Protecting fences and wooden garden furniture

It's been a bit windy lately hasn't it, with the storm Barney throwing high winds at many parts of the UK which if the forecasters are correct is likely to continue for a few days yet. I've blown across the car park after work a few times this week, so when Kent Blaxill about this post, it made me think how much our fences, decking and wooden garden furniture go through at this time of year.

There are things we can do of course to help protect them. We have a large green tarpaulin which we throw over our patio furniture, tying it to the legs of the furniture to ensure it stays in place. All we need to do over the winter is to check those knots are still secure, or otherwise I fear we'd find it at least a few gardens down. Not with the garden furniture still attached.

We haven't had any damage to our fence in the winds thankfully, although it took a few days before I got a chance to get out into the garden in daylight to check. But I remember the shock in the last storm when we experienced damage. There was however, a feeling of space in the garden!

For fences and decking there's things we can do there too. Usually when we put our garden "to bed" for the year we check our fences so if nothing else we know they're in good condition. It's a good idea to check to see if there are branches close by which could damage the fence and to see if any of the panels are becoming more delicate, as these are more likely to encounter any damage. Checking the posts are still sturdy is also worth doing.

I don't think you can beat the look of a new fence, the photos above are of our completed fencing shortly after it was replaced last year. It doesn't look anywhere near as new now though and we could treat it to protect it and give it a boost. 

This time of year is a good time to treat fences, the plants are dying back which makes it easier to get close to the fence. Something like Sadolin Superdec would, I think work well. It has an opaque finish, is available in neutral colours and provides up to eight years of protection, which all sounds great.

Do you give your fences a yearly health check?

This is a collaborative post with Kent Blaxill, but all words and opinions are my own.

I fell in love with a house I'd never seen...

I mean, how is that even possible? I'm not sure I really know but it was definitely love at first internet search, let me tell you more. It started in Devon, which is odd as the house - the one I fell for - was in Norfolk, but I guess distance doesn't matter on the internet so much. 

It was - and still is - a Grade II listed building, built in Norfolk's traditional carrstone and an unusual choice for a confirmed townie as it was a fair way out of a smallish village. It needed a lot of work, that much was clear from the pictures but it also captured my imagination.

It had potential. It was a doer-upper and would have made a fantastic forever home. I know the lingo, I watch Kirsty and Phil. 

I even showed it to MOH and his interest too was piqued. So now it was less of a pipe dream, or was it?

We talked about it, considered when the viewings were - it was for sale by auction and the viewings were set for three week days between 9:30 and 10:00am, and of course they started the first week I went back to work. Hmmnn. We wrote a list of questions we wanted answered and thought about asking my parents to go and check it out on our behalf. 

In my head I remodelled the rooms, and made plans for the yet unconverted space. There was room for a large kitchen diner, a hi-fi room for MOH - something that's high on his wish list, a boot room and craft room, which are high on mine and much more. 

I even thought about how I could furnish the space. And I thought I might get to revamp some furniture and use some chalk paint, that is if I could persuade MOH that this house needed that kind of furniture. But even I knew furniture was a long way off.  

In the end after much discussion, thinking and mulling it over we decided that it was a lot of work, and while it might have been right for us at some stage that time wasn't now. So we didn't go and see it and the list of questions we'd carefully composed weren't used either. But even though that was that I couldn't resist registering on the auction site, just in case...

So what did we learn from all this? 

Well, apart from learning how much a dream can capture your heart and falling in love just a little bit with this house, we learnt that moving to the country would be countenanced by this confirmed townie, and for the right place we'd take on a "project."  

More surprisingly, well it surprised me, was the realisation that most likely in the next ten or so years we'll sell this house.  I mean, I knew we'd sell it at some point, and I couldn't see us selling it to buy another house in this area (and I still can't) but even so putting a number on it, and being comfortable with that was something I hadn't expected. That doesn't mean I don't still love this house, but more that we've worked through an outline for a longer-term plan and that puts lots of things into perspective. 

