Autumn in all its glory - but some plants really should know better!

I was going to do a post about the next stage of tea house building, but that involved my wonderful father-in-law, David, and I was finding it incredibly difficult to write about him as he is currently in hospital after (planned) major surgery - but thankfully out of ITU now and the post wouldn't come together........... so I decided to try out my posh new camera instead and went off for a pootle round the garden in the few minutes when there wasn't a howling gale or horizontal rain!
(for those who are interested my new camera is a Canon IXUS 95 IS and it replaced my old camera which had given up the ghost due to eating too much soil!)

So, on my travels round my back garden, I found.......(this feels a bit like the childrens game of 'I went to market and I bought...'!)

My Fuschia bush blooming away merrily.


Some poppies from that mountaineous region which includes Nepal, but which I can't spell correctly tonight!


Sedum, still flowering profusely.


The Cyclamen haven't stopped flowering since I planted them about 2 months ago.


The Quince has fruited well this year .... if only I liked the taste of them!


This tree has a magnificent crop of berries, but no-one seems to know what the tree is - so if anyone could enlighten me, I'd be very grateful!


The Copper Beech has been quite glorious, but I'm still waiting for the oak (far right) to give up the rest of its leaves ..........it took me about 4 hours to get the lawn to this state and one windy evening to cover it in leaves again!

Just a few of the oak leaves I cleared up.
Don't you just love my sassy wellies?!


The Hydrangea was blue when it first came out, but has gone through purple to red and is drying off nicely and will soon be ready to take indoors for a bit of colour in my hallway.

I found these hidden under the leaves on the border - they are HUGE. Unfortunately I have NO idea whether they are edible or not ....... so I left them there!

A spectacular Pyracantha berry crop.

My Buddha nestling in amongst the leaves and bamboo in the Japanese garden.


As well as changing my camera, I've also changed how I load the photos. Please could you let me know if you think this is quicker or slower than on previous posts. Thank you!

The second post!

October this year has been glorious .......warm, dry, balmy sunny days with blue skies and very little cloud or wind. So warm in fact that last night I walked down to the local Indian restaurant without a coat on! However, November has arrived with a bang today - the temperature has plummeted several degrees overnight, the sky is steely grey and the horizon is invisible because of the rain pelting against my windows- which are rattling ominously in the face of the gale. The leaves are flying past horizontally, to eventually land in sodden red heaps on the drive and the lawn but I am safe and warm inside, huddled up in my snuggly hoodie and fluffy boots (well, and my jeans - obviously. I'm not that weird!).
Welcome to Autumn, Derbyshire-style!


Let me take you away from the dismal day outside and back to hot sunny days when the world felt good ......... and the second post went into the pond! Chris and OJ weren't around to provide muscle, so we roped the Gnomelets in to help. That was it - three girlies and Himself, our full workforce for the day!


Himself wanted to do things the same way as last time but, despite my love of adventure, I refused point-blank to stick my head down a muddy, mucky barrel whilst balanced precariously on my knees on a wobbly plank over 4 foot of very wet water!
Another way had to be found!


I was convinced that the way I had suggested last time (and been ignored about!) had to be quicker and easier - especially given our current lack of muscle, so Himself agreed to give it a go. We tried it out first on the original post because Himself wasn't happy with how the post was sitting on the cement-filled pillow. He'd accidentally made the mix with sharp sand rather than building sand, so the mixture didn't 'flow' in the pillow and had set lumpy (note excellent use of technical terminology there!), causing the post to be unstable and not truely vertical - a problem which, if not resolved, would have a knock-on effect throughout the rest of the building. We used the chain-hoist to raise the post up and out of the way and lifted up one edge of the pillow with my big leaf catching net so that Himself could reach it to lift it out of the pond.

We then made a new pillow filled with a nice flowing cement mix .....

slid it into the pond .....

pushed it into place with the handle of my trusty net ......

checked it was in the right place ........ ooh look, I'm on my knees on a wobbly plank over 4 foot of water!

lowered the post back down and popped the wooden post back on top. Easy!

