The Donated House

We ordered some firewood, which got delivered while I was up there on my own, and they couldn’t get the truck in as far as the driveway, so I had to have it delivered to Jane’s driveway, about 100 meters away from where I wanted it.

The bag was about as tall as me. I pulled the car round, flattened the back seats and threw as much as I could in, driving it up and stacking it on a pallet at the top of our drive and then going back for more. I did it in three trips.

My stacking skills are not as sharp as they ought to be, so I had one small collapse, but I managed to fit it all on there not more than a meter high, and hopefully stable enough not to fall down.

I put the remainder down near the house, as much as would fit. I chucked it down the stone steps from the car, and from there, piled it into the little trolley Lea donated, which was a lot more efficient than carrying it in armloads. I have no idea what to expect from the winter, but I hope this will see us through. First time doing this, so I really have no clue.

At the end of my stay I tarped it and put straps round it to keep it steady, and with no particular wind forecast, I hope it will be fine til I can make it up there again to deal with it properly, though I don’t think that will be this week, as I’ve got a wedding cake to make…

Anne was up a few days back and took some really lovely pictures which she was kind enough to send me, so I thought I’d share them.

This unusable door leads into the bottom shed. It’s never been openable since we bought the place, but one day I’ll replace it, when we re-roof the sheds and start using them properly. It’ll be a bit of a shame, actually, I like nothing more than a crumbling old door sometimes.

This archway is what we call the Secret Garden Door because when we first came up here, it was almost entirely curtained with ivy, and the structures beyond it had to be carefully discerned from the overgrowth. It’s still pretty charming, though unfortunately there do seem to be bags of rubbish around the place.

This was while the hammock was still in place on the pegs. It did make a beautiful pattern.

These are all that remain of what must have been hundreds of similar pots. The rest are now in small pieces, encouraging drainage in various places.

The lanterns still hang along the front edge of the porch, though it’s a bit cold these days for entertaining outdoors after dark.

The gorgon planter that hung on the front wall of Cherry Tree Cottage has taken up residence on the shelf of the slanting wall near the cabin. She looks rather well there, actually.

The ivy at the top of the wall catching the sun. It’s all gone now, thanks to Ryan.

I’m off up there again tomorrow, hoping to get a lot of insulation up so that we can be warm and cozy as the weather goes colder again.

Autumn is definitely upon us, and somehow that makes bonfires extra fun. Elmo, uncharacteristically, let us have a bit one to burn all the rubbish wood around the place, brush-piles and not-very-useful firewood, ivy stumps, etc. Bit smoky, but lovely to have cleaned up the place a bit.

Sylvia came round and helped me cut the shiplap for the enclosing of the gables. Both are now clad from the outside and the bedroom end of the building is insulated. I’ve got to wait for a day Elmo isn’t there to insulate the other end, because he’s in the way when he’s working at his desk.

He’s decidedly not in the way when he’s being tall and therefore able to reach the topmost nails. Very useful he is then.

Now that the building’s been rendered (all except the front, which I think will have to wait til spring, unless we have a very warm autumn) it’s looking all quaint and beautiful. I want to put some decorative trim under the gable. And maybe paint all the woodwork. And definitely get rid of that water tank.

I bought a lampshade on sale for almost nothing, but then after getting squished a few times as the bed got pulled up to the ceiling, it fell off its thingie. So I had to sew it back on, and obviously that’s an opportunity for a bit of bead embellishment. There’s never a wrong time for bead embellishment.

At the weekend we had six for dinner and I made slow cooked chicken (becoming a bit of a speciality) with onions and garlic, plus a sort of ratatouille-ish thing and rice. Apple crisp for dessert, with a handful of the last blueberries and the only decent blackberries on site. Not a good year for fruit, it’s been way too cold. I can’t even find damsons or sloes anywhere, so I’ll be reduced to making cranberry gin instead this year.

This is the view I get when I am lazily still in bed and Elmo’s up and eating breakfast at his computer. The morning sun is so beautiful through the end window. I can’t wait to be in the real house, with the south facing wall of glass getting full sun all the time. All the time that there’s sun anyway.

The guys from BT finally came to dig the hole for the pole, so we are one (tiny, almost invisible) step closer to having a phone and broadband. They were late and didn’t have time to actually put the pole in, of course. They are meant to be doing that today, and in preparation we had to clear a bit of ground below the bottom greenhouse base, which it soon became apparent had been the dumping ground for fifty years of broken greenhouse glass. The blue tub and about eight more like it are destined for the tip. I wish we could separate out the glass and use it as heat-sink in the house, but I don’t know how we could do it. Actually, I haven’t quite written it off… I might have at think…

A lovely image to end on. On a shopping trip in town I dodged a shower by having a cup of coffee and a lovely piece of the new gluten free cake at The Bear. Very, very good, which I don’t often say of gluten free cake. I love that place.

As I have been seriously neglectful of blogging for at least a week, here’s an extra long entry with all the goings on of the past two weekends.

I made a hammock by just messing about figuring it out as I went along, but not entirely surprisingly, it came out a bit wrong and not as good as I would have liked. So I stripped it for parts and made a proper one. Below is the weaving of it. Still not perfect tension, but measuring and marking the lengths made a big difference. Except where I made slight mistakes. Oh well.

