On 8/9/07 16:09, in article , "David
(Normandy)" wrote:
If the Russian vine let's everything else thrive. It really is a monster!
I would never use it myself but in the OP's case, given that she's looking
into someone else's garden from her own, I think using one of those would
give nothing but trouble to both parties. He won't be too happy when his
new sapling hedging is eaten by the Russian vine......
--
Sacha
I planted the Russian vine in the least favourable position of all the
climbers. The barn faces South so the sun lovers are all on that side. The
passion flower is loving it's position. The Russian vine was relegated to
the North facing side of the building. It put on quite a spurt initially
reaching the top of the wall (about 20 feet) then strangely has stopped
growing with a number of it's leaves turning rust or red coloured. It is
almost as though it has decided it has grown enough for one year or that
Autumn is here so time to throttle back.
The roof of the barn (what remains of it) is huge and very steep, covered in
rusty corrugated tin sheets. I'm hoping that at least one of the climbers
will be able to tolerate growing over them without baking in the Summer sun.
The rusty tin sheets are really ugly. I may post a photo some time - the
barn is quite a monstrosity at the moment. The weathered stone walls and
ancient wooden doors / windows have charm but the tin sheets completely
spoil the look. Needless to say the barn is beyond renovation. It would cost
a fortune to do anything with and is not financially viable. So a "romantic
ruin" is it's only future as it slowly crumbles away.
David.
It sounds extremely pretty, actually, David. Some friends of ours have a
little and very old manor house on Dartmoor, all built from local stone,
which used to belong to Drake and his family. It had some of those lovely,
old stone pigsties and when they bought the place, parts of the barn and all
of the pigsties were pretty tumbledown. They didnšt have enough money then
to chuck at the whole project and coming home one night, they let the big
gate clang to a bit too hard. There was a low rumbling noise and a huge
billow of dust and the pigsties collapsed before their eyes! In the end,
having been widowed very, very sadly, the wife restored the barn and finally
got planning to let her put an interior door through from her kitchen into
it (there had been a window there once, for some reason) and she turned the
pigsties into the sort of thing you describe. It hasn't been gussied up at
all but one wall has been carefully reconstructed but left roofless and it's
there that they have barbecues or tea on summer days. The rest of the pile
has all sorts of things rambling and scrambling over it and very pretty it
looks, too.
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'