Now convinced that this method would work (!) Himself did some precision measurements for where the second post should go .....


sighted it against the first post now sitting snuggly and vertically on its new pillow.....


then we did the same process with the second post.

For some reason I was back to my old familiar position of 'counterweight and shover of big beams with heavy things on the end' ........... but apparently this does not yet qualify me as Technician Third Class, it only keeps me at Grunt Worker level - one day I shall achieve promotion ...well, a girl can dream can't she?!!!

Placing the post onto the plank .....


First-Born in charge of the chain-hoist and lowering the post into the water - I have to say she wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect!


post in place and being checked for stability on its pillow .....


and the really exciting bit ......... the first horizontal post is brought into play!


getting nearer .......


and nearer ..... it was flippin' heavy and jolly unwieldy too! Oh look, yet again I'm on my knees in an unstable position near water! I'm begining to think that he's secretly trying to topple me into the pond!


Having got the beam into place, Himself decreed that we should take both bits back onto dry land, assemble the two upright posts and the horizontal beam there, then lift the whole job lot onto the concrete posts - simple eh?!


When Himself was using a bit of persuasion I became the brace ....... suppose it made a nice change from being a counterweight! (but still no promotion!)


We then carried/walked the completed structure on wobbly planks out to the posts. Himself's plank is precariously balanced on the edge of the concrete post!


The structure was carefully lifted into place so that the holes in the bottom of the posts corresponded with the metal locators on the concrete posts and pushed down to fit tightly onto the posts. It was hard work!


Enlarge this photo and look at the bubble in the spirit level - precision engineering or what?!


Finished - and tied off on a couple of suitable posts to keep it vertical whilst the cement set.


Total time taken = 3 hours :)
Total time taken to get ONE post into the water last time = 5 hours and one wet Chris!!!

and there I rest my case m'lord!

and what was I doing...........?

......... and what was I doing whilst Himself was playing in the pond?!
I was doing a whole load of other things in that very specialised multi-tasking woman sort of way!
You might remember that back in July, I made redcurrant vodka - purely as a means of using up the redcurrant glut you understand! Anyway, once it was ready, I bottled it (as you do!), but it seemed a shame to just throw away all those lovely redcurrants. We had friends coming over for dinner that night so, in a spark of inspiration, I made redcurrant vodka jellies!
They were awesome!
The only minor glitch was that, although I 'watered down' the jelly mix with a jolly nice sparkling rose, I forgot to allow for the potency of the redcurrants that had been sitting in neat vodka for a couple of months!

I also spent time picking the last of the vegetables.

Anyone know what these are?!

....and when I wasn't pottering around the garden I was coating each and every piece of wood for the tea house with three (yes - THREE!) coats of 'stuff'. It's non-toxic eco-paint that looks just like semi-skimmed milk and you can't see where you've painted it until it dries - when it gives the wood a very slight sheen. The only trouble is that once you've done the base/sealant coat, you only have an hour to get the first top coat layer on, then up to 12 hours to get the second top coat layer on. I learnt how many pieces I could paint in just under an hour, then would do all 3 coats straight off. As my teenage Gnomelets would say..... "Boring?Much!"

The Nutty Gnome hard at work ....... I calculated that I painted approximately 350 pieces of wood x 3 = 1050 pieces!(but it felt like more some days!) Who says building a tea house is all fun eh?! It was an incredibly tedious task - but at least it was sunny whilst I was doing it!

I also started to clear a path to the back of the tea house. We (well, I) wanted to have the filter well out of sight, tucked away down the back of the tea house. But I also wanted to block the view back beyond the verandas by planting tall grasses, so that meant that I had to create a path where none had previously existed!

I cleared away all the hedge, weeds and vegetation down the gap between the fruit cage and the boundary - which had been impassable.I levelled the ground and lay 'Weed Stop' matting down............

then covered it with stones I'd had piled up from digging out the pond - which, as usual I'd not worked out where I'd finally need them, so I had to cart them in trug loads from where I'd dumped them to where I needed them (having first carefully extracted frogs, toads and newts from the pile!)

