Irritation

It has been a year since I last posted; I guess that makes me not a prolific blogger! *

The reason being, is not a lot has happened at Frelon Cottage save for relaxing in the sun, cheese eating and wine drinking.

The summer just gone was the hottest and sunniest since we bought the cottage. All great for holidays, we managed two summer visits here this year, but not great for my newly established lawn. Hence the main project for this autumn’s visit, to install pop up irrigation.

The garden area, over 600sqm was surveyed on a balmy evening on our last holiday using my laser and then drawn up on the CAD system in the office and an irrigation system planned to cover all areas in two separate circuits.

All parts purchased including one hundred metres of 19mm pipe, I headed down to the cottage. I must be getting older as I now often choose to overnight in Calais to break up the journey, as I did on this occasion.

The weather for my visit was set fair and due to be above average temperatures. All good, except the main job on this project is to hand dig 100m of small trenches to take the irrigation pipe. This job was made all the more tiring by the barrow loads of limestone rocks and roofing tiles just below the surface. As it was around 24 degrees by lunch time each day, I trenched from 8.00am until 1.00pm, stopping of course for tea at 10.00 and to admire the early morning deer that wandered into the lane.

This left the afternoons to continue to work on the piggery bathroom, which last Autumn had a new floor and ceiling and this visit is being prepared for decorating with a view to completion for Easter.

After three mornings all trenches were dug and pipes installed. Job done……well no! The trenches need filling and the voids left by the rocks meant that more topsoil from a pile at one end of the plot was needed to fill the excavations level.

By my last day the garden area was all level again and ready to be scarified and reseeded. By 18.30 this was all done and now, once again we wait for nature to it’s work, this time aided slightly by nine pop up sprinklers!

* although written at the time 28/10/2018, I lost my password and the recovery email was obsolete. I had given up on posting further but today I found the password stored on my phone! So we are back on! Just in time as I am heading down this Saturday!