8 Jan 2026 Sliding doors; that moment in one’s life when one realises one could have bought a greenhouse with only one door. Today the final missing piece of glass arrived and we fitted it, less exciting than hammering on the glazing bar covers with a mallet, or drilling and screwing the frame to theContinue reading “Sliding doors”
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Get your kicks on Route 926
Electricians before Christmas: As planned they arrived on Monday and left on Wednesday evening. They should have fitted batteries and new controller/inverters for us and our neighbours, but there were some problems. A couple of forgotten switches had to be couriered out from Glasgow and on Tuesday evening there was a power cut (affecting onlyContinue reading “Get your kicks on Route 926”
Low sun high moon
By the end of November there’s not enough sun to generate any significant amount of electricity and anyway, by noon the sun is setting behind our (ever growing) trees. I’ll fell some of the closer and taller birches before spring. Our search for blewits continues without success since Tash’s initial find. We’ve read that youContinue reading “Low sun high moon”
Barnacles for supper
We were still waiting for our better soil when, with frost imminent, our seventy five Rosa rugosa arrived. I heeled them in up on the vegetable plot. We made a couple more seaweed forays and prepared the first four tree pits by partly back-filling them with some of the soil we’d dug out, then addingContinue reading “Barnacles for supper”
First frost
Paul said he’d bring us a dumper load of soil next week. We can then assess whether we arrange for more to be delivered or whether we hire a small dumper and load it by hand when the Plot 1 building site is not occupied. Whenever Tash swims she returns with a big bag ofContinue reading “First frost”
Nightlife
I stayed up late playing guitar, making the most of having the house to myself, and after midnight went to let the cat out. She paused, lowering her head to sniff at something on the metal threshold, then moved on. My first impression was perhaps of a cat or marten dropping, right size and taperingContinue reading “Nightlife”
Bodies, machines and landscape
Doors: I’d bought what I needed and started making two doors to replace the black polythene sheet on the bike shed. Two sheets of ply, treated timber (left over from verge) exterior varnish, glue, fifteen millimetre larch boards (2nd hand) hefty hinges, screws, coach bolts, and bolts (for fastening and locking the doors). I’d cutContinue reading “Bodies, machines and landscape”
Visitors and a frog in my ditch
Stone: Compacted stone makes embedding the verge board round house and workshop a wearing task. Not just wielding the mattock and levering out bigger-than-my-head stones, but lugging buckets of gravel, stone and soil, riddling out the soil (for future planting), then casting the stones into the barrow to backfill the trench and hold the boardsContinue reading “Visitors and a frog in my ditch”
Watch your step
Tash gets home tomorrow and Poppy caught the bus this morning so I thought I’d go fishing. Then I changed my mind. After a delightful week off work, with Poppy here, and with two friends coming for two or three days this coming week, I should crack on with the verge round the workshop asContinue reading “Watch your step”
Send slate, now!
We’re sliding increasingly quickly into autumn: the swallows keep a low profile or have already left; bracken is browning and starting to subside; ling and bell heather are flowering; days are shorter and last night at three I caught my first glimpse of Orion. The year’s excellent blackberries are gone, the remaining fruit soft andContinue reading “Send slate, now!”
A sustainable house for unsustainable times... 