Nothing's fixed but I'm a firm believer in having a plan to help ensure you get there. And now we have that, and that's strangely satisfying. 

Oh, and the house that started all this? 

Well, it sold at auction - I checked, and it sold for some 40% over the guide price.  There's a learning in there about guide prices and buying property at auctions, which isn't something we'd done before. It's something I'd consider though, but I'd want to do more research first. 

We were in Norfolk the weekend after the auction and I was keen to see the house in person, even if that was just from the outside and just from a drive-by. We managed two drive-bys, which was pretty impressive as it was in a cul-de-sac! From those we learnt we were right it did have lots of potential, and also that it did need a lot of work. Even from the outside that much was clear.

I suspect too, that it'll be a house I'll keep my eye on through the property sites, maybe stalking it just a little bit that way to see how it's changed if it comes back on the market and to see how the price is affected, because even though it's not mine I'm not quite ready to give up on it completely.

Sometimes life throws things at you to help you grow, don't you think? 

And the digging continues...

This month we've been into digging on our plot a lot - and it's been fun. We decided the time - and the weather - was right to move the small apple tree. While MOH started to free its roots, I started preparing its new home at the other end of the plot, in an area we've not dug before. But the rain the day before and the following week have, I think helped it settle in. 

I also took some strawberries which seem to be multiplying exponentially in our back garden over and planted them alongside the tree. I'm hoping to plant a strawberry border along one edge of the plot - I've definitely got enough, it's just a case of getting them over there.

After a strimming incident with one of my tiny lavenders, we decided to add some wooden edging to our plot so it's easy for the council workers to see where the edge of our plot actually is. It was tricky to know before, even I didn't know sometimes. Rather than buying new wood for this we dismantled the vegetable beds in our back garden and reused them here.

The stakes holding the old veg bed planks in place are also from our garden and left over from when we had our trees cut back. MOH had a great time sawing them into the required lengths, sharpening one end and banging them into place. Although if you ask him he'll roll his eyes and tell you he didn't, but I could see he was having fun!

With the apple tree moved out the way for the first time we were able to clear the width of the plot. And you know what, it's starting to look like an allotment.

At the top of the picture above there's the purple sprouting broccoli, with the cabbages and cavolo nero in front. Then there's a couple of rows of onions and then a few rows of garlic. In the middle of the picture you can see some bricks, which is the start of my path, in front of that there's a row of potatoes and then the latest addition a couple of rows of broad beans.

On the left of the picture there's still a bit more to dig, you can see where now that the ground is softer we've been able to put in an edge where it once was, many years before.

Alongside the apple tree's original position was this flowering bush. It was clearly a well established plant, but like the apple tree was in the wrong place. This too was dug up, and it was so large we split it into three new plants and planted it along the top edge of our plot. 

It's responded well and is already flowering again. I guess that's partly due to the bonkers November weather, but I'm also taking it as a sign that it's happy. I'm adding largish plants as a border around the plot as a way of establishing our boundary as fences aren't permitted, but also as a fox deterrent, and it seems to be working.

It seems that the foxes are less keen on our plot the more we work on it, which is fine by me. Occasionally there's a new ball or a glove or a shoe on our plot where the foxes have been playing but it's a lot less than when we first took over the plot back in May.

I'm quite proud of my cavolo nero which I grew from seed, and was the only one to survive. And let's be honest, I'm looking forward to eating it!

Elsewhere on the plot the sunflower has finally given in to the seasons, but every so often a poppy blooms where you least expect it to.

We've still got a lot more digging to do, and that's fine. I find it quite therapeutic although the results of our digging is becoming a logistical nightmare. The existing compost bins are full and the grass that we've dug up is now growing in those compost bins instead of composting so, they look quite odd. It means  there's little point adding more of it there, so we've been filling old compost sacks and bringing it home to go out with our green rubbish. We're at the point where all the sacks I have are full so the digging will pause until we manage to get them home and emptied. 

Oh the joys of bringing our plot back to life!