Tropical paradise in Wales

On a whim we bought an apricot tree online, I think it was about ten pounds including delivery. It duly arrived - think bundle of unimpressive twigs wrapped in cardboard to look like a two metre cotton bud. Frankly we didn't have high hopes of growing produce especially as the courier produced it from under what appeared to be a large boxed television and it was boomerang shaped.

Still we stuck it in what was then one of our relatively unused greenhouses and forgot about it apart from the occasional guilt fuelled watering.

It flourished and this year guess what!

 

We've harvested close to twenty ripe and flavoursome fruit. It has however now outgrown our little greenhouse and this week we relocated it to our huge planter by the front door. Not sure how well it will fruit there but we'll see, in the meantime it looks pretty.

A sailor's life for us!

This week we have mostly been putting up hammocks.

I bought a double cotton hammock a few months ago and never got around to doing anything with it. The last week of glorious weather however had me trawling through the back of our cupboards in search of a piece of tropical, idyllic furniture.

Having found the hammock it was then time to find the trees. I settled for two firs that stand on top of a bank that overlooks the back garden. You can see the whole landscape bathed in light whilst keeping under the cool shade of a couple of two sixty foot trunks.

Not the greatest photo but now that I've tidied up the vegetation and opened up the view it is a great place to chillax, and, best of all it's a double!

Anyway this got us thinking and Karen remembered that she had, from days of old, another hammock - as yet unused (this tends to happen with hammocks that are kept in Wales). So two posts and a bit of concrete later and we also have a double hammock next to our fire pit.

Enthusiasm got the better of us and we started putting the posts in during a thunderstorm (hopefully not an omen for its infrequent use?) but done and dusted in a day.

 

 

An Ebay bargain and a little showering of fairy(saw)dust...

There has for some considerable time been lots of goings on with this whole 'upcycling' movement. Slow as ever to jump on a bandwagon we have recently started to experiment with various bits of what can only be called other peoples broken crap in an effort to create something practical, amusing or magnificent for the house or garden.

We've tackled some ideas recently (and blogged about most of them) including:

- Grabbed some free timber (an old deck) and turned it into a cold frame
- Found a bathroom sink at the dump and created a sink water feature
- Turned a long ranch fence into a two ton raspberry planter
- Various items such as Belfast sinks turned into planters
- Old trailer into a herb planter
- Pallet seating area with strawberry planter fence

and the list goes on...

We like the principal, getting free or cheap stuff and giving it a new lease of life, there are cautions however, getting free timber doesn't mean you won't need to spend a small fortune on paint for it as we've found out from time to time.

Anyway I have many woodwork projects that are desperately screaming for my attention but I found an opportunity to ignore them and try something that I've seen others do. So about a week ago I bought and collected a cheap second hand little kids bed via Ebay. Here it is:

 

 

Now, literally a couple of hours (mostly spent waiting for paint to dry) later plus two offcuts of pine that I had knocking about and Hey Presto! our kids have a tiny person garden bench to sit on.

 

 

 



Trojan chicken, the tale of a wooden hen...

We've been meaning to replace our chicken signs. We stuck some out by the road a couple of years ago to let people know that we often have surplus eggs, in typical fashion for us we weren't happy with a simple print out so made wooden ones and painted them all up.

We had two, the larger one is a looking a little worn these days and the smaller one was (we think) recently ripped down and carted down the road either by kids or a pub returnee - extremely unusual behaviour for this area but there we go, perhaps we had offended them in some way or perhaps they are just gits?

So having drawn and cut out the relevant shapes earlier in the week I passed the buck on to Karen, our resident artist, who got cracking with the brushes this afternoon during the sunny weather and they are now ready to take their place high up on our wall like sentinels overlooking the neighbours.

This time we'll set the smaller one back a little further from the road so if anyone fancies having a go at it again they'll have to climb our wall. Whether they can hack their way through chest high brambles, a field of nettles and 150,000 unimpressed bees and get back out is entirely another matter and one that I wouldn't mind watching.

Thousands more kids for fathers day.

WOW.

Went to pick up the queen bee we desperately hope will replace the lost one in our pink hive and got a surprise. Apparently my wonderful wife had phoned ahead and added a nuc of bees to my collection as a Father's day present from the kids.

A massive shock (and a VERY expensive treat) but very nice as surprises go. It did mean I had to miss out an intended trip to the local timber supplier in order to get them home quickly in the heat. He was probably a bit confused when I rang, "Sorry, I'll have to pop by next week instead. Got ten thousand bees in the car and I need to get home"

Currently (and depending on how pink manage with this new queen) we have all four hives up and running. Magic!

