Conservatory

The people who bought Marshall’s house next door want to build an extension that will come right to the property line. They want to take down the hedge between our properties. That is what one side of our conservatory looks onto. Looking onto a fence isn’t as attractive. I spent parts of the past two days cleaning the conservatory, where the cats spend the night and most of their days. I let them into the house only when I can supervise them because they have claws that could be used to wreck our furniture, and their fur gets all over everything, and they trail cat litter around, and they vomit occasionally. Nonetheless I do love my kitties. They spend most afternoons sleeping in the living room while I work.

We’d like to upgrade the conservatory to a four-season room (and put a solid wall where the windows now look out on the neighbour’s). I got an estimate last week of 35,000 pounds. So that isn’t going to happen. But we are considering removing the grapevine, which is an interesting conversation piece but creates a year-round mess.

This picture was probably from August. Most of the grapes had a fungus this year. I’d say maybe 20% were good, most of which I gave away. Part of the cleaning job was wiping mold off all the window frames (the grapevine generates a lot of moisture) and picking squashed grapes out of cat bedding. I swept up lots of leaves and, within days, the floor was covered with leaves again.
And here is how the conservatory looked after I trimmed the grapevine.

From this photo you can see the hedge in the background that would go away with the neighbour’s extension. And you can see that the conservatory is basically a storage room--cat beds, litter pans, bikes and paint cans.
10-23