A few folk came round to do crafts. Sister Wynflaed brought her scribe’s setup and wrote another entry in the Book of Rumwoldstow.
I can’t really express how good it felt to have the cloister full of people doing their crafty thing, and just yakking. More of this sort of thing please!
Every garden needs a water feature, and it should be accessible to the small beasts. How to achieve this in the cloister has been something of a puzzle, but eventually we came up with a plan. Of course, Rumwoldstow has an old Roman well still in place, doesn’t it?
The first step was to purchase a round pond liner and for the mighty-thewed Brother Julian to embed it in concrete. Yeah, I know. ‘Authentish” is our watchword!
Because of rain, Al erected the gazebo to protect Chris the stonemason. It ran off overnight, however (i.e. blew down).
Doesn’t it look smart? The water level should be around ground level, so although it’s too high for a real well, you will look down at it and I think the overall effect will be pretty good, especially once some ferns and things have grown in. I’ll put some blocks in the water inside the two archways, to make it easy for beasts to climb out.
In other news, work is underway on the gatehouse (also, of course, Roman). Al is casting blocks for the archway pillars, and Chris is starting to lay out the guardrooms.
Yeah, breeze blocks aren’t very authentic, but the cast stone arch will look great and we’ll probably render the breeze blocks. After all, one must render unto Caesar…< ducks >
There hasn’t been much happening here, and last weekend I scuttled off Oop North to play at Vikings in the lovely Danelaw Village, now happily reopened. A small group of us carved spoons from sycamore wood – though my first spoon cracked overnight and needs some work with polyfilla and sawdust when it’s dried out.
Back at Rumwoldstow, the flowers are nearly over although the cornflowers are still attracting the bees and the yarrow is out. Still nothing but huge leaves from the elecampagne.
The new North bed is doing well – I’ll probably need to move some of the plants in the spring as they are all crowded in and growing fast.
All the late-planted vegetables are coming up at last, with even the second go of dwarf beans finally making a reluctant appearance. I’ve started to harvest salad leaves and am looking forward to cropping the lamb’s lettuce.
The Cripp’s Red apple seedling died, which is not surprising because its root was broken off. However I have two more Braeburn seedlings in action now making three in total. One of them has three seed leaves so it is definitely a mutant! Still 5 – 10 years to go until I find out if any of them produces good apples. With the hot weather, I’m watering them like crazy and today put them in the shade, though it’s still about 32 Celcius out there. Flewf.
I brought some early apples home from the Tudor garden at the Danelaw village, which don’t yet have viable seeds. I’ll keep them and see if the seeds develop.
