Garden - from wilderness to fun family space

The clearance has started. Nothing but an old slide & rubbish hidden in ivy, brambles and weeds.

Burning the brambles

 Burning, clearing, going to the tip. For weeks.

 Wall of brambles 12' tall

The shedhad arrived & been put up by John & Zach

 More burning

Shed painted. Boys variously helping/watching

The back wall is discovered! 

 See those bits sticking up - bramble stems to dig up!

 More tea breaks and more burning. Length of the garden becoming apparent.

 That is a dug bed, ready for the raspberries, currants, blue berries & strawberries to arrive. Chicken hut can just be seen at the back ground.

 Herb garden laid.

 More clearance - behind and around the shed space. Warm work for late Jan!

 Marking out where the yurt will be!

 Fruit bushes put in!

 Leylandii hedge cut back and burnt. The last burings.

 Tending to chickens, the thing on Johns head is the weather proofing for the food dispenser.

 Trampoline had to be bought & used! Now this garden lark is more fun for the kids.

 Using the chickens to clear the ground where the yurt is planned to go.

Flowers from Katy. feeling ever more garden like and less wilderness

 Ben showing how no amount of H&S will stop stupid

Laying the foundations for the yurt base

Ruth & Tom inspect progress so far. Dont think they were impressed.Look like brave smiles to me.

 Things growing!

 Yurt base being made!

 Zach enjoying the space

 Yurt being made, by Meadow Yurts - they came from Cornwall especially

The yurt is made!

 Moving chickens about

 Inside the yurt. A great extra room, and guest space.

 Have yurt, now to continue to evlove the space around it.

 Garden fun - water fight!!

 Home brewing got started again - always a sign a house (or hovel) is becoming a home. And that brewing needs somewhere to be.

Shed is at this point wired up to the mains with its own fuse box and everything.  So it has heat and light. A home office and a place for home brew!

 See desk to the right and refreshment to the left

 Just enjoying what we had created.

The remains of 2013

We moved in. We compressed the huge house we had into a 3 bed terrace with a wood shed.  We gave lots away to charity. We had a storage space in Peterborough for 2 months. We bought and made a shed. We made cabin beds. We clad our bedroom walls. We made do.
An early relief from the misery of the move was Bens birthday. We downed the unpacking and made the first proper meal in the new place. We cleared the table and had a proper birthday feast. And for the first time since moving we laughed.

We had 2 weeks before I had to start work, and the younger lads & Cesca started school. We used some time after Ben's B'day to take a walk in the woods.

The family were strong. And we passed the test that this experience threw at us. But with wobbles.

The boys had their intro day to their new school, Baston C of E, and were so noisy and rude the head mistress took me aside telling me all about how discipline is necessary. I did tell her it was just the family tilting on its axis, and they are charming young gents, but it was not  good start.

Cesca is at Kirkstone House school, a small private school in our village- and we spent a small fortune getting her uniform sorted.

We had to appeal to gain Tim a school place, but were successful and he joined his brothers after a full month off school.

In south Lincolnshire

We moved in November 2013, fleeing Nationalism in Scotland.
It was a horrific experience for us all.
A good life, friends and jobs were all given up for uncertainty in England. There was real pain for us all in this loss.




 Our beautiful 5 bed house with double garage






I had a job to go to and 3 months notice to work out. So that should have been time to find somewhere to rent or buy, right? No.
The nature of the agricultural area we live is that rental properties only go to those who can view the property. So that was us out of the running. Our property in Shetland was not selling. Fortunately having a good job to go to we were able to buy a small property to move to "for a short while." We had to buy a place without a chain- so we could ensure we would move on the right dates. We had to buy without seeing the place. And we had to buy cheap.
The one thing a visit to Lincolnshire to present credentials had given us was a sense of where we wanted to live - so we knew where we were going. We bought the one place that fitted the criteria.

And what a small awful dive it was we moved to.

 Front bedroom wet to touch with damp. We peeled the woodchip paper off with our fingers with ease.
We then set about making cabin beds for everyone, to optimise space available.