countryside | A Castle in the Sky

June 16, 2013
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The bee man (Jun 16)

The bee man’s been (See Can Anyone Hear a Buzzing? May 30). He soon established that it’s definitely honey bees we’ve got here. He had a good look in the attic but there was no hive in there – and he thinks there are probably 2; one on each side of the house, high up between the rafters and the outside walls so we can’t get any access to them.

He brought a spare bee suit for Ed (who’s been expressing a lot of interest in said bees) but given no hives were to be found, he sadly never got the chance to put it on.

The bee man explained that the swarm we saw was a good sign as bees swarm when they’re moving on with a new queen bee, so the majority of them are now gone (in that hive anyway), leaving an aged queen behind and some loyal hangers on. The only other issue we might encounter is honey dripping through the ceilings – but apparently this is quite rare!

So we have bees in the walls of the house and this is where they’ll stay.

Mr C tells us that years ago someone used to keep hives up behind the walled garden (which likely explains where the ones in our walls originate from). As Mr C also has a twinkle in his eye at the mention of bees, I’m guessing he and Ed are now hatching a plan….

June 12, 2013
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To do lists…(Jun 12)

I do love a to do list – and as the list for this house will keep me going for the next 20 years I couldn’t be happier. Today’s list is:

Chase plumber for breakdown of costs for new hot water system

Book in insulation man

Get carpenter to fix leaking window

Pay locksmith

Sign contract for septic tanks

Get in planning applications for new biomass heating system

Apply for a building warrant

Price up wood pellets

Book in Green Deal Assessor

Research salvage cast iron radiators

But then Ed ran through his list with me and now I’ve got list envy….

Move oak tree from orchard

Cut the paths through the paddock

Cut back the rhododendron’s around lawn

Plant magnolia

Research compost toilet

Build sheds

Cut holly

Research yurts

Clear riverbanks

Scarify and aerate lawn

Dig drains

Weed control

June 10, 2013
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Highland Dancing (Jun 10)

I watched a little girl practice her Highland Dancing on a ferry to Lewis on the West Coast about 8 years ago. I day dreamed then that one day we would live in the countryside in Scotland, that we’d have a little girl and that she’d also learn how to highland dance. Classes in the village start at the age of 3….

June 9, 2013
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Making hay… (Jun 9)

The thing about scarifying (see Footprints on the Lawn April 21) is that we hadn’t quite taken on board that:

a) you have to wait for a decent enough dry spell to successfully pull out all the dead moss, which has been a bit of a waiting game on the wet West Coast
b) the elusive dry spell has had to coincide with Ed’s weekends at home
c) the whole process produces a huge amount of thatch (grass and dead moss) that must then be removed

The good news is that the sun’s been shining for days, Ed’s home for the weekend – and enough of the moss has turned brown to get started (luckily we got the moss killer to lawn ratio right and the grass is still alive).

As I’m now proficient on the ride-on lawnmower, I mowed and Ed and Gracie followed behind with the scarifier. By late afternoon the lawn was hidden under a frightening amount of thatch – and as the mower couldn’t cope with hoovering it up we had to resort to hand raking it into lots of separate piles, loading up the mini-trailer and ferrying backwards and forwards to the compost heap. We were out there till late in the evening.

Even so, we’re nowhere near done. There’s still loads of moss to kill that was missed from last time – and today we only managed a quarter of the lawn.

I’m now beginning to realise why the mention of us scarifying raised so many local eyebrows – but we’re nothing if not tenacious…

June 1, 2013
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A crutch for the tree (Jun 1)

One of the old sycamore trees by the paddock has a long, low-hanging, gnarly branch running along a stretch of the paddock fence for about 20 feet – and it’s in danger of breaking off under it’s own weight. Ed’s said for some time that it needs a crutch to support it so this evening the three of us headed over to a hazel tree by the burn.