This is from the tea house end of the path.......

and this is from the other end of the fruit cage, looking back to the tea house

I also tied up all the raspberry canes,

then weeded and edged the raspberry rows - a 'little' job which took a whole day!

(*sigh*, I LOVE nice neat rows!)

.... all of which looks like it happened very quickly, but in actual fact took me about 8 weekends to complete because - as usual, I found other jobs that then needed adding into the equation and took what seemed like forever to complete. But that's a tale for another day!

There's the easy way .......... and there's Himself's way!

As many of you will know by now, Himself was born in the wrong time period .......... he SO should have been a Victorian engineer/inventor! He loves a good intellectual challenge and never knowingly under-engineers anything - why use 2 screws when 4 would be better?! Me? I'm someone who looks for the simplest, most straightforward solution - which can sometimes lead us to 'having words' over how things are done!

Anyway, Himself decided that the optimum way to put the concrete support post into the water was to build a casson, pump out the water and clear the debris off the bottom of the pond, make a 'pillow' out of pond liner filled with cement, put the pillow on the pond bed in the casson then lower the post down into the casson and onto the pillow before levelling it.

Here's Himself putting the finishing touches to the casson. He angled the edges of all the planks so that they would fit together snugly like a barrel. It was held secure by ropes, then covered in plastic sheeting (I'm sure he had a reason, but heaven only knows what it was!) and made a skirt of pond liner to help weigh it down.

We roped Chris and OJ into helping for the day. Here they are moving the casson to the edge of the pond. If you enlarge the photo you can see a white sausage-shaped bag, held on with yet more rope, going right round the casson as an extra weight. First-Born made it out of an old dustsheet and we filled it with pea gravel.

I spent a lot of time going " couldn't we just .........?", " wouldn't it be easier if .......?" and "what if we just ..........." and being thoroughly ignored, so I let them get on with it in their own sweet (complicated) way!


The casson being lowered into the pond.

Using the pond pump to get the water out,

........but the old-fashioned bucket and chuck it method was faster!



Chris decided that the best way to clean the grunge and bits off the bottom was to dive in head first!

Bringing the post onto site. It had had two coats of sealant to make sure the concrete didn't leach into the water and poison the plants and the (currently non-existent) fish.

I am holding the 'pillow' in preparation for filling.

OJ filled the pillow and ensured the cement got into all the corners.

Chris then placed the pillow in the bottom of the casson.

The post was carried onto the planks..........

attached to the chain hoist then with Chris being the counter-weight (makes a nice change from it being me!) and OJ providing resistance to stop the post from swinging...........

the post was carefully lowered into the casson.........

until it nestled gently on the pillow.

Me? I'd have slid the pillow down the edge into the water, shoved it into place and lowered the concrete post onto it ....... but hey, what do I know?!!!

The Plans (or men are from Mars and women ...... aren't!)

Over the past couple of months several people have asked whether we drew up any plans for the tea house and Japanese garden so, as my next few posts will be concentrating on the building of the tea house (yeah!!!), maybe now is the time to share them with you.

As many of you will know, Himself is a reincarnated Victorian engineer and inventor (he's actually a software designer, but hey!). He is meticulous and thorough, so his plans are a thing of beauty which should be shared.


Himself and our dear friend Pete spent many a happy(?!) hour designing and redesigning the tea house, discussing different types of joints, angles, load bearing timbers, roof curves, elevations, flooring depths, materials, insulation, sliding doors versus folding doors, etc (have you noticed - I almost sound like I know about technical stuff!). I was relegated to the odd comment along the lines of "no, that's not what I want, please can I have........" and "don't forget I want a wood burning stove and to be WARM!". Eventually, after their umpteenth discussion but no pen to paper, someone threw a strop, accused them of procrastination and the plans miraculously appeared!

