Yesterday morning I took one car load of the massed debris from the shrubs I attacked earlier in the year to the dump. I then moved all the rest of it up closer to the house, onto the concrete bit, so that I see it every time I look out of the back windows. Second load went today. There'll only be another 2 or 3, and this from a garden the size of a postage stamp!

I have been in touch with the planning officer about exactly what stone the new build should be in, and he's sending a conservation officer out. Don't know when. I let both builders know what's happening, and the one I have already got a quote from has just taken me out to see some of the work he's recently done in the stone they were suggesting. The only problem he knows with using the recycled sandstone is that you only get the sort they have been demolishing recently, and you don't know what it will be like till you get it delivered! If they say it has to bein the local whin stone (a form of granite, I think) it will cost a lot more because it's harder work to lay it, and it comes in irregular shapes.

I have also manage to vac up most of the debris from dragging old branches through the house!

Andrea