Potatoes Lifted!

It's been a hard weekend's work, but ultimately quite successful. We finished painting all the windows: cleaning the 'old' ones (sitting and dining room front windows) was really time-consuming, and took as long as painting, but they're done, as are the second coats on all the new windows. While we were about it, we also cleaned and repainted the door to the old coal cellar and the gate to the front garden. It's got a little too gloomy to be sure, but hopefully they'll both look nice and bright white again.

More excitingly, we also lifted all the potatoes. These were planted in May, a bit later than normal, but they've done well. We've had some Belle de Fontenay, which are very tasty. We should have lifted the rest earlier, but they were almost all ok. Similarly, the pink fir apple should have come up sooner, and we lost some of these.

The Axona (red skinned) cropped quite well, and quite shallow-ly: the purple Blue Danube were much deeper, but perhaps lower yielding. The latter seems to have sent tubers off great distances, as we were finding distinctive purple tubers quite a long way from the haulms! There were only a few more King Edwards, and I think the remainder were Marfona (but no guarantee...we were a bit lax in labelling, in haste). Taste-test still to come, but—at the moment—I think we might plant Belle de la Fontaine, pink fir apple, and King Edward next year. And a few Blue Danube for fun.

For now, I've bagged the crop up in hessian sacks, and they're in the workshop.

Work on the kitchen has gone quite well this week: final plastering should be happening tomorrow, and then the fitting starts Tuesday. It should be finished by Friday, and there'll then be a couple of weeks' hiatus (in which we'll decorate!) before the floor goes down. The wait is to give the room to dry out a bit, to minimise swelling/shrinkage of the oak floor. I'm really looking forward to seeing the floor: I laid a few packs out on the sitting room floor, and they looked really attractive.

Potting On

It was a bit wet yesterday, and I've got no further with the window painting, which will have to pause. However, work in the kitchen moved on yesterday. The two joists are now supporting the wall, which has gone down further, although there are still eight or so acros in evidence.

The kitchen units and worktop have moved into the workshop, where they fit beautifully along the walls—somehow, they're the perfect sizes. I've put melamine sheets (perfect examples of 'it'll come in useful someday') over the worktop cut-outs for sink and hobs, and I now have eight cupboards with shelves, and a lot of bench space.

I should say: I did have a lot of bench space. We then immediately started potting up the pansies (132 Cat's Whiskers, 168 Amber Kiss) and primulas (132 Candelabra), which arrived in 2–3 ml modules, and are now in a variety of small pots.

Also recently arrived were six honeyberries (edible honeysuckles, Lonicera kamschatika), and a collection of cottage perennials (four of each):

• Scabiosa 'Perfecta White'
• Hollyhock 'Chaters Mix'
• Kniphofia 'Flamenco'
• Lupin 'Dwarf Mix'
• Achillea 'Summer Pastel'
• Geum 'Lady Strathden'
• Delphinium 'Black Night'
• Lobelia 'Queen Victoria'
• Galliardia 'Arizona Sun'
• Papaver 'Garden Gnome'
• Aquilegia 'Winky'
• Aubretia 'Royal Blue'

These all, also, needed potting up, as did sixteen mixed cyclamen we picked up. On the same trip, we also bought our own pair of loppers, to help with the cotoneaster

Between this lot, I have no bench space left! I'm going to try to rig up a temporary coldframe on the back patio, with some bricks and old secondary glazing. That would give me some space for—for example—the pulsatilla seedlings that are coming on.

Oh: the 50kg of daffodils I ordered from Fentongollen arrived, as did the Puschkinia scilloides var. libanotica. The former, I realise, is more like 1100 bulbs, which means for a long session of planting...

Lastly, we popped out between showers yesterday, and collected the apples from the hillside, along with as many sloes as we could find, and the ripe blackberries. The weather hasn't been good for blackberries, and there aren't as many as I'd like—but hopefully enough for some wine! The sloes were better than last year, and I'll start some sloe gin when I have time. The apples are also more plentiful than last autumn, and we'll put them onto racks tomorrow evening. The chutney-making will, of course, need to wait until the kitchen is once more useable!

