Times have changed somewhat.  The top photo is taken from a drone. Didn’t know what a drone was 11 years ago and now they are multi tasking - some tasks good and others not so.  The second photo is of the foundations concreted.  This is exciting news for me, but I don’t expect it to be for anyone else reading this.

There have been times over the last 6 months especially when I have felt as if I was back in full time employment as a secretary - which was my profession decades ago.  We’ve had a long drawn out ‘conversation’ with the land registry, which we eventually won, and now I am knee deep in reports and surveys and trying to keep up with all the certification we need these days.  In years gone by for example  the only insulation we had to have was a few inches of fibreglass in the loft.  Now you are expected to live in a totally insulated box, where not a whiff of a draught or a mobile phone signal can enter.  And to protect our beloved walnut tree the foundations around it have had to be 2 metres deep.  And it’s got to have a fence around it while the building is going on.

We also have a large badger sett in our piece of woodland that we own next to our plot, which has to be considered in everything we do - quite rightly.  I saw one of the occupants a couple of weeks ago.  We’d had friends up for supper in the woods and I went back after they had all gone to bring a few things up to the house and a huge badger was snuffling around where we had been eating.  He didn’t see me so I just stood and watched him for several minutes.  He was magnificent, and it felt quite magical to see him so relaxed at midnight in our little wood where he and his ancestors have lived for at least the 40 years that we have owned this land.  Our main reason for staying where we are is the badger sett and our little woodland retreat.  If it weren’t for these things we would be looking for somewhere else to live.  I don’t like some of the things that are happening in our country and the way our politics is going - but that isn’t for this blog.  And when it gets too much for me I take myself off to a little secluded glade that we have and I sit and watch the birds making the most of our multiple bird feeders.  Such a variety of birds in our garden and I hope they are all going to move with us when we go - it isn’t very far - a few hundred yards. I regularly see jays, woodpeckers, every type of tit (pardon the expression) sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes and hawks, not to mention pheasants and partridges which I encourage to take refuge from the farmer’s gun.

It feels as if summer is over now and Autumn is making its  presence felt.  I like the Autumn but the rain has come at the wrong time for us really.  Because of the delays we have missed the long dry spell.  We had hoped to be all roofed in by now, but self build isn’t for the faint hearted and there are always hiccups along the way.  So wish us well and I’ll post some more photos soon  Hopefully they’ll be a bit more exciting and I’ll include some of our woods and garden.