All of our money so far in this house seems to be going underground! We discovered that the down pipes off the back off the house were also blocked, so we had no choice but to get these repaired and renewed.
Fortunately Liam Lambert was available once again to help us out, and once again the house looked like a temporary building site with huge piles of sand, stone and shingle standing on the driveway.
This post is really for my own benefit as much as a blog update because lately I have been wondering just what we’ve spent the last 3 months since we bought Waterloo Farm doing! Some days it feels like we’ve achieved very little because the actual building work still hasn’t started, so I thought that writing it down might help me realise just how much we have achieved in a relatively short space of time (considering we don’t actually live there yet!). So, here’s a list of the things I can remember - no doubt Nigel will remember some more so we’ll add to the list (thanks to everyone who has helped us get this lot done 
)! (more…)
This is how the back garden looked when we first saw Waterloo Farm back in May this year. You can see that quite close to the house was a post & rail fence with a hedgerow planted on the far side, running the full width of the garden, and also an ugly weeping silver birch tree smack bang in the middle of the view. You would never know from this picture that there anything much beyond the fence! One of our plans for the garden has always been to incorporate the bottom paddock into the main family garden by removing the fence/hedge and making it feel like one space with (hopefully!) great views from the house down the length of the garden. Well, the silver birch came out in various stages (minus branches and getting dragged out), and now we have started taking down the fence too … it certainly makes a big difference!
I planted my dwarf weeping willow into a random spot in the garden about 3 weeks ago and am really hoping it will survive (read the story of it’s transplantation here). Well, it’s very hard to tell how it’s doing because clearly it’s Autumn and trees don’t always look their best at this time of year, but as you can see it is looking very sorry for itself :( However, the buds are still looking reasonably healthy and some of the pussy willows are actually coming out now so there may be hope for it yet … will keep my eye on it …
The baby oaks aren’t looking too hot either, but again it is Autumn. Am I being overly optimistic perhaps?
On a positive note, 7 of the home-harvested sweet pea seeds I planted have germinated and are doing very well on their sunny little windowsill so it’s not all doom and gloom on the plant front
We appear to have rather an abundance of this pretty flower, and while in this picture it is a little past its best, I still like this close up photograph showing the individual flower heads.
Sam reckons its a sign that we might have damp soil, and based on the old name of the property, Waterlow Farm, I think she is right!
