holy crap...
I've been busy. Right at this moment I probably can't recount most of the activities that have kept me from posting for almost a week, but it seems like every spare moment has been filled with something that needed doing, somewhere that needed going to. I've spent the past two days slaving away on the grounds; I managed to get almost half of the back forty cleaned up. All the scraggly underbrush is gone, all the dead fall picked up and carted off to the brush pile, all of last autumns leaves raked and blown away. It's taking on an almost park like look. I will continue to hack away at the rest of it tomorrow, the front half is three times the disaster that the back half was, so my work is cut out for me. I did take a break for a few hours yesterday and dug out and carted off about forty feet of old honeysuckle hedge that had seen it's day. There's about the same length left to go, but at least the remainder has some foliage on it, so it's staying put for the summer. I need some privacy from the street. I'm going to replace it with something else, but haven't decided what yet. Probably something evergreen. I've already removed the hedges from the other side of the front property and all told I will be planting enough hedging to span about 110 feet. I'm leaving the forty feet or so directly in front of the manor hedgeless, as the spruce trees afford enough privacy for now and I really, really want to get about fifty feet of old iron fencing for across the entry way. Something a bit evil looking, if I can find it. Lots of spikes on the top and a nice, big gate with something nasty incorporated into the design. Perhaps a nice vamypre bat. After I get the front hedging figured out and planted, I have the task of prepping and planting about another 550 feet of something to frame the sides of the grounds. Something evergreen and tall, perhaps hemlocks or leyland cyprus. I hope I live that long.
The next big project on the Manor itself is a new roof on the back addition, I'm done doing battle with the flat roof; every time I think I've fixed the leaks, they come back someplace else. It's time for a gabled roof like the main part of the place, which is going to be a task, as the flat roof is pitched about eighteen inches higher where it joins the house than the other end, so I'll have to build a tapered knee wall to level it out before I can put up new rafters. Nothing is easy. It will be nice to have a half cathedral ceiling in the bathroom over the tub area, though, maybe with a clerestory window for some extra light and ventilation. But that's not till the autumn, the spring and summer weather is too unpredictable for ripping off of roofs.
Well, I'm beat. Hope all of you who celebrate Easter had a wonderful one. I'm off to the bed chamber and some iPod induced sleep.
Be well, fellow wanderers.
what say you..?