Planning consultation closing dates and more garden jobs 

This week we managed to complete a job that we’d been dreading. We’ve recently had a wall re-rendered, which previously had a trellis and jasmine growing up it, and which we’d had to remove to get the rendering done. Now the time had come to put it back up – but securing it through two layers of render and into the wall was a bit nerve-wracking as we weren’t sure if the new layer of render would just come off… Luckily it seems to have worked! 

We’d also bought a new pot as the previous one had split apart. It took us at least an hour taking out the dead roots of the clematis that had been there previously (which had died last year) – the old plant had been completely pot-bound. Hopefully we haven’t done too much damage to the jasmine in doing so. 

in the last couple of weeks, we reached the end of the public consultations for our third and fourth planning applications – one for renewables (3rd June) and one to restore our listed 16^th century cottage (10th June). We’ve been lucky again that everyone seems supportive of what we’re doing as we’ve not had any objections, so now we’re waiting for the conservation officer to return from holiday and give us their verdict. 

For the first time we explored our attic! We say explored – beyond sticking your head through the hatch, there’s little more you can do. It’s not boarded out so you have stick to the beams, and the gaps between the a-frames are barely big enough to squeeze through. We found some really interesting features hidden there – lots of bat poo (as normal in this house!); a name and date carved into the wall (we’d thought this was a former resident but a friend suggested it’s more likely to be a plasterer’s signature); wooden pegs attaching the beams, and some randomly-shaped old bits of tree used instead of proper beams. Pretty interesting to uncover more of the house’s history. 

We’d also intended on fan-pruning our peach and nectarine trees, but a sparrow’s decided to nest right on top of one of the winter covers and so we can’t move it yet. We managed to move one of the covers and get to the tree without disturbing the birds too much (they’re pretty tame anyway given how much time we spend in our kitchen garden), and tried to follow the guidance in the book as much as possible. It’s hard to be so severe in pruning, but it’s important at the start to get the tree into the right shape. If anyone has feedback on our latest attempt, we’d love to hear it!