First balcony dinner

We have made it to Friday and it's been a glorious day, warm and sunny and lots of progress.

Just removing the wood from around the sink

Getting ready to fit the mosquito net

Strimmer and scythe at the ready

A cleared flat trench ready for a wall

Making up lengths of shuttering

Unloading the wood from the truck

Here is what we had delivered

End of the day, the front run is done

The first task the men undertook was to remove the shuttering from the cheshma and they've spent various moments through the day wetting the cement down so it doesn't crack. Right now as I type this Angela and Rosie are outside watering the garden and making use of the new taps; it is awesome. With this done Bekir and Halil went into Rosie's bedroom and hung a mosquito net up over her bed for summer and then they moved on to the next big task; the chicken enclosure. Finally. First job there was to clear away a load of the overgrowth and then they set to lifting the infall from the sides of the trench we had the digger in for last year. With this completed they ordered some more planks from the shop and while they were waiting for these to be delivered they made use of all the spares we had in the green building and started to build the shuttering for the concrete base that will run all around the bottom of the wall for the chicken enclosure. Not long after the wood delivery arrived and was unloaded so now we should have enough to shutter the whole perimeter. The idea is to get a cement truck to come and pump this all in very quickly rather than hand mixing it all. All in all it was a good day of progress.

Rosie putting lettuce into the salad

Aphids on a thistle

Rosie found a grass flower

Sat on the steps of the slide

Awesome to be back out here for dinner

After work and when Rosie got home from school she was insistent on helping Angela to cook dinner and it was so lovely to watch them together and see how well Rosie follows instructions and is so helpful. Once she had run out of things to help with I took her into the garden and we did some sliding but also had a lot of fun looking at things in the garden. We found some aphids on a thistle and then admired multiple flowers, Rosie getting me to take lots of pictures so she could see. Soon enough it was dinner time and we took ourselves up onto the balcony for the first time this year and it was super magical and awesome to be up there. Dinner was a lovely steak and chips with Rosie-made salad. Superb.

So there it is; the first week of the men being back is done. Thanks for reading, I'll be back on Monday.