The May Trees Blog

As it’s the 29th day of February, it seemed appropriate to look back over the last month. The unexpected calm, dry and mild weather has allowed much to be achieved outside in the garden. Most of the work has been clearing, pruning and removal of some very daunting roots from smaller trees and shrubs. The huge ‘hedge’ at the front between us and the house next door is now replaced with a much lower fence which will give much more light to the garden in the mornings, and we are looking forward to seeing many plants which have been struggling for light for years start to flourish all around the garden as the spring arrives. The next phase will be a new planting bonanza in a week or two. We really don’t know when things can go out - there’s a lot of stock been collected, mainly overwintering in the greenhouse. We’ve still only had three nights this winter where the temperature has just dropped to zero, so frost is probably not a worry, but we’re beginning to understand what damage a strong cold wind can do. We were puzzled at the unexpected lack of acidity in the soil here, which looked like it might prevent us from planting things like camellias and rhododendrons, but I became a bit suspicious of our new soil tester, and 5 minutes with the vinegar bottle proved that the meter had been wired the wrong way round!

Those of you who have witnessed the occasional accidental pumping out of the water from the lower pond, leaving the fish floundering in the mud, will be pleased to know that I’ve removed some of the slate edging and managed to correct the sag in the pre-formed top pond liner to stop the overtopping. We’ve acquired some more stone, so when the slate goes back I’ll construct an ‘artistic’ housing for the ugly filtration unit, which spoils the appearance of so many ponds.

We’ve (deservedly) rested on our laurels for the last week of the month and had some good days out - as you can see from the photo gallery. The first visitor of the year, our old friend Bryan from Rugby, will be here for the weekend, so we’ll enjoy a few more excursions before getting back to work next week. Fortunately the workshop is now ready for action, so we’ll be able to get started on some of the inside projects.

After last month’s gales and rain we’ve been taking advantage of the unseasonable mild weather. Resisting the temptation to have a few days out, instead we’ve got on with the remainder of the heavy pruning and clearing at the front and back of the house. It’s good to have been able to do all that so early, and we’ll reap the reward when the days get longer. We’re really not sure what to expect down here though. We know that winter is relatively short, but it’s been mild everywhere, so, as there are no new photos from trips, I took the camera for a walk round the garden this morning. We’d be pleased with any comments on how early things are.

The sale of the Rugby house, having failed to go through last Friday again,  finally completed yesterday afternoon. We’re back in the black at last!

This rainbow was photographed from the landing window at sunrise yesterday.

A couple of months ago, when things were not going well either for Darren or me, as it was a brilliant day, we decided to go for a walk along the vast beach of Hayle Towans at low tide.  As men do, we had put the world to rights and, as a ‘local’, Darren was reminiscing about times on this beach in his childhood.

He told me a tale of someone driving a Land Rover across the beach at low tide, getting it stuck and being unable to recover it before the tide came in, so that it had been lost forever beneath the drifting sands.  As we walked on further along the base of the cliffs we both spotted a small black dot near the tide line in an otherwise empty panorama of wet sand. Although a long way out, the object drew us like a magnet.

This is what we found:

I know some of you think we’re well off the beaten track down here, so you might be surprised at the goings-on in the pretty village of Relubbus between here and Marazion.

Particularly interesting are the plans for a new Eurodisney.

We’ve had nearly a week of unseasonal spring-like weather, and we’ve managed to do a lot of the heavy pruning that was left from last year, which gets us off to good start in the later stages of the garden restoration. We’re really not sure what to expect, knowing that spring comes early here, but there is a lot of unexpected new bloom and growth already on many plants, which seems wrong for January!

We’ve had some good trips out to enjoy the weather, particularly to Trebah. The microclimate was obvious as we walked down from the car park in the sun and it was very apparent how these gardens came to be where they are. Some very dramatic beach walks too, as the surf is very high after all the stormy weather. It looks like we’ll be back to wet and windy soon, but it’s been a great few days respite. We had a very still and clear night on Saturday and woke to a slight hoare frost, which is the first we’ve seen since November.

