Before:

After:

No – I understand that this may seem like a bit of a theme, but we really don’t have anything against trees! We did, however, have a particularly large False Acacia in the front garden which was ill-placed and dieing.

When we originally purchased the house, I thought it might be a good idea to look at doing something with the tree, but living in a conservation area, all the trees are protected so I was doubtful we’d actually be allowed to do anything. However, over the summer, it became more and more apparent that the tree was unwell as it began to drop larger and larger branches at random.

I got in touch with our local tree officer who was excellent. Having inspected the tree, Havering confirmed it was potentially dangerous and should be removed. Another irreversible change made to Oakleigh.. still heading in the right direction I hope!

Amazingly the sun was shining on a British bank holiday and given we weren’t stuck in a traffic jam somewhere by the sea side, we decided to tackle that other bank holiday tradition – the garden.

Or more specifically, the front garden. We’d not really touched it since moving in 6 months ago and the house was beginning to verge on the abandoned looking from the street.

Shortly after moving in, we’d taken a couple of conifers down that were against next doors garage. Only after they’d come down did we discover that they were really all that was holding up the side gate. After a few strong gusts of wind, I’d resorted to rope and bits of the broken gate to secure it.

I was in 2 minds whether to blog about repairing the gate since I use repair in the loosest possible terms. It’s highly likely that when we start the building work (if we ever start the building work), the gate and side fence will have to go, so I was loathe to spend any real money fixing it properly. Once I’d removed the securing rope and cross bar piece of wood, the whole thing collapsed allowing me to properly survey the scene. Both the gate post and fence post against next doors garage had rotted through completely at the bottom, although I was delighted to discover that both had deep concrete slots that they had once fitted into. I thought momentarily about just re-using the old posts and dropping them back into the holes with the result that they would be slightly shorter than before and then the gods sent me a message. A strong gust of wind caught the old fence post which I’d propped up against the garage and sent it careering towards me. With a long rusty nail sticking out the back of it, it neatly tore a gash down the length of my t-shirt at the back. Counting myself lucky I had someone escaped a trip to A&E, I decided to opt for something almost as painful and braved B&Q on a bank holiday monday. Fortunately, someone must have been smiling on me today as they had both the gate post and the fence post in stock in the right size. Armed with them and a pack of decent, but frighteningly expensive, screws I headed back home. What better excuse than a glorious sunny day to crack open the circular saw. An hour or so of heaving and faffing around later – my temporary fix was in place. Hopefully it’ll last me out until the end of the year. Something felt very wrong about nailing back the rotten old featherboard to the sturdy new posts, but at least it all blends in and my repair is seamless to the untrained eye. (Well from the front anyway).

The rest of the afternoon was spent tidying up the beds and weeding the drive. I can’t claim much credit for that as Lu spent pretty much the entire day on her hands and knees on the gravel turning what had practically become a lawn, back into our drive. 8 Green sacks of cuttings later – we’re looking sort of presentable again at the front. Well, apart from the render of course!