The International Steam Pages |
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The Best Garden in Mitcheldean? |
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This is the 2015 index of the pages describing our very dull life in the UK since arriving in 2011. Having negotiated the maze of regulations designed to frustrate those wanting to bring a non-EU spouse into the UK, I am glad to say Yuehong is now the proud owner of a UK passport. I didn't upload a set of garden pages for 2014, suffice to say it looked rather better than it did in 2013. We were very busy not just maintaining other gardens around us but also taking advantage of unbelievably fine weather to travel the country visiting steam fairs, something we continued in 2015. Click here for the main 'Life in the UK' index page. For most people in the UK the prospect of taking on a property built up 33 steps on a 30 degree slope would be a nightmare. For us, it's proved both a challenge and a delight. This is our fifth summer (2015), the first started late for us in June 2011 and was spent cutting away the growth of two years near total neglect. It was dry as the seasons go in these parts by which I mean the moss had trouble making any progress. 2012 was the most miserable summer imaginable, it was cold and wet almost continuously. 2013 had as bad a start as can be imagined, but this set up the later months very nicely, 2014 was a year of sunshine and consolidation and 2015, has allowed time to sit back and enjoy the spectacle, apart from some late fungus, it's all gone very well indeed. After a good start, the weather turned cooler and wetter and everything slowed down. September and October were then quite pleasant, the first frosts being later than normal, November being rather dull and dreary.
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Rob and Yuehong Dickinson
Email: webmaster@internationalsteam.co.uk