Anyway, here are a few photos of our plans. If you click on them they will enlarge for you to see the details more clearly. Enjoy:

This photo shows the building's structure, including the roof lines, distances between the posts and so on.


Himself's ID system. All the posts and beams were numbered and lettered according to position. The next two photos show his cutting schemas and identify some of the different types of joints he needed to cut.





This one shows the concrete posts in the water, distance from water to top of post and to the bottom of the horizontal beam. Nothing was left to chance!



This one focuses on the roof - angles, joints, number of rafters, distance apart, etc.


This one shows where the pond is in relation to the tea house and which posts are above or below floor level.


Some of the details for multiple joints in a beam.


Himself's maths ........... good job he understands it!


I, in the meantime, was busy getting on with the garden design part of things - admittedly mostly in my head, but hey, who needs plans?!!! Yeah, yeah ...... I know - one rule for them, another rule for me! The thing is (in my defence!) I had had a very clear picture of the finished garden lurking in the back of my head for about 3 years by this point and had been working away on the hard landscaping to create it. I didn't need a paper plan!

Anyway, after some ongoing persusion from Himself - along with his arguement that he still didn't really understand what I was trying to do or achieve, I eventually spent considerable time and effort into putting together a scaled drawing with detailed planting plans for the Japanese garden - not! :)

The plan


The planting scheme!


Job done, everybody happy!!!

Seven things you didn't know about me!

Both Monica at http://gardenfaerie.blogspot.com/ and Happy Mouffetarde at http://inelegantgardener.blogspot.com/ have nominated me to take part in the 'seven things you didn't know about me' meme - thanks girls! Having never been nominated for anything in blogland before, I got quite ridiculously excited about it - but then realised I'd have to come up with some interesting stuff!!!

Anyway, to participate in the Meme Award, you need to:

- link back to the person who gave you the award;

- reveal seven things about yourself;

- choose seven other blogs to nominate and post a link to them

- let each of your choices know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog;

- and finally let the tagger know when your post is up.

So, down to business!

1. I was both an accident and born 5 weeks premature!

I was born at home and came out at great speed - the midwife only just arrived in time and the doctor didn't. If I'd have been born that early and at that weight (5lb 5 oz) nowadays I'd have been taken straight to SCBU for a couple of weeks and also been closely monitored for the first couple of years of my life. Back then, I didn't even get a hospital visit!

(My parents were convinced I was going to be a boy and had planned to call me Peter. I didn't find this out until I'd had Last-Born - I was convinced I was carrying a boy and we had decided to call him ......... Peter! How weird is that?!)

Here's me at about 18 months old with my brother and sister. Don't you just love the curl?
Do you remember the rhyme:
There was a little girl who had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good, she was very, very good
and when she was bad, she was ...........horrid!


2.I was South Yorkshire's first female Queen's Scout.
This is the highest level of achievement and takes lots of hard work over about two years. The reward is to take part in the annual Queen's Scout parade at Windsor castle, where I got to meet the Queen, who was taking the parade that year. She is even smaller than me - and I'm not exactly known for my vast height!


The writing hasn't come out very well as it has a plastic sheet over it - which I didn't dare remove due to the great age of the article! Sorry!

3.I got my glider pilot's licence when I was 20 through a joint programme between the Scout Association and the RAF.
My RAF wings were on my Venture Scout uniform. That is how I got to meet the Queen - she spotted my wings and came to ask me about them. We had a nice little chat. I still have my uniform and the shirt still fits!
(Jackie, who is in the picture with me is still one of my dearest friends nearly 30 years on!)

This is the glider we flew in ....... it was called 'the barge' and it was made up from bits of other old gliders. It didn't so much fly as lumber through the air somehow defying gravity. I cannot describe the sheer joyous excitment and pure adrenalin rush of being taking up to do aerobatics in one of the RAF gliders one day!!!
I still look up at the sky some days and long to fly again.


