welsh hills again

At the beginning of August I was out of love with the garden - gaps, tired foliage, few flowers and those that were flowering ones I had lost interest in.  This always happens.  For some reason August is just not my time.  Taking these pictures as September came in made me realise that I am engaged all over again. This is the side garden.  I know it will look better when the four different types of honeysuckle have grown up over the trellis but I think it doesn't look too bad.  The shapes of the foliage, meaty hellebores, airy verbena, spikes of crocosmia and clouds of fennel and cosmos, all please me.  At the front of the borders the alchemilla and the hardy geraniums which were cut back a few weeks ago have regrown into satifying hummocks. Some of the individual plants are stars too.  I have grown dahlias this year for the first time with some serious attempts to make them settle into my stony soil.  Previously I have chucked the odd one and ...

One or two people have asked for an update on the kitchen.  I suspect this is so you can remind yourself how lucky you are!  Well, weeks and weeks ago we found we had to take down all the plaster to reveal the stone walls in all their glory. The stone looks quite good in the photographs but it is what is called rubble stone, soft and shaly and never meant to be on view.  There were gaps and holes and a constant fine rain of dust.  So we accepted the inevitable and had it plastered, using a special plaster which would breathe and allow the old house to breathe along with it. So here it is, very beautifully plastered by Roger and his son Dylan.  This, to put it gently, was not the work of a moment.  And painting it was not the work of a moment either. Then today the electricians came, another father and son business and another cheerful, charming and highly skilled pair.  They connected up the sockets and wired the new lights and all of a sudde...