RHS Wisley

After a very long day yesterday, we got away from Ludlow as soon as we could (eleven), and made the long journey down to Surrey over lunch. We'd resolved to visit RHS Wisley, as we were in the area without Katie and Dan (staying elsewhere, though we're all using their house for two nights).

It's an impressive garden, though, actually, I think Harlow Carr compares well, and has the advantage of being a more locally representative climate.

The orchard, particularly, we enjoyed: there are hundreds of decades-old apples, which give a beautiful impression of what, eventually, we hope our orchard will come to be like.

Flower Arranging

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Down to Ludlow

Need list of the morning's work. We had a rather longer list of things to do today than ideal, but we managed to get them done, and set off for Ludlow at half-two, with a car full of presents, foliage, luggage, and flowers. We got to Ludlow castle at about half-five, and then had two hours to get the flowers arranged, with Jenny, and Dan's sister and aunt helping. Amazingly, it all got done, and we staggered back to Molly's for a late supper. The big day awaits tomorrow...

Finishing the Kitchen

A busy day, today, finishing the kitchen. To start with, we pulled the cooker and two side units out of the cooker alcove (the old fireplace), and stripped that wall to stone, as well as the small bit of external wall near the deprecated front door.

We then had to work quickly to get the cooker's wall insulated (with some difficulty getting the foil behind the pipework near the floor!), before our helpers turned up: Philip and Clara came down to help get everything back into the kitchen. Clara was particularly useful, cleaning the cupboards before things went back in.

Meanwhile, I went back to the dining room, which we started some weeks ago, with an unexpectedly free afternoon after the last houseparty. Once the kitchen was re-stocked, Liz joined me, and we've finished insulating the front wall of the dining room, as well as replacing the windowboards on the back of the sitting room, and the front of the dining room. We need more cavity-fill batts/rockwool slabs before we can do any more of these, though.

There's a list of things we want to squeeze in to tomorrow morning, and then we'll hopefully be able to set off for Ludlow shortly after lunch.

York Gate

In between work on the kitchen, we decided we deserved a break, and took a few hours off to visit York Gate. We went about this time last year, and got good ideas: we hoped for the same again. It's given us a few ideas for plants that will help fill what we find is a slightly 'subdued' period in the garden, where there's less flowering than we'd like.

Photos to come...

Insulating the Kitchen

We've been putting off insulating the kitchen, focussing instead on the other downstairs rooms, until we've had several consecutive days to work on it. There are a number of reasons why, although it's a smaller area of wall than, say, the sitting room, it was always going to take longer. The kitchen units on the external wall, which include the sinks and the water heater (that is: lots of plumbing and electrics) all needed moving; so did the little units to either side of the cooker; the pantry is fiddly (the shelves are, for various reasons, basically un-removeable), and so it was always going to take several days. If it weren't the kitchen, that wouldn't be so bad, but we really couldn't face doing the work over two weekends, and being without use of the kitchen for nine days.

And that's assuming it all went to plan.

So, instead, we've waited until this weekend, which comes at the start of a week off. We only have four days, as on Wednesday we're travelling down to Ludlow, ahead of Katie's wedding on Thursday. Hopefully, though, four days are enough.

It took a long time to get the units removed (inevitably, they weren't installed with ease of removal in mind), but we got them out of the way, and have stripped the wall back and insulated it. Unlike in the other rooms, we've done the window reveals and boards as we've gone.

Tonight's gone on rather, but we've probably broken the back of it.

More Perennial Plugs

As expected (though we didn't think it would follow quite so hot on emptying the module trays last night), today we received 96 perennial plugs: 24 each of 'Mussinni' catmint (nepeta), echinacea 'Deep Rose', achillea 'Cassis', and a dozen each of 'Blue Queen' salvia, and 'Lady Strathden' geum. Interestingly, the cats don't seem as interested in the catmint as our other plants, grown from seed or 'Walkers Low', which bodes well for actually being able to plant it out.

Forgot to mention: I was finally able to mow the lawn yesterday, too, after not being able to coincide good weather and time for three weeks. The games lawn really needed it, but actually the rest wasn't too bad.

Late Summer Flowers

After weeks of sweetpea arrangements, they're starting to come to an end, and so this week's centrepiece arrangement is a bit different (apologies for the shaky photo).