4.My first marital home was a Land Rover.
We took a year out and drove through Pakistan, India and Nepal - and back again, obviously! The Land Rover had all mod cons - a bed, cooker, lights, music, curtains, filtered water through a tap and a washing machine! Well, okay, so it was a lidded beer brewing tub fastened into the back corner with seat belt strapping, but it worked well. We put the clothes, soap powder, water and a few stones in then drove to our next destination, rinsed everything out and hung it out to dry. Easy!

This is what our family and friends did to Fred (the Land Rover) for our departure. Subtle, eh?! We did clean it off before we got to Customs at the docks.



5.I spent my 27th birthday under arrest in Nepal.
We had an accident and hit a cyclist who turned into our path ......... quite how he didn't hear our very loud truck horn remains a mystery. Anyway, the law in Nepal is that the biggest vehicle is automatically at fault and if a foreigner is involved, then they are definately at fault because if they hadn't been there the accident wouldn't have happened! I can sort of see their logic, but it wasn't funny at the time.

Most of our photos of the trip are on slides, but this is one that I had printed years ago and I love it - Himself and I had driven 300+ miles up the stunning, starkly beautiful Karakorum Highway to the Pakistan/China border (which had only just opened again in May after the Winter snows!). This is the border marker.


6.I HATE spiders. But , when the Gnomelets were little and in order not to pass on my irrational fears to them, I held a tarantula. It was awful - it moved and everything! I'd had no problems with the Falcon or the snake, but it was only the prospect of a free cream tea that stopped me from dropping the dratted thing! It didn't work either - my fixed grin and glazed expression didn't fool them and they're nearly as bad as me about spiders. *sigh*

7. I would love to go white water rafting down the Grand Canyon.

Anyway, that's all the stuff about me (- except that if I had to have an 8th thing, it would be that no matter how filthy, dirty or grotty the job is, I always wear girlie earrings!)

My nominations for continuing the meme go to .............. (cue dramatic drum roll)

Carolynn at A Glowing Ember - because her eloquent writing frequently moves me.
Matron at Down on the Allotment - because she grows wonderful veg and shares some great growing tips.
Kathryn at My Roots Run Deep - because it is such a lovely blog - and she grew multicoloured carrots!
Rob at Our French Garden - because I love where he lives and the photos he takes and, okay - I'm nosey ..... I want to know more!
Camellia at motstrvigtragardsdesigner - because despite English not being her native language, she writes beautiful evocative posts.
Irena at Plant Whatever Brings You Joy - because her posts are always thought provoking and informative, especially her recent ones on butterflies.

and last, but by no means least
Mrs Robinson at Mrs Robinson Presents - because her lovely sweet posts on a huge variety of subjects always make me smile.

Enjoy!

11-09-09
Ooops ......... I've just realised that I've messed up the links for 'My Roots Run Deep' and 'Plant Whatever Brings You Joy' - they're the wrong way round. I am a bit of a plonker sometimes!!!
Strongest apologies to Kathryn and Irena ...... grovel, grovel :)

The Tea House work starts to get technical!

Having finally got to the point of clearing the area for the tea house (as seen in the photo below), we could start making the various component parts that would build up into a Meccano-like kit that would all fit together to create the composite tea house - hopefully!



Himself had decided that we couldn't use wooden posts to go into the water to support the tea house, so he crafted (and it was definitely crafted, rather than just made!) a mould to make a concrete post instead. It was tapered to both look more aesthetically pleasing (although quite who was going to notice under water wasn't discussed!) and to make it easier to get the post out again once it had set - because we had to re-use the mould for the second post. He also, bless him, used filler on the top corners so that the post would have rounded corners when it was finished - this man really thinks of every little detail!

In the photo below you can see that the mould is raised off the ground ...... this is to allow room for the stainless steel pipe that Himself inserted so that the wooden post could locate onto it for
stability and accuracey when adding in all the other posts and beams of the framework.


Being a reincarnated Victorian engineer, he couldn't resist a bit of extra strengthening - "just to be on the safe side". He drilled a few holes in the pipe then bent a few wall ties and inserted them into the pipe and into the mould for a bit of extra reinforcement ....... if there is ever an earthquake in Derbyshire, my tea house will still be standing!


