In eight days time it will be the Wedding Day of our elder daughter Jenny and Peter Olds – a friend she has known for many years and we have known his parents for even longer!! A reception at home is a wonderful idea and it is great fun sprucing up outdoors – and a fine excuse to get more jobs done!!

The marquee field is looking quite magnificent

and Pete has a friend who has a tractor and mowers and rollers booked for monday. He is determined to have stripes even! The 2 sheep in the neighbouring field have decided that the grass is definitely greener the other side of the fence so David amongst all the other pre wedding jobs has had to do a section of re-fencing to persuade them otherwise. Oh dear can you imagine the havoc that 2 sheep could create in a marquee overnight? – doesn’t bear thinking about!!!!

The new track and grass on the farm buildings side of the bridge is also looking good. Another area for a picnic table for our cottage guests I feel and you would never think that a few months ago this was 1m deep trenches for the ground source heat pump pipes for Toad Hall!

Toad Hall ground source heat pump area

New gravel was laid and raked yesterday between Toad Hall and the barn – a useful sized car parking area

More brown bread ice cream to make and more cream bunting for the entrance drive to create still – to mention but a few pre wedding tasks yet!

Moving weekend has been and gone and we have picked up David’s Uncle and his carefully selected possessions from his bungalow in Heamoor (just past Mounts Bay School on the way up to Trengwainton Gardens – for the interest of our regulars who visit these gardens and the delightful tearooms   at least once but often several times during their stay – for some it is rather like a pilgrimage!) and deposited him in Toad Hall.

The third and final seal of the much admired silver travertine floor was done at 10.30 pm on thursday night after I had returned from a ‘girls in the workroom’  supper in Newlyn and it  looked positively resplendent on friday morning.

Silver travertine floor in the living and dining area

The living area curtains were hung on the friday night – a busy evening as it just happened to be my birthday too and we raced between our dining table and Toad Hall,  hanging curtains in between courses as Morwenna (younger daughter) had kindly offered to make soup and bread rolls and a birthday cake to celebrate and Graham (on the right in the picture) who was the builder and creator of Toad Hall had also kindly offered to come and assist with the final touches – the curtains. One couldn’t resist either of theses offers, naturally!

The very useful horse trailer was the Pickfords vehicle and David and his elder brother Paul were the men in green coats with Jenny, Paul’s wife Bernie  and myself flitting between pack and despatch and receive and arrange! Uncle Kenneth was overseeing the whole operation and guiding us ‘young ones’.

I mean – ‘ how simple and effortless can this whole moving thing be?!!!!!!’

I’ve arrived!

So, apart from a few things in the wrong house still – he decided he would cook himself a Boscrowan egg  on his first night to practice using his new induction hob and realised then that his egg cups were in his old bungalow – to name just one example that we heard of, it all went pretty seamlessly.

How very worthwhile it has all been, hopefully and we hope he enjoys his new life down with us as much as we will enjoy having him and his wise words and ideas and great sense of humour!

September is nearly over and we’re enjoying wonderful weather still. At the end of last week watching Iolanthe at the Minack Theatre under a full moon which cast its light over the sea and a simply amazing production of this Gilbert and Sullivan favourite and I thought yet again what a wonderful place to live – we have so many fabulous places so close to Boscrowan. It is a real privilege to live here.

We have virtually completed the  ‘uncle annexe’ ( same as Granny it’s just we have an Uncle!) overlooking the pond at the end of my workroom and it has been named – Toad Hall. After all, in The Wind in The Willows, Toad declared it the finest house on the riverbank and indeed it is.  Underfloor heating fuelled by a  ground source heat pump, floor to ceiling glass on the South elevation overlooking the pond, silver travertine floor, oak windows and doors, a growing sedum roof above the living area, 100 square metres of patio in sandstone which David is at this moment laying  and we have a home that we all want to go and live in!

Room with a view

After a tidy up it now looks like this –

Toad Hall living and dining area – view to the pond

But we are still awaiting the double ended free standing bath –   tomorrow we hope!

More pictures to follow soon.

Curtains to hang this week, the long patio to finish, some external lights beside the oak pillars and a few small tasks and the move is planned for this coming weekend.

Then we have  the wedding of eldest daughter Jenny to Peter in four weeks time at Madron Church with the reception in a marquee in the field that you can often find the horses in – just over the bridge beyond the buildings. The field in question is being harrowed and rolled and generally spruced up in readiness, I am praying that the wonderful Old Man’s Beard (wild clematis) in some of our hedgerows will still be around to use with the flower decorations and that I can squeeze a few more weeks of splendour from the hanging baskets around the cottages. Flower dead heading has now even more purpose than usual.

Our delightful guests who left yesterday requested more blog posts from me as they love keeping up on our news and activities. Now Toad Hall is almost finished perhaps I’ll find some more time for this.