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Selling a house...
I'm absolutely knackered.
We're in the process of putting Molly's house on the market. We'd love to keep it as it holds many happy memories, but the family member living in Kent would not be able to afford to buy the rest out and those living in Dorset and elsewhere can't live in it as it's too far from work and family.
So, it goes up for sale, although my brother-in-law will continue to live there until we find a buyer, so the house won't be empty.
It's an old house. The oldest part of it has massive thick stone walls and 500 years ago it was a grain store for the mill next door. Later parts are half-timbered and have been everything from a forge to a pub. In the last century it was a dairy and you can still see features like the dip well in the garden that was used for cooling milk churns.
Every generation to live there has made changes and additions. Molly did a lot of research into the history of the house - even gave a talk to members of the local history society.
Her talk ended with: "Future owners of this house and large cottage garden will undoubtedly continue to alter things just as each family has in the past."
Which is a rather nice way of saying that future owners should not feel that they have to preserve a fossil from the past. They will doubtless do revolutionary things like introducing central heating and an upstairs toilet and other modern amenities...
We took the estate agent's advice and did massive de-cluttering and cleaning and moved various items of furniture. We cleaned all the windows, which made an amazing difference all on its own.
But most of our four days in Kent were spent in the garden. Molly's garden is very big and a real delight. It's an informal, partly wild garden that contains many interesting varieties of plants. She was a real plants-woman. There are many different varieties of garden plants like hellibores, geums, geraniums, pulmonarias, etc. as well as wild flowers like purple loosestrife, honesty, foxgloves, yellow loosestrife, primroses and more.
She managed all of this (apart from mowing the lawn and cutting the hedge) until she was in her mid-eighties and suffering from loss of vision and anemia. She loved her garden. People used to ask her why she didn't move somewhere with a smaller garden, but she always replied that it was the garden that kept her going.
The last year or two, she also had a gardener (Not the lawn and hedge man), a real gardener, the kind who can identify plants like burgenia, london pride and three different varieties of mint.
Sadly, last week he got a full time gardening job somewhere else and can't do the Dairy House garden any longer. And on only two hours a fortnight, he was only able to do a reasonable job - some sections were getting a bit overgrown.
Advertising for a gardener has so far produced two applications without the necessary plant knowledge - one was honest enough to admit she didn't after she'd looked at the garden and the other failed the phone interview in spite of trying to claim she could do it. Her definition of a weed would have removed virtually every self-seeded plant in the garden. Farewell love-in-a-mist, forget-me-not, etc.
So, in lieu of anyone else, Richard and I spent many hours weeding. Because we do know our plants. Molly taught us. Many of the plants in my own garden came from her and she loved showing me round her garden and talking about the different things growing there.
It's June and the garden looks fabulous.
I do so hope that the eventual buyer is a keen gardener (really, they'd be crazy to buy the place if they aren't). I'll not have any regrets if the house is changed, much though I love it, but it would really hurt if that wonderful garden was turned into a couple of tennis courts and a swimming pool.
We're in the process of putting Molly's house on the market. We'd love to keep it as it holds many happy memories, but the family member living in Kent would not be able to afford to buy the rest out and those living in Dorset and elsewhere can't live in it as it's too far from work and family.
So, it goes up for sale, although my brother-in-law will continue to live there until we find a buyer, so the house won't be empty.
It's an old house. The oldest part of it has massive thick stone walls and 500 years ago it was a grain store for the mill next door. Later parts are half-timbered and have been everything from a forge to a pub. In the last century it was a dairy and you can still see features like the dip well in the garden that was used for cooling milk churns.
Every generation to live there has made changes and additions. Molly did a lot of research into the history of the house - even gave a talk to members of the local history society.
Her talk ended with: "Future owners of this house and large cottage garden will undoubtedly continue to alter things just as each family has in the past."
Which is a rather nice way of saying that future owners should not feel that they have to preserve a fossil from the past. They will doubtless do revolutionary things like introducing central heating and an upstairs toilet and other modern amenities...
We took the estate agent's advice and did massive de-cluttering and cleaning and moved various items of furniture. We cleaned all the windows, which made an amazing difference all on its own.
But most of our four days in Kent were spent in the garden. Molly's garden is very big and a real delight. It's an informal, partly wild garden that contains many interesting varieties of plants. She was a real plants-woman. There are many different varieties of garden plants like hellibores, geums, geraniums, pulmonarias, etc. as well as wild flowers like purple loosestrife, honesty, foxgloves, yellow loosestrife, primroses and more.
She managed all of this (apart from mowing the lawn and cutting the hedge) until she was in her mid-eighties and suffering from loss of vision and anemia. She loved her garden. People used to ask her why she didn't move somewhere with a smaller garden, but she always replied that it was the garden that kept her going.
The last year or two, she also had a gardener (Not the lawn and hedge man), a real gardener, the kind who can identify plants like burgenia, london pride and three different varieties of mint.
Sadly, last week he got a full time gardening job somewhere else and can't do the Dairy House garden any longer. And on only two hours a fortnight, he was only able to do a reasonable job - some sections were getting a bit overgrown.
Advertising for a gardener has so far produced two applications without the necessary plant knowledge - one was honest enough to admit she didn't after she'd looked at the garden and the other failed the phone interview in spite of trying to claim she could do it. Her definition of a weed would have removed virtually every self-seeded plant in the garden. Farewell love-in-a-mist, forget-me-not, etc.
So, in lieu of anyone else, Richard and I spent many hours weeding. Because we do know our plants. Molly taught us. Many of the plants in my own garden came from her and she loved showing me round her garden and talking about the different things growing there.
It's June and the garden looks fabulous.
I do so hope that the eventual buyer is a keen gardener (really, they'd be crazy to buy the place if they aren't). I'll not have any regrets if the house is changed, much though I love it, but it would really hurt if that wonderful garden was turned into a couple of tennis courts and a swimming pool.
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Then again, I tend to go for "if it's pretty, it's not a weed". I mean, really, the fundamental definition of a weed is: a plant I don't want.
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I assume she's never waged war with a dandelion...
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There's a house down the road from me which has a fabulous (for inner London) garden, but one of the owners died and the other is being placed in a home, meaning that the house is on the market. I'll be very saddened if it goes to someone who doesn't want to keep the garden going.
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Plants like forget-me-nots wander around and find different homes each year. They don't take over and they're polite.
I love the phrase 'wandering plants'.
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I have to extract at least 50% of them before they get to flower each year just to keep them in some kind of reasonable bounds....
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Molly would be grateful to you all for all the effort!
This garden sounds like a gardener´s dream - together with all that work. Again, I hope only an owner who loves gardening will buy the house.
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