The Donated House

Here we are, enjoying a delicious outdoor-reared waffle breakfast, all unaware that the next hour would bring…

Garden progress. And…

A giant swarm of bees. From our own beehive. We forgot to read the book, which said in chapter 1: put a super on in April to give the bees enough room. Otherwise they’ll swarm.

Ooops.

They gathered quite quickly on one of the blueberry bushes, and we quickly set up a hive to try to catch them.

They were quite easily shaken off the bush into a bucket.

And the bucket dumped into the waiting hive.

Two lots of bucket dumping didn’t seem to have got them all, so we took the blueberry bush itself up to the hive.

But they very quickly reassembled on the next blueberry bush to where they had originally congregated. Obviously they had decided on that spot. We stuck an empty brood box next to them, hoping that they would decide to go in it.

But they hung around until evening before flying off in a giant cloud, never to be seen again. Oh well, we still have the remainder of the original hive.

Meanwhile, at the back corner of the plot, Catie and I removed the raised bed at the base of the wall ready to erect a workspace/shed with the windfall reclaimed wood Antony has given us.

Progress was quick with Catie, Anna, Daisy and me all working on it on the weekend.

And today I finished the roof frame with Anna and Lea’s help.

It’s ready for the roof going on tomorrow, all being well.

Once again, it is very clear that I am a fair weather builder. A week’s rain is a week’s laziness, but when it goes all sunny and nice, I’m quite up for long days of work.

And it’s just beginning to dawn on me what a good stroke of luck is occurring: my neighbour Antony is demolishing his house, quite carefully, bit by bit, and donating most of it to me. I’m rolling in building materials like Miley Cyrus. Only with more sensible clothes. And a lot more of them. And I don’t lick my tools. Ok, so not at all like Miley Cyrus, but anyway, I have SO MUCH good quality reclaimed wood, roofing materials, insulation, etc that I’m going to be building awesome stuff all summer. And that means storage space!

Elmo’s parents had a few extra sweet peas and also kindly let me dig a bunch of stuff out of their garden, so my shade garden along the front of the porch is now packed with stuff that will either thrive or it won’t, which is how I garden.

Anna, ever-sensible, finally orchestrated my busy mind to go get more tyres, so we have earthed up the potatoes in time for it to have been worth doing.

The blueberries are absolutely thriving, and I can’t wait for pie.

Sarah-May came for a lovely day of tea-drinking and gossip, followed by therapy in the form of glass-breaking. I’ve given up on finding a use for all this ex-greenhouse glass, it’s all going to the tip. It’s a shame, but on the other hand, it’s no longer holding me up.

And it makes a very satisfying pastime.

Ok, so off-topic, but yesterday Elmo and I walked downtown and this party political message from UKIP had been altered Todmorden-style. I love this town.

Anna made some delicious katsu curry with crispy baked chicken. I love other people’s cooking.

And finally, prizes available for anyone who can identify this week’s mystery plant. The flowers are about upside-down snowdrop sized, and I found it occupying the shady edge of the drive, coping admirably with the challenging conditions. So I’d like more of them.

It was a blessedly gorgeous weekend for working outside, so we got all sorts of stuff done that we’d been planning and (as often happens) got distracted by other stuff we hadn’t even realised we’d needed to do. Anna swept the roof and cleared out the gutter. She also started making a chicken-wire leaf-guard to keep it from getting so blocked as to be useless.

I had a brainstorm moment when trying to figure out where to store the lovely hardwood exterior door I’d been given (not my taste by looks, but very sturdy and nicely made) when I realised it could, with a few edges sawn off it, make a great end-of-porch door.

Alec and I worked on making the storage systems for the back porch, aiming to have everyday and nearly every day stuff nearest the door and cold storage toward the more awkward middle.

Actually, Alec was only holding a mattock to measure something on the back porch against its height, but we thought he looked rather manful so we took a picture.

Lizzy got a whole vegetable garden well underway. All we’ve got to do is water it. Hooray!

Elmo worked dutifully to keep de-weeding the rest of the veg plot, which is full of all sorts of horrible, well-established weeds.

Me,  I made a cake. On our trip to America we’d bought Lucky Charms, thinking there was no breakfast cereal too sweet for Anna, but in the end we had to pick out the marshmallows to make it palatable, so I kept them and made this cake with them.

And roasted a chicken by dangling it from a string and spinning it by the fire for an hour and a half.

It was amazing. Beautifully tender and delicious. I am SO going to do that again.

We got back from a trip to Vermont to find that our house-sitter had expanded our plant collection nicely, cleaned up all the potted plants and generally made the place much nicer.

So in celebration, I went to the garden centre. I want to be surrounded by flowers. Elmo planted a rose that I’d bought last year (eek!) but it seemed to be ok. I’m sure it will be happier in a big pile of manure rather than its tiny old pot.

I got an orange azalea because it’s one of Anna’s favourites. Well, technically orange rhododendron is her favourite, but I’m not sure what the actual difference is…

Well, it seems to be going well, so I think we can now start considering Jack our cat. Lily tolerates him a lot better than she did Balthazar, and he’s mature enough not to go looking for trouble with her. He’s a sweetie, and although he still spends a lot of time away (mousing? Hanging out on Antony’s kitchen window sill asking to be let in? Who knows…) he seems at home when he’s here. And he eats like a horse.

Today I hurriedly painted the chicken house, just because I wanted to see it done and all pretty. I am so looking forward to spring and lots of flowers and lovely grass and sunny days and outdoor work.

Elmo cleared some space and we laid out the tyre garden for the potatoes, which had been chitting for a month. Anna filled them with soil and compost and we planted three in each tyre. Maris Pipers and King Edwards, not that I think I would know the difference. Some people take potatoes so seriously. I just keep an eye for the first signs of blight and chop them down.

Grass wants cutting, driveway wants finishing, top deck wants clearing, vegetable bed still full of perennial weeds… but spring is in the air and it’s lovely to live here.