Friday 30 May 2014

Quick Strim

We set off at lunch time for a weekend in Cambridge (staying with David & Ann, but seeing everyone else, too!), but there was just time this morning to sow a load of flower seeds (and coriander, in fact; slug-munched), as well as half-strim the hillside (the apple-walk end, which was looking worse, and the two clearings), and for Liz to work on weeding the herb garden. It's the end of a busy week, and a few days rest will be good.

Thursday 29 May 2014

Old English Plaster

For today's first trick, we learnt how to plaster, in Old English finish. In a way, we're lucky, because the rest of the house is plastered in this style, so we're justified in plastering the garage and the rest of the house, in the same way, without it seeming odd. Lucky because neither of us has plastered before, and flat, smooth plastering was likely to take a while to master, even if I have practised on the odd Christmas cake before. I have to admit that it's not a perfectly flat, smooth surface.

Old English finish, however, is not meant to be. Instead, the surface is uneven, with prominent trowel marks. If it weren't deliberate, you'd think it was incompetent. To its credit, it covers uneven walls very well: if the plaster surface was perfect, the underlying lack of right angles, plumb verticals, and parallel  walls would shout at you.

The experiment appears to have been a success: we'll be sure when its dry and painted, of course. For now, we've plastered only the one board that covers the stud wall: in time, I'll dry line the entire room, but that's not urgent. It was more economic than I thought, too: a quarter bag of plaster (6.5kg, plus 3l water) was enough to cover the board, and do the joints over about half the ceiling, having fortunately taped them before mixing the plaster.

That finished, we then put down the last section of floor that can be done before the doors are replaced with walls and windows. The builder should be starting that work in the next week, so we also needed to clear access to everything he needed, which entailed moving everything previously standing in the front third of the room onto the new floor, leaving the front area (almost exactly three sheets worth of flooring: two deep on the door side, one deep on the far side) bare for him to work in.

We then worked through a stack of almost a hundred pots, planting up small plants that have grown on from seedlings over the past few months, and which are mostly now out on the weed membrane. We also potted up a dozen big pots of tomatoes, and a number of chillies and sweet peppers, which are on the benches in the greenhouse now.

It got rather late, so the cats had to come and shout for us to come in.

Wednesday 28 May 2014

Cavity Wall Insulation

As part of this year's big push to insulate the house properly, we were having the small area of cavity walls insulated today. They extend only to the 'modern' extensions (by modern, read 1970's), which are the hall, cloakroom, and downstairs loo; the garage and workshop (not, in fact, built at the same time); and the kitchen expansion (ex hallway) and utility room. These are all dressed stone outer leaf, with a cement block internal leaf, and a variable cavity. An excellent team arrived at lunch time, and the pair of them have spent a few hours blowing about eight cubic metres of polystyrene 'Polypearl Platinum' beads, bound with PVA, into the cavity. Theoretically, that should reduce heat loss through these walls by about three quarters, which should be noticeable.

While they were doing this, we put down another section of the new garage floor (SFUF, QuinnTherm, and ply, as before), and packed out our stud wall with more solid insulation, before screwing a plasterboard on top. We'll plaster it tomorrow.



Stud wall without, and with plasterboard (© Ian 2014)

Having grown rather tired of the untidy state of the herb garden, we've decided to cover it in weed suppressant, which will keep it neat, and start killing off the grass, before we get round to digging it over. It now looks much neater, especially where I was able to quickly strim down the grass first. We also laid a strip up the middle of the apple walk, which very nearly met the cardboard mulch to either side.

We've now emptied a large number of small plants out of the greenhouse, and they've gone out on the membrane, to start getting used to life in the great outdoors. More will follow tomorrow, as we've lots of things to pot on, to make more space in the greenhouse for the tender veg.

Tuesday 27 May 2014

Weed Control

In one way or another, the whole day's been spent controlling weeds (and the lawn). Liz has spent the entire day weeding, and has mastered the copse bed, the heuchera bed, and the sweet peas' bed. I've put cardboard and chipping layers to mulch the blueberries; put cardboard collars around the fruit trees in the copse bed, the apple walk, the grafting beds, and both clearings; and mown the lawn. I also installed the horizontal wires onto which the first tier of the apple walk espaliers will soon be trained.

Last thing was putting the loft insulation into the loft, after it arrived at lunch: not installed, but out of the way, ready for a rainy day.

We're shattered.

