Diary catch up #6: November at Windy Acre brings glowing colours but Potting Shed Disaster!

I returned from Cornwall to savour the delights of autumn progressing quickly in my own garden.

The leaves of the copper beech were nearly all off.   Right! I thought, let's get the big mower out and start the grand old tidy up.  The Plan - two birds with one stone - the last trim of the year on the lawn, nicely mixed up with the chopped up leaves, into the leaf bins and voila!

Oh dear.  The engineer brought the ride on mower round into the garden...and then quickly turned it off.  A brief inspection later resulted in a Total Ban on using the mower. Argghhhhhhh....Apparently it had 'felt odd': the cause being the fact that there is only one bolt left holding the engine to the mower...Grandma's legendary maintenance regime strikes again.  The engineer felt that it could be dangerous and possibly disastrous to drive it round the garden picking up the leaves, the only course of action would be to book it in for an early service and check over and then to bed for the winter.

Great!

That left me looking at most of November hand raking the mountainous quantity of leaves shed by our lovely (but numerous) mature trees...Good for the soul, maybe, but definitely no fun for the back.

Fallen beech leaves - beautiful.  Until I realised I was going to have to collect them all by hand!

So through the weeks as I paced myself carefully gathering the falling leaves, I tried to take pleasure in the small beauties of autumn, to keep myself going and not have a major toddler tantrum....

Last lingering bloom on the yellow rose.  Gaura still looking fab in the background

The fuchsia is just getting into it's stride 

Last Gertrude Jekyll of the season, brought inside to be enjoyed.  But the chickens are showing no signs of lightening their offerings

But then - tragedy struck!

I opened the kitchen blind one Thursday morning ready to make breakfast for the masses before school, to be greeted by the following sight:

 ...a collapse of fairly extensive proportions in the side wall of my precious escape, my bolt-hole, my potting shed! And to add insult to injury, the stone had all landed on top of the loveliest rosy in the garden - the pretty pretty creamy cluster flowered shrub/rambler Malvern Hills.

Panic and gloom descended.

Will it carry on collapsing? Will my potting shed have to be evacuated and completely rebuilt? Not the best time of year to contemplate that - and the Engineer is less than confident in his stone work skills (so it would get put repeatedly to the bottom of the priority list, which is long enough already).

I will have to cut the rose right down to the ground, and hope it survives the experience.  Meanwhile I took lots of hardwood cuttings and hedged my bets for success - half in the veg patch in classic technique, half in pots to be left outside but round the sheltered side of the greenhouse.

I cleared the stones away from the rose as best as I could, sorting them roughly in to sized piles in optimism that at some point they would be need for the rebuilding.  The wall seems stable still (although dry stone construction, it is still 2 foot thick, and the inner skin seems to be ok for now.  The roof looks ok too, although I think a wise course of action may be to take the whole roof of, repair the rotting rafters and front porch supports, and rebuild the wall pointing it in properly in the better weather of spring and summer next year.  As long as it keeps standing for the winter.

But why has this happened?  It has stood for 40 years without a problem.  Was the felling of the big Monterey Cypress too much for it - perhaps the crash started to dislodge a few stones and it has just taken a few months to show it.

What is certain is that normal outdoor garden work is becoming patchier as the winter advances upon us. The 'season' is over.  Time to start hunkering down inside, with occasions forays out when its not too nasty.

Windy Acre Bonfire Night fun

Boy and Cat enjoying the best spot in the house

While outside, the harsh beauty of the frosty sunrise casts a less forgiving light on the as yet un-renovated facades of the cottage.  It looks careworn and battered, waiting for it's turn to have the Cinderella magic...

Just in time - the ground is frozen and asleep, but the ladies are safely tucked up inside their new winter home

Solar Eclipse fun

Excitement reached it's peak at Windy Acre this morning as the day of the Solar Eclipse dawned - worryingly with a hazy covering of cloud!

School has been gearing up for this over the last few days, with plans for the children to all observe the event by each class having it's own whiteboard outside with a large card and pinhole to project the image safely.  I found this brilliant and reassuring - there has been news that many schools in the country were instead intending to purposefully keep the children inside, as they were worried about the risks of them not doing as they were told, and looking at the sun with the naked eye.  Whilst I can appreciate their concerns and care, I still feel that this event is far too good an opportunity to miss - especially as a fitting finale to Science Week, which the school has also been really exploring in different and stimulating ways, judging by the reactions my own children have been bringing home all week.

