A garden room

Coming soon … surely by 2021.

I have added one more chore on my list of things not to do in the garden. Top of the list is wearing shorts and pruning brambles.

But added yesterday was sweeping up stone and mortar dust in sandals.

I came out of this particular job white from toe to knee. (Yes, I was wearing shorts. Again.)

I wanted to show you this project because I have nothing fluffy and verdant to fling at you just now.

Our building work ambles on at a snail’s pace – it’s not unexpected. It is August. But it has given me time to think about what would be fun in this newly created space.

Behold from the front a large 21 metre square room. Open on two sides in the stone arches. But full of promise.

Well, it is now that I have swept up all the massive amount of stuff that came out of the floor above when Bebere and Etienne created a door in the old stone wall. A few centuries of rubble, stone, dust and old mortar fell through the gap below.

And to see the promise I also had to shift a pile of wood that has been here since the project began. And move all the extra building detritus to one side.

I tried to move my swanky new water barrel which should form together into a rather large egg. Capacity 1300 litres, soon to be attached to the drain pipe that connects to the new roof. You can see the gap in the wall I asked for so that drainpipe can come into this room and give me lots of runoff water for the garden.

I say soon…

We have to get the walls mortared under here. And I don’t think that happens until the autumn when the weather cools and the stone masons can complete. But I have visions of using this one north wall to put up simple thick wooden shelves. And display and store my enormous collection of vases and pots for flowers. And give me somewhere to plonk my secateurs and baskets for harvesting the crops.

That fence really has to go. And the scaffolding tower.

Right now the metal containers I use each week for the market flowers are in a pile in the potting shed. And the smaller dahlia vases on a table in the potting shed which is perilously close to the Creature’s current sleeping nest.

She is doing very well. And has become very fussy. In the space of a few months she has gone from a wild scavenging in the compost heap feral creature, to a fussy princess who rarely leaves her chaise longue and cashmere-lined life in the potting shed and only eating commercial cat food.

She turned her nose up at cooked chicken! Croquette Creature.

I lured her out to see if she would play outside with me.

Fat chance. Note her wonky left leg. Broken, I suspect when very young. It doesn’t seem to cause her any discomfort, but it does make me wonder why we didn’t call her John Wayne.

The one disadvantage of the potting shed – apart from being attacked by a continuously ravenous creature, is that it is just so far away from the rest of the garden. I do plod. A lot.

So the idea of having a large room right next to the main potager with a place to store my secateurs, wheelbarrows, flower pots….

And of course this gorgeous concrete base on the floor will be the perfect place to put a giant work table from which to make my bouquets.

I think the concrete was poured in the 70s to place the heating oil containers outside the house but close by. And to think last decade I was contemplating breaking this concrete up because I wanted to plant a garden here. It takes vision to see that what was once outside is now a room.

Here is a shot of the space way back…

Okay, now I’m getting excited by the idea. 2021, here we come.