Glossing

I've made the most of a couple of dry days, and started gloss painting the new window frames. Yesterday, I put the first coat on the hall, kitchen, utility, and en suite windows; today I re-coated the hall windows, and first-coated one of the master bedroom's, the dressing-room, and the three study windows. The last study window was unpleasant: the path in front of the house steps down before that window, so the feet of the ladder are half a metre lower—and then the door to the old coal-cellar is below the window, so when you're painting the window it's effectively on the second floor (third storey). I don't like ladders.

Anyway, they're done, at least: I need to put a second coat on most of them, but they'll be a bit protected, and certainly look better.

Meanwhile, work on the kitchen is progressing nicely. The table is all but gone, and there's a number of acro supports propping up the old external wall (which divided kitchen from hall), as this is gradually removed. The wall with the built-in cooker has gone, as has the fridge housing. All the kitchen units are out (currently sitting on the drive), and there's a growing pile of building stones under the kitchen window.

And a lot of dust.

Preparing the Kitchen

Building work on the kitchen starts next week, so we've spent quite a lot of the weekend getting it ready. This involved taking out eeeeverything (cupboard contents, shelf, bits'n'pieces, fridge, washing machine, microwave, curtains, extractor hood...), and removing the wall tiles. Yes, technically, this could have been done by the builder. But it goes against the grain to entirely hand over work like this, so we took the tiles down. We'll do the decorating, too, including priming and painting the cupboard doors, and oiling the worktops.

The kitchen now looks a mess (especially the walls), but hopefully will begin its transmogrification into something much more attractive. I've created Google SketchUp models of before and after (below), and—of course—taken photos too.

Century

Very nearly finished the vegetable beds, but some complexities (read: mis-located posts) delayed completion of the mini-bed. However, this, and the rectangular bed, are now complete. The latter looks a little odd, as the nursery bed is still within it (un-raised). I now only have the back of the C-bed to go, using up odd lengths as I go.

I forgot: yesterday we lifted the rest of the onion crop, and laid them out to dry—they're now inside to finish drying, then I'll string them up. Quite a nice crop, though the best yield came from the unidentified sets from Thirsk market, which may make obtaining more trickier.

On another note: this is my century post! First post was 28th October last year, so there's another couple of months until the anniversary, but I thought I'd mention the milestone.

Long Weekend

We took yesterday off, and have got a bit further with the vegetable beds. The C-shaped bed is now joined up, but the back length (the outer edge) is waiting. It'll be the last one I do, as it's a good place to use up shorter bits of plank where they won't be too visible. Getting the post into the top-right corner (which is where the bed meets the terrace) was tricky, but I've managed. The planks, there, aren't screwed into the post from the outside, but from the inside, rather than excavate working space 'outside' the bed.

The rectangular bed, the mini-bed in the centre of the Q, and the back of the C are all that's left...well, I say 'all'. All of the topsoil has now come down from where it was delivered on the drive. The beds won't be full, but we'll probably only need about 2m³. That said, I think we'll order a full (6m³) load, as the extra will come in useful over time.

We also went over to Norland, as planned, to see the scarecrows. They were, as predicted, rather good. There was an impressive Dr Who (complete with Tardis and Dalek), and a superb Scooby Gang. Along with a full size Ice Road Trucker.

Tomorrow: bit more vegetable beds? And lunch with Liz's grandparents (visiting t'in-laws).

Blackberries & Scarecrows

After mowing half the lawn (doing all of it at once seems too much like hard work, frankly), I popped out to collect some blackberries. Although those on my route to work have been ripe for a week or two, those near home are a bit further behind. I managed to collect about a pound, I reckon, and have frozen them: hopefully more will come ripe over the next week or two—although the threat of frost worries me.

Once fruited, the canes of blackberries (and hybrids: loganberries, tayberries, boysenberries...) are exhausted, and won't produce fruit again; they flower on the previous year's growth. This is all very well on domesticated plants, grown against wires, but who cares for brambles and wild fruit? Well, in an effort to increase yield, I'm thinking of cutting back some of the 'done' canes this year. It might seem mad, pruning the brambles, but there you go.

On an entirely unrelated tack: I'm hoping we might visit the Norland Scarecrow Festival this weekend. We went last year, and enjoyed it: it runs from Friday 3rd September to Tuesday 7th, in (predictably), the village of Norland. Each year has a theme (last year was Myths and Legends; this year is TV Programmes), and there are scarecrows in the gardens of houses, in fields, verges, and commons. Some are highly inventive, many are quite amusing. Worth a visit, if the weather holds, and you're in the area!