You reap what you sow… (well what you don’t keep on top of anyway)

We finally got round to tackling a job that we should have done two years ago, and which has been made exponentially harder as a result. With all the building work and preparation the year before, keeping on top of the front garden flower borders was at the bottom of our never-ending list and the weeds have really made the most of having free rein. They’ve been looking unkempt and semi-abandoned for a while now – not a great first impression when our guests walk up to the front door.

So with a day off on Friday and a weekend without guests staying (it’s not really a job we can do with people staying at the Farmhouse), we started with the largest bed that runs along the side of the driveway and up around the front lawn. It was full of three-cornered leek (a tasty but invasive plant that seems to appear out of nowhere and multiply at an incredible rate), brambles and grass predominantly. The shrubs were overgrown and needed cutting back – one of our first jobs although we need to go back and trim some of them further.

After three days we’ve managed to clear about 85% of the first bed. It’s been difficult to dig out all of the grass roots, and I’m sure we’ve missed three-cornered leek bulbs all over the place. We tried to keep as many of the primroses and other plants we found – including some huge iris rhizomes which produce the most beautiful flowers. They were impossible to dig up without splitting them so we likely won’t any flowers this year since we’ve split them too late in the season but we’re keeping our fingers crossed. We’ve temporarily ‘heeled in’ the plants we managed to dig up before we replant the bed and put them in properly to give them more chance of surviving. The compost bins are overflowing now! We’ve put multiple layers of cardboard between the weeds to give them a better chance of breaking down and dying.

We’re aiming to weed our snowdrop bed next week and move some of the primroses from the larger bed across to that bed as the snowdrops don’t seem to like it there. And then hopefully dig up the rest of the bed so it’s ready to plant. And then we can move onto another flower bed! The joy…

We finally received sign-off from Building Control this week for the Shippon (our house) and the New Barn (with the games room and laundry). It’s been a little painful along the way but worth it as this also means we can now submit our VAT reclaim for the costs associated with building our house. Self builds where you’re living in the property are subject to 0% VAT, so as long as you keep all your invoices and go through a lengthy process to document everything. We’re now waiting for HMRC to review our submission and come back to us which will take a few weeks at least…