First Contact happened shortly before we had to go to school, and the Engineer was suitably inspired enough to work from home today in order to enjoy the event himself...needless to say, before school he had already erected his Eclipse Viewing Station! However the cloud thickness was too much for our domestic viewing equipment - it was so thick that I was able to get a very sneaky quick glimpse with the naked eye (extremely naughty mummy - but the children didn't know I was doing it) and saw that first thrilling 'chunk' missing at about 8.45am.

Fortunately at 9.15 miraculously the clouds thinned - it was still quite hazy but at last enough to use our 'equipment'!!!

Professor engineer with his Solar Eclipse laboratory weapon of choice - the old pair of binoculars - which certainly gave us the largest and clearest image, without having to squint into a pinhole camera.  The mass of masking tape was the result of him trying to attach the binoculars to his camera tripod, in order to set up a hands-free system...but of course there was no successful way for us to line everything up - without looking at it with the naked eye!

Naturally, I got to use the less technical version...homemade pinhole camera made out of a cereal box...

...but it still worked really well!

Once the excitement was over, of course all his 'equipment' got dumped on the kitchen table for me to work around/tidy away.  Walking back into the room, seeing all this scattered across the table just made me think of a favourite film when I was younger - Short Circuit... "NO, no dis-assemble!!! Number 5 is ALIVE!!!"

No dis-assemble! A sorry end for the solar eclipse 

 But all good things must come to an end.  So back to the business of the day:

Eclipse over - I'm off out to carry on the rose pruning marathon.  Though perhaps I ought to change my weapon of choice?

Having 'got my eye in' over the last couple of days tackling the 'Paul's Scarlet Rambler' (well, I think that's what it is, anyway) which Grandma saw fit, in one of her moments of gardening insanity, to plant at the foot of the Magnolia "to brighten it up in the summer"...hmmm..., and also the Oldest Rose In The Garden, which I believe by a process of elimination, serious googling and general commonsense to be a Rosa 'Goldfinch', I gritted my teeth and took a slow and careful approach to pruning the climber on the archway.  A seriously prickly customer, hence the 'careful', but also quite precious to my heart.  And as it had flowered beautifully from May to November last year without hint of secateurs even having been waved near it last winter, I was a bit concerned that my attentions might possibly do more harm than good.  If in doubt, I turn to my ever reliable source of common sense advice: Helen Yemm, who told me to simply prune back all the flowered lateral shoots (eg the ones which were still showing hips, or the tattered remnants of them) back to 3-4 buds/or about 6 inches.  So that's what I did.  And nipped of a few dead tatty bits, though really there wasn't too much of that.  I did look carefully for the 'sucker-like new strong growth' which a healthy climber is supposed to produce from near it's base, and which we eager gardeners are to tie in lovingly to the support in order that it may replace an older stem which we can then gleefully remove...but I didn't find one. Horrors! Does this mean my lovely rosy pink wedding rose is not growing happily and healthily enough to want to produce one??? Must feed and nurture and generally adore it more obviously to make it feel loved and appreciated.

It was heartbreaking finally having to cut off all those fantastic hips.  Although, the birds never did seem to want to eat them, so either the winter hasn't been as bad as it seemed, or they are ridiculously spoiled by the smorgasbord of sunflower kernels, fat balls, peanuts and niger seed which I dilligently top up for them every week!

The rosy pink rose finally pruned, looking more like a bony catwalk model than her normal voluptuous self

 On this Spring Equinox day, I couldn't resist a quick picture of my spring tub just waiting to burst forth - I walk past it outside the kitchen door so many times every day - and I can't wait for those fat narcissi buds to open!

One of the half barrels planted up with rescued mixed narcissi I 'acidentally' dug up from the flower borders during last summer, along with a couple of feeble looking Primrose Bedder wallflowers and the forget-me-nots I scavenged from Hil's garden in the autumn - I had no annual forget-me-nots here a Windy Acre, can you believe that? Almost an impossibility, surely?  But no, Grandma's zero tolerance of 'weeds' had resulted very successfully in a total eradication.  So I begged for some from Hil - and hopefully from this year I will find them popping up all over the place here too, in the future.

Although the Primrose Bedder wallflowers I sowed in the veg patch seed bed germinated well, they haven't made terribly impressive looking plants.  I'm not sure what sort of a show we will get from them.  In contrast, the leftovers of the packet of Wallflower 'Vulcan' which came free with Gardens Illustrated a few years ago, germinated very patchily and I only got 3 plants to transplant in the autumn.  Fortunately I gave over the big barrel to them along with a couple of my honesty plants - which is lucky as they are now enormous, in rude health and the flower buds look extremely promising!