Poo Pipe Problem

We have a problem with a poo pipe. Not a plumbing problem but an ugliness one.

Outside the front of our house there is an eye-shatteringly awful, though necessary, piece of external plumbing. The toilet disposal pipe which runs through our bathroom wall and down to the drain below shines in the afternoon sun creating a halo effect against the backdrop of our historic charming dwelling. It is large, it is a multi-directional piece of honking plastic that from time to time creates a loud whooshing sound akin to a bag of spanners falling over Niagra Falls.

Once upon a time some bright spark had the good sense to cover the thing up with some form of botanical delight, there is a small stumpy trunk and many wall pegs that have been previously used to wire supports for a plant. This would have been a well placed, decorative foliage screen to at least hide the unsightly mess if not the sound of our bathroom adventures.

So having recently moved our honeysuckle from the south side of the house where it was getting scorched by the sun (in Wales!) and becoming unhappy we decided to plant it on the north side where it should be a smiley. So I made a large planter this week and in she went.

It has since flowered in the last few days so hopefully it will now rocket up our wall and completely camouflage the grey tubes that have been giving us nightmares for the last two years. In future guests will be able to park up, admire the rustic aesthetic of our character home and, if they time their arrival correctly, be left running for cover when the sound of a mighty tidal wave suddenly springs upon them.
 

Bee shed finishing touch

A quick update...

Karen finally got around to finishing off the painting of the bee shed. Not drastically important but cute none-the-less.

Presse Party !

Elderflower Presse

This is our favourite (and well tested) recipe for elderflower presse. We decided to make tons of this last year given we have about five HUGE elderflowers in the garden and it is delicious. We made about 25 litres last year and still have a bit left over in the freezer (it freezes really well) but the flowers are out again so here goes...

We usually make this in double batches with no problems

Ingredients
25 Elderflowers (ideally picked on a warm, dry day)
3 Lemons - we'll use their juice and their finely grated zest
1 Orange - again using both the juice and the grated zest
1 Heaped teaspoon of Citric Acid (available in most chemists ask for it though as they keep it hidden)
826g Sugar - white, granulated stuff

Optional (but we love it!)
80g peeled, grated ginger

Method
- Take a look at the flowers and remove any leaves, dead bits and give them a shake to throw off any little critters.
- Stick the flower heads in a large bowl with the lemon and orange zest (NOT the juice which should be shoved into the fridge for tomorrow)
- Bring 1.5 litres of water to the boil then pour over the flowers/zest in the bowl
- Cover and leave overnight

Next Day
- Strain the liquid from the bowl, muslin is great for this, I tend to give the flower heads a good squeeze or two - you'd be amazed just how much extra liquid you'll get out of them.
- Add the sugar, lemon and orange juice and the citric acid.
- Heat gently to dissolve the sugar, bring to a simmer (NOT boil) and keep it just bubbling for a few minutes.
- Use a clean funnel to pour while still hot into sterilised bottles, seal them and sit back.

Top Tips
1. To sterilise the bottles we tend to use hot soapy water and really clean them out well, then we fill them with boiling water and let them sit for a bit. Finally we shove them into a VERY low oven and keep the door open for a few minutes to dry them off.

2. If you let the simmered fluid cool a bit whilst covered then pour them into clean plastic bottles (used pop bottles?) give the bottle a bit of a squeeze and leave a fluid gap at the top then screw them up tight - this allows for a bit of expansion. They'll be great in the freezer for AGES !

The psyche of Russ...

Very excited about this naff little project.

I wanted to attempt some sort of creative visual feature near our chicken area that could catch the eye. Having no creative or artistic talent I Pinterested and YouTubed other people's great ideas. This was my thought process.

1. Put a mirror behind our bird bath - led to...
2. Put up a shabby wooden wall with a mirror on and stand the bird bath in front of it - led to...
3. Why not use an old sink instead of a birdbath - led to...
4. Why not make a tiny bit of a bathroom with a mirror on a wall and a bird bath in the sink - led to...
5. Why not add a fountain or water flowing thing too

Now you've delved into the psyche of Russ this is the result of a couple of hours mucking about...

 

and thanks to a £7 solar pump I found on Ebay this is what happens when the sun shines (take a look now you may never see it again!)

 

Garden plans...

So here is the plan...

This is a basic representation of how our back garden will look unless we get bored, run out of money or change our minds !