Golden rod, achillea, echinacea, grasses, and lysimachia in this week's flower arrangement (© Ian 2014)

We went up on the hillside, too, and it's very pleasing how the apple walk and graftlings are coming on. The apple walk's structure is a lot clearer than I thought it would be, in its first year, and the shoots need tying in again. In the graft bed, I'm delighted that we seem to have three viable Hessle pears, two each of the apples, Crimson Superb and Craggy's Seedling (a third, of each, is in the walk, grafted directly). There's only one of each of quinces Ivan and Vranja, and medlar Dutch, which is, admittedly, all we needed to make the effort a success. Sadly, the medlar Royal didn't take, in any of the three attempts, but there you go. I make that a 12 out of 21 success rate, for my first grafting attempts.

Tonight, we potted on three giant scabious, a load of Lysimachia ephemera, and a tray of Hidcote lavenders; all seed-grown, the first and last from the RHS. That's freed up a couple of module trays for some perennial plugs that will arrive soon.

Back Sitting Room Wall

After finishing very late last night (early this morning), we only got started today at 10-ish, but wanted to press on to get the room back to normal today. We had a few problems with the radiator, but the electrics and plumbing were much simpler, as predicted, with only two radiator pipes dropping down the wall.

We think we've worked out that the big window was, originally, a door on the left (looking from inside), because the bottom part of the wall has been rebuilt with some cement blocks and newer mortar. Similarly, we think there was a window on the other end of the current window, for the same reason. The new window is much bigger, of course, and has a new concrete lintel inside. It's good fun, uncovering how the house has changed over the past two centuries.

Back wall of the sitting room, stripped back to stone (© Ian 2014)

We managed to get the battens on, the insulation in, and the plasterboard back up, apart from the right hand end. There's less space here, because of the cellar door, so we need an even-thinner insulation solution. Maybe next weekend, when we tackle the kitchen, which needs the same thing, we'll finish up.

Sitting Room

Although we haven't finished insulating the dining room, it's a much less inconvenient room to have half-done than the sitting room, so this weekend we focused on getting the sitting room done, in the hope that two consecutive days would suffice, and it could return to normality by the end of them.

Front wall, before work (© Ian 2014)

Back wall, before work (© Ian 2014)

We started with the front wall, which we knew was going to be trickier, stripping off the plaster to reveal the stonework. In doing so, we uncovered some complicated wiring for the room's lights, as well as the outside lamp-post in the front garden. Additionally, the wall under the window was, like that in the dining room, much lower on the internal leaf than the external. This was a bit of a pain, as it meant that the radiator brackets go partly onto stonework, partly onto timber frame. We're also going to need some more cavity slab to fill the space.

Eventually, though we sorted out the wiring, and radiator pipes: the former's now much improved, as there are two double sockets (was a double and a single), provision for an outside RCD socket (much desired, as it will allow Christmas lights in the front garden), the switches for the room lights are now in a more sensible location (inside the doorway into the dining room), and the outside lightswitch is separate.

We got the battens on the wall, the insulation secured, and the plasterboards attached, and all by 0220 on Sunday morning. Oops.

Horizontal battens attached; verticals ready; insulation is next (© Ian 2014)

However, it was done, and this was the much trickier of the walls (having electrics, a more complicated windowsill, and being a little larger), so we'd pushed on to get it finished. As a note: we're deliberately leaving the tops of the windows, and the reveals: we need to get the walls proper, with the radiators, done before we can turn the heating on. We'll then have some finishing up to do, but the heating won't be affected.

The insulated front wall, taken the next morning (© Ian 2014)

Onions

We had thought we might get some weeding and lawn-mowing done this evening, but discovered two problems with that plan when we went outside.

Firstly, it was still a bit damp, and the mower doesn't collect wet clippings very well, which means a big raking-up job in addition to the mowing, of which I am not enamoured.

Secondly, there have clearly been deer rampaging through the garden in the last few days, and they've done distressing damage. They've stripped the leaves, flowers, and pods from the runner beans, climbing beans, peas, and French beans (no legumes this year, I suspect, now); nibbled the chicory and Japanese ginger; damaged a forsythia in the copse bed, munched some of a neighbouring heuchera or two; eaten a lot of the strawberry foliage (not necessarily a problem, this one, as that was due for trimming back, anyway); destroyed the last of the spinach; eaten several stems of tay- and loganberries (losing next year's crop); and—as best I can ascertain—done some sort of deer dance on top of the onions. I think it's their route from kitchen garden to games lawn.

