And . . . Back to Normality

With our Welsh courses finally finished, it's 'back to normal' life - whatever that is!

I spent a couple of days or so across country with family, helping out with this and that, and returning with a boot full of wood from a tree my parents had cut down in the back garden.  Couldn't take it all in one trip, but will be back for more - should provide some firewood for next year!

 

While I was away Martin took advantage of some nice-ish weather to get out and about, including a fishing trip with his Dad, and a walk up to the University's Penglais solar farm - where the panels are now up and running.  

For the most part though the weather has been a tad unsettled, and with it being mid-school holidays we've no plans to go anywhere or do anything much other than keeping up with the garden, etc. - so it will probably be a quiet month.  

Lots of time to practice our Welsh!

Posts that Didn't Happen - October 2022

October now - and autumn is with us . . .  

. . . giant scary spiders lurking about the house, leaves all over the lawn, and time to decommission the greenhouse and polytunnel, dig up potatoes, and chop more firewood.  

(We've been picking up pallets from my work and while some of the wood is destined for various projects, the less good stuff will add to the firewood stock.)

In other news, we had the chimney inspected and swept professionally - booking some maintenance work on the chimney pot (although that won't happen until next year now).  

We also both had flu jabs, and on one of the nicer weekends took a trip to Aberaeron, walking down to Llanerchaeron and engaging in some fungi-spotting:

Mid-October saw me off to visit family, with a horrifically wet motorway journey, the only saving grace of which was the news that Liz Truss had resigned after a week or so of saying she wasn't going anywhere!

Towards the end of the month there were sunny walks by the sea - where someone had decided to give the 'kicking' bar a crocheted coat!

I also caught my first cold since before the pandemic 😞

Finished October with some more floor cleaning (this time tackling the wooden floors), and hosting a Chinese takeaway for Halloween.

Posts that Didn't Happen - September 2022

And on to September - traditionally our main 'holiday' month, but also the month where there is usually a glut of garden produce to deal with.

So the first week of the holiday involved lots of sorting through apples, tomatoes and marrows - freezing some down, cooking up tomato and chilli jam, etc. etc.

Then there were other domestic tasks, such as cleaning the upstairs carpets; a Covid booster jab for Martin; and on the recreational front a fishing trip with his Dad up to Dinas Reservoir.

Other notable pre-holiday activities, included a walk along the prom taking in the sights of the Rali Ceredigion, which ran a short stage through town and round by the Castle.

Then it was holiday time 'proper' - bags packed, and on the road for our first slightly more extended break since before the pandemic.

First 'in-transit' stop took us to Malvern - lovely town, nice walk up to St Ann's Well with some great views - ending the day with a pint or two, and a very tasty curry.  All in all a good start!

From there it was a cross-country drive to Norwich - via the National Trust's Wimpole Estate - arriving late afternoon to news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II - truly the end of an era.

Had a couple of days in Norwich, exploring the city, and visiting the Cathedral - where the sights included the Cathedral Cat, Budge, enjoying a nap; tributes to the Queen; the Book of Remembrance (actually turned to a page with my Great Grandfather's name inscribed); and this rather macabre 400 year old ode to mortality:

All you that do this place pass bye
Remember death for you must dye.
As you are now even so was I
And as I am so shall you be.
Thomas Gooding here do staye
Wayting for God's judgement daye.

From Norwich we moved on to the Norfolk coast . . .  meeting family for a beach walk and lunch at Winterton-on-Sea . . .

Visiting Cromer (with its roaming Goats) . . . 

. . .  National Trust properties at Felbrigg and Blickling . . .

. . . and Sheringham, with its murals and historic steam railway . . . 

Loved this piece of WW2 signage at Sheringham station - no 'leaves on the line' excuses back then!

Left our cabin on the coast for a couple of night's visiting family in Cambridgeshire, before returning home again.

Back to the reality of hedge cutting and wood chopping, and my own Covid booster jab - before returning to work the Tuesday after the Queen's funeral.  Life was more or less getting back to normal, then the 'new' government under Liz Truss released its budget, and appeared to be in the process of bankrupting the country.

In other news, we had the end outside wall of the Folly rendered (as you can see it wasn't in the best of nick before all the Folly works started).

The addition of the chimney for the log burner hadn't helped matters, but now we have a nice solid wall - just need to paint it!

Finally, the end of the month saw us down by Tan-y-Bwlch beach enjoying some late September sunshine (while waiting for the car to be MOT'd!) - watching the sea, and the passing Hercules aircraft . . .

Back to the Woodshed

We've not done much with the woodpile for a couple of year's or so now - except for a bit of a tidying up exercise back in 2017 - and it was all returning to a state of chaos once again.

So, with a couple of sunny days ahead of us, decided it was time to turf it all out, have a bit of a sort, move the dry and already split wood inside the woodshed, and get the chainsaw out . . .

Can't say we got through all of it - but Martin had a good work-out with the axe, while I moved and stacked.  We now have room outside to store and dry out the off-cuts from the yew tree -  and an almost full woodshed again. 


Hopefully enough to see us through the winter!

Firewood

Having been less than industrious on the wood gathering / chopping front this year (too busy with the hedges!), we decided to buy in some firewood, and on Tuesday evening (just as it started to rain) this lot duly arrived:

Fortunately they were able to back up to the garage and drop the wood inside (Martin was most impressed with their trailer reversing skills!).


So an hour or so this morning (while it was, briefly, not raining)  was spent moving just over one bag full from the garage into more permanent storage in the woodshed.  Will move the rest on another day (if it ever stops raining again!).

Bonfire

We've been accumulating hedge debris, and odd bits of wood round the back of the woodshed for longer than I care to  remember, and to be honest it had all got a bit out of hand . . .

