Back to Oswestry - again!

For about two and a half weeks from the middle of September I have been house-sitting for some previous WWOOF hosts near Oswestry in Shropshire, while they went over to Brittany to do some work on a tiny cottage they have there.

This place is one that I went to first in June 2010 and again with Jeni in April this year, and has three acres of gardens that they are gradually trying to reclaim. It is quite fascinating to see what they have achieved since I first visited. They don’t have very many WWOOFers per year, but they had a couple of New Zealanders this summer for just over two weeks, and with their help they have now built some more rustic steps (Jeni and I did some in April) and built on a raised decked area in front of the summer house, plus they continued cutting back and down some of the more overgrown areas.

Basically, the house sitting consisted of looking after the two cats and Jasper, the Miniature Schnauzer that arrived with them in April for two weeks and has never gone home to Dawn’s son in London! He was actually quite nice company as I was totally by myself in the middle of nowhere for two weeks, and it saved me having to talk to myself! As Jeni says, I’m very good at anthropomorphisising (spellcheck did not recognise this word so I don’t know whether it’s a real word or not!) so it wasn’t long before I thought I knew what he was thinking – I could become (am, already?) a very eccentric old woman.

Every day, when the weather was fine enough, the two of us would venture into the garden after breakfast and do some work, either in the vegetable patch or in the larger ‘pleasure’ garden. I was mainly weeding the veg beds and removing the finished peas and broad beans, and after two weeks I had cleared three of the raised beds and replanted another one with kale, and also sown some winter spinach. It was quite strange to remove the dead pea plants that Jeni and I had planted out in April and also to see how some of the later sowings had grown – the parsnips we sowed looked particularly impressive. When the weather was not so good I weeded the greenhouses and plaited the onions that were drying in the shed, so that they could be hung up over winter.

In the larger garden I tackled weeding paths and steps and also dug out some massive fern roots and ash saplings from the heather and conifer bed, and dug up a row of encroaching shrubs from along the driveway. I don’t know what they were – there is so much in this garden that I don’t recognise – but they spread by underground runners, so it won’t be long before they start to encroach again. I also weeded the ‘Jeni bed’ created by Jeni in April, and the ‘Jan bed’, on the opposite side of the steps, that I created back in 2010! I also started a ‘dead hedge’ on one boundary where sheep were getting in in the spring. A dead hedge is just a few stakes driven into the ground about three feet apart and then any small branches or woody stems from cutting back and pruning are woven in and out to form a strong barrier that should last for a few years and can be added to as and when more material becomes available.

I found the time that I was on my own quite trying at times, as I realised that, once I stop travelling, I will be living by myself all the time and I don’t relish that idea at all, so it made me rather sad and introspective. Luckily I had a couple of bracing chats with Jeni during that time and also with my Mum and that helped put things back into perspective a bit. I was still very glad when Dawn and Tony came home, and probably didn’t stop yakking for hours! I had hardly spoken to another human being for two weeks, apart from the checkout girl in Morrisons ‘Do you want help with your packing?’ – ‘No, It’s OK thanks’ and a rather strange chap who accosted me outside Oswestry post office on a Sunday morning to ask if I could direct him to Wilkinsons. As it was literally opposite where we were standing, I didn’t have too much difficulty! I then wondered, later on, whether that was some sort of chat up line that I’d failed to recognise!!

I am now embarked on a tour of Wales that should take me up to mid-December when I shall retreat to Mum’s for the Christmas festivities, before trying to think where to go in the New Year – I don’t somehow think it will be Scotland – perhaps I could go back to the South West and hope for a mild winter and lots of lovely log-burning stoves!