Another weekend

Once again I slept well last night and I appreciated the fact that I had no urgency to get out of bed this morning at all. This was until I remembered that T had told me I would get the order for the two pallets of bricks at 8.30 and so I decided to not lay in bed reading but to get up and get on with the day. I filled my watering can and wandered over to first of all water Rambo, and then do the trees and other plants. As you know I normally have my brew first but today I wasn't desperate and just pottering around slowly, eventually getting back to the house and filling the food bowl for Rambo, brought me into the land of the living before I entered Room 13.

Sitting on eggs

For the past few days I have been enjoying watching the newly hatched sparrows flocking all around the place, and today I noticed that one of them is now sitting in the nest which is in the room next to the Humanure toilet. I am now no longer as worried about keeping the birds out of the main part of the building as they are no longer building nests and are now focused entirely on the finished nests. I have birds in the workshop room, and loads in around the toilet and garage, and a few in the living room but none are coming through into my living area any more.

New cactus, potted up

My aim was to be as lazy as possible today however I sat with The Electrician for a bit while having the first cup of tea and then, when he started work, I went out and did a couple of little things. First of all I selected a porcelain plant pot and moved the cactus I got yesterday from its small pot into the new one and then I did something I've been meaning to do for weeks; I tidied up the scrap wood from the windows in Room 13 that had just been chucked out and down by the entrance. This is all now stacked up and out the way.

Ahhh this is the life

After this I got my kindle and hopped onto the swinging chair and lay there reading about the Third Reich which I have been trying to get through since before I left England. Rambo was cute and left me alone after I ignored him dropping the kong on me and he pretty much chilled out on the porch next to me, other than chasing birds every now and then, and at one point spotting the old donkey and going haring across to bark at it.

After a bit (and after a lovely video conversation) I moved the chair out from under the porch and into the middle of the patio to get more sun. I think all in all I was laying on the chair for about two or three hours and this was definitely just what I needed. I think I've been more tired with maybe a touch of stress from all the decisions and also visitors and I just needed some me time.

After a bite to eat (more chicken and pickle butties but my own home made pickle this time) The Electrician and I decided to head into town to get supplies and the final bits that we need to finish the electrical stuff. Fortunately we both changed, with me putting some jeans on on because, as we drove down the hill it started raining and there was an awesome flash of forked lightening and it was hammering down when we parked. There was a huge crowd by the doors waiting out the downpour and as we were pottering (I might have bought more plants, whoops) there were some awesome cracks of thunder.

We bought meat and beer and parsnips then went past Lidl to get mayonaisse and pork belly for my special pasta and then, with a few wrong turns we ended back at the electrical store we have sourced everything from so far and managed to get everything we needed, including the switch that we had been struggling with. It's so good to have a place I can go to who knows me now and I can trust their advice. Another customer in there helped a bit at one point, as they are wont to do.

Back to digging over the flower beds

We got back and he got straight on it and I changed into shorts again (it was not raining here; it looks like it never did; was obviously a very localised storm over the reservoir) and set to with my spade to get a bit more digging done on the entrance flower bed. It has been weeks since I did this as I've been waiting for the Flags to go down but they have now stopped flowering so it is about time to start looking into it. I was never planning on actually getting to them but I found it hard work again after a few days of rest and I only did the first bit of the planned dig before checking my phone and finding out that the purported day out had gone away so I headed up to Room 13 for a brew.

Another walnut to try and grow

I also planted a rooted walnut that I found in one of the spits that I turned. I opened one of the bags of potting compost for this; I really want one of these to grow!

Plugs, and a light fitting

All the time I was lazing this morning, stuff was being installed and all the time I was digging and then sat chattering on th'interwebs it kept going. Here are a couple of examples of some of the awesome that has been achieved today. While he was working I wasn't being totally idle (well not all the time) as I started preparing dinner. We had bought steak at Kaufland and I was doing chips again, and onions and mushrooms on the side. Everything was chopped, fried and prepared and put on the plate just as The Electrician finished his last task and we nommed it down so quick that there were no pictures taken.

Mo is asleep here

Today Mo has been doing his exploring thing again, and chasing the sun around. He wasn't very pleased when we got the blind back up as it immediately put him into the shade. He did manage to have a good trundle around but is now dozing in the middle of the central plain. I played around with the ISO settings on my camera while snapping these pictures - I think this one was at 100, as it was a bit shaded now as the sun was heading down.

My fave tree in the evening

Now I'm sat here, listening to music and chattering to The Electrician and drinking beer. He has some wine we bought today and I may sip a bit of whisky too. It is warm outside and the clouds have gone and once again I'm going to hope that maybe we may be seeing the start of the expected months of gorgeous weather to make working outside both a greater pleasure, and much more difficult at the same time. Here's to sun blasted soil and massive heat beating down.