The Donated House

Today I framed the west wall of the outdoor kitchen, ready to stand it up and triangulate it to the south and north base plates tomorrow (when, with any luck, the metal bits I’m waiting for will have arrived.)

It worked exactly as expected (good cutting job, Anna) and I hope to have the rest of it framed and up by the end of the weekend, with any luck. I am very pleased, because that gives me loads of time to do all the other things I’d like to do before the end of the month and the next big party. I might even get around to rendering the front of the house!

We ate dinner outside today, watching “Boggart Hall TV”. In today’s episode, Lily was swooped upon by a crow and ran for the house as if the devil was after her. And Elmo swore he could see the nettles growing before his eyes. Better strim tomorrow.

I got garden fever and went to Gordon Rigg’s to get some little alpines to plant between the paving slabs yesterday. I probably should have waited until the rest of the building was built, but I couldn’t help it, I wanted to do the soft furnishings first.

This way they’ll hopefully have a bit of time to establish before they get walked on a lot anyway. It’s all low-growing, spreading stuff that will survive a bit of walking on, and anyway, there’s plenty of un-planted area to step on if people pay just a little bit of attention to where their feet are. Which is asking a lot, I realise.

This corner, with my pot of very enthusiastic purple and yellow pansies, as well as the new bleeding hearts I was thrilled to watch survive, is about to become a ver gardened little spot, I think. Michelle added a coreopsis and I’ve just bought a dahlia (I think it was a dahlia, I’m new to this) to add more colour. I love flowers, I can’t wait to cover the entire plot in flowers.

A grand success of a birthday weekend.

Cute, sweet, beautiful Elmo turned 51 in style with a polka-dot birthday cake and surrounded by load of friends. The weather was stunning, beautifully sunny but, for the most part, not too hot for working.

Alec headed up the team finishing the foundations for the outdoor kitchen, ably aided by Christopher and Daisy. I’d been procrastinating about finishing that for ages; you can’t imagine how happy I was to watch other people do it so well.

In the end, we got all the paving slabs laid, and I’m now working on finishing the scraping away underneath them to make them stable. I want to plant stuff between them, so I haven’t used mortar or sand or anything.

Debbie did quite a lot of cutting up the remainder of the oak offcuts from the neighbours’ garden trimming session a couple of months ago. Good to get that done, finally. Meanwhile, everyone had a go at de-nailing the reclaimed wood for the frame of the outdoor kitchen.

Occasionally there was a nail so reluctant, a team effort was required.

Anna re-drew the building plan and made a cutting list, and then oversaw the cutting of the pieces for each wall. Mainly she used the power saw, but in cases where we were not totally sure of the absence of nails, it was safer to use the bow saw.

Unfortunately she had a cold, so was constantly blowing her nose, which made sawing difficult.

But triumph was hers in the end and the pieces are all cut.

At the other end of the garden, Ryan finally got his way with the wall of ivy, which peeled off in a satisfying sheet (barely visible above)…

And then burned MOST smokily. But blessedly briefly.

And of course, come Saturday night, we had a mega-feast around the bonfire.

The sausages and teriyaki beef are now traditional, and I added some veggie chilli, quinoa salad and a goat stew made of some goat brought by Lea.

People look really funny eating meat off sticks and I can’t help but add a few pictures every time.

Simon was particularly photogenic.

Lizzie was the lucky recipient of the now traditional rude comments about sausage eating.

It all descended quickly into music and singing after the food was done. Val’s shanties were particularly saucy.

On Sunday we relaxed for lunch on the lawn before people packed up and went back to their humdrum lives. Lets hope they don’t get too bored and depressed before they can come back to the excitement and stimulation of Boggart Hall work weekends!

And finally, my two highly-paid models reveling in the glamourous lifestyle of the volunteer. Lets call them the Boggart Hall pinups.

We’d known about the water meter for ages, in the bottom shed, and we’d spent about a year figuring out what happened between the pipe leaving the property and joining (or failing to join) the mains pipe.

Elmo eventually found the right flagstone on the property below ours to dig underneath, and yesterday Mr Yorkshire Water kindly came and clamped the pipe so we could do some plumbing.

After an initial small fountain from a leaky joint (which Elmo fixed quite easily) we had cold, clear, running water!

An excellent birthday present from Elmo to himself!

Meanwhile, it’s 21 degrees and sunny here, and Anna’s just done a bit more strimming to make room for the tents of this weekend’s guests.

She came back covered in tiny bits of plant, though this picture doesn’t do justice, either to the coverage of the tiny bits or the cute face she was making. Still, it warranted inclusion on the strength of its cuteness nonetheless.

This is the pile of rocks I’ve been moving. I’m quite sick of moving rocks now, to be honest. But they’ll come in very handy when we start to build the driveway.

Some of them have already come in handty in building the foundation for the pergola/outdoor kitchen, which is coming along very slowly. I should be out there setting more stones in right now, to be honest.

The people who gave me the stone also gave me this cast iron fire surround, which I have no use for indoors, but I’d quite like to use it in the garden somewhere, perhaps with a plant growing out of it.

This one’s for my mother. Hi Ma.