The early mornings are so lovely here at the moment, Gracie and I go out in the garden when the day starts. We don our wellies and I sit in my dressing gown drinking tea on the garden bench while Gracie runs around naked (aside from wellies) in the morning dew. Today the lawns are covered in these tiny cobwebs….
There are 3 huge old vegetable patches in the walled garden that are overgrown with grass and weeds. Ed’s been working on one of the patches this week – and this morning he turned over half the soil ready for planting.
It was sunny and hot so we had a picnic lunch under the apple trees before getting down to some planting.
We put in several seedlings; sprouts, kale, purple sprouting broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and leeks (as we’re a bit late to plant these from seed). Apart from the leeks I’ve discovered that these are all ‘cruciferous’ veg from the ‘brassica’ family. We also replanted what we think might be some ropey old courgettes (that were already in there) hoping to save them. From seed, we’ll plant beetroot, carrots, lettuce, spinach, turnips and beans (currently germinating in the kitchen) in the next few days.
We’re building up our knowledge of brassica growing as we’ve discovered birds have a particular fondness for them; apparently wood pigeons like sprouts. So the whole patch needs to be protected with net. We also need to get some flat disc ‘collars’ that go round the base of all the stems to stop cabbage root fly laying their eggs down there.
So Ed made a frame from various bits of wood that he found in the old green house and lean-to’s and then managed to cobble together enough pieces of random net to go over the top. He doesn’t think the net will last a windy day though so it will need replacing in the next few days.
The upsum is that out of an acre of walled garden we’ll have cultivated just 6 by 12 meters – but at least it’s a start. If we’re successful with our beginners patch then it should supply us with nearly all our winter veg.
It didn’t take long. Gracie just told us “she’s growing like a barley”!
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….
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
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….
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…
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.
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…
A Castle in the Sky 