The weekend after we got back from York we had yet another set of visitors! These people didn't come from as far, though. They were John's sister Joy, her husband John, her son Nick and Nick's girlfriend Sam. On the left is a picture of Sam and Nick with one of the carved bears on the Allen Coppice trail. Nick is a real ham and a good mimic, so he's always doing and saying very funny things. We had a lot of good laughs over the weekend.I've put pictures of the carvings on previous posts, but we still love to take that trail and search for new things. The artist is David Bytheway. Some of his things are nature inspired, like the otters running down a log and others are mythological, like the green man hidden in a crack in a tree.
We had a good walk along the trail after lunch at the Long Mynd Hotel and then we wandered around the shops for the rest of the afternoon before coming home to a smashing roast pork dinner and an evening of badger watching. The next day we all went off to Rhyadder to see the feeding of the red kites.The next day the painting of the outside of the house started. This necessitated some work by us to remove the vines and branches that were growing all over the house and the upper garage. Here's a before picture of a mass of jasmine and clematis that was clambering up a trellis between the living room and dining room french windows. There's actually a light under there, but we'd never seen it and just a dappled glow would come out of it at night!
I had a helluva time getting this stuff down as it had grown up under the roof tiles and into the soffits and vents under the eves. I've cut it right back to the trellis now and will have to try to keep it under control. I hope I haven't killed it completely! I shouldn't think so, everything seems to grow like the clappers in this climate.
Here's an after picture of the same part of the house. That's Adrian Dann the painter man up the ladder. He's quite a character and we've enjoyed having him around the house for the last couple of weeks.On the picture you can see the newly exposed light. It's VERY powerful and now we have a floodlit patio! It's also rather old and ugly and we're now starting to think about how we want to change the outside lighting around the house. We have a couple of security lights that are on and off all night because of the badgers and foxes - so they are a bit of a nuisance - and they're also very bright. They're too bright really and tend to blind you as you approach them. In addition the lights around the house don't cast a nice glow, they tend to give you bright spots and leave the rest in shadow which is not good. Then, also, the lights up the driveway end too early and leave the top of the drive and the garage up there in darkness! So I think we're going to have to get the electricians in fairly soon to get this all sorted out. And I suppose, while they're at it, we'll have them run electricity to the other end of the garden so we can have power in the shed and a possible water feature in the pond that we're planning.
The painting is now pretty well done except for a couple of patches on the fascia boards where there was some rot. We're waiting for the builder to come and replace the wood and then Adrian will finish off the painting.
We decided to leave the trim white as we have the white patio doors, but we changed the color of the garage doors a bit from green to bluey green - kind of a teal colour. Terry Olive would love it!
One of the benefits of the new bright light on the patio is that we can see the badgers much more clearly. They don't seem to be bothered by the lights, in fact we've seen them ambling by quite casually as we've been sitting at the dinner table or watching the telly after dinner. We don't even bother to turn off our indoor lights any more.So the other night I attached my quick cam to my laptop, put the quick cam outside on the step, closed the curtains and waited for them to come for their peanuts. I was amply rewarded! I got lots of pictures and a few videos. I wish I could post the video because it has sounds and you can hear the badger sucking up and crunching down on the peanuts!
So that's all the major news. We're settling into a quieter winter routine now. We try to get out for walks between showers, and of course we're starting the winter clean-up in the garden. Work also continues at the Museum, John has become the web master for the Food Fayre and on the actual day I will be working with the Crafts People at the fayre, although at present I'm just a volunteer doing anything they ask me to.John has gone back to cataloging his slides and I'm making Christmas cards. This is a coloured pencil drawing I did of some holly and a computer modified version of it will appear on our cards this year.
So that's all for now! It's a great relief to have caught up with all this - jobs like this become daunting when you leave them for a while and then realise how much you have to write! Now I feel guilt free and very relieved! My next task is to try, yet again, to catch up on all my e-mails!
Stay tuned and write when you can!
