Friday, April 16, 2010

New Wall for the Orchard

At Christmas Russell our stone mason slipped over and broke a knee cap, so he has been off work until the middle of March which meant he was not able to finish to main wall.
To help him ease back into work as he had lost a lot of his fitness and also had to wait for his knee to mend we asked him to create a small stone wall to hold back the earth by the garage and orchard. I have planted some Aubretia in pockets within the wall, but I don't think they are surviving too well because the ducks have been busy pecking at them. I will try and replant in the autumn.

Medieval Barn

The wet winter and exceptionally cold weather in February has caused a lot of damage to the medieval barn and alot of the rendering has fallen off in patches, so we have been busy repairing and painting sections of the barn. The rendering on the chimney for the cottage also fell off, but when the scaffolding was put up for the repair work it was worse than we thought, so Andy our builder took down the whole stack and rebuilt it. The only good thing was when he took off the brick work it revealed part of the original stone chimney.