The Drunken Boat

So with the project about to move into the realms of big things happening (big diggers, big lorries and big cranes) we’ve just quietly been getting on with some smaller, long-term aspects of the project.

Firstly we have taken delivery of our green willow fencing plants that we are required to put in along our site boundary to hide our acoustic fencing behind. Apparently our fence would destroy the visual amenity for locals as they wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the neon green BP filling station that is our immediate neighbour as it towers over the entire area.

We were lucky that our chosen day for planting turned out to be a lovely sunny late autumn one. The planting itself wasn’t a whole heap of joy as the other side of the timber fencing that forms our boundary is a dense hedge and trees planted by highways 25 years ago and now has a well established root network just under the soil which needed digging through. We’re going to need to keep on top of the watering as well to help our newly planted friends thrive in the first year or two.

Another long-term detail that might, at the moment, seem very small is getting some spring planting dropped in to our native hedging that we planted up in early spring. Managed to get some wild daffs in which will take a few years to establish but the sooner they’re in, the sooner the site will be less of a building plot.

Away from the nature and we have been able to peg out the location of our barge for the first time! This had to wait due to a requirement for a minor material amend to our planning application as we’d changed the type of barge we were using and it’s location within the site. Now it’s all pegged out we spend most of our time on site excitedly pretending to walk in a out of the doors and hanging-out in the kitchen area. Did I mention that our LPA had destroyed our minds…….??