Monday 26 May 2014

Vegetable Planting

It's that time of year when the vegetable beds in the kitchen garden go from bare (or green manure covered), to filled, quite rapidly. The onions and potatoes went in about six weeks ago, and are doing well. We've now planted out a couple of blocks of beetroot (half a variety of mixed colours, and half Boltardy), 32 Brilliant celeriac, six courgettes (Defender), and scarlet kale and cauliflowers amongst the spinach. We've sown some more radishes, and sown a pot of scorzonera, as they haven't germinated in the bed. Some of the summer-sown brassicas (winter cabbage, cauliflowers, swedes) have gone into pots to germinate.

As a result, the kitchen garden's looking a lot more full. There's space, still, for leeks to go out (still in the greenhouse), and of course the potatoes get replaced as we lift them.

At the other end of the garden, the rhubarb had put on loads of new growth, meaning there was about 10kg of stems to pick. With such a large amount at once, it's been worth bottling, so we've preserved four and a half big Kilner jars.

While doing so, I've also made a batch of rhubarb vodka, with 8oz of chopped rhubarb, 4oz of sugar, and a 70cl bottle of vodka. Should be ready in a few months...

That was this morning: this afternoon, we sawed, split, and stacked a load of poplar.

Sunday 25 May 2014

Garage

We've got a week of leave, coinciding with the bank holiday, and a long list of things to get done. We started work on our garage conversion a few weeks ago, putting up the plasterboard ceiling, and beginning the slow process of laying the new floor: we need to get further with that, as the building work will hopefully start in 10–12 days. As normal, there's also a lot to get done in the garden: it's weeding and mowing season, which always takes a lot of effort.

Yesterday wasn't a very exciting day, by all accounts: I re-stacked some firewood that turned out not to have been stable, and Liz weeded the beds by the septic tank. We then cleared as much as possible of the garage loft (the only loft in which we store anything), including a large number of cardboard boxes that are destined to be a weed-resistant but degradable mulch. A lot of other things from the garage are actually rubbish, so we then went on a tip-trip, before going round to Cath and Jason's for a rather tasty dinner.

Today was more interesting. We started by building a stud wall in the hole through which the biomass accumulator tank was installed. I've always intended to do this, but we've had a stop-gap measure for the last nine months of a layer of mineral wool held in place with chicken wire. Not very professional, but effective.

The stud wall will have solid foam insulation packed into it, and a plasterboard screwed on top; that'll be later in the week.


Stud wall partition (© Ian 2014)

After this was done, we spent the rest of the day in the loft, putting down supplementary rafters and boarding a walkway down the centre of the loft. There was a walkway previously, but the floorboards weren't secured, and the extra rafters (giving us space for plenty of loft insulation) meant it had to be taken up and relaid anyway.

Sunday 18 May 2014

Sweet Peas

We finished constructing the climbing frames for the sweet peas over Thursday and Friday evening; working together, it takes about an hour to willow each one. Yesterday morning I dug holes into which they could be sunk, and positioned them in the bed. The soil's stonier than ideal, really, there, so this was slow progress, but eventually all four were suitably sunk into the ground. We then planted out the sweet peas, about a dozen plants per pyramid, with two or three varieties per support (hopefully complementary colours!). The plants have grown on really well in the greenhouse, so they're bigger than they've been in previous years, which is encouraging. It's also freed up some valuable bench space in the greenhouse, which is good because we discovered that we've got a couple of dozen packs of flower seeds to plant. I moved the tomatoes into the greenhouse, from the sitting room window: they'll need potting on soon. All in all, we need to get things moved out of the greenhouse shortly: fortunately there are a number of pots that can be planted out into the vegetable bed (beetroot, Swiss chard, brassicas), which will help, and a lot of lavender that can go out. A few pots, of dahlias, tulbaghia, and agapanthus, need to wait until we're sure there won't be frosts (probably a week or so).

Sunday was spent putting a third of the new garage floor down. The sealant paint went down over a number of evenings, the last on Friday. Onto this we've laid a high-tech multifoil insulation. The battens on top of this have solid foam boards between them, and then a plywood layer on top. That makes a very well insulated layer, but only takes 65mm of height. Tomorrow we'll move things off the next section of floor, ready to paint that, and lay the floor in a week or so.

Barely, we managed to get that sorted with enough time to mow the lawn (a mixed blessing), which does admittedly look a lot better for it. Liz has also managed to weed the entire long border in gaps in the flooring work, which is now looking magnificent.

I reckon that the quince will be in flower in the next 48 hours...and I can't wait.

