garden

The first five months of 2026

My home, Stará Oleška 44, 19th May 2026 © Ricky Yates

I know, I know, there hasn’t been a blog post since early January. Sadly, good intentions to write one have never come to fruition – until now! So here’s a bit of what’s been happening since I returned from Zermatt on New Year’s Eve 2025.

Health update

Let’s start with the good news!

Unlike in the UK, where when you reach the age of seventy, you have to self-declare that you are still fit to drive if you want to retain your driving license, in the Czech Republic, you are required to pass a medical examination. And the process starts five years earlier, on reaching your sixty-fifth birthday. A further examination is then required at age sixty-eight and every two years thereafter.

On 5^th January 2026, a few weeks before my seventy-fourth birthday, I was medically examined by my GP and deemed fit to drive my car for a further two years, until the day before my seventy-sixth birthday in February 2028. I had to pay CZK 1100/GBP 39.15 for the privilege as it is one of the few things not covered by my otherwise totally free healthcare. But without having the resultant certificate, my car insurance would be invalid.

Also on a positive note, my INR, (level of thinness of my blood), has now fully settled down having been seriously disrupted by taking antibiotics to treat my Erysipelas infection. I am back to only needing to have it checked once every six weeks.

On the downside, the swelling of the lower part of my left leg, which never completely subsided following my Erysipelas infection has partially returned. I am back to taking anti-inflammatory tablets again to try and bring it under control. It subsides overnight but returns soon after getting out of bed each day. A further consultation with my GP will take place on Friday 26^th June along with the regular check of my INR.

House

Over a period of several weeks from late March to mid-May, the father and son team of K & K renovace nemovitostí have renewed the cladding & improved the insulation of the enclosed verandah at the front of my house. Why it took so long to complete is another story 😉 but the end result is excellent.

Rainwater-damaged cladding © Ricky Yates

What prompted this work was me asking Karel junior if they could repair this damaged section of the existing cladding, alongside the steps to the front door. Whilst he said they could repair it, he suggested that it would be much better to undertake a complete renovation of the whole exterior of the enclosed verandah and, as part of the work, improve the insulation. As in previous posts about the renovation of my house, I’ll let the photographs do most of the talking.

Stará Oleška 44 before renovation work on the enclosed verandah © Ricky Yates

The photograph above shows what the front of the house looked like before work commenced.

Insulation material attached to the exterior sides of the enclosed verandah © Ricky Yates

Insulation material was inserted on the three exterior sides of the enclosed verandah, held in place by wire. Then a couple of wooden batons were attached to hold the new cladding.

Insulation material covered by a waterproof membrane © Ricky Yates

All the new insulation material was then covered by a waterproof membrane.

Insulation being inserted between the roof and the ceiling of the enclosed verandah © Ricky Yates

Fresh insulation material was also inserted between the roof and the ceiling of the enclosed verandah.

New cladding was then attached.

The cause of the damage to the old cladding, as seen in the photograph at the beginning of this section, was rainwater dripping from the small gutter on the side of the perspex shelter above the front door, onto the steps and then splashing onto the wooden cladding.

New shelter over the front steps © Ricky Yates

So the old perspex shelter has been removed and a more extensive shelter erected over the front steps, with a gutter and downpipe to take rainwater well away from the new cladding.

Garden

A year ago, I discovered a tree surgeon called Michal who lives locally to me in Decín. He is the husband of Marcela who I’ve known for a few years through her teaching English classes held at the Hussite Church in Podmokly, the western part of Decín. Michal doesn’t have a word of English but communication via Marcela has worked perfectly 🙂

Michal working up in the poplar tree © Ricky Yates

Fallen branches stuck in the poplar tree © Ricky Yates

In June 2025, he cut down the branches of the poplar tree that were hanging over the roof of my house, as well as removing two branches that had snapped off in a storm but were still caught up in the tree. He also seriously reduced part of the massive walnut tree in my back garden.