Wallflower 'Vulcan' looking delightfully promising

I shall round off with a couple of pictures of the ladies enjoying their afternoon constitutional in the warm sunshine, having recovered from the peculiar astronomical occurrences of this morning.  They were a bit perplexed by the dimming light, they all resorted to their late afternoon preening behaviour and huddled together inside Sandringham, although it didn't go dark enough here to send them to roost.

"Eclipse? What nonsense...Just an extra opportunity for a little late morning snooze"

 Well, I'm off to put all the cereals back into their boxes again...xxx

Diary catch up #5: Half term holidays in Cornwall

I briefly mentioned in my last post that "Operation Sandringham" was rudely interrupted even though it was running woefully behind schedule - by our Half Term trip to Cornwall.  Although it feels a bit odd writing about this autumn holiday when I haven't yet got round to writing my diary catch up about our lovely summer holiday to Wales yet, nevertheless I shall shamelessly proceed.

Following what appears to have become their tradition, the children insisted upon going in the sea as soon as we arrived.  All the way in.  Snorkel and all.  Admittedly not much actual swimming was achieved, but even so...Never mind that it was fairly chilly, fairly cloudy and almost dark when we arrived...

The first dip

One of the hightlights of this trip was enjoying a Heligan Hallowe'en - fantastic because as well as partaking of their amazingly created Spooky Quiz Trail (and who doesn't love a Quiz Trail?) which winds through the wilder gardens punctuated by these astounding artworks of Hallowe'en-ness (children today really don't know they are born - when I was small the spookiest thing I ever saw was the decidedly dubious Penny for the Guy that the local boys used to prop up hopefully outside the little local supermarket), I also got to enjoy a full day investigating the whole of Heligan again.  The last time I went it was Easter a few years ago, and so was all fading camellias and just opening rhododendrons etc.  Of course this time the productive walled gardens were in full harvesting mode and the tree and shrubs were awash with autumn colour glory.

Fortunately there is more to Heligan to appeal to the children even once the Spooky Trail was done - a lot of effort seems to be put in to provide a good spread of interest and activities during the school holidays.  This meant we were able to alternate between 'something for them' and 'something for us' throughout the day so that everyone was happier.  Although these did include the usual 'Hallowe'en Craft Activities' - pumpkin carving, making a spooky picture which charcoal, weaving a dream catcher, etc, all of which required an additional couple of pounds here and there, which adds up over the course of the day.

Evie nonchalantly working out the next quiz trail question, seemingly oblivious to the huge spider about to eat her

There was also an enormous Storyteller's Yurt, all bedecked inside with branches and fairy lights, a snuggly woodburner and rocking chair, with straw bales and cushions around the edge to sit on while the very good team of 2 storytellers did their thing, with costumes and props, lots of audience participation and really captured the children's attention with suitably themed 'Spooky Cornish Tales', which gave a shiver of excitement but didn't go too far.

Aspects of the garden were also very appealing to my children, they enjoyed the rope bridge so much that they ran round 3 times to do it again - while I sensibly waited at the other side - as it is so narrow there is an official 'one-way' route, so running up and down the steep gorge several times to do this helped to wear them out a bit in time for their picnic lunch!

Crossing the gorge - Indiana Jones style

The Engineer, as always, looks for the artistic shot.  Fortunately you can't see my white knuckles from this distance, as I clung on trying to pretend to Leo that I was quite brave really...

My favourite area will always be the walled gardens, though, and I especially like the fact that like Barrington (closer to us in Somerset) the productive gardens are worked properly to produce produce for use and sale, rather than just being an atmospheric and beautiful echo of some long lost productive past.

The Melon Yard gardeners' buildings

Lusting after the amazing coldframes AND the espalier fruit trees

Brassica and Scarecrow envy

Cabbages as a work of art, really.  But they are immaculate - hardly a nibble on them - how do they manage this???

The Engineer always prefers a 'posh garden visit' if there is the option of a reasonable yomp through some pretty woodland.  Acres of this available here, we never manage to cover it all before little legs start to groan, though.

If only things were always this harmonious!

Heligan's pumpkin harvest - almost as good as ours this year!

Of course we only spent the one day at Heligan, and the rest of the week was general bodding about on the beach, reading books and colouring in and watching awful films when the weather was less friendly.  We had nearly 3 full days of the most terrible fog, which meant that Leo's usual fave cliff top walks were a definite no-no, much to his daily disgust.  And inland walking in thick fog down narrow Cornish lanes isn't really that much fun with small-ish children, as you never can tell when a car is going to suddenly appear out of the mist, but we did enjoy one good misty inland walk without hiccups.  Oddly, the fog makes you focus more on the little details of the berries in the hedges and the strange differences that fog makes to the noises you can hear, I suppose because normally you would be focussing your attention on the more far-reaching views.