Ed’s knowledge of trees is pretty good and he tells me that hazels are good for coppicing (a kind of pruning for trees so they grow back quickly and produce lots of wood) so he had the hazel in mind for the job. I thought it was a machete in his hand but apparently it’s a ‘bill hook’ specifically used for cutting wood. He shaped a Y section out of the branches and then hauled it over to the paddock. Together we managed to manoeuvre it into place. Here it is…

The branch still needs protecting where it’s sitting in the y – to prevent the bark rubbing off when the wind blows. A bit of old carpet from the kitchen is earmarked to do the job.

May 25, 2013
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Can anyone hear a buzzing? (May 25)

Last Sunday evening Ed noticed a wasp or two outside and heard a significant buzzing above. Then way up around the main roof gutter at the back of the house he spotted a small swarm. The gutter is 3 floors high so we can’t get up for a closer inspection (not that we’d want to) and if there’s a nest up there it’s likely to be in the attic space anyway….

The thing about the attic though is the size of the hatch… It’s a very tight squeeze and certainly not the size of hatch you want to be squeezing yourself out of with a swarm of angry wasps in hot pursuit. Hmmmm…

Then a few days ago I also noticed a buzzing. This time outside the front door – and when I put Gracie down for her nap a good number of what looked like honey bees were bobbing around outside her bedroom window and one or two had made their way inside. I have to confess I wasn’t totally sure how to tell the difference between wasps and bees but having looked on the internet I’m pretty convinced these are bees. Now I’m wondering whether it’s bees at the back of the house too. Either way it’s certainly been a problem before; after a bit of investigation I discovered several bits of old loo paper shoved between the sashes of Gracie’s window and dozens of dead bees caught up inside…

Guests are now here to stay and yesterday when I was putting Gracie down again my friend Louise came running up the stairs; ‘I think you better come and look at this!…’ Outside the kitchen window the mini-swarm on the roof had turned into a massive swarm about 30 feet high and 10 feet across. It quickly reduced in size but the thought of thousands of wasps suddenly appearing out there is not very nice to say the least.

I’ve since been spending quite a bit of time on the phone…

The man from the council can help us with wasps but he can’t help us with bees and at the moment he can’t help us with anything because he’s off on holiday for a week. The man from Rentokil can deal with wasps AND bees – but there are 2 kinds of bees (don’t ask) and if these are honey bees we have to get a bee-keeper to come and try and save the nests first. I’m loving that – so I found the local bee-keepers association and as luck would have it there’s a bee-keeper who lives in our village – I’ve left him a message. The carpenter’s coming on Monday to widen the hatch…

I’m not sure how this is all going to end but Ed’s now home for the weekend and a quick look through the binoculars has at least established that it’s bees at the back of the house and not wasps after all – which at least feels more comfortable.

It would be lovely to think the nests could be retrieved and that our kindly local bee-keeper might adopt them or perhaps deposit them in a local wood – but this whole bee thing has given Ed a twinkle in his eye and I think he may have other ideas…

May 20, 2013
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The paddock (May 20)

We’ve been mulling over what to do with the paddock and while we mulled, wild flowers started to grow. Wherever we ended up we’d always hoped to have a wild flower meadow so we decided not to mow the paddock and see what happened. Already we’ve had bluebells, birds-eyes, campions, wild primrose, herb robert and pignut – and around a dozen more flowers we’ve still to identify…

But as the flowers have grown the grass has grown too and now it’s taking over, along with the nettles and docks. A bit of research tells us that wild flower meadows come up in fields that are left to grow where animals have been grazing. We have rich soil here (you can tell by looking at it and lots of nettles are also a sign apparently) which is great for grass and veg’ but not so good for wild flowers. If we put animals in there they would take a lot of the nutrients out of the soil by eating the grass – and at the same time create a good bed for next year’s flowers by churning up the ground.

So animals sound like the answer. Oh if it was that simple. Much of the fence needs to be fixed and there are rhododendrons creeping over the sides which are poisonous to horses, sheep and cattle. As always here, nothing is ever straight forward. An alternative would be getting in a JCB to take off the top layer of soil in the paddock which is way out of our budget.

So if we want a meadow next year, we’ll have to fix the fence, prune the rhododendrons (which are running rampant everywhere but that’s a whole other story) and then find some animals before the end of summer. As there are other more pressing jobs to get done, it looks like our wild flower meadow is going to have to wait.