Stuff we've already done:
- A series of posts with a rope between them for roses and ivy to grow up and over to create arches (top left in orange), in place but waiting for plants to get their finger out.
- Rockery, finished.
- Summerhouse, wicker Ebay find all up and running.
- Bees, hives built, garden sectioned off with rustic fencing, we'll be adding a low hedge to soon.
- Sink, see todays other post!
- Fire Pit, the first thing we did after moving in. Been cooking it up good style for a while now.
- All the 'T' marks are new fruit trees that we have put in this year.

Stuff still to do:
- Massive amounts of weeding, this will take forever..!
- Pond, this picture shows the new shape we hope to have next year. Currently it is just a rough oval but we want to 'Y' shape it at one end to shape it around the black spot.
- The black spot, this will be a garden bed made from an old trampoline (Ebay find for £10!) and a structure that will probably be a living willow gazebo thing (to be done in the autumn)
- Old shrub bed by the arch will be ripped out and returned to lawn but also our apricot tree will go here.
- Low walls on the terrace will be built, mainly out of stone reclaimed from elsewhere in the garden to create a better border between the terrace and the rockery/lawn.
- Gravel ! The driveway, terrace and front of the house desperately needs re-gravelling. We've found a local supplier who can deliver around 14 tons for a couple of hundred quid but right now we can't guarantee the motivation to move it about and a pile that big on our driveway will stop us getting in! 
- The circle with the '?' is a dark clearing under the trees high up overlooking the garden. Not sure what will be going here...

and that's it!

P.S. If anyone fancies helping us move a lorry load of gravel let us know!

Mourning a Monarch?

After recent bee successes; starting a third colony and re-queening to clear chalk brood issues we have been feeling pretty good. Halfway through our first full season and we feel we have been breaking new beekeeping ground, for us anyway.

We have Blue hive, a very prolific strong colony that we used to start two nucs. Pink, a decent sized colony that after removing a queen that was a bit on the slow side and not helping with the significant chalk brood hiccup was back in action and laying well. True our Green hive made with one of the nucs sadly created great emergency queen cells, matured a queen then unfortunately lost her somewhere, maybe eaten on the mating flight? But having successfully combined that little colony with the other nuc we still reckon we're up on the deal.

Last weeks' hive check has shown Blue hive seemingly back up to great strength, still lots of capped brood in the main brood box and recently drawn out brood super though they are a little slack in drawing out their honey supers. Yellow - all systems go. Pink however has had a bit of calamity we think.

Last week Karen didn't observe the pink hive queen in person but did see plenty of egg so was happy. She was also pleased to report that they were filling a honey super. This week however, disaster. I checked pink, didn't see a queen and could see only a few uncapped larvae and absolutely no egg.

Looks like we've lost the queen.

We can't figure out why. There is plenty of space, no sign of excessive nurse bees and nothing to suggest any reason for swarming that we can see. The queen whilst new, was carefully introduced and has spent the last few weeks happily laying within the hive seemingly accepted by the other bees. So where has she gone? We don't think we've crushed her or accidently damaged her, the hive seems happy, non-aggressive and full of bees. I can't imagine that she would swarm so shortly after seemingly being accepted into the colony and we've been out in the garden from dawn until dusk over the last week and had no sign of swarming.

I'm hoping that I just missed her, this hive contains some of our older comb, it wasn't the brightest day and eggs are hard to see. But I also think I checked pretty carefully, particularly once I became concerned. On the cuff I grabbed a super brood frame from blue and shoved it into the middle of the pink brood and sealed up the hive. I'm hoping that if the queen is present and hiding (probably wishful thinking at this point) that she'll be visible when we check in a couple of days. If she has died/gone then at least the remaining bees will now have access to some egg to start making emergency queen cells - seeing those would confirm our fears but hopefully indicate that the colony is adapting for survival. Of course in either case we are disappointed that one of our two decent colonies would now be unlikely to make any honey for us - we were looking forward to trying some this year but most important is getting them back to having a reliable queen, otherwise our well populated pink hive is in danger...

Fingers crossed and we'll update in a few days when we plan to have a decent extra check of pink to find out what is going on.

Freecycle - a tale of determination

A long time ago, not long after we moved in, I signed up for a few of those community/getting rid of junk sort of websites. Preloved has been useful on the odd occasion that we've managed to pick up some decent kids bikes for a couple of quid that were actually great finds. A nosey sort, I did like to keep an eye on Freecycle - never got anything from it but found some sort of humour in eyeing up other peoples' random cast-offs (normally so random they couldn't even Ebay it and had to try giving it away) Bizarrely Freecycle seemed particularly attractive to me at times when I should have be weeding/cleaning out animals/changing nappies etc....