On our drive home we stopped off at Knightshayes near Tiverton - for that essential National Trust cafe lunch and stroll to break the journey!

Evie particularly enjoyed the gothic grandeur of the house interior, but I like this little spot at the back of the walled garden area:

Knightshayes

It was an ornamental walkway, which obviously has it's own microclimate as many of the plants still flowering merrily there were borderline hardy even for the mild Devon climate.  It was the heart shaped last leaves of the tree on the right which really grabbed me by the throat - I think it must be some type of redbud/Cercis canadensis or siliquastrum.  I saw one in Heligan too - the way the bright leaves look like they are floating in mid air as you approach is magical.

Sometimes I want so much to hold a picture in my mind to remember and create the feel of it at home, and this whole walkway was like that.   I wanted to photograph each metre of it to replicate! Impossible anyway - as most of the plants would NOT be suitable for frosty heavy clay old Windy Acre...but the feel and the shapes - yes please.

Sunshine - Mother's Day delights - and the unveiling of Sandringham...

I'm whispering this very quietly - just in case whoever is in charge of these things hears me - I think it might, really might, be Spring!!

What a beautiful day today.  Admittedly not that promising a start, but those Met Office types had hinted at a lovely day, and by mid morning it had come up with the goods.

I celebrated by officially letting the ladies out of their winter quarters to dip their toes in the green grass and paddle among the newly opening daffs.  It's still a bit too early really, it has been so chilly the grass isn't growing dramatically - I haven't contemplated the first cut of the year with the mower yet, and I had sworn when they went into winter quarters that I would be firm and not let them out onto the grass until it was growing enough to be able to recover easily from their daily nibbling and scratching onslaughts!

My ladies enjoying their first forays back out into the outside run

It's also a bit precipitate as the Engineer is still in the final throes of adding their pop holes, of which there will be two, to lead from the enclosed undercover 'barn' run into whichever of the 3 rotating outside runs is operational...so just for the next few days they have the luxury of wandering in and out of the big personnel door.

When the blossom emerges on the little apple tree, this will complete the picture of what my good smallholder friend Garth calls 'the most extravagant des res for a bunch of hens' he has ever seen....It is true, they appear to live in greater comfort that we do in the house! Priorities...

As always, Delia likes to eye me quizzically through the netting, even if sadly now she can only do it through her one good eye.  The other one has gone completely blind now, and although slightly enlarged it doesn't look infected or sore.  I can only assume it is a peck injury - she is fairly low in the flock order, if not at the bottom, poor chicky.

On my catch up diary entries, I am pretty much almost up to November, when we finally managed to undertake our long planned but much delayed construction of 'Sandringham' (named appropriately, I felt, after the favourite Winter Residence of our jolly Queen, that other old bird who does her duty uncomplainingly too and always carries herself well, just like my ladies).

I seem to have managed to upload the photos in reverse order, incompetence!

There's a strange new bird in the flock!

The official opening of Sandringham - the ladies thought the straw bedding was the most thrilling thing that they had ever experienced - it was hilarious watching them scratch about enthusiastically, raining straw down on the unsuspecting chicken behind.  Snug, warm, and dry at last but still well ventilated.  It's own very own Hyacinth Bucket-inspired 'indoor outdoor BBQ with finger buffet'!

Under construction - we can see the poor ladies having to put up with the generally grim and damp autumnal weather with only the shelter of their little dustbath roof and the space under the chicken house when the rain got really nasty.  This section of garden wasn't ideal as it was so exposed, but they needed to be kept well out of the way while the Engineer was busy swinging around great lumps of wood and sections of wriggly tin roofing.  They punished me by digging ridiculously large holes in the cricket/tennis lawn...

Leaf fall and it's still not finished! Time is pressing, but the half term break to Cornwall got in the way and delayed it all even more....

All in all, it took us (well, mostly him, bless him) quite a few more weeks than expected to build - mostly of course as in November the light is completely gone by the time he was home from work so progress could only be made at the weekends.  As I was generally taking on the whole of the normal weekend child-ferrying and supervision duties in order to allow him unfettered time to work on it, he was also mostly working single-handed, which also slows things down considerably.

Yes, I know it should have been done in the summer with the leisure of no weather deadline and the lovely long evenings... but there have been so many priorities for that time this year.  I was thorough in my design planning though - I knew it needed to be covered but well ventilated and visible, as I didn't want to feel like they were shut up completely in an enclosed dark barn environment, out of sight, out of mind.