Wednesday 14 May 2014

Climbers' Supports

A mixed day off, today: Liz spent a lot of time getting beds weeded, which is tedious but necessary work. I've cut back the ivy and Virginia Creeper on the front of the house (the former was encroaching the dressing room window rather); re-attached the hanging basket bracket that came down over the winter; and repaired the bikes.

On Monday evening, Liz painted the feet of my sweet pea/legume support structures with bituminous paint, to protect them once they're underground, and we painted the above-ground bit with outdoor paint last night. That meant that this afternoon I was able to continue putting the woven willow sides into them, and we've now done two of the four sweet pea wigwams. (It's surprisingly slow work.)

We managed to spend fifteen minutes looking at the hillside. A lot of the hedging isn't doing so well, unfortunately: either deer or slugs, but we're not sure which, or whether it's just taking its time to come into leaf. Much better are the grafts, which appear to be mostly alive, and starting to break into leaf. And a lot of the apples, old and new, are in flower. A couple of the old trees, which bore really well last year, seem very light on flowers. We're not sure whether we've missed them/they're not out yet, or whether they're at risk of biennial bearing, having had such a good crop last year. Only time will tell.

Sunday 11 May 2014

Ceiling

After a day off, yesterday, with friends visiting, today was spent installing the plasterboard ceiling in the garage. This went, we were pleased to find, faster than expected, and we actually finished the job, barring a few small sections that are awkward to get to with the contents of the room. We'll have to move everything around over the coming weeks, in order to install a new floor, so we'll add these small panels as we can. Over the next week, we'll be painting the exposed third of the floor with liquid damp proof membrane, and then putting an insulated floor down next Saturday. We've a day off on Wednesday, which will let us get some things done in the garden, too, which will be good.

Wednesday 7 May 2014

Above Ground

I've had a day at home, starting work on the long-planned permanent support frames for the sweet peas, and vegetable climbers, as well as being around to receive a number of garage-related deliveries.

While in the garden though, I've been delighted to see that the quince is, finally, going to flower this year. The cherries and plums are already doing so (not brilliantly, in the latter's case), and the apples, in the garden and orchard, are on the cusp.

In the vegetable garden, many of the potatoes now have shoots above ground, and a large fraction of the onions have shoots. That's a lot faster than in previous years, for both, which I credit with the later planting, and—therefore—warmer ground.

Monday 5 May 2014

Scarborough

Making the most of the bank holiday weekend, we've had a couple of days in Scarborough, with Liz's grandparents, and a day in Thirsk with my parents. It's the first time I've been to Scarborough in twenty years, and about a dozen since Liz last went, so we were both really seeing it through fresh eyes.

On Saturday, after lunch, we walked down Woodland Ravine, through Peasholm Park, and along the north bay, before turning back past the open air theatre to return.


Spring colour in Woodland Ravine / Dean Road Cemetary (© Ian 2014)


Spring colour in Woodland Ravine / Dean Road Cemetary (© Ian 2014)


Peasholm Park (© Ian 2014)


Peasholm Park (© Ian 2014)


Wildflowers: primroses, wood anemones, and forget-me-nots in Peasholm Park (© Ian 2014)


North Bay and Scarborough Castle (© Ian 2014)


Squirrel Sculpture, Peasholm Park (© Ian 2014)


Peasholm Park (© Ian 2014)

Faux-Oriental sculpture, Peasholm Park (© Ian 2014)


The Secret Garden (© Ian 2014)


The Secret Garden (© Ian 2014)

Although Sunday morning was a bit overcast, we started at Anne Brontë's grave, before walking around Scarborough Castle. From there, we went down the side of the headland, across the harbour, and along the seafront. After going past the Spa, we came up through the gardens to meet our lift.



Ruins of North Transept in churchyard of St Mary's with Holy Apostles, destroyed in Civil War (© Ian 2014)


The Keep, Scarborough Castle (© Ian 2014)


Roman Signalling Station, Scarborough Castle (© Ian 2014)

The Keep, Scarborough Castle (© Ian 2014)

View from Scarborough Castle over North Bay (© Ian 2014)

Sunday afternoon comprised a walk through Raincliff Wood, which has a large number of paths (thank you, Woodland Trust), and an interesting bit of woodland regeneration in Raincliff Meadow.


Wood Sorrel (© Ian 2014)


Bluebells (© Ian 2014)


Woodland Flowers (© Ian 2014)


Wood Anemones (© Ian 2014)


Stumps, Raincliff Wood (© Ian 2014)


Tree roots over outcrop (© Ian 2014)