Barn on Burns Night

This is how the barn looks at the very end of January

Christmas in France

I was reminded that we had not put up any pictures of our break in France. This is Debbie and David's house nestling in the valley by a disused railway line. The house is a little railway cottage. All the buildings associated with the railway are similar in their architecture

Raise high the roof beams carpenters...

Naomi's graduation, January 2006

The graduand at breakfast time, before the conferring of the Vice-Chancellorial hand.

Our front garden under snow

Meanwhile, as a respite from our obsession with the barn, here is a nice pic that Naomi took which captures the structure of the french and scottish potager-influenced front garden (I'm thinking of Culross Castle and Villandry in particular, only about a hundredth of the scale!). Ok, it's in its infancy but I think it will work out fine. The box edging is doing particularly well.

This is how the barn looked at Christmas

Woody and Trevor had a week off, but when we came back from France on the 5th Jan it was even further on. Next pictures (when the light improves) will show the roof nearly complete! In the end, we were able to use the old pantiles from the original roof, augmented by another thousand old tiles that Trevor had, waiting for just such a job as this. Only the ridge tiles will be new, andthey will weather down very quickly. The oak doors, made by the same boatbuilders/carpenters that made our front gates are finished and ready to go on, too.