Sunday, 30th January 2011

Most of last week we've been bashing ice on all three ponds, and getting fresh water to the ducks got increasingly more difficult as the outdoor tap froze up once more.  Even though it might make building work more difficult for the workers I'm looking forward to next week when slightly warmer weather is forecast and rain.  Certainly the ducks will enjoy that - they've been reduced to a small area in their big pond yet again.

It was a lovely morning yesterday, and after sorting the ducks out I went around the garden to take a few photographs:

 

Then it was time to drive to the first - and for all of us the most unusual - AGM of our Volounteer Group in New Lount Nature Reserve.  About 20 people were standing round in a circle, all discussions and voting were carried out very swiftly as it was freezing cold.  After 20 minutes it was done.  John and I didn't stay for the work this time as we still had lots to do at home.

Ducks and drakes have got used to the upheaval around the house and come up regularly to feed - although we don't see much of that as the food container is usually hidden from view by some sort of building equipment:

Both John and I are very happy with the way building work is progressing in spite of the resulting mess.  On Friday afternoon a trench was dug for the electric cable between house and garage and covered over again:     

It will be a lot safer buried underground than stretching overhead - and I shall be glad when it's no longer bisecting panoramic shots from the window like this one:

After building up the foundations for the extension the builders filled it with earth and ground up rubble and firmed it down with what I think is called a plate compactor - what my friend Alan called a 'whacker' when I was building my garden path in Desford.

They then topped it with polystyrene for insulation and a steel grid before smoothing concrete over it:

 

There was time for a teabreak before they wrapped everything up for the weekend:

There was nothing much to please the eye in the garden, except maybe the flowering hamamelis mollis [witch hazel] near the crashed ash:

It's still rather small but I enjoy seeing it.  The heather bed doesn't look too bad now, either:

The evergreen pittosporum in the middle of my knot garden with box balls has lost all its leaves, and I fear it has snuffed it, the same as the ceanothus by the fish pond: