Day six

The roof is on.   Six lovely metres of clear polycarbonate roofing and the edges are the recycled tin roof from before.

This was an exciting stolen day. We were supposed to be heading to London, but decided to wait out another day for the strike to settle.   And I certainly made the most of it.   I needed to be within earshot of Dario in case he needed some builder’s mate work. But actually the hard stuff is now done, and I can’t do all the fiddly roof work.

So I decided to sort out the pool garden area.   All the wildflowers needed cutting down to shake the seeds about and hopefully resow for next year. I’ve left all the huge piles of dead matter in situ. To keep those seeds in the same area. And also because I have a wheelbarrow full of tree saplings that need chipping and I have to get this pool garden sorted first.

After a bout of heavy rain last month, a lot of sand was washed down the steps and settled on the pebbles just above the wall of the pool.   Clever weeds were already pushing through. And I had to lift all the pebbles, store them somewhere, clear the weedproof fabric, and then relay the whole thing.   It’s not a large surface to do.   And I had a little helper.   Artur is positively clingy right now.

Which suits me. So lovely to have feline company. And the weather was perfect: cool but sunny and no wind.   I kept on weeding and clearing while Artur played camouflage up against the walls and on the rocks.   This is his perfect hiding spot because he can see me, hear Dario above but be perfectly safe.

He’s an elderly cat: so I’m not sure how much hunting he does now, but I bet he was a terror in his youth.

Later I did manage to get to the chipping machine and make merry.   The master plan is to have the entire shade garden and calabert garden area mulched.   It’s going to take the winter.   But I was so delighted with the success of the deep mulch I applied to one part of the calabert garden.   Very few weeds grew through the chips, and the bulbs thrived in the fungus rich soil.

I chopped back a lot of the small shoots that appear at the base of all the chestnut trees. Useful for stakes and for mulching. And I feel I am carrying on a centuries’ old tradition of putting the chestnut trees to work.   Because the shoots are so straight and whippy they can be put to good use.   I guess I should be saving them for weaving fences.   But the mulching is the most pressing task right now.   Lots of leaves go through the shredder as well, so the soil looks oddly green.   They will rot down in time.