Our Community

We have lived in our special little corner of Wales for two and a half years, and gratitude for our house and the place we call home knows no bounds. 💜

Our first winter here, Tim spent hours digging through snow and frost to clear the front garden, which had seen better days. He removed old tree stumps, large rocks, and paving stones, and stored the rocks and paving stones in the back garden, just in case.

I have written before about the raised bed Tim built from railway sleepers, which we initially planted with roses. They weren’t happy and after gifting them on, we have planted a woodland garden. The anemones, fuschia, salvia and astilbe are thriving, and we have two agapanthas making an appearance this year.

In this idyll, if anyone has any hints and tips on how to stop the squirrels from eating all the bird seed from the feeders in the hedge, we would be grateful. They are remarkably clever at working out a way in and then hanging there till they have emptied all the feeder tubes. I have no faith that the squirrel-proof bird feeders work, and despite our best efforts to feed them their nuts in the back garden, they see everything as fair game!

Anyway, back to the rocks. When our neighbours opposite wanted to remove the rocks in front of their homes, we happily said we’d look after them. We then discovered one of these neighbours ran a garden landscape business with his dad, so we booked them to come and put a pretty fence up between our front garden and our next door neighbours. They were delightful company, and their work is wonderful.

New neighbours moved into the house on the corner opposite, and their front garden flower bed was full of large rocks. Tim and our neighbour spent a Sunday morning moving them across to ours, then we started making plans. We didn’t hesitate to ask our neighbour and his dad to return and build us a rockery in the side garden, adjacent to our workshop (picture above), next to our beautiful Acer tree.

This Acer tree is a favourite for our landscaping neighbour, as it’s the first thing he sees each day as he looks out of their bedroom window.

Tim and I had a great time at the garden centre late one Saturday afternoon after our friends had built the rockery, and on Sunday, we filled it with plants and mulched it with smooth and little pebbles, all saved in the back garden.

Loving recycling and community spirit. 💜