The correlation between my Freecycle interest and my actual 'free' time was noticed by my adoring wife who immediately nipped this, my one enjoyable escapist activity, in the bud pretty quickly when the kids really started to smell and the weeds crowded the upstairs windows. Once pushed I did however take solace in removing my Freecycle account that I would now longer receive the fifteen plus hourly emails that it automatically forwarded to me desperate to let me know that  someone within forty miles was giving away a used lightbulb from a non-smoking home.

Recent thoughts about sorting the more aesthetic side of the house have been causing me to ponder garden features. Little snippets of interest that we can cautiously arrange with great effort to look like a natural or carelessly placed visual feast amongst the bushes have been tingling my creative tastebuds. Of course we could just go to B&Q with a credit card and pack a van full of slate monoliths or bamboo arbours but, light wallet aside, that sort of commercial, conveyor belt décor wouldn't feel right in our rustic, proper old house garden alongside a pallet fence strawberry planter and bee garden. I was thinking more old ploughs, milk churn planters, trombone water features and unique stuff made from junk. Back to Preloved and Freecycle then...

Actually since I restarted the sites this week I happened upon some local rubbish on a trip out that will keep me and my workshop occupied for the moment (more on these soon) but none-the-less signing onto Freecycle proved on this occasion to be an instant hit, validating my entire previous interest and justifying my removal from nappy duty for some considerable time.

Would you believe that on my first look at the local group a listing had been added an hour before for an item located six miles away. FREE to anyone that arranged to collect it. Instantly I wanted it. I have no ability to use it but I wanted it. The timing suggested it was meant to be, however...

It is heavy. So heavy that I would need to organise four friends to help us move it. But I wanted it.

It is large. So large that I would have to hire a van to move it and we would have to permanently swap our living room with our dining room just to accommodate it. But I wanted it.

After a few phone calls, logistical arrangements and a long night of shuffling furniture between rooms we went to see it for the first time today. It was classy. It was beautiful. We bought it home, all battling and sweating to get it into the house, even the horrendous downpour switched off for the exact time it took to move it from house to van and van to house. Like destiny.

It fits perfectly in our new dining room and looks extraordinary. Two immediate thoughts; I am now going to have to revisit a childhood pastime and fit it into my already crammed existence and my mum is going to be outrageously jealous.

I still cannot believe someone wanted to give away such an incredible and valuable item. I'm not sure what the rules of Freecycle are but we might have to wander back with a bottle of something special next time we are passing.

Until then sit back, adore and feel ever so slightly smug.

Amidst the hoovering Karen couldn't help but stop and admire the new furniture

Piano - Collard and Collard. Dress - models own.

upcycling

A few weeks ago we had an unexpected opportunity to pick up some Perspex from neighbours who were throwing out secondary glazing that had been in their cellar since their windows were done a while back.

We took several sheets and immediately used some to replace some broken greenhouse glass which worked very well. I've also ear-marked some to make transparent crown boards for my hives - I have two already and like to be able to lift the lid and see in without having to disturb the bees.

The last sheet has been hanging around waiting for me to make Karen a cold frame for next years growing - obviously I haven't been rushing.

Anyway, the same neighbours took down an old, partly rotted deck last week and offered the timber to us if we had any use for it. Down and outs that we are of course we said yes.

I had a spare hour today so in the sweltering heat of the afternoon I banged together a cold frame. Cost us nothing and looks like it will do the job.

Bee-autiful bee garden?

As we are starting to concentrate on the aesthetics of our garden we have been talking about what to do to make the bee garden a bit more interesting. We like the rustic look of having grass around their little area at natural 'meadow' length however in the last week or so it went ballistic and the poor bees were having to machete their way out of the hives.

So last night after they were tucked up in bed we got cracking. We've snipped most of the long grass and done some emergency weeding (I bought a £12 electric strimmer today just for this purpose) although most of the really long grass is now laying flat as apposed to having been properly cut.

We've also made some raised beds and planted some flowers. We also made some plans for this space..

- Place a hedge (probably cherry laurel?) around the inside of the twig fence
- Install a curious water feature (I've bought a little solar powered water pump for this)
- Find some sort of visual feature in addition to the colourful hives - completely drawn a blank at this so le me know if you have any ideas

Here is a terrible snap of the working progress.

 

Fishtastic !

Quick update from yesterdays fishcake post...they tasted amazing with our home grown new potatoes boiled in mint from our rockery, plus some salad from the garden.

Tasty!