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| nice cat, though... |
Those of you who are paying close attention will have realised that over the last few weeks, our lovely summer garden has been essentially destroyed by a team of inept and careless drainage contractors.
I haven't talked about it much because it's been fairly painful, but they've "finished" (and I use that word in its loosest possible sense) and gone now, so I'll just give you a brief update.
For context, you should know that the house we've rented for the last 8 years or so, is a small, semi-detached farm cottage in the corner of a wheat field in a small hamlet in South Warwickshire.
It's very plain, with no mod cons, but is a beautiful place to live, especially in the better months of the year.
Two significant mod cons that it hasn't got would be a connection to the gas supply, and a connection to the sewage or drain systems.
With only electricity as a power source, we at least have the benefit of open fires all winter, which we really love, so we've learned to live with that one.
For drainage, our house and the one we're attached to are on a discrete system, with all of our storm water and foul waste feeding into a large, brick built septic tank underneath our car parking area.
There have been minor issues with this system for years (rodding blocked sewer pipes is not funny, believe me), and the landlord has now decided to replace it entirely. That is, a new, large, modern septic tank, and new pipework to both houses.
So far, so good...
But then as it turns out, that's as far as the good went - from that point on it has been a painful descent into what has now become kind of a hilarious purgatory.
The photo above shows our lawn where we socialise the most, and the little patio area where we (used to) barbecue. As you can see, the lawn is pretty much ruined, stones all over it, dead patches, nothing cleaned up - they didn't even brush the mud they got all over the decking off...
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| at least it's sunny |
...here's another section of the garden, which really doesn't do justice to the ridges, holes, dips and lumps that cover it all...
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| mud path |
...this is our main route in, the path from car park to house...the slabs are all broken or missing, and the ruination of the lawn continues throughout...
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| why, exactly? |
...this is where Anna parks her car - or where she used to park her car, when all of these slabs were intact...
That's just a few random samples - and I can tell you it looks much worse in real life...I could easily take another 20 or 30 shots of additional examples of the damage and destruction...
But it doesn't stop there...check out the ridiculously amateurish joining of the old system (the green downpipe) and the new...
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| seriously?! |
And these shots are how they left the job, when their remit was to leave it as it was, to make good the usual upset of laying some pipes.
As a reminder, the photo on this page gives a hint of how the garden felt before...watch the video with sound for the full effect of how lovely, peaceful and pretty it was here just a couple of short months ago...
Anyway I won't dwell on it, what's done is done. I'll hopefully have some more positive photos of whatever remedial work we can squeeze out of the landlord, before we give up and think about moving on.
Maybe we'll get a new lawn out of it...and a gate, and the car park resurfaced?!
It could happen!
I'll take that image forward with me, I think...if I expect it all to get sorted, and act and behave as though that will happen, it can only help to nudge the universe towards making it so...
It's going to be really nice when the carpark is mud free for the first time ever, and the lawn is smooth and easy to mow!
Can't wait!
;-)
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