Chris and Bev – Heads in the Clouds

We’ve now submitted the light spillage assessment report demanded by the Council planners. This models how much light might come from our new windows and hit the garden walls. Bats don’t like lit walls apparently and this could put them off their foraging in the garden. The good news is that the report from our consultants concludes this will be insignificant – less than 0.5 lux in case you were wondering … The bad news is that we have no idea or control over how long the Council planners and ecologists – and then Natural England – will now take to read and process the report.

Probably of far more interest to any bats (that we do want to encourage into the garden!) is our first planting in the bog garden which we hope will become a wildlife haven and provide a reliable supply of invertebrates for them to feast on. We’ve planted ferns from Woolacombe and some marginals from the local garden centre that are new to us, such as ragged robin, lesser bullrush, cotton grass, corkscrew rush, pendulous sedge, and houttoynia.

Chris had a rather boozy weekend with the classic car Jolly Boys and the ‘payback’ will be shifting another eight tonnes of aggregate to form the paths around the raised beds. But we did manage to persuade the driver to tip it a lot closer to where we need it.

The Jolly Boys also encountered some ragged robin, pendulous sedge and corkscrew rush at the weekend …

… while Bev – with the Jolly Girls – spent a slightly more sophisticated time at the open-air, all-male-cast performance of Macbeth in the Cathedral close. It’s marvellous that there are signs of normality returning …