the living room and the colours are just right.
We were wondering what we were going to put in that space!

I bought Bob a dart board for Christmas and that is now up in the workshop with an oche line drawn on the floor.  I had a go and I'm absolutely rubbish at it - we'll have to make sure there are no precious bits of wood stacked underneath it when I'm playing or they might end up looking as though they have woodworm!  I'll just have to practice I guess!  I also got him a Sony Walkman (not the old cassette ones we used to have but a new-fangled thingy where music magically gets onto it from the computer).  Being in the workshop all day, he gets a bit bored with the playlists on the radio so he can now listen to whatever he wants.  I can now just imagine him in the workshop, woodburner lit, polypin of beer at hand, music playing and darts in hand . . . . . we'll have to think of a name for this new pub!  The Chairmakers Arms perhaps or The Chair and Chicken.  

My goodness, it was windy last night.  We didn't hear the tree fall down just across the bridleway from our bedroom though.  Mind you, I think it might have just laid down gracefully rather than crashed down.  Its trunk has been split vertically for quite a while and it had kind of bent over rather than fallen down.  So our first job this morning was to clear that as it was blocking the bridleway completely.  Luckily it didn't take too long as the weather was still really horrible - the rain was really so wet!

Luckily, it wasn't a very big tree otherwise it may have reached the
lean-to.  As it was though, no damage was done and we haven't
found any more casualties.  I think we have had so many violent
storms in the last couple of years that most of the vulnerable trees
have already gone . . . lets hope so anyway!

Happy Christmas Everyone

Well, yes, it's nearly here.  I'm quite lucky this year because I had yesterday, today and tomorrow off work.  I'm in on Monday and Tuesday (6am start on Christmas Eve - oh my!) and then another three days off, so not too bad really.

Gathering our 'christmas tree'.  It's a couple of
Cherry saplings which we then bound together,
stuck in a heavy block of wood and decorated.

Ta dah!  It does look better in real life - you can't see the fairy
lights or presents underneath on this picture.  I quite
like this look, festive but different and it doesn't block the
light from the window.

Yesterday we had a bit of a neighbourhood party/get-together.  We see all our near neighbours individually, but never see them together and so we thought we'd have a go at remedying that. The weather was truly awful with howling wind and lashing rain, but quite a few people fought their way through.  I'm so glad they did - we thought no-one would turn up because of the weather.  We got a polypin of beer from the local micro-brewery which seemed quite a cool thing to do - nice just to be able to pull a pint whenever you want.  You do have to look after it though which Bob took very seriously.  We chose to have the beer with the yeast still in it (as opposed to 'bright' which is when they take the yeast out - that's my new bit of terminology for the week by the way) so you have to not move it around to let it settle and you have to keep it between 10 and 15 degrees.  So it was in the utility room which is the coolest room with a thermometer on top of it and we had to keep checking it wasn't getting too warm and opening/closing the window to regulate it!  We made pulled pork for in rolls which worked really well and is really very easy and mulled cider as a welcoming drink which also worked well once we'd completely changed the recipe.  We finally went to bed at 1.45am and so we have had a very lazy day today, bit of tidying up and a walk round the block and that concludes the activities for today!

Here are the knitted chickens I made for Laura's friend to sell -
they do have a look of the Chicken Run chickens.   They are filled
with rice so they can be used as paperweights to bring a
smile to the working day.

We do have some festive greenery (not just dead branches)
across the beams in the kitchen (top) and lounge (above) and
this has little fairy lights in amongst it which don't really show
up on the photos.

So, now I'm feeling Christmassey so:

I hope you all have a very merry, chilled and fun Christmas and a healthy and happy New Year.

Crafty things

This is Bob's latest chair made from Yew and
a very burry piece of Lime for the seat - it's
very strokeable!

