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!

Wood Storage

It's taken us a while, but we've finally made use of the 'wall-space' we acquired last year.  

We had a rather ramshackle arrangement for drying out newly cut wood by the side of the woodshed - now we've used some reclaimed building wood to build a new wood store along the wall.

Hopefully the new racking, in its sunny position, will do its job well.

Keeping the Wood Dry

We'd been aware for a while that the woodshed roof wasn't really doing its job any more - the old asbestos concrete corrugate had become quite porous and was flaking away in a number of areas - and we'd already had to empty out a couple of bays of wood to dry them off after major leakage.

So time for a new roof . . .

First job - get rid of the 'old' one!

The builders had to take off the old corrugate (carefully!), then dispose of it - which because of the asbestos content doesn't come cheap.  At least they removed the rather extensive moss deposits before taking it down to the tip - otherwise we'd have been paying asbestos rates on the weight of moss!

Then of course, there was a brief 'no roof' stage . . . .


Followed by the 'new' roof - green metal box sections, with similar 'barge-boards' sealing off the sides:





So now we're watertight again - and ready for the winter weather!




Update - 14 December - minor issue with the 'barge-boards' in some extremely windy winter weather - luckily we noticed that the wind had lifted off one side, before it got blown off entirely, and the wind got underneath the main roof.

Fair play, the builders were straight out to batten down the hatches, and within a couple of days it was all securely back in place (this time screwed firmly into the wall).

Timber Two

Back in November, the wind brought down a couple of our trees, the remains of which have been littering the garden ever since.


A sunny Saturday finally saw us out and about in the garden, tackling the debris - and since we had the chainsaw out we thinned out a couple of the bushy trees for good measure.

While Martin logged stuff up, I snipped up bits of twig for kindling - although began to run out of space for it all after a while.  Bagged up the leafy bits for the tip, and job done.



Some much needed replenishment for the wood stock after a long winter.