The summer so far has really been about cold and rain, with occasional 3-day hot, sunny periods. But this last week has been more like all that stuffed into a single day. Downpours followed by sizzling sunshine, making the roof steam like a boiling pot.
This corner of the house got soaked rather badly in one of these downpours, because the down-spout overflowed and gushed water all down the outside of the hose that was (stupidly, in retrospect) in contact with the corner of the building. Whoops. Still, it’s drying out, slowly, and Barbara has a moisture meter we can put in in a month or so to see if it’s going to be ok.
Meanwhile, we’ve started lime rendering the back, though I think I will have to make a couple of changes to the plan for ventilation purposes. Was going to do a warm roof, but there seems to be a strong feeling against that idea in the circles of wisdom to which I have access, so I am going to leave the inch gap and ventilate under the eaves.
I mostly spent the day on Saturday cutting up tiles for the mosaic I’m going to do along the back of the work surface and sink in the kitchen. I have a good selection of colours to do a sort of sand-ridge-pattern with lights and darks making optical-illusion-style curves of colour. I’m quite excited to get on with it, though the ceiling and gables should really take precedence.
The potatoes are doing alright, having been thoroughly weeded round by Lea. I’m sure they will shortly get blight; I’ve never had a crop of potatoes that didn’t.
On Wednesday Alec and I went round Haddon Hall (on a sort of one-day holiday) and there was an absolutely amazing, beautiful, semi-wild looking perennial garden in the grounds that has me seriously inspired. So I bought a delphinium, which I hope to propagate when it’s come on a bit. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that next spring or if it’ll have to establish a bit longer. Anybody know?
Elmo and the steaming roof, in one of the sunny intervals. Check out my lawn!
This is the unfortunate state of the really hard-trodden earth around the building after a rain storm. It drains eventually, but I think we should probably figure out some way to drain it more quickly. Before someone drowns.
The rain continued at intervals on the way back to Barnsley, giving us some of the most intense and beautiful rainbows I’ve ever seen. This one was an incredibly bright, full double rainbow all the way over and down the other side. I’m afraid my iPhone has not done it justice.
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