The grass definitely could not have supported their maraudings when it cannot grow to replenish itself, they would have made a complete morass of the whole orchard area.  And the poor cheapo chicken house was already after only one season showing signs that it was not up to the job of an unprotected winter in the West Country wet...the hinged end of the roof was starting to rot and everything was expanding so that I couldn't slide out the droppings tray to scrub it clean.  The hope was that with the rain kept off, this little house might last a few years at least, and as the chickens themselves were not getting wet through in the rain every day, and then sleeping in a dry house, they ought to be able to cope much better with the cold of winter, being dry and fluffy.

But here we are emerging blinking from the other end of the winter (more or less - fingers firmly crossed!) and it has worked even better than I could have hoped.  The ladies have been dry and well.  They have not stopped laying or even slowed down at all - 3-5 eggs a day has been the pattern still - though whether that is because they are all young and still in their first year, I'm not sure? But I had understood that they ought to stop laying in the depths of the winter when the light levels drop? The house has been clean and dry and presumably warm and comfortable in the night times, and I have felt confident that locked inside the house, inside the 'barn' with its welded mesh dug into the ground, surrounded on the outside by the electric fence too, that I have done my best to protect them from the winter risks of the hungrier predators.  I can't really do any more.

They seem to have been content with their feed pellets and daily corn treats, but I have also regularly treated them with their favourite cut kale from the vegetable patch and any weedlings that I removed in my general winter tidying round the garden.  So, I hereby officially declare Sandringham a success! God bless her, and all who sail in her!

And on that uplifting note, God Bless the Engineer, who wisely took note of my not-so-subtle hints about potentially ideal Mother's Day gift ideas - and so I was the joyful recipient of these gloriously cheerful mugs, just exactly what I need to keep that Spring-is-coming positivity flowing - thank you!

Along with these stunning irises from the lovely flower stall man at Wells market, from amongst whose wares I was allowed to choose my pick on Saturday - hurrah to that I say....Not that I would ever, ever openly criticise the good Engineer's choice in cut flowers, you understand...but I much prefer these bright spring beauties to the samey samey bouquet jobbies at the supermarket.  Who really wants Chrysanthemums and lilies in March?Not me, anyway.

As always, however, my little phone camera has struggled with the colour (it seems to have these problems with blues, purples and reds)... Please be assured they are not quite such a technicolour electric blue, but the normal, fabulous purpley blue dutch iris, with that flash of yellow on the fall that just makes the zing and lifts my heart every time I see them.

I want one like this...

I have been gently nudging the Engineer throughout the winter months that I would very much like him to construct for me a suitably fetching and daintily tempting 'Honesty Shelf' from which I hope to sell my wares of eggs, vegetable/fruit gluts and the odd pretty bunch of cut flowers, to the as yet unsuspecting but hopefully captive audience of school mums and dads, and general strollers and dog walkers who daily pass my gate to go to school next door, or onto the footpath which passes along our boundary.

With the untold riches thus gained, I intend to help provide for my lavish chicken keeping and gardening habits without feeling so much like I'm stealing from the housekeeping...so it's all in a good cause!

However, as with all 'gentle nudges' these have been heartily ignored and as spring is almost upon us, my need for 'The Shelf' becomes daily more pressing.

So yesterday I insisted he pull over on our way through a nearby village so that I could take a quick photo of this:

A reasonably attractive example, and I felt, quite achievable to his carpentry skills....no? I particularly like the deep shelf with equally deep roof, so that the eggs in their more vulnerable cardboard boxes could be pushed further back to protect them if rain was likely.

The huge blackboard here would be overkill for my passing trade, who would likely be on foot - here they are right on a very busy through road so need to attract the motorist's attention.

I would favour the more tasteful example below, which I fell in love with as we passed every day from our campsite in Wales during the summer holidays:

I am hoping to have a go at painting a similarly striking chicken sign myself.  It was the thing which first caught my eye as we drove past, and really made this house's honesty shelf stand out.  It also made me smile, which can never be a bad thing.

I have drawn a total blank in scavenging in the garage for something solid enough and suitable - which amazes me considering how much junk is being kept in there 'just in case'...so I am forced to demand a purpose built offering, after all, there is an equally huge quantity of 'garden suitable' wood also being stored under a tarp by the chicken house for this sort of eventuality.  Watch this space.  (Hopefully not for too long, or it will be autumn again and I will have nothing to sell).

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....