Fortunately, the onions were pretty much going over, and ready to be lifted, although they also did a lot of damage to the weed membrane we grow the onions through, which means I'll have to replace, tediously, some of it. Nonetheless, it meant that this evening's job was lifting the onions, trimming their tops, and setting them out on racks in the wood shelter to dry.

We've put some deterrent barriers in what we think the deer's routes in have been: a few gaps in the bottom hedge, some tunnels between kitchen garden and games lawn, and over the wall behind the beech bench. Hopefully that will help. Liz is more sanguine about this than me, and reckons it's a price we pay for enjoying deer roaming on the hillside. I look at the losses and damage to plants, crops, and trees, and think thoughts of venison.

Preparing the Dining Room

Since Friday afternoon, we've had Rachel, Philip, Luke, Elizabeth, Robert, Liz, and Ash with us. We were really lucky with the weather, which meant we could spend yesterday afternoon outside, and have a barbecue. Today's been a lot worse, with high winds and heavy rain. However, as they left yesterday evening and after breakfast, respectively, we've had an opportunity to do some work inside.

This is what the dining room looked like at lunchtime.

Garden side of the dining room (© Ian 2014)

Front side of the dining room (© Ian 2014)

And this is what it was like when we finished for the day. We still need to fix the rest of the horizontal battens, and then attach the insulation, vertical battens, and plasterboard, but we didn't think we'd get any work done this weekend, so that's good.

Stripped dining room wall (© Ian 2014)

Wall Insulation

We've had a long and rather tiring weekend, making a start on the internal wall insulation. Although we'd hoped to get started straight away (which would have meant we got further), we suspect that our potatoes have been hit by blight, so we actually started by digging up the remaining earlies (a few Royal Jerseys, the British Queen, and the main crop Lady Balfour). Especially in the case of the maincrop, it's several weeks earlier than one would ideally harvest them, but the haulms have collapsed, and so the tubers won't get any bigger. If it is blight, too, the sooner we get the tubers out, the more likely they are to store and be usable.

The yield, however, is somewhat lamentable.

We're going to rethink potato growing, I suspect, and decide whether, in light of a couple of poor years, it's worth the space and effort, for a crop that isn't actually expensive to buy. We might decide to grow a couple of packs of Lady Christl, say, which come out early (leaving useful later space), taste really good, and have been very reliable; but ditch the maincrop. Instead, we'll have a think about some alternatives, possibly including Jerusalem artichokes (possibly in the back corner, where perennials might do better than annuals, and where their height would help), oca, and maybe dahlias. We'll have to see. I'm also going to consider whether we should turn off the automatic irrigation, as this might be exacerbating blight—it's not been a damp summer, so blight is a little unexpected. Certainly, we need to continue our plan of heavy mulching.

While out there, I also watered the vegetable garden with chafer grub/wireworm nematodes, Heterorhabditis megidis.

Having made it back inside, we only started work inside at about three, and had to stop at six because Cath and Jason were round for dinner. In that time, we managed to make a complete mess of the master bedroom and ensuite, ripping the old plaster off the external walls, including the plain white floor-to-ceiling tiles of the bedroom. Quite the mess.

The master bedroom before IWI work (© Ian 2014)

The dressing room before work (© Ian 2014)

En suite before work (© Ian 2014)

The en suite before work (the most tasteful of the three, a blue floral pattern) (© Ian 2014)

Today, we got an early start, and having moved the bidet and toilet out of the way, finished the de-plastering. Then we battened, insulation foil, and plasterboarded the bedroom, taking the oppportunity to move the single socket on the left of the room to a more useful position, while making it a double, and added a second double to the right of the room, using a previously 'lost' socket hidden behind the radiator.

The master bedroom's wall stripped back to stone (© Ian 2014)

Horizontal battens in place (© Ian 2014)

The master bedroom with vertical battens, and one of the plasterboards (© Ian 2014)

The end/gable wall of the en suite stripped back to plaster, and with the 'missing' wall on left under the window (© Ian 2014)

We still need to do the same in the bathroom, as well as sort out the window reveals and windowsill, which may actually be rather later. We need, really, to get the walls proper done as soon as we can, because the radiators will be impossible to work round once the heating's on: we can do the other tidying up bits in more leisure in later autumn and winter.

In taking down the tiles in the bathroom, I was very surprised to find that the wall under one of the windows is a single stone skin, with a timber frame, which explains why that wall was always cold: it's even less insulating that the rest of the (500mm sandstone) walls, as it's only about 200mm thick. We'll replace the timber frame, but I'll fill it with glass wool slab, which will really help.