Chose to make presents this year. Mostly birdboxes, made out of recycled floor boards. This one is now in Gaynor’s garden. 28mm hole suitable for tits, sparrow, nuthatch, pied flycatcher. Or whatever might turn up in a suburb of Wrexham.
Our penchant for big and draughty old building sites with history does have its downside. This is our bedroom this evening. Two nights later it showed 1°C. We were pretty miserable with it.
A magic carpet ride around the coast of Pembrokeshire in yesterday’s sunshine and quiet air with Hâf and a map. With a land-away at Haverfordwest.
Primroses, celandine and the Chiff Chaffs are back. It must be 18th March.
Most people who know me also know that I have a telegraph pole thing going on in my life. What is it? It’s not a crush. I wouldn’t even call it an obsession. It’ just a thing. Me, Martin Evans, is Mr Telegraph Pole. Like some caped crusader, my alter ego is Member #0001 of The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society. And now the good readers of Country Life magazine know all about me too. And you can read the article in full <right here> for as long as it is active on the CL website. And who knows how long that is. Plan B – <click here>
Fallen ash trees turn into Axolotls it seems. Who knew?
We’re now 15 months into the long renovation of C17 Fedw Fawr. It wasn’t long after we bought this (frankly a wreck of a) place that we uncovered a serious problem with the mighty main chimney stack. Centuries of rain had washed out all the clay mortar from between the stones. That and the sheer weight of the thing had created a long deep fracture and dangerous slippage about half way up. I could put it off no longer and so spent 3 long days in October at the top of a tall ladder with buckets of lime mortar, spiral steel helixes and lots of rocks to stitch and point it all back together again.
Daniel’s Highland cows have been coming up to our back gate at Dolfawr lately. These are curious beasts and we’ve had to push them back out of the garden several times, and later evict them from the yard by the pole barn. It’s not so much as they were seeking food, more like they just had to see for themselves what was there.
In the best of interests. Lapwing drawing by Richard Buxton. Theft by me. #cofiwchygornchwiglen #lapwing #peewit #cofiwch #dryweryn
