So weekend number 3 has now seen us complete the greenhouse. Today was fitting 33 panes of glass with finger numbing plastic clip strips and walking each pane of glass the entire length of the garden, a total of 11.6 miles (up hill), after finishing in the gym this morning.
7 hours and one thunder storm later, it’s finished
Is almost done.
Two days to prep the land and seat the wooden supports. One day for Mrs Fogg to build the frame ably assisted by Pops. One day left to fit all the panes of glass and make it waterproof.
In the next phase of Operation Good Life (named after Tom and Barbara Good from the 70s sitcom where they tried to escape the rat race and live off the land), all of the 1 tonne of gravel has been shovelled, moved and laid ready for the greenhouse parts to arrive on Monday.
Meanwhile I persuaded Mrs Fogg to buy some more trees, unbeknown to her it was to complete my love of symmetry and ensuring they were stragetically placed to form and equilateral triangle, in rows of 4, 3,2,1. That is now the orchard completed in the meadow
Or roughly translated in my pigeon Francais “how we prepare for the greenhouse“. And it’s goin here!
Mrs Fogg has bought a DIY greenhouse that we need to build (jeez there’ll be fireworks), but first off we need a stable base in a field with dips and rises everywhere. Operation “dig a hole commences”. Followed by 10 trips to the compost bin with 3 square metre of sod.
Stage 2 cut 4 off 2.4m x .2m x .15m trees to size, each one weighing in at 30kg a piece, propped on a workbench, Mrs Fogg tickling it with a saw and saying “you finish it now”, so as instructed I do with Mrs Fogg supporting the beams, well that is until she sees a sparrow hawk attacking a birds next and then she runs off to help the birds leaving muggings balancing a bloody great chunk of wood and hacksaw!! Thanks mate!
And that was day 1, with the logs cut and seated, day 2 was the easy bit, put down dry mix and go for a beer! Yup or actually nope, put down dry mix, find all the levels are off, threaten to kill each other, book someone else to finish it, wish you’d not got out of bed, get covered in cement, beat the daylights out of the wood with a mallet. But we did it, oh and this is the easy bit, apparently building the greenhouse takes 9 hours!!
With the glorious weather around us (well if 15 degrees is glorious), we decided to go lockdown camping. Grass all cut (Mrs Fogg on her mower and me strimming anything I can find).
BBQ T-bone and salad washed down with copious amounts of fizzy, and then chance to sit around the fire pit until 11pm before retiring to the cabin for the night.
This morning up with the birds at 03.40 and time for a BBQ cooked breakfast before today’s fun, building the foundation for Mrs Fogg’s new greenhouse up in the top field.
And tonight we’ll repeat the exercise although with Rump steak this time.
It’s March, must be time to prepare the veg plot. I’ve dug over 2/3rds of it and I’m enjoying the lovely soil and low weed population thanks to a few years of digging it over.
Still the last third to dig and to remove all the oriental poppies that keep popping up. This year we have an abundance of new veg to try growing.
Shame Mr Fogg has just read the weather forecast threatening arctic weather until Easter. Not planting potatoes yet then..,
It’s been so nice to get in the garden today. We had a small project to create a Japanese garden next to the decking, setup a big hotel and install bird boxes. All looks lovely now too
Today was a sad day where we had to say goodbye to our good friend of almost 30 years, young Mr Stuart Cadman. A time of reflection of the lovely guy who always had a smile and never had a bad word for anyone.
So that there Gov tell us we can go for a cycle on our own, so I did in Tech Stylee!
To finish off the gym we got an exercise bike that hooks up to that there internet thingy and you can build a route on goggle maps and watch all the pretty scenery in the dry. It will increase resistance at hills and decrease it downhill.
So now we are gonna do cycles around where you live (it’s not stalking, just selective cycling) and no-one can tell us off for leaving home.
Next up, a swimming pool in the garden!
I bought Mrs Fogg a knitting set for Christmas and this is her endeavour. Not bad for a first attempt