I made proper harnesses (below) for this one, the same as were on the one we had when I was growing up. I had to do quite a bit of google-reasearch to figure out how to do it, but it turns out to be pretty easy.

I bought a couple of bits of oak from the local joiners and sanded them and drilled them for spreaders. Good thing I happened to have a 12mm chisel bit!

And good thing I have a dremel tool, with a drum sander attachment. Smoothed and rounded all the holes so as not to saw through the ropes.

Finally, tying it off at each end, with a sailor’s hitch or some such knot, which I was very good at by the end.

And below is the hammock in action. Pretty much everybody gave it a go, but only an elite few (myself included) managed to dump ourselves out of it in proper comedy fashion. There’s not much funnier than watching somebody be dumped out of a hammock.

In other news, last weekend Elmo and I spent a day helping some friends get their boat up the locks between Hebden Bridge and Todmorden. Elmo did a lot of paddle-winding and I did a lot of decoratively draping myself along the gates. A fair division of labour, I think.

Ryan came along last weekend and, as usual, powered through tons of work. The back wall turns out to be made of bricks behind all that ivy. Who knew?

And Anne came along as well and did some serious path excavation. It’s amazing how much structure there is under all this lumpy ground, if only you dig it out.

Anne also helped me get a bit done on the mosaic for the backsplash in the kitchen. Then I accidentally started using it as a kitchen again, so it may remain undone for a few weeks, but at least it’s started. It was lovely to see Anne anyway, I don’t get to see nearly enough of her.

The rest of the ivy came off the shed roofs, revealing a surprise pair of skylights in the bottom shed, which now beautifully illuminate the interior.

So you can actually see what you’re doing in there! Amazing. The rafters are all shot to hell, having been in a moist atmosphere above plastic that held the rainwater for years, so they’ll need a lot of shoring up, but the walls are sound and when the place is re-roofed we’ll have a lovely workshop.

Anna was good enough to agree to climb the tree which will have the trapeze hung from it when we get around to making it. All the parts are present and correct now, which is helpful. Now I just need Elmo to do a lot of complicated splicing.

Alec’s birthday weekend was fantastic, with great weather and a great crowd. The cake (an experimental clementine and dark chocolate extravaganza) was a success and a good amount of single malt whisky was consumed. Always a sign of a good birthday.

And as Steven was around, I made the one dessert I make that doesn’t even have to be altered to be vegan, my mother’s apple pie recipe. And I proved to myself that I’ve still got it in the pastry department. You’d be proud, Ma.

As we had our two climbing friends on site, we took the rest of the willow tree down. In large, exciting chunks. Poor Bob is going to be very sore for the next few days from all that awkward angle sawing.

Simon did a fair amount too and toward the end a number of people had a go and it’s now down to a big, bare double trunk that we can take down from the base. Then we get to have fun trying to get the roots out.

While Simon was up there he took a couple of pictures of the site from his excellent vantage point.

So there you have it. Boggart Hall, late summer 2012. A very good summer. And I’m genuinely looking forward to autumn. Especially if I get the insulation and the ceiling finished before it gets cold.

Well, the little bastard birds are having any blueberries I don’t pick every day, so this is what a day’s haul looks like, ’cause I can’t leave them to build up. Still, just enough to be worth eating in my porridge.

Ryan and his friend Becs came last weekend, and we went down to the beer shop for the first time in ages. It was great, we played cards, and Ryan kept telling me I was giving him “The Look” so I tried to capture said look…

Ryan, Becs and Alec did an absolutely admirable job of clearing the plastic from the underside of the roof of the bottom shed. I think it must have been put there to catch the falling bits from the ivy and nettle roots that had colonised the roof and were pushing through the slates. It did a very good job of that, so that there was a moist compost heap on top of said plastic, rotting the roof timbers. A not-very-pleasant job. But the timbers weren’t as bad as we’d feared and it looks like it won’t immediately fall on our heads after all. Result!

I finally conquered my fear of dealing with the ceiling, so I tried putting rock wool up between the rafters (which turns out to be every bit as unpleasant as they say) and cutting complicated angles and chunks out of plasterboard to make it fit awkward places (which I suck at and had to get Elmo and his endless, patient meticulousness to do.) The result is pretty good, though, makes it feel less like a barn and more like a house already.

Oh, also, I decided to “weave” a hammock. I say “weave” because although that’s what all the websites say I’m doing, my mother would explode if I didn’t point out that it’s not weaving at all, it’s more like knitting. Anyway, it went ok, for a first go, but I had to do a lot of adjusting tension in it. Below is a picture of it quite a long while into the tension-moving exercise. After that I still did a fair amount more moving all that open space from the middle out toward the edges.

Which is tedious work. And today I went and bought some hardwood dowel and rigged a post opposite the porch and tried to put it up, just temporarily, just briefly, just enough to get a picture of me in it, but it all went wrong in a number of comedy ways that ended me up with my butt on the ground. Well, I’m going back to Barnsley tomorrow, where I have proper materials so I can make it it work next week with any luck.