New Home!

Moving day!

 

Well, this is a blog that I have waited to write for over a year!

I officially completed on the sale of my house in Glastonbury and the purchase of my house in Binegar on Monday, 10^th June but, as some of you already know, I have had access to my new home for quite some time due to the generosity and trust of the owners. This has enabled me to decorate some of the rooms prior to moving in and employ builders to try and make the building watertight, as the sitting room particularly has a bad case of damp. (I took readings with a damp meter – a dry wall registered 5%, which is well within the acceptable range of 0-15%, the obviously damp wall registered 45%!!)

Before

During

After!

Moving day was not without its minor dramas! I may have mentioned when I moved in that my 7 foot sofa would not go through the front door because of the right angle in the porch and the height of the porch ceiling, so had to be lifted over the flat-roofed extension. Obviously, it hadn't changed size in the last three years so we had to do it again in reverse order and this time I got photos!

Getting the sofa out the back door

Passing the sofa across the flat roof

I suppose I took a bit of a risk spending so much money on a property that wasn’t yet mine, but I decided to trust in the innate goodness of people, the gods, the universe, my gut instinct (delete all/any of these choices!) and believe that everything would be fine!

There is still a lot of work to be done, both in the house and in the garden, but I will try and pace myself sensibly and work on one project at a time. The dreadful shed, that nearly broke me, is pretty much finished and is, at least, watertight which is just as well as I have had to fill it with things that really have no business in a shed and need sorting out and more appropriate homes found for them.

The oddly-dimensioned shed!

It was only when I emptied the wardrobe cupboard and the loft at Glastonbury that I realised just how many fleeces I have amassed over the years! A few of them have been washed, dried and stored in vacuum sacks, but there are many that are still in their raw state, including three huge fleeces – a Cotswold, a Wensleydale and a Lincoln Longwool. I am not looking forward to the washing process as they are quite heavy when dry, goodness knows what they will be like when wet!

All set up at Wells Town Hall

I have been continuing to go to the twice-monthly Community Market in Wells Town Hall and taking my spinning wheel, which creates a lot of interest and draws people into the building from the outdoor market, which is held on the same days. This means that at least a small proportion of my fleece is being used on a regular basis – you never know, if I do this for the next few years the fleece mountain may become a lot smaller! 😊 Unfortunately, even though people are very interested in the spinning and some take photos and videos, I am not selling much and have failed to cover my pitch fee recently, which is a shame.

Newly laid hedge

The hedge in full leaf

The hedge, that was laid back in April, is looking so much better now it has come into full leaf and I have continued to plant new hawthorn and hazel plants to fill in the gaps, protecting them from any marauding rabbits with those clear plastic spirals. Where there were large gaps in the hedge bottom I have put in stakes and woven a temporary hazel hurdle in situ to protect the new plants and also to encourage other plants to grow around them. I am thinking of introducing a honeysuckle plant, that used to be in a pot, into the hedgerow to encourage bees and other pollinators. I have also scattered some wild flower seeds in the hope that they might germinate and set seed this year for next. Wherever I come across an attractive ‘weed’ (a wildflower growing in the wrong place) in one of my clients’ gardens I am carefully digging it up and bringing it to a new home on my wildflower bank! Even my mother’s bete noire, Alkanet, is being allowed to colonise a small area as the blue forget-me-not style flowers are really pretty and, as it is related to Comfrey, can be used to make a nutrient-rich ‘tea’ or put into the compost.

The poorly ash tree😢

Sadly, the remaining large ash tree in the garden is showing early signs of ash die-back so I have made the decision to have it felled at the end of July, before it becomes dangerous for the guys to take down and before I put in any more infrastructure at the bottom of the garden, such as another shed and the chicken house and run. I have two or three field maples in my collection of hedge plants and I will probably plant those along the boundary line instead. The ash will not have died in vain, however, as I will have the bulk of it cut up for logs for my log burner and the brashy bits will be chipped on site and left for me to use as mulch for pathways and the chicken run.

A day after I officially owned the house, the scaffolders came back and removed the scaffolding, revealing my home in all its newly-repaired, newly-refurbished, newly-painted splendour! I am so pleased with how it looks now! However, three days after I officially owned my new home I decamped to Jeni’s house to cat sit for two weeks while they gallivant off on a road trip through France!

You can take the girl out of Glastonbury.....!