January 7th and 8th and I’m up on the land to let in our tree and landscaping person and hang around for a while in the cold. We have never attended to the long border on the north side of the land. There are lots of brambles at one end and over the last 6 months or so at least two of the poplars have died and one has collapsed very close to the existing barn. Another is now at 45 degrees, so we need to act in advance – probably well in advance – of any building work starting.
I stayed a night at the very reasonable Brome Grange Best Western hotel, a couple of miles up the A140.
I am amazed at the strength of the tools that they use both to cut up and chip these trees. They did all the work in a day.
At first I was paralysed with cold or rather the prospect of getting colder and colder but I twigged that some early spring cleaning of the barn – sweeping out the leaves that always find their way in under the doors and cleaning the bird shit from the surfaces – warmed me up. It felt good to reconnect with the building and the whole space. I hadn’t been there for a while and things feel more in limbo, strangely, knowing that we will build here but not knowing when the initial demolition work will start and who will do it. Things move so slowly that I don’t even dare to anticipate that the building will start this year.
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