A Garden, A House and the Life Between

So a couple of weeks ago, hubby and I had the week off following a very busy March at work. We don’t normally take leave over the Easter break but as we were intending to holiday at home, we took the days off over the Bank Holidays so we ended up with 10 days off in total. The weather wasn’t solid for all of that period but the 3 or 4 days of sunshine we did get we made the most of it.

We did a fabulous 10 mile hike up Helvellyn via Whiteside in the glorious sunshine, steep but fun, followed by a lovely lunch at the Helvellyn Cafe. Our first trail run in a while took us to Lowther Castle for a nice 40 min pootle along the existing footpath there. And then the rest of the dry weather we spent continuing to remove rubble from our paddock and then plant saplings in its place

When we first procured the paddock it had this massive pile of rubble left over by the contractors who had put in a new septic tank with the previous house owner. He’d made the age old mistake of paying the supplier before they’d finished the full job, i.e. removing the rubble, and once paid, he couldn’t get them back to remove it. We worked out that this space is 10m x 4m so not a small amount of land to be covered in concrete, clay and weeds so it was important for us to get rid of it. And it was ugly, here’s a pic of the original pile:

The first half of the rubble was removed by a local guy who quoted us to remove it all but then on the day, when I wasn’t there, he filled his truck but there was a lot of rubble left over so he re-quoted my husband to come back but never did, so we had to remove the remaining pile by hand. I don’t have a pic to show how much we removed, unfortunately, but I can promise you it was maybe three hundred rubble sacks worth at least and many trips to the tip.

Last weekend on Sunday, we finally finished it all and I planted Mountain Ash Rowans, provided by free from our council, and will lay grass seed asap. We will leave this section un-mowed to attract wildlife and bugs etc so that our Swallows will continue to visit for the bugs and other creatures will visit for other use of the land. Here’s the final rubble being moved and then me planting the Rowan saplings:

As you can see from picture 2, Esme our cat, supervised us throughout and made sure we did everything correctly. She’s such a clever girl and never misses a chance to shout at us!

Re-wilding here is important to us to ensure we retain, and attract, wildlife wherever possible whilst also maintaining a pretty garden. We have planted hedgerows, sapling trees, we only cut the hedges at the end of Summer/early Autumn so the birds can nest all Spring and Summer, we will limit mowing where we can, I’ve purposely left dandelions unpicked and uncut for the bumble bees, and we’ll continue to do as much as possible to support our areas wildlife.

The weather is definitely changing for the better up here now with the hedges turning from bald to bloom and the trees quickly turning green. It’s a very pretty and exciting time of year as we look forward to local events such as the Penrith Show, the beer festival and the charity tractor event which is just up the road from us at our neighbours farm. It’s also the best time to sit out on an evening and just enjoy the birds and butterflies, fluttering around and enjoying the longer days.

Work wise it’s now time for us to go back to our veg garden and finish what we started last year. We spent months digging up ground elder weed, which had such deep networks of routes under the paving in there, so this year we will lift every brick, put weed killer down, then a membrane and then reset the brick path. It will be a long job, like the rubble removal, but once it’s done, we can rebuild the raised beds for the veg and start growing. We’ve had some glass break and blow out of our greenhouse so we’re having that re-fitted this weekend and then that will be usable again. Positive steps all round and lots to look forward to.