At long, long last it feels as if Bob's furniture business is starting to become a reality - somehow the scaffold board furniture he has been making doesn't seem to count.  At the weekend we had a stall at a craft fair in an art gallery in Oswestry.  This forced us to get on and design some leaflets and business cards, polish and wax all the old stock and get our heads back into selling mode which is all good.  The Willow Gallery is quite a nice venue with a cafe and little shop and it was fairly busy most of the day and everyone was very complimentary.  Quite a few people seemed genuinely taken with the chairs and lots of people took leaflets.  We had some smaller stuff to pad the stall out  and we sold some of that - some cards I'd made with pictures drawn on slivers of oak and yew, the same but mounted on slate as a picture to hang on the wall, a peg board made out of an old oak fence post and some garden dibbers.  So, we made a profit on the day and came home feeling as though we'd had a pat on the back which is a nice feeling.  The girl who runs the gallery also asked us to leave some bits and pieces for them to sell in the shop (I had to make some more oak cards for them as there was only one left).  They have a craft fair each season and I think it'd be worth going a few times, so people get to know you.  Next one should be around Easter.

The week before Laura was manning a stall at village Christmas Fayre where the monastery is.  She was raising money for ROKPA, the charity she works for up there.  I had made a lots of cards and comedy knitted chickens for her to put on the stall (in addition to their other stuff) and my things  brought in about £130 for them, so that was worth doing.  Someone has even asked for some more of the knitted chickens so they can sell them where they work/live (still in aid of ROKPA) and so I am knitting away like mad again!

This weekend Carol and Graham (sister and brother-in-law) are coming so Graham can have a go at furniture making.  Over the next year or so he is going to make a rocking chair under Bob's guidance - he can just do a bit to it whenever they come to visit.  Actually, Bob has never made a rocking chair before (he knows the theory), so he'll be learning too.  Luckily, we went to the local woodyard earlier in the week and they had unearthed three big planks of Elm which we were able to buy for seats.  We have had real trouble trying to find anywhere round here that sells interesting wood, so it was quite a relief.  We never had this trouble where we used to live and were quite spoiled for good woodyards.  We even phoned one of them up thinking we might have to go all the way back to Northamptonshire to get the wood for Graham's chair!  That would have been ridiculous wouldn't it?

I guess after Carol and Graham's visit we'll have to start thinking about Christmas.  Working at M&S does put you off it all a bit - mince pies were in at the end of August!  It's all just so . . . . so . . . I don't quite know the word?  False?  Forced?  Not sure really.  I actually like Christmas and gathering greenery to decorate the beams in the kitchen, getting in touch with people, making cakes, etc, but just not all the commercialism and one-upmanship.  I must just be getting old!

Hedge-laying

Well, we've had a busy and productive weekend off - none of this lazing around malarky!  We decided to try our hand at hedge-laying.  All along the field (which we are still in the process of buying one end of) is a very neglected and overgrown hedge.  We have photos from the 50s of a very well kept thick hedge, but it hasn't been touched for 30 years or more and so is now made up of very leggy trees.  We have done a little bit of hedge-laying and know the theory, but have never tackled anything quite as unkempt as this.  The theory of laying a hedge is that you cut almost all the way through a trunk - ideally about as thick as your your forearm and about eight feet tall.  This doesn't kill the tree as long as the bark is continuous and it then shoots from the cut base and all along the trunk which you lay down at an angle of about 30 degrees.  So, you then have a good thick hedge as each subsequent trunk is laid down on top of the previous one.  This needs to be done in the Winter and it will all shoot back into life in the Spring.  As you can see from this picture, our 'hedge' doesn't meet any of the ideal measurements!  On closer inspection it appears that something (probably sheep or rabbits) has been nibbling the bark in years gone by.  The bark is the means of getting water and nutrients to the rest of the tree and the easiest way to kill a tree is to cut a small ring of bark away all around the trunk.  Just a small amount of continuous bark will keep it alive though and so you can still lay it.  Trouble is, most of these had been barked on the wrong side and we found ourselves trying to twist them gently after cutting them on the wrong ide to keep the bark. 
Now that would actually work and be quite easy on a tree that was only eight feet tall, but these were about thirty and so not so easy to control!  Quite a few just snapped off as we were gently trying to cajole them into place . . . . well, that's more firewood I guess! So, the finished thing looks a bit sparse (it always looks very drastic when a hedge is first laid), but each stump will sprout loads of new shoots even without an attached trunk and we found some baby hazel and holly growing around and have put them in the gaps.  Just have to wait now until the Spring to see what happens.  We only dropped one tree on the workshop by the way which I don't think was too bad going!  Our method was to tie a rope as high up as possible and then Bob did the chainsawing while I hauled on the rope to persuade the tree to fall the way we wanted.  That worked well most of the time, but this particular one was a bit on the big side and as Bob cut I could feel it falling away from me and there was nothing at all I could do except pull like mad to one side to try to stop it falling straight on to the ridge of the shed.  It fell to one side with the heavy bit between the shed and the retaining wall behind and so didn't do any damage except to pop the stop end off the gutter (and that just clipped back into place), so I think we got off lightly! 

