Chris and Bev – Heads in the Clouds

With the fine weather, the freed up space where the storage unit used to be, and our suspiciously cheap olive trees from Costco, we now have our ‘olive grove’ for sitting and eating outside. Peter and Alison have moved down to Dorset (the favoured South-West) from Harpenden and came for lunch, and Neil and Wendy called in on the way home to London from Devon. Bat-lover, Neil, came to review the light spillage assessment report and to generally check we were looking after the bats …

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The big fire pit has arrived and the Honda tractor again proved its value – as did Henry! Rustic Picnic Area – tick!

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We’ve now been here long enough that we’re having to carry out maintenance on work we’ve already done: weeding round our new shrub borders and more clearing of our arch-enemy, the ivy growing on the walls. Some ivy is good but too much enables it to root through the walls and lift the coping bricks.

We’re very pleased that some dragonflies seem to have made the bog their home. We think they’re Broad-Bodied Chasers (or Darters) – rather like Chris …

We’ve been trying to lose some weight – it seems so unfair that we’re so busy all day in the garden, but must still be burning fewer calories than we consume. We’ve cut down on everything we eat (except Chris’s crisp-fest) but everything nice is so bad for us! We also feel we have a duty to help keep the village pub in business. Hey-ho.

On Thursday, we had an energising meeting with our architects, Paul and Nigel, who came with lots of reassurance, encouragement and good design ideas. We hope to finalise details in readiness for the planning permission landing soon …