April 27, 2013
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Finding a nest (Apr 27)

Ed’s just cleared a path through some of the undergrowth at the back of the walled garden and spotted this…

We’ve family staying so after taking a careful look we’ve had lots of fun trying to identify what eggs they are from pictures on the web. We’re settling on song thrushes. Julie our new neighbour’s already informed us that a song thrush lives on our drive – and we’ve since seen one on the lawn and think we’ve heard it’s song. It’s not too hard to identify as it sings its song twice over …

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/s/songthrush/index.aspx

I’ve been told they used to be quite common in the countryside but are seen less now because of intense farming and the loss of hedgerows. So it’s lovely to know we might soon have another 5 living here…

April 23, 2013
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Dog pooper (Apr 23)

Loads of dog walkers use our drive which is all very nice – but one of them is bagging up their (biodegradable) dog’s poo and disposing of the black plastic bags by throwing them into our bushes/ trees/ general greenery. They have mostly landed at various inaccessible heights and there they remain in full view – and will no doubt continue to do so for hundreds of (non bio-degradable) years.

This bizarre behaviour is sending Ed and I round the twist and we find ourselves mulling over how we might identify the culprit. These range from polite notices – “Polite Notice: Please take your f*****g dog poo home with you – you moron..” to sending off the poo for DNA analysis, DNA matching every dog in the village and then dumping all the bags in the owner’s front garden!

Sadly we’re way behind the Scandinavians on this one – as I’m told that dog owners there must DNA register their dogs. So aside from catching them red-handed I’m not sure what we’re going to do about it…

April 21, 2013
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Footprints on the lawn…(Apr 21)

We still haven’t unpacked everything yet because there are too many other urgent things to see to. The lawn is one of them and it’s our (Ed’s) first big job. It’s over an acre in all.

It’s mostly moss, apart from the molehills (see Counting Molehills Apr 25) with varying patches of grass poking through. It’s so spongy we leave our footprints behind when we walk on it. This apparently is not a good thing, although I’m not sure I would have realized for quite some time unless someone had pointed it out. Ed says it’s too soft to use for much and gets boggy.

Neither of us have had a lawn since we were kids so it’s taken a fair bit of research to work out what we’re supposed to do. A sure sign of middle-age, Ed’s bed time reading is now The Lawn Expert and The Country House Garden. The moss is essentially caused by the wet (not much we can do about that up here on the West Coast) and can be made worse by overenthusiastic mowing (one to remember) as well as bad drainage (the drain is still to find…). Who knew? Lawns have drains.

To get rid of the moss we have to spray with moss killer, wait for the moss to die and then ‘scarify’ – basically comb out the moss leaving just the grass behind. We then have to re-seed and re-fertilise. An extra bit of machinery for the scarifying bit is already on it’s way with the new mower.

The new mower has also been something of a research project – and suffice to say Ed’s going to have to sell his motorbike to pay for it. I’ve suggested that he wear his helmet and leathers while he’s doing the lawn and he’ll hardly know the difference!

We’ve been keenly awaiting the arrival of the mower as the speed at which the grass grows up here has taken on mythical proportions. Mr C, the farmer, keeps reminding us that we better get on with it otherwise we’ll soon be up to our knees and then it’ll all be too late… Although as one of our friends recently pointed out; given the lawn is mostly moss we may have nothing to worry about.

One option would be to rip it all up obviously and start again/lay down new turf but that’s way too expensive. So scarifying it is. As Ed’s only here at the weekends for now, we don’t have that much time to get on top of everything but we’re determined to do as much as we can on our own. Mr C and our various new neighbours smile knowingly at the mention of us scarifying – but not to be put off, Ed sprayed the lawn with moss killer today. Working out the ratio of moss killer to water to square foot of lawn using a 15 litre back pack was challenging to say the least – but fingers crossed we got it right. Now while Ed’s away the moss should start to die… if we got the mixture wrong the grass will die too…

Once we get to the actual scarifying bit (in a few weeks) the view from my desk of a sea of green could easily turn into a sea of brown. I think it’s fair to say I’m just a little bit scared….