From kitchen to pond

Describing the steady progress made with tiling our kitchen walls is of no real interest to anyone not directly involved so we will not dwell on it any more here. Hanging over us throughout the whole process is the 'Have we ordered enough tiles?' question, something which any kitchen fitter regularly faces. As it turns out we find ourselves with a whole box left unused, which naturally begs the question, 'Where else can we put them?'

Anyway, that's both sides of the kitchen completed decoratively and on the end walls, where we decided we needed to add some colour to the otherwise grey/white palate, we are very pleased with the effect we have achieved. A recent visitor remarked that we were steadily bringing our home decor into the twenty first century, a comment that we were delighted to hear.

This could be the last kitchen picture ever to appear here. The inset shows where we started just over twelve months ago. Job done!

So moving on...

It has been some months since our garden pond featured in this blog so perhaps it is time for an update. No? Well here it is anyway.

Our rear garden is on a slope, from the back fence down to the house, so any pond was always going to have to be a hole in the ground with a dam below it, a soil bank, to contain the water. As it turned out our wet climate ensured that the hole filled with water from the moment it was dug and originally we thought it might retain a certain level of water without the need for a liner. But when a dry spell last spring reduced it to a muddy puddle we decided a plastic liner would be needed after all. Then, in order to keep the pond water level constant, we fitted an overflow pipe which took away the surplus, all of which seemed to work well until the real rains started in September.

Suddenly, almost overnight, the pond liner started rising, forced upwards by the pressure of the ground water from beneath. How this could be happening in a sloping garden seems to defy logic but the effect of this was that as the plastic liner rose higher the water inside the pond was forced out through the overflow until almost nothing was left. The pond life which had spent the summer months galavanting about above and below the surface were now living in a shallow puddle, if they survived at all. Even large rocks placed into the pond (rocks being heavier than water) failed to counter the pressure from beneath - they too were being lifted up! All this goes to show is how little we know about what is happening beneath our feet. There are forces at work that we could never imagine.

Initial attempts to try to relieve the pressure from below by poking a long metal spike horizontally into the ground below the dam in an effort to create a passage for the ground water to escape had no effect at all. More rain arrived and despite it falling into the pond itself, this was always countered by more pressure from below so nothing changed. 

After much contemplation we realised that it is merely a matter of balance between two opposing forces. The pond overflow is constantly draining away the excess water and this means that as the pressure from below increases, it lifts the liner and more pond water flows out of the overflow.  It follows that as this happens the weight of water in the pond decreases so it is unable to resist the force from below. It took a while but once the simple logic of this was recognised the solution became clear. The pond overflow pipe had to go.

The result was almost instantaneous. Several days of heavy rainfall and the pond had water in it again, the liner having being squashed down under the weight. We now have a pond, deeper than planned, but one with water in it. When it fills now (which doesn't take long given the rainforest climate here) the weight of water in the pond increases to counter those hidden and mysterious underground forces. Eventually the pond water will overflow the edge of liner and the excess will run down into the boggy area further down the garden. This is now a small wetland that we will keep suitably unkempt in the hope that this might be attractive to some other wild creatures.

As autumn moves on and winter sets in there is little to see from our observation perch beside the pond. The pond skaters have all gone although there is still the odd beetle scuttling about beneath the surface. The wild plants (commonly described as weeds) surrounding the pond have extended across the water (as intended) in the space of less than a year but we must wait until next year for what we'd really like to see... frogspawn. Should there happen to be a lady frog passing nearby we can just hope she might be attracted to our fledgling wildlife haven. Would a 'Frogs Are Welcome Here' sign help?

Kitchen distractions

One day there's a knock at the front door... it's a delivery, something we are expecting. A pallet is shuffled off the back of a lorry and lowered onto the road. On it there are seven heavy boxes tightly wrapped in plastic, each one needing to be carried up our many steps and into the house. They are all marked with the words Revestimiento Ceramico and each one contains 44 smooth white tiles which, with an additional bundle of 10 more, adds up to 318. Each of these now has to be fastened to one or other of the walls in our kitchen.

The first question might be as to whether to call this a 'project' or a 'job' but the answer comes easily when we decide where to fasten the first tile and immediately realise that it will need a piece cut out of it so it will go around the first of the many wall mounted power sockets. This definitely makes it a project, one that will take many days and a considerable amount of time and patience. At the end of the third day we still have 281.5 tiles left in their boxes but at least one of the most difficult sections of wall, the one with most wall sockets, is covered. Sticking whole tiles to a wall is considerably quicker than fiddling an odd shaped piece around a power socket but even so the numbers are still pretty daunting.

We are, of course, under no pressure to complete the project at this point as we have a fully functioning kitchen. Life can continue as normal, one would think, although there is always something nagging when it comes to an unfinished project. Nevertheless when our charity coast walking friends need help for their progress around the coast of Wester Ross (one of the most remote areas on the west coast of Scotland) we decide this should take precedence over tiling and we set off north in Martin. Two days later we find ourselves in a blast of bitterly cold air from the east which takes our breath away and makes us question the decision but after wrapping up in enough layers to insulate a frog we realise that this is an opportunity to explore the wild terrain we have driven into. 

So off we go, and without meeting a living soul we climb up into a gorge then, pausing for breath beside a crystal clear torrent, it becomes clear why we set off. The wildness of the place just blows us away.

The waterfall is an added bonus.

Thankfully the bitter cold moderated after a few days and we were able to recover. In all we spend more than a week lending a hand by driving two campervans, Martin and Nancy, from place to place along the wildest coastline in Britain. This involves negotiating tiny single track roads where a single wheel off the tarmac could spell disaster but the views around each corner take our breath away and the sunsets each night are simply stunning.

Our keen walker friends set off early each day and once we had moved their campervan, Nancy, to their expected finish point we have plenty of time to set off exploring on our own.

This is a place of big skies and big mountains, the terrain being rocky and difficult to traverse on foot but it has never failed to take our breath away each time we have visited. There are glimpses of deer, who tend to keep their distance, unlike the sheep who will wander about on the road or lie beside the footpaths which wander off into the hills. The history of this landscape is full of sadness, crofters driven from their homes by greedy landowners, but there are still plenty who choose to live here, making their living in other ways.

We took our leave from Nancy and her owners beside the lighthouse at Stoer in Sutherland, a halfway point in their round the coast walk. It could be argued that a campervan of this size is totally unsuitable for the narrow single track roads of the north west Highlands and after having for the last week driven around many tight corners on roads with rocks bulging out on either side I would be the first to agree. At least we had a specific reason for doing it and there were similar vehicles of this size so clearly there are others who feel it is quite acceptable.