Michal working on my walnut tree © Ricky Yates

Through Marcela, I asked him to return this Spring, as he had previously said it would be the best time for him to work on the trees, and complete the reduction of the walnut tree.

He also said that the poplar tree should cut right down drastically, assuring me that it would survive and sprout again. As it is very close to the house, I agreed to his suggestion.

One benefit of having all this work done has been the creation of a considerable new supply of firewood for next winter which Michal has kindly cut up and stacked in my woodshed. And I am hopeful that I will experience another benefit this coming Autumn with a much smaller leaf fall to rake and clear up.

Walnut tree 13th June 2026 © Ricky Yates

Poplar tree 13th June 2026 © Ricky Yates

Here are two photographs, taken yesterday, showing that both trees are still flourishing.

English-language ministry at the Dresden Frauenkirche

The Coventry Cross of Nails/Nagelkreuz on the Frauenkirche altar © Ricky Yates

As I have explained previously, one of the two main reasons that the Church of England in Germany, was offered a monthly evening English-language Anglican service at the Frauenkirche, twenty years ago, is the strong links the Frauenkirche has with Coventry Cathedral through the Community of the Cross of Nails. Being born in Coventry and living and being educated in the city until the age of eighteen, makes my English-language ministry at the Frauenkirche very significant to me.

With John Witcombe, Dean of Coventry Cathedral © Ricky Yates

Over the past couple of years, I have got to know John Witcombe, the Dean of Coventry Cathedral, through his visit to Dresden in February 2025 and by attending worship at Coventry Cathedral when I’ve been in the UK.

With Bishop Sophie Jelley at the Frauenkirche 26th October 2025 © Ricky Yates

More recently, the new Bishop of Coventry, Sophie Jelley, a fellow graduate of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford 🙂 made her first visit to Dresden on Sunday 26^th October 2025 and was the preacher at the Festgottesdienst, celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the consecration of the rebuilt Frauenkirche. I attended the service and got to meet her afterwards.

Over Easter 2026, I made my first UK visit of this year and worshiped at Coventry Cathedral on Easter Sunday morning. Dean John was the celebrant and +Sophie the preacher at the Eucharist and she recognised me in the congregation and greeted me warmly at the Peace. In her sermon, +Sophie spoke of her first visit to the Frauenkirche and of the shared ministry of reconciliation. It has been a real privilege to be a part of the significant relationship between the Cathedral of my home city and the Frauenkirche where I minister.

Having updated my safeguarding training and once more proved my lack of criminality in the Czech Republic, earlier this year, my Bishop’s Permission to Officiate (PTO) was renewed for a further three years, meaning I can continue to lead worship and preach in my active retirement. I’m very much looking forward to my next service at the Frauenkirche on the evening of Sunday 21^st June when we will be celebrating the twentieth anniversary of English-language Anglican services, the first ever service being held on Sunday 18^th June 2006.

The view from the Beatenberg Conference Centre © Ricky Yates

I remain very grateful to the Intercontinental Church Society for their continued prayer support of my Dresden ministry. At the end of April, I was again able to attend their annual Chaplain’s conference held in Beatenberg, near Interlaken, in Switzerland. A lovely mixture of good teaching, fellowship and relaxation and you can’t really beat the view from my bedroom window 🙂

Yours Truly at the Rhine Falls/ Rheinfall © Ricky Yates

On my way back from the conference, I broke my journey, staying overnight in Bülach, near Zürich, meeting up with my friend Benedikt who I first met in Bavaria in 2004, when he was only sixteen years old. On the following morning, I drove us to Neuhausen am Rheinfall on the Swiss-German border and visited the impressive Rheinfall/ Rhine Falls where Benedikt kindly took this photograph of me. He then got the train back to Bülach and I drove on to Stará Oleška.

Postscript

There are several more things I could write about, particularly from my UK visit where I met up with both of my sisters as well as my two adult children and four grandchildren, watched Coventry City beat Derby County 3 – 2 at the CBS Arena, and at great expense, obtained a new British passport in Peterborough. But I want to get this published before it becomes six months since my last post.

