Hens eat fries!

The apple trees in position - if you look closely you can see 2 McDonalds fries on the cardboard, the scaffolders thought the hens might like a snack

The exterior revealed

The scaffolding is just about down after a day and a half of disassembly and the render is dazzingly white. The polythene over the ground floor windows will be removed after the renderers have finished covering the grey you can see at the bottom of the house, this may happen tomorrow depending on the extent of rain forecast. We haven't had rain for a week now I think.

Next week we'll work out the design on the ground for external hard landscaping close to the house. The architect drew a rectangular area of paving on a plan but the levels on the west side need a bit more thought so we're just going to work to our own design in conjunction with the groundworks crew. Some number of tonnes of hardcore are arriving tomorrow afternoon to start that process. There's always something arriving on site, today's delivery were the 122 boxes of kitchen which the fitters will commence construction and installation on Tuesday. The appliances arrived yesterday, the kitchen sink last Friday but we still need to buy taps...a job for the weekend.
Two days ago the vinyl flooring went down in the 2 upstairs bathrooms so Willie the plumber has now fixed the sanitary ware in both those rooms. The gorgeous bath tub is in the ensuite.
In the ground floor bathroom Billy the tiler has started fixing the slate tiles, setting up the lines took a while as this slate will run through the majority of the ground floor.

Feel Good Day

We're back in the caravan now and love being at the heart of it again. Glorious weather here at present so I spent the early morning putting cardboard 'mulch' circles around the newly planted apple trees to keep the weeds at bay. There was no wind so it was really beautiful being out in the Spring sunshine and I was thinking of putting a bench seat in the new orchard. It's a bit rich calling it an orchard yet but Steve and friend Allan planted 12 apple trees yesterday. I chose mainly Scottish heritage varieties from Butterworths organic nursery who are renowned for the quality of their stock and for the range of species they grow. Very kindly the nursery added an extra tree to the bundle but I haven't worked out where that should go - should I just pop it in with the others and ignore the separation distance they're meant to be or put it in the ground elsewhere and hope it pollinates, ether way its temporarily heeled in nearby.
Here's my list of species:- Dessert Apples are White Joaneting which dates from before 1600 and produces early fruit from August, Thorle Pippin (2 of) a Scottish apple first described in 1831, Charles Ross which fruits from Sept to Dec and is a cross of Peasgood Nonsuch and Cox's Orange Pippin, Golden Pippin (2 of) which was described in Scotland's first gardening book in 1683 as the 'best variety for Scotland', Wheeler's Russet which is originally English but was grown in the big Clydesdale orchards in the late 1700s and is a late cropper from Jan to March, Maggie Sinclair is also probably from Clydesdale and finally for the dessert apples is the Ribston Pippin which I chose as it heralded in 1707 from Knaresborough which is the nearest apple connection to my place of birth. Culinary apple choices are Stobo Castle which is an early cooker from Stobo, Golden Spire which originally hails from Lancashire (as does Steve) and is a good cider variety so we can dust off our apple press in seasons to come, Scotch Dumpling which has particularly attractive blossom apparently and is another Clydesdale species, Scotch Bridget which dates from the 1850s and crops from Oct to Dec.
I've spent quite a few hours reading up on the subject and working out the best species for our site (wet and windy west), its conditions (fairly shallow soil with rocky strata), the pollination days of each species to ensure they remain fertile and cropping times so we that we don't end up with too many apples at the same time. Obviously we'll have far too many apples but it'll be fun to see it all grow over years to come.

Brickbats and Bouquets

Life is immensely busy so when we get great service from someone it is terrific and of course when we have to spend lots of time chasing people or doing someone else's job its a real pain. One of our future projects is the development of two holiday lets (more another time on those) so we're building up bank of people and places we'd like to use again. This list isn't exclusive, maybe at the end of the project we'll compose a list of the best products, people and places.

On my list for bouquets are the builder and every tradesman who has worked on our site (no kidding, I know its unusual); Sainsbury's online for kitchen appliances (subject to delivery of course); Ecoliving for the ground source heat pump which is working tremendously well.

Currently on the blacklist are B&Q's delivery service; the products are good and well priced they just don't do delivery within or close to their estimates and are a nightmare to chase.

Not for blacklisting but 'could do better' - the timber frame manufacturer is not high on the favourites list but the builder has had the burden of chasing them and the joiners have had the problem of insufficient supplies. The Architect has been on site only three times since Christmas so there's a bit of a gap on the project management which we and the builder have filled. That's fine 'cos we have filled the gap but isn't the service signed up for.

And the weather has been pants since Christmas too!