Martin's recent hedge-chopping activities had only added to the pile, which had gotten so large we couldn't actually get to any of the outside wood storage areas.

No pictures were taken, but here you can see the subsidiary pile accumulating on the other side of the fruit cage - a mix of rotting pallets and hedge clippings . . .

So with time on our hands (two week's off, and our first reasonably decent day weather-wise since Saturday) we decided that today was the day to tackle the wood-pile.

We started by sorting, chopping and discarding the twiggy bits not worth keeping.

One load made it to the tip before we decided we were on a highway to nothing, and had the bright idea of putting a match to the smaller pile by the fruit cage / compost heap.

A slosh (scarily) of petrol later, and we soon had a fine blaze - in fact it was hard to keep up with it as it turned out that even relatively fresh leylandii burns very very well!


So we now have a pile of ash, and the external wood storage area is satisfyingly clear and tidy.

A good day's work!

Tales from the Woodshed

Martin has been busy with the axe recently and we'd accumulated a rather large pile of wood as a result - although it was taking up a lot of room in the woodshed.








It took a few hours to clear, but now it's all neatly snacked (in various locations!) . . .




And there's room in the woodshed to move again - plus hopefully we're now all sorted for the winter months.

 

Wood Stock

One thing we have been busy with in the last few weeks is sorting through the wood 'stock' for this winter.  This involved testing the wood that was seasoning outside for its moisture content, and moving the dry stuff into the bays inside the wood shed.

We also stocked up on pine off-cuts from the local timber yard - got a trailerful for a tenner - so not bad.  This filled one of the outside bays and should season pretty quickly, so it could be used this winter if need be.



Today we took delivery of a small truckload of wood from land being cleared for building work in town.  The workmen are being quite entrepreneurial and are flogging the wood at a fairly bargain price - got this little lot (and more) for £50.


It needs seasoning and splitting of course, but this should give us a good head start on the wood 'stock' for winter 2011/12 - although cutting some of it down to stove-sized bits could be interesting (the house brick gives you some idea of the 'scale' of the problem!):

Fire and Flood

We got off rather lightly in the so-called 'big freeze'. Although we had a good couple of inches of snow at the beginning of January (and it's stuck around pretty much ever since) we missed the worst of it. And we'd got ourselves a bag of 'grit' before the stocks ran out so we could get up and down our path / drive.

The new porch (pictured) which I never really got around to blogging about - something we had done, in addition to the roofline, guttering and some double-glazing back in September / October - has helped insulate us from the cold. In due course it will hopefully be a nice place to sit, but at present it's providing a good place for stock-piling some handy wood for the stove during the cold snap.

While awaiting Sunday's snow - which never really arrived with us, although some of the surrounding villages have been badly hit - we decided it would be a good idea to give the stove's chimney a mid-Winter sweeping. All went very smoothly this time - on the previous sweeping, back in October, we managed to dislodge the chimney cowl! So we hopefully have nothing to fear in the way of chimney fires for the rest of the winter.

Still awaiting the snow - the following day - when our neighbour called round to say they could hear running water coming from the back of our house. It wasn't so much a 'flood' as a 'fountain' as it turns out. We thought the pipe to the outside tap had burst to start with, but luckily the tap had just popped off the top, so didn't take too much replacing. Hopefully that's the last water-related drama for some time to come . . .

Wood Piles

And piles, and piles. We managed to gather rather a lot of wood over the course of 2008 - we filled the wood shed, and then piled it into the garage out of the rain . . .

. . . then Martin took a chain saw to it . . .

. . . and we stacked it in the garage wherever there was space (including against the broken garage door).

It didn't prove to be the best of drying environments however, so over the last week we've been restacking outside, under the covered porch - it was all going quite nicely until a cat or some such took a short walk along the top of the pile . . .

So this weekend we built ourselves a proper log storage area - it seems much more stable anyway. The separate 'pile' is designated 'dry' (tested at below 30% water content) and is there ready for burning.

Belated Blogging

Herewith the 'Blogs that Were Meant To Be' . . .

Sunday 7 September: Cool . . .

Well we finally got round to ordering the new fridge and freezer we'd been promising ourselves ever since moving - no more going out to the utility room every time we want milk for our tea! Sunday morning delivery - lots of polystyrene packaging. The fridge - actually in the kitchen - makes a subtle whooshing noise from time to time, which took a bit of getting used to, and the freezer (which has gone in the utility room) finally means we have room for something other than peas from the garden . . .

Sunday 14 September: Carrots (at least that's what I think they are) . . .

Pulled our first crop of carrots, strange creatures every one . . . a regular family of Mandrake Roots -they tasted ok though.

Wednesday 17 September: Sunshine . . .

Finally!

Saturday 20 September: Strictly Come Leching . . .

Men like Strictly Come Dancing too - but for entirely different reasons. Think the BBC has got the Saturday night ratings sewn up, Merlin was pretty good too . . .

Monday 22 September: Bootifull . . .

Not exactly free firewood this time, offcuts from the local building suppliers / wood merchant - help yourselves from the pile round the back, £4 for a boot-full.

Mind you I guess it will burn quickly being mostly pine. Took some unloading, but it's all stacked round in our drying area now, filled up a fair amount of space . . .

Free Firewood

Took a wander past some workmen cutting back an oak tree at the side of the road (just up from the house) today. Asked them what they did with the cut wood and managed to secure some of the 'smaller' logs. Some of them seemed pretty big, especially after 8 wheelbarrow trips up and down the road from where they'd left them!



Pretty good haul all in all - will need to season it, so it probably won't be ready for burning until next year, but it's added to our stock for then.