At the end of my last blog, I made a promise that I would write a week later and tell you about all the things I had done, as you will have seen, I didn’t – again!
The reason was that, while active, I didn’t manage to do any of the jobs that I had hoped to do and that I said I was able to get on with so, come the end of the week, there wasn’t really anything to speak about.
The past week hasn’t been much better, so this blog won’t be very long, but I did at least manage to do a couple of those tasks I had hoped to the previous week.
The weather in the past week has been pretty good and most of our guests took the opportunity to go exploring or spend time at the beach. When they were all out, I took the opportunity to do a small amount of hedging on the large laurel hedge alongside Hent Gorreker.
I had done some of this earlier in the year but I avoided a large section in front of Granary as there were birds nesting in the hedge. Having checked this year’s brood had fledged, I was able to tame that part of the hedge, at least on the outside of the hedge, the inside is a lot less accessible so I will tackle that later in the year.
I also began to clear the talus (old stone wall) along Streat Al Louarn, the track at the back of the property, now behind the pool house which I try and do at least once a year.
In the first couple of years after we arrived, we had planted lots of small hollies and yews in an effort to create an attractive boundary hedge but, because of the overgrown state of that part of the garden, its relative inaccessibility, and the presence of some large trees which took all the light and moisture from the small plants, they didn’t do a huge amount of growing for a while.
The first image was shortly after we’d planted them in 2016 / 17, the second taken in 2020:
Over the years we have tidied that part of the garden up a lot and, because of the pool build we have felled a number of the unattractive trees that were there, not least a large, dark leylandii, giving the hedge much more light and water and, as a result, it has put on significant growth.
However, with the additional light the weeds along the base of the talus have also roared away, assisted significantly by the creation of a drainage ditch dug by the commune when they resurface the lane a couple of years ago!
To aid in that desire to have an attractive boundary hedge, I started to clear these weeds away and will endeavour to keep on top of them better. I have managed to do just over half the length of our boundary on the lane so will hopefully complete that in the next week.
I have also managed to assemble the chandeliers I spoke about in my last blog that we had ordered from China – I didn’t mention that they had come in kit form, and the photo I used was from the retailers website. It too a while to put the first one together (the instructions weren’t ideal!) but, once done, the other 2 were much quicker.
I assembled them in our dining room where they took up a lot of space and looked huge. We have now hung them in the pool house (mostly to get them out of the way) where they don’t look anywhere near as big! I have not hung them at the height they will finally be as there is no power for them yet and I suspect our electrician will want to make the connections, so I have hung them slightly higher to allow some flex in the cable.
We think they look great.
Today, we have had some very good friends arrive who are having their summer holiday with us so, while I hope to be able to progress with some of those other tasks, I am not going to promise this time that I will update next week …
Kenavo.