After a great deal of anticipation, the digger arrived last night in preparation for another bit of work to transform the respective mounds of (a) earth and (b) telegraph poles into a raised bed along the left flank of the hard standing. This has become a bit of a bugbear as a number of factions were involved with an interest in getting the thing done. First, us; it was becoming a real blight on all the work done thus far and while I am not a fussy bint, it was starting to grate a bit. Second; the gaggle of electricians who have rewired the yard - we're still running on the original connection back to the house and were waiting for the bed to be laid so that the armoured cable could be installed (which still makes me think of armadillos even though the cable itself doesn't look anything like an armadillo and is very definitely not crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside like one either). Third; Phil himself, who is very clear that he likes his bollocks as they are are and if at all possible would like to avoid any further suggestion of a scrotum/nail/pole interface by virtue of being too busy to shoehorn our doings into all the other doings he has to cram in every day. They do say farming is stressful, and I begin to see why. Anyway. They arrived this morning just as I was leaving, so I just had time to make them a coffee before leaving.
I've been in Earl's Court for work today discussing the relevant merits of numerous service desk solutions, and sussing out the contraindications, if I may put them so, by a combined process of interrogation and deduction. An interesting if tiring day - by the end of it my feet had a very clear message for me, which went something like this. "Wahhhh! Wahhhh! Wahhhh!" and "Arrrrrghhhhhhhhh".
Was looking forward to getting home for a number of reasons, and was delighted to see that they did an excellent job of making the raised bed, which is now (a) larger and (b) shorter than it was when I left, and flanked with telegraph poles. It stretches all the way from the garden fence to the muck clamp and they've finished off the remaining bit of hard standing so it goes all the way to the edge. Wicked.
The next task will be to enrich the soil with fertiliser, and luckily for us we have an almost inexhaustible supply of that. So for the next while I can poo pick the fields and spread said poo over the bed to prepare it for planting. There's a real dearth of plant life on the place at the moment so it will be great to do some planning for what we are going to plant. Leylandi, certainly, for the fence masking, as it is quite rancid, and a wealth of shrubs. Top of my list is dogwood and ceoanthus (sp). As sure as night follows day, Sid will want some sort of rhododendron, although they are a bugger to keep going in full sunlight and clay soil.
The Next Big Thing is the garden, which is a real shitpit, it must be said. The challenge is that it currently all slopes towards the house and when the biblical rains come it comes very close to flooding the house by way of the strange hole in the lounge floor which is ostensibly there to allow air suction for the fire (we're told) but which also fills alarmingly with rain water in the event of a torrent. The plan is to redo the patio and build a small brick wall around it, then raise the level of the lawn such that it slopes away from the house. There are the inevitable plans involving the trellis, climbing things, vines and walkways that characterise a Sid-designed garden, but there's a lot to do before we get to the fun bits. We also want to build one of those marvellous outdoor ovens, a la Jamie Oliver, "in the fullness of time".
Meanwhile the boys are doing well on their 24/7 routine and I am certainly doing well on a routine of little or no mucking out. Poo picking the field is so much more civilised, even if it is with a wheelbarrow and shavings fork. The boys spend much of their time loafing at the fence near the mares, wandering up every so often for sustenance, or grazing for a while. Our ridiculous attempts to water the fields with a sprinkler do seem to have had an effect, but I would really like it if we had some rain some time soon.
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