Summer 2020

Your Truly on 5th November 2020 © Kát’a Burešová

I must start by making a serious apology for not posting anything here for five and a half months 🙁 I will not make any excuses. Instead, here is a new post about what has been happening over these past Summer months and a promise to resume writing more regularly in the coming weeks.

In contrast to the Summer of both 2018 and 2019, this past Summer has not been so excessively hot and we have had far more rainfall. Across the Czech Republic in June, rainfall was double the average for the month. Throughout the Summer, the Labe/Elbe maintained a decent level, allowing the passage of commercial craft, unlike in the two previous years. My grass has also remained green and has immediately shot back up, each time I’ve mown it!

Cooler temperatures have encouraged and enabled me to make further progress in my garden. Even better, I finally found someone capable and willing to complete a number of tasks that have been beyond my capabilities – a man called František.

František lives with his wife Andrea and their three children, in the upstairs part of a house on the end of a public building, within sight of my house. Earlier this Summer, Andrea found me on Facebook and asked to be my Facebook friend. Through this link, I discovered that her husband has a Facebook page, which advertises his various building skills. Therefore one evening, when František, Andrea and I were all sitting outside at Bar-Restaurace U Soni, enjoying a few beers, I approached them, asking if František would be interested in doing some tasks for me, in particular, constructing a new path from the steps at the back of my house, to the woodshed on the far side of the garden.

The new path was to replace this untidy mixture of bits of rubber matting and roofing felt, left by the previous owners.

Our discussions were based on my pre-prepared Google translate text, asking whether he would be willing to do the work and if so, what would be his price? He clearly understood what I was asking and got out his mobile phone to show me a couple of photos of a path he had previously constructed. However, it did take a further conversation at U Soni a few days later, before I finally convinced František that I did want the work done.

Early one evening, a few days after our second conversation, František came round to look at what exactly I required. I told him that I wanted the path to be 70cm wide and he then measured the distance from steps to woodshed to work out the quantity of materials that would be needed. I also showed him the existing path through the front garden and agreed with him that my new path could be constructed in a similar style, using interlocking paving blocks.

A few further days later, František returned with my Google translated print out, giving me a price for materials, a price for his labour and saying that he would do the job the following weekend, 11^th-12^th July. In turn, I promised him that I would visit an ATM the next day and give him the cash for materials which I duly did.

Materials for the new path © Ricky Yates

Thus in the late afternoon of Friday 10^th July, this pile of materials appeared in my back garden, along with several bags of cement.

František & Andrea at work © Ricky Yates

The following morning, František arrived and started work, marking out the exact line of the new path and then digging two trenches for the supporting pieces of the sides of the path. An hour or so later, his wife and attractive assistant 🙂 Andrea, arrived to help.

New path under construction © Ricky Yates

In constructing the boundaries of the new path, František had a brainwave. He suggested the creation of an additional step at the top of the existing steps, which meant the new path would rise at a more gentle angle. Your can just see part of the new step at the bottom of this photo.

And here is how the new path looked at the end of the first day of construction.

The next morning, fine stone chippings were put into the channel of the path and then all the paving blocks were laid on top. Numerous blocks had to be cut into various shapes, in order to complete the path.

New path completed at the end of day two © Ricky Yates

However, a few hours later, this was the wonderful end result.

The new path properly landscaped © Ricky Yates

Fast forward to early October, and this is how the path looked after I de-weeded the disturbed ground on either side and then successfully grass seeded it.

My walnut tree

In my back garden there are three trees – an apple tree, a cherry tree and a walnut tree. You can see all three trees in this photograph, taken in early October 2019. The apple tree stands immediately to the side of the woodshed on the far side of the back garden. The cherry tree is on the left front in the photograph. Towering above both of them is the walnut tree, in the centre of the photograph, with its leaves rapidly turning yellow.