We enjoyed a concert by the local Praze-Hayle Male Voice Choir on Sunday evening (tickets £4 or £4.50 with pasty) and are looking forward to more local events like that. If you’re thinking of heading our way in the next few months, check out the May Trees local events diary, which is now getting surprisingly full. It’s the St Ives Feast on Monday, famous for some traditional antics with a silver ball on the beach. I’ll try for a few photos ( if it’s not raining).

There is some happy news from our friends next door: there is a new Irish red setter pup on the way! Bryony has been particularly missing her old friend and we think this will be a very fitting tribute to the memory of lovely Beau.

We managed to get our hands on a couple of very precious pictures of Beau and Bryony taken when we were all a lot younger. We hope you enjoy them.

Things have not gone quite to order in the last week or two!

First, the sale of our house in Rugby failed to complete because of a mortgage problem down the chain. Particularly annoying as we accepted the buyer’s offer on the basis of there not being a chain. Still, the news today is that it’s all sorted out and the sale should now complete on 1 February. It’ll be good to have something back in the depleted coffers at last.

We’ve also noted that technology is generally less reliable in this (very) old house. So I wasn’t surprised when the PC I was using to prepare stuff for the website died at the same moment a transformer in an adjacent socket went bang. I think some very funny electricity arrives over wires strung from the poles along our lane. Anyway, I’ve had to do a lot of the work to get back to where I was, but the webcam trials, which were looking good, have stopped for now.

It’s surprising the wires are still up, as the weather has been very wet and windy like most places, but quite mild (well into the 50’s most days). We had a few hours of cloudless sky yesterday though, which made it worth taking a camera along on a shopping trip into Hayle. So there’s a few new pictures in the gallery.

There is sad news from our neighbours, whose much-loved but very old Red Setter reached the end of her life on Tuesday. Beau really was one of the family, and most of the children have never known life without her, so she will be very much missed. Pennie and I spent the evening with them all on Tuesday to share their sadness. You can see from this snap, taken that night, how much the animals are part of the household.

I bet you thought (like me) that it would never happen. Yes, the May Trees website rides again. The long dark days after Christmas seemed the ideal time to finish what I started just before we moved here last May. How I ever thought I would be able to keep it up during all the work we did last summer … Anyway, we’ve got things under control now and I hope you like the redesigned site.

The main difference is in the redesigned home page, with a few links to some other Cornish sites that I hope you’ll enjoy. The picture galleries are redesigned into ‘Latest Pictures’ which are sets of new photographs that should be updated about weekly with the older ones disappearing after a few weeks. Best shots will then go into the Photo Archive section for permanent storage. I have selected my favourite pictures from last year to get things started, but many of the photos are either Margaret’s or Michael Dixon’s, as I had little time for photography in 2007. For those of you with a technical interest, I gave up using server-side gallery software for something a lot simpler and a lot easier to maintain. I hope you like the presentation. Any comments would be gratefully received.

I hope you like the idea of an occasional Newsletter. I’ll try to do one every three months or so. The local event calendar is starting to fill up a bit now too, I’ll keep that up to date as I do it for our own reference, so publishing it on the web is just an offshoot. If you’re thinking of a trip down here you can easily check to see if there’s anything on you fancy.

Hot news today is that the sale of our Rugby house, which should have happened tomorrow, is now on hold. Just our luck.

As you will have guessed, there just hasn’t been any time to do an update on all that’s been going on, or to post anything from the growing picture collection.

Unfortunately this isn’t going to change any time soon, as I have to go to Kent for a week or two.

Shortly after breakfast this morning we delivered Martin to St Erth station to begin the long train journey home.

He has been with us since the evening of 1st May, the day we got the keys to The May Trees, and has been of invaluable assistance over the last four weeks. Things would have been very much more difficult without his generous help.

The garden particularly is gradually coming under control thanks to a lot of Martin’s efforts, he’ll certainly be lot fitter now! We are also very pleased with a delightful date palm which was his parting gift. With a bit more global warming we might even manage to pick a few dates in a year or two.

We were all very happy to see John and Frances yesterday, when they ventured a bit further into Cornwall before returning home to Devon, after their weekend at the Newquay ‘Run-to-the-Sun’ event. They had survived the gales and heavy rain overnight on Sunday in their newly painted VW camper. We hope this will be the first visit of many.