Eyeing up a few more jobs in the garden which needed sorting, and having some free time on my hands while John was sleeping his way throught the final month, I finally managed to look for someone to do a bit of work outside. The render painting needed finishing off down one side of the house, including the highest gable end, along with concreting the bottom of the drainage ditch along the driveway and shoring up the crumbling edge of the tarmac. And finally the fence round the front lawn was rotting and the wire had been applied to it haphazardly meaning mowing or strimming along the bottom of it was difficult. It was also so old that two trees had grown through it and gotten embedded in the wire and then been cut down leaving only stumps growing through and distorting the fence.
I found a young guy who said he and a another guy could do all those things and fix the dry stone wall along the roadside that was falling down into the stream that runs down the side of the road to take away the water that comes down off the hill behind. John and I had cut back the grass, bracken and other weeds growing out of the wall over the summer but it was slowly disintegrating and needs probably dismantling and rebuilding and strengthening. I was surprised these guys said they could do such a varied list of jobs but their website looked pretty good.
There was a spectacular moment in the darkness, which unfortunately John was not able to enjoy as he was too sleepy, when a flock of red wings and fieldfares visited the garden to spend the day stripping the rowan tree of every single bright berry. I had to grab the binoculars and the bird book, gifted by Hugo's parents, to identify them as I'd never seen them before.
The render painting came first and, whilst I'm glad it's now done (apart from one strip that got missed but is low enough for me to do myself), they had also got paint on the concrete window cills, the window frames and my entire herb bed. The herbs will not be edible for a while but thankfully the windows could be wiped down. I might paint the cills black in time anyway, but am becoming more reluctant to make changes like this that are not reversible as I question every change I make as moving away from what we fell in love with when we first saw the property.
The render painting made me a little wary about the quality of their work and so when they decided to come back and concrete the drainage ditch on a day when it was drizzling on and off it made me nervous. They cleared out the ditch and put down the concrete and secured the edge then headed off without me going out to look at the work as it was getting dark and I assumed they had done it the way he first described. But when I went out the next morning before paying the bill I was horrified to see that the edge of the driveway was worse than before and the concrete had washed away in a rivulet down the middle. They had not repaired the edge of the driveway with tarmac as promised. I messaged to say it needed redoing. He returned on his own the following day, dug it all out and reconcreted. It was a drier day and fingers were crossed for overnight setting. I seemed much better in the morning thankfully.
I also agreed for them to remove the old fence but called time on the rest of the jobs as I no longer trusted them to complete the work competently. They didn't even finish removing the fence as the end post was concreted in and they just gave up (after turning up at 11am, spending 1.5 hours in the van for lunch and leaving at 4.30pm!). Maybe they needed tools they don't have, but it cost a lot and it's not finished.
Looking at the drainage ditch now, a month later, the frost has cracked the concrete a little so I am dubious about its longevity, but time will tell. I now have a new quote from a guy recommended by Michal, who is proving to be my go to guy for excellent work or for recommendations, so I am now awaiting the new fence to put popped in. He said December but not sure on the date. I will be glad to get it back because the moment the fence was gone all the local sheep turned up to rip my plants apart. I wouldn't mind if they stuck to the grass, but they don't!
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