As you can see, the walnut tree stands quite close to my garden fence, with many of its branches extending over the adjacent public land, across which runs a driveway to the house behind my garden, the home of my neighbours Pavel and Vlasta. In the Autumn of 2018, the tree produced a large crop of walnuts, many of which fell on the public ground. More than one local lady came around and collected them, and example of thriftiness for which Czechs are renowned 🙂

Walnut tree leaves lying on my back lawn © Ricky Yates

However, in the Autumn of 2019, the tree didn’t produce any nuts at all. But what it did produce was a superabundance of fallen leaves.

Raking into piles, all of those leaves which fell into my garden and then transporting them by wheelbarrow to the bio odpad/green waste skip, was a major exercise.

The walnut tree minus nearly all its leaves © Ricky Yates

During October 2019, the walnut tree lost nearly all its leaves in little over a week. There was no more than ten days between when the photograph at the beginning of this post was taken and the one above. As you can see, large quantities of leaves also fell outside of my garden.

Whilst strictly speaking, clearing them up was not my responsibility, I did feel rather guilty being the owner of the tree from whence they had come. This was especially so after rain and cars being driven along the driveway, turned many of them into a squelchy mess. So one Saturday in late October, I raked the leaves from the grass strip along the outside of my garden fence, whilst Pavel used his leaf blower to clear the driveway.

Over this past winter, I decided that I must do something to avoid a similar or worse experience in 2020. In simple terms, the tree has grown far too big for where it is situated. So I asked Mirka, whose English conversation class I help with, if she or one of her friends knew of a tree surgeon who could come and give it a ‘hair cut’.

Mirka kindly found someone suitable who, in turn, asked to see photos of the tree. I sent several, including some in this post. Having seen the photos, the tree surgeon, Johan Beneš, gave me a quotation of 5500Kc/£180.00 to reduce and thin out the tree, together with taking away all the resultant debris. I accepted his offer.

Johan Beneš cutting the walnut tree © Ricky Yates

On the morning of Wednesday 20^th May, Johan Beneš and a colleague, arrived in their van, towing a small trailer, in order to carry out the work. By a series of ropes and pulleys, Johan hauled himself up into the tree and commenced cutting branches, whilst his colleague collected them from the ground and started stacking them into the trailer. Johan did all the work with a simple hand saw being very careful where he cut in order to conserve the health of the tree.

The walnut tree following its ‘hair cut’ © Ricky Yates

After about four hours of Johan being up in the tree and with many branches and smaller twigs, lying on the ground, this is the end result.

Tree debris loaded to be taken away © Ricky Yates

And here is all the debris, either loaded on the trailer or stuffed in the back of the van. I remarked that they should really have brought a larger trailer with them. In reply, Johan admitted that the tree was far larger than he had envisioned from looking at my photographs 🙂

Winter 2019-2020 and progress with my front garden

This past winter, which is hopefully now over, has been my third spent in Stará Oleška. Yes, I’ve now lived here for two weeks short of three years.

The view from my front door on the morning of Saturday 29th February 2020 © Ricky Yates

One of my regular commenters asks for me to post snowy winter photographs. Well this one – the view from my front door on the morning of Saturday 29th February 2020, is the best I can do, as this past winter has been remarkably mild. And within a few hours, all the snow in this photograph had melted.

A combination of it being a mild winter, together with my new wood-burning stove, has meant that I’ve had no problem at all in keeping warm this winter. I’m also very pleased that the hope I’ve expressed a couple of times previously, that the logs delivered in mid-January 2019 would last until the end of this winter, has been fulfilled.

This is the inside of one end of my woodshed where my logs were once stacked, right up to the roof.

Split logs, ready for my wood-burning stove © Ricky Yates

But in mid-April, when this photograph was taken, I still had this supply of logs that I’d previously split, sitting on a table in the other half of the woodshed. These have enabled me to have the wood-burning stove going for a few hours each morning which is all I’ve needed the past few weeks.There are still some left if we do have few more cool days like today. The stove is burning merrily as I write 🙂

Although I pruned the vine on the front of the house in the Spring of 2019, I failed to give a serious ‘haircut’ to several of the bushes in my front garden.

