A Seedy and Friendly House

 I suppose that I am anti-perfection. I like things to be a little seedy, comfortable, and even a little stained. Imperfection is something to be desired in my life - just are straight lines. I don't feel right among the sparkling clean, where an accidental spillage of red wine, for instance, can be disaster and an embarrassment. 

I like to think that if you look after a house it will look after you. With that in mind I have been recently patching up our house a little. I leave electricity, plumbing and boiler work to professionals. The rest is between the house and me.

Sine the 1830s our house has been altered and repaired many times - sometimes only to improve parts of it for looks, possibly for sale, and often using inferior materials. 

So part of it are rotting or have rotted over the years. And those parts have also usually been patched up rather than replaced. 

Panels in our porch, for instance, were constructed using inferior composite, pressed board. These and their attachments have moved with the seasons of hot and cold, which has allowed rainwater to penetrate, soften and rot the wood.

To replace the whole of the construction would not only be disruptive but unnecessarily expensive. So I have dug away and extracted rotten bits, replaced some of it with hardwood, and filled gaps with plaster filler, with deeper areas backed with bubblewrap. 

To arrest further rot, holes have been drilled in specific places to allow air to flow in to dry filler and any remaining damp wood. Come the summer heat, those holes will help warm air to circulate where needed.

To stop further destruction by rainwater, outside cracks and crannies have been filled and then coated with mastic before being coated with paint.

But this is an old house resting on scant foundations over clay, so cracks tend to open and close with the weather. These are left to their own devices. And probably I am the only one who notices them.

Carpets and flooring surfaces are no longer wool and food for moths, but man-made fibres - with the exception of colourful Middle Eastern rugs (where red wine stains only complement the exotic patterns).

The house is well warmed in winter, but certain draughts from sash windows are allowed - only to let in fresh outside air to blend with and freshen the warm air inside. 

I allow this, as having once built a house in London's dockland and installed triple glazing facing the river Thames, patches of mould appear in the stagnant air inside and be the very devil to deal with. 

Here we have installed replacement windows at the top of the house with wonderful, double glazed, anodised aluminium windows. With the latest insulation under our newly slated roof, these improvements have made a great difference to heat insulation and retention in the house.

Our inside walls have not been touched for years as they hide behind paintings galore - mostly mine - and shelves of books.

A coating of pictures, and books read or unread, make a wonderful background to my preference for a certain amount of seediness and comfort in a house.

Bumblebees

Artists create things. That's the way we are.

This particular artist loves bumblebees, despite having been stung and partly paralysed by one in my youth.

However, they are almost essential for the pollination of crops both in wild nature and inside greenhouses. An angry one, caught in a window perhaps, can be nasty, but to have a peaceful one crawling over one's hand is a pleasure.

So I look after them, large or small, welcome them, and cherish them.

When Margreet looked through some internet search engines, we learned that in spring, pregnant bumblebees like a reasonably large nest box to bring up their brood of worker bees. Yet, when we were observing them pollinating fruit in Dutch greenhouses, the offered quarters there were small. But why?

Perhaps these small houses were only for when the bees wanted to hibernate in winter. We saw no breeding boxes where the pregnant queens, having left their winter quarters in springtime, are being offered large enough breeding hideaways to form a nest in which to bring up young.

So, having tried to entice them unsuccessfully in the past with papier-maché homes, I have now made hibernation places from a tin, a flower pot saucer, screwed to an outside wall, and an almost shoe box size wooden breeding home. These are waterproof, camouflaged, and made comfortable inside with cotton wool. 

Making the wooden bee house posed some problems as the wood, acquired from a rubbish dump, had once been moulded skirting board in a house.

But my design, using only available materials of sawn wood, nails glue, hinge and screws and a filling mixture of sawdust, sand and glue, took several days to construct and paint. With an entrance hole having a small landing platform outside it, I'm hoping for the best.

I like making homes for birds and insects. Sometimes they are even used, and hopefully appreciated. A brood of great tits flew the nest box successfully this year.