Distracting ourselves while waiting for planning…

We’re continuing to hold our breath and hope for a good planning outcome – it looks like we may have to change some of our plans to accommodate concerns from the Conservation Officer, but it’ll be a few more weeks until we know the extent of this. Our main worry is that we’re limited to only building two extra dwellings instead of the three we’d hoped for, as this would take longer to raise funds for renovating our Elizabethan cottage which is already looking worse for wear… but it’s out of our hands now and we just hope the Planning department make a positive decision.

So in the meantime, we’re keeping ourselves busy with our never-ending job list. The bathroom beams are finally sanded, and the doors we started three weeks ago are now done. One of our targets is to finish the woodwork in the hallway and lounge, and paint the bathroom by the end of March – we’ve still got a way to go, but at least we’re heading in the right direction.  

And we made some progress rabbit-proofing our kitchen garden! We started noticing holes in the orchard grass in the autumn, and knew something was up when the chard plants we brought from London started to disappear. And then in December, we spotted a visitor in our back garden! Thinking it was only interested in grass (and that it might save a bit of strimming!), we didn’t worry too much. But then a week ago, I spotted a smaller rabbit hopping around our terrace, right next to the house, and realised how brave they were getting!  

There’s no way we’ll ever be able to keep wildlife out of the garden, and having lived in London for so long, it’s actually nice to see the birds and animals hopping about. We decided it was up to us to keep them off the plants we wanted to protect, and so built our first two vegetable bed covers this weekend, designed to enable easy access to the beds for us, while keeping the rabbits and birds out. 

We also saw our first two goldfinches in the garden recently – not so happily, they were enjoying the blackcurrant buds! So as a temporary measure we’ve put a net over it until we work out a more permanent solution (having high bushes and a drain cover to navigate means a proper cover will require more thought!). We also ordered suet pellets (apparently a favourite of goldfinches) in an attempt to tempt them away from our bushes, so we’ll see if that works!