Painting the Passageway

With no guests I am busy painting various areas of the house.  We have recently had a new oil tank installed in the passageway down the side of the cottage and I have been busy with the paint brush. I painted some of the white on the cottage and the black bottoms on the walls, as well as stripping off the black paint on the door to the Lean-to and repainting, and a general tidy up.

A Hot May

This month we have had no rain and I am having to water plants in the garden, as well as all the pot plants.  I am now keeping the horses in their stables during the day and turned out in the fields at night, as it is cooler for them. The donkeys, goats and sheep are out during the day, but they are sensibly going into the shade when it is too hot, today (Sunday 31st) it was 25c with no wind.

New Patio

Last year we commissioned garden designer Laurence Maunder from Taunton to create us a new patio for the main house and the idea was for us to build it in the autumn of 2020, however with Covid and not being able to have any holiday guests we have brought the build forward.  We started at the end of April as the weather was so dry and sunny by hiring a mini-digger to start digging out all the soil that had to come out of the garden.