It took a while to cut it up and get it out of the gap between wall and shed though.  As you can imagine, there is quite a lot of twiggy rubbish at the top of the trees . . . . actually, there's a wole lot more than you would imagine!  So today we thought we'd have a bonfire to get rid of it all.  I guess it was all just a bit too fresh and green and it just didn't really get going and so we had to abandon that plan.  Maybe  we'll try again in a couple of weeks - unless it rains incessantly of course.

 

So, instead of a bonfire day, we got on and redesigned our composting arrangements.  We now have a two bin system - one we keep filling and then when that's full we move onto bin two.  As you can guess, we have made it from stuff we have lying around - namely wriggly tin from the old barn we took down to build the workshop.

It looks a bit rustic doesn't it?  But it'll do the job for sure.  We transferred the stuff from the top of our old bin to the right-hand side and the stuff from the bottom which is ready to use, to the left.  Must say, the ready-to-use stuff looks luvverly . . . . delicious!  Very friable I think is the term, but that always seems a little odd to me as I can't think why you'd want to fry it, but that's what they say.  I guess we end up with quite a good mix with chicken bedding and poo, green garden waste and kitchen scraps - I think most people end up with too many grass clippings and then just get slime.  Without a lawn, we don't have that problem!

Other things we've done in the last couple of weeks are:
Very nice dinner at Phil and Ann's
See a comic poet at a pub in  a nearby village - very funny, in fact the young lady behind us had to dash out in the middle because she was closer to wettting herself laughing than she'd ever been before
Mystery guest - turned out to be male
Work at M&S
Proper shopping trip to Shrewsbury - even bought clothes and everything!
Make scaffold board furniture
Bought a new microwave
Pub
Sainsbury's
Knitting
Yawn
yawn
yawn!

All one happy family

The chickens appear to have stopped fighting (thank goodness) and Lottie now follows Horse around all day.  If you were to put it into human terms, I get the feeling that Horse views her as a pesky, annoying little sister.  Lottie still thinks she's in charge, but as she doesn't know her way around it doesn't really work very well as once she's bustled up to the others in a bossy way, she then has to wait for them to show her what to do.  Quite funny really.  A few days ago, when the others were still very wary of her, Bob went up to check that they were all tucked up in bed.  They were, with Horse and Peggy squashed at one end of the perch and Lottie at the other, but surprisingly Dot was down Lotties end looking sleepy.  She woke up when Bob opened the door and looked horrified to find herself on her own at Lottie's end and very quickly shuffled to the other end.  They are funny.  Anyway, they all tolerate each other now and Lottie is learning the ropes and seems to be quite enjoying her new home and friends.  It has been quite hard to get a photo of her because she is quite well camouflaged against the mud and fallen leaves, but here she is with her giant friends:

Finally, finally, finally after asking for ever, I have had an extra day added to my contract at M&S which is good . . . . . isn't it . . . . . extra money, always useful . . . . no, honestly, I am pleased . . . . really!  So, I will now work four days a week which I really need to do, but to be honest I wish I didn't.  At least I won't have to rely on the very unreliable extra hours at their whim and I should be able to just do my contracted days and know where I am, so it is good really - I just can't get that excited about it. 

We have a mystery guest visiting this weekend.  My friend from a million years ago is coming for the weekend - we had our first babies the same night and made friends in hospital, so not actually a million years, but 27 which is nearly as long!  It will be lovely to see her and catch up on all the news of the last few years and she is bringing a 'friend', but we don't know a name, boy/girl or any other details, just that they eat anything, so that's the important thing.

Bob has a stall at a craft fair at the local art gallery at the end of November which is exciting.  We have been hunting all around to find all the bits and pieces of stock we have stored ready to sell.  We have found enough to make a good display along with the new chairs he's made and I have made some greetings cards, so it should look OK.  The stall only costs £20 so you don't have to sell too much to cover costs and it's a good first step to getting his name known and a chance to give out some business cards (so long as we get around to making some!).