Diary catch up #4 - October's bounty gathered in

Big harvest day finally came on the 5th October.  I left it as long as I could, the weather had been so amazing and I just felt that every day ripening in the sun on the vines would mean tastier and longer-keeping squashes and pumpkins.

In then end, I caved in after about the third day of builder Graham doing his "frost is on its way - I can feel it in my bones" comments...perhaps I was pushing my luck - the mornings were feeling nippier, with that smell of the change in the air, even though by 10.30 we were still all stripping off our jumpers to carry on our work on our respective walls.

Even so, I was still pleasantly surprised at the quantity of the haul:

My first Windy Acre harvest of pumpkins and squashes (with a few late tomatoes thrown in)

The 'Munchkin' pumpkins were the most astounding - the quantity mainly being the result of all my 7 plants which were planted out, all surviving and none lost to the demon slug.  I had actually expected only 3 or 4 to make it through unscathed.

The 'Hunter' butternut squashes were also the best haul I have ever achieved from a butternut variety - pointing firmly to the excellent weather conditions we have enjoyed this year, lots of sun, warmth and rain intermittently distributed throughout.

The 'Turk's Turban', 'Harlequin' and 'Big Max' were less prolific - I will be interested to assess the flavour of 'Turk's Turban' as I have never eaten this one before, and they did grow to a good size just less fruits on the plants than the butternuts.  I don't think I will bother again with a big one like the 'Big Max' as the colour didn't seem to ripen deeply enough and so looks less appetising.  Also, you end up with so much leftover pumpkin in the fridge that after endless meals of it everyone loses interest, whereas with the small 'Munchkins' which are essentially one person portion sized, or the smaller butternuts which do one large or two smaller meals, they seem more 'kitchen-friendly'.

After my disastrous experiences last year of storing our pumpkins in the cool/cold/dark passageway in the old cottage (which has the same sort of conditions as storing in a cold cellar or garage), when they pretty much all started to rot off well before Christmas, I decided to emulate my favourite veg guru Charles Dowding's advice to store in an airy, light, dry and neither too cold nor too warm spare bedroom - the end bedroom fortunately fitted this bill perfectly as we are not using it at the moment while the wall continues it's drying out phase for the foreseeable future, but we are keeping it aired with the radiator and the door open to the rest of the house to prevent that musty smell of a shut up, unused room.

Spare IKEA shelving unit pressed into service, just the job for spreading the pumpkins out so they weren't actually touching.

Only time would tell whether this storage method does the trick - but of course by the magic of time travel (!) and the fact that I am writing this catch up entry in March, I can reveal that it did! It has worked beautifully - we are still eating pumpkins as and when we fancy from these stores, and still have plenty looking good.  I have checked them over about once a month and had to remove to the compost about 3 or 4 over these last few months which perhaps had had damage to the skins which I hadn't spotted on harvesting.

After the big harvest, came the big Horticultural Vandalism event...

BEFORE - the pyracantha, though a splendid sight to behold, was over 2 feet thick from the wall, impossible to maintain the gutter, still heading skywards and outwards and equally impossible to lean a ladder against if I wanted to try to maintain it.  Add to that the need to renew the painted surface behind it, and the newly discovered urgent need for the builder to access the little dormer roof over the bathroom which was springing leaks left right and centre...

AFTER - A mammoth and extremely painful task both physically and psychologically

Almost done - in the end I took advice from Hil and reduced the horizontals from over the windows as well

It took me nearly a full week up the ladder, nibbling away and then carting the cut off material to our bonfire site.  My heart very nearly snapped in two having to cut down this glorious plant in full berry.  But once I could see what I was doing, I was glad I had chosen to knuckle down to this job - several branches thicker than my wrist had grown behind the downpipe and were forcing it away from the wall, in fact it is split completely just above one of it's brackets where the pressures pushing both ways have proved too much for the corroding old cast iron, which of course (along with the wall behind) haven't been painted or maintained since the plant had established itself.  In one way, the thickness of the growth may indeed have been protecting the wall, but it was certainly reaching the point where something had to give.

It is soooo prickly! Even with my thickest gloves I was spiked in my hands and forearms every day and the next day I would wake up and every one of the spike injuries would have swollen up filled with a clear but bloody coloured fluid which hurt for days before subsiding.  The thorns seem to have either dirty tips or irritant, or perhaps I am just sensitive to them.  The builders laughed at me every time they heard me yelp - they wouldn't go near it and recommended a chainsaw to the trunk at the bottom...

In the long term, I hope to keep the section below the windows more shrub-like and rounded, but perhaps to retrain a lighter fan design of branches back up the wall which I will keep firmly pruned back to hug the wall, in order that access to gutters etc can be easily done.  I can't imagine even a heavy pruning like this will harm or hinder such a sturdy, well established and healthy toughie like this pyracantha, but it just looks quite sad at the moment!

Safe from the predations of the prickly pyracantha, the builders' mini scaffold tower can at last be erected ready to tackle the unknown disasters hiding in the bathroom dormer roof...

We didn't know what they might find when they stripped off the tiles and felting above the leaking bathroom roof - except that it can never be good, in a house like this!  But we didn't expect this:

Old wasps' nest in the little roof above the bathroom

That explained the roaring sound - almost like a motorbike starting up - that I used to hear at about 5am back in the Spring.  The head of our bed used to be up against the bathroom wall, so this nest was essentially almost above our heads!  They were exploiting the gaps and cracks in the old cement fillets of the ridge tiles and where the dormer roof meets the main roof - which also turned out to be where the water was getting in...

Lots of lovely rotten wood - it got worse - once the main roof tiles were removed in the right of the photo here, it was evident that the whole wallplate and most of the rafters had been taking the water for quite some time, and had pretty much rotted away completely

So a presumed 'quick leading job' turned into almost a total rebuild of this little dormer, with the advice that the main roof here is well overdue to be re-felted and re-battened, ideally in the next 12-24 months, unless we want to risk more seriously problems...argghhhhh....just add that to the ever expanding list of 'urgent' repairs...

We just about managed to get this job in and finished before the real autumn weather rolled in, and put and end to my exterior wall painting mission.  So we will pass the winter with an attractively patchy multicoloured wall - but at least a repaired bathroom roof.

A fitting conclusion to our summer's work: the unveiling....

After the scaffolding eventually came down in November, we were able to see the repaired walls in their full glory!

Beautiful stone of the repaired east gable wall

So, from mid October rain and normal autumn weather stopped play on any sort of exterior renovations...although I couldn't resist adding these wee pictures of our beautifully repaired stone walls at the east end of the house.  The scaffolding finally came down toward the end of November, and we could truly appreciate the skill of builder Graham and his care in replacing the damaged stone and repointing the whole thing so wonderfully.  Inside, even by this point, we could feel the walls drying out immensely, though we intend to allow this to continue for at least 6 months before we start to repair the interior surfaces.

From now on until spring thoughts turn more to the garden work which needs to be done, as well as the inside tasks we can get on with regardless of the what the weather throws about outside....