My front garden in mid-October 2019 © Ricky Yates

This photograph, taken in October 2019, shows the result of my inaction 🙁 Therefore as well as pruning my vine, as explained in this post, in early November 2019, I severely cut back all the bushes in my front garden.

My front garden in early November 2019 © Ricky Yates

In the photograph above, you can see the result of my labours. As you can also see, because the bushes grew too large, they killed off the grass underneath, leaving bare patches of earth. Re-seeding these areas is one of my tasks in the coming days.

My front garden on 22nd April 2020 © Ricky Yates

But with the arrival of Spring, green shoots are appearing on all of the bushes reassuring me that I wasn’t too severe 😉

As I outlined in my previous post, since the middle of March I have been living in splendid isolation because of the measures taken by the Czech government, to counteract the Corona virus. However, this has given me the opportunity to do a lot of work in my garden, aided by dry, fine weather throughout April.

Along with dead-heading and pruning all my roses, I have finally managed to repair this trellis alongside my front door, which was damaged on 10th February by Storm Ciara (UK), Storm Sabine (Czech Republic & Germany).

Once DIY shops, (or Hobby shops as Czechs call them), were allowed to re-open just before Easter, I was able to obtain a replacement metal bracket to re-attach the trellis to the wall of the house. You can see the new bracket in the photo. I also screwed a new wooden baton, (which you can’t see), across the base of the trellis, and resurrected the roses.

One of the joys of this Spring has been to have these daffodils and tulips flowering, directly in front of the house. The bulbs were given to me by my daughter Christa at Christmas 2018. Last Spring, only the daffodils flowered, no doubt due to being planted too late. This Spring, they flowered beautifully.

Flowerbed & panels treated with wood stain © Ricky Yates

A couple of weeks later, just as the tulips were past their best, I also completely weeded and delineated the flower bed, and then applied wood stain to the panels below the enclosed verandah. This and the previous photo, show how dry everything is. The whole of the Czech Republic is currently experiencing drought conditions. Fortunately, this weekend as I write, we have had some most welcome rain.

I have also done plenty of work in my back garden. But that deserves another post 🙂

My Vine

The house and vine in March 2017 © Ricky Yates

On the front of my house is a well-established vine. In this photograph, you can see the outline of it, in between and along the top of the double-glazed windows that enclose the verandah. The photograph was taken by me in March 2017, at the time I agreed to buy the house. It has appeared previously on the blog, in this post entitled, ‘The new house in Stará Oleška‘.

At some point in the previous six months, the vine clearly had been pruned for which I am most thankful. It was the only thing in the garden that appeared to have received any attention in the months before I purchased the property. I believe that once the previous elderly owners decided to sell, they chose to do nothing further to the garden, meaning that I inherited quite a jungle 🙁

Over the summer of 2017, the vine flourished, as can be seen in this photograph, taken in August that year, when I was painting the frames of the two windows under the apex of the roof of the house. However, it did also produce a healthy crop of grapes.

The vine after being pruned in March 2019 © Ricky Yates

In February 2018 and again in March this year, I rigorously pruned it. This is how it looked following its serious haircut in March 2019. But in both years, all my rigorous pruning has ever done is to encourage the vine to flourish even more.

As you can see in the photograph above, taken in late September this year, the vine took over virtually all of the front windows, making it almost impossible to see out!

However, it did once again, produce an excellent crop of grapes. These are some of the 2019 vintage!

One piece of helpful advice I was recently given was this. Whilst vines are known for growing prodigiously, if you prune them in the late Summer/early Autumn, rather than leaving it to the Spring, they tend not to grow as much. Therefore, deciding that I would like to be able to see out of my front windows next year, over the past two days, the vine has been once more thoroughly pruned.

Pruned vine 31st October 2019 © Ricky Yates

Here is the photographic evidence!

PS: You can also see my recently renovated & freshly varnished front door 🙂