The completed post with its lovely rounded top!


Himself with one of his more complicated joints. This one is an external coner post with the slot cut to take the corner roof rafter.




Ceefer cat doing the health and safety check as we started to bring the wood out onto the yard for the trial assembly! This was the 'dry' run (ie, with no glue!) to make sure that all the joints were accurate and that everything fitted correctly - not that I had any doubts about the standard of Himself's meticulous work, but he reckons it's far better to check twice and glue once!

First used as a counter-weight, now just a weight! Ho hum!


We borrowed our best friends' son, OJ, (also know as our 'spare son' or 'my boy'!) to help erect the frame as he's considerably taller and stronger than I am. The frame quickly began to take shape.

Some joints needed a bit of persuasion ............

some needed a bit of chiseling out.............

but by the end of the day the frame was up and looking good - even if it was in the wrong place!

This is the complete external frame. The actual tea house will cover 4 posts of the long side and 3 posts of the short side, giving an internal dimesion of roughly 8ft by 10ft ('roughly' because I can't remember the correct metric measurement having been brought up on feet and inches!) with a 1 metre wide, L shaped veranda taking up the rest of the space.

Looking up, with the purlin ring in place which will support the weight of the roof.

The diagonal piece is for support, but it's also the gap through which the wood burning stove chimney will go!

Whilst all this was going on, I was cracking on in the Japanese garden. I couldn't wait to get some planting done! I have to confess that I didn't (er ....... still don't!) have a planting scheme drawn out. I have done some research on what plants should be in a Japanese garden and I know which plants I like and want in there. Once I've aquired them (mainly by virtue of asking for garden centre vouchers for birthdays and Christmas!) I just play around with placing the pots until I think they look right, balancing size, colour and textures!

This is looking up towards the pond, which is a couple of feet past where my spade is, from the bottom path. I dug up all the stepping stones from their straight line (bad!) and re-set them in a more curvacious line (good!) before working out which plants I wanted where ........ although two of these plants have since been moved to better positions elsewhere in the larger garden - but I thought they looked right at the time!

I am convinced that plants do well in our garden because I keep them permanently worried! I shift them at the drop of a hat, regardless of whether it's the 'right' time of year - if I want to move them then it's obviously the right time!

Planting a bamboo.

Job done - for the moment!

I then began work on the ground near the beach, being careful to leave space for a rough access path near the fruit cage for when we construct the tea house (and for where my weeping willow will eventually be!).

The pea gravel path in the foreground is a tester area about a metre long and shows what all the finished paths will eventually look like. The path was dug deep - I know how deep ... I dug it! It was filled with motorway grade hardcore previously dug up from where the pond now is. It was topped with fine grade sandstone and sand - also gained from digging the pond, before a layer of Weed Stop (metallic coated weed control fabric) was put down and the pea gravel spread on top. The path is edged with 1920's 'Tucker's Mixed' reclaimed roof tiles - left over from a load we'd sourced a few years ago when the house roof need some work doing on it and the tiles had to match into the existing ones.

The tall plant in the foreground is a bush Acer - but I'm cross now because I can't find the label I'd carefully kept to identify it correctly!!!

However, the other tallish plant next to the flagstone path is an Acer palmatum 'Kotohime' - Hah! Kept the label for that one!

This is the bed above the island with the stones on. The path to the bridge runs to the right immediately in front of the large rock. This photo was taken this time last year and the bed has matured beautifully!

That is Acer palmatum 'Ornatum'.

Looking back down the garden from near the beach. A. p 'Ornatum' is on the left, Acer p 'Emerald Lace' is on the right. You can just see the island and how well the moss I transplanted from the lawn has done. The bamboos in the background form the bottom boundary of the Japanese garden, the righthandmost one is Black Bamboo. I planted these about 7 years ago when I first began to think about creating the garden!

Phew - I thinks that's probably enough for one post ...........!