Tomatoes are weeds

G'day, and what a day. Let's just crack on with everything which has happened.

Sunrise reflecting on the clouds

Sleep was good last night however I woke just before the alarm and was encouraged out of bed by the amazing morning sky. There was still a substantial lack of water pressure so I filled the kettle, put that on, and then took the pictures. What a glorious start to the day.

I moved more wood

Once again this morning I was working on the wood pile and I reckoned, based on the progress I made yesterday, that I should finish it today. I had my cup of tea and headed out as A went to feed the boys and I was still going when she got back with the men however I am still nowhere near complete on this task. It could be that my muscles were still a bit stiff from the exercise yesterday, or the cool breeze that was blowing stopping me from warming up fully, but I really found it hard to get up a fast pace of work this morning. I did stick at it however and I only came in once my second brew of the day was on the desk in Room 13. I'll now pick this task up again on Monday morning.

Wood sorted into piles

Just now before starting the blog I popped onto the roof to get some pictures of the men at work and saw that from the far end I could get a good shot showing just how much wood has now been sorted. From left to right you have the pile of planks, then the burning wood and above that the good-for-fencing wood and finally the pile of beams. I shifted quite a lot of stuff which was in the ditch round below the balcony which my before/after shot doesn't encompass so I wasn't quite as lacking in progress as it looked initially.

Sally and Orhan unloading my wood

Breakfast was egg in a cup which was lovely and my toast was the star of the show obviously. I then went up to see the men and get the phone number for the digger machine to pass to Georgi Stankov of Bulgarian Properties for Sale but they weren't there and I saw that we had a delivery of wood - my wood for the raised beds! Finally! Rambo was locked in the entrance room as the driver was a bit scared of him and he was most amused to hear that he has some rottweiler in him. Anyway, they unloaded it and then I got the number and emailed it over. I look forward to getting the quote and hope it is reasonable.

Duskat starts to be fitted

The men had spent the first part of the morning pulling duskat onto the roof from the balcony and, with a brief pause to pull wood off the back of a delivery lorry, then headed back up and commenced to putting duskat onto the ribs. This is what they worked on all day and they made great progress, though more of that later.

Putting additional Ralf security

I was still feeling quite lethargic at this point, the semi failure with the woodpile and the cool breeze effecting me. A suggested that we go out and do the Ralf-proofing of the front fence so we gathered the wire and snips and went down to the front right corner and started fixing the metal grids that we had bought the other. Technically they are reinforcement for concrete slabs however they are almost perfect for this purpose. It didn't take that long and the 16 sheets (we bought the shop out of their stock) got us along and past the front gate. Next time I'm down there I'll buy another 16 and that should do the job.

Tomato weeds

And so to the reason for the title of this blog. While I was spelunking in the trench below the back door extracting the wood from the sludge down there I suddenly noticed that there were TWO tomato plants growing in the filth and dust and old plaster and whatever else is down there. Counting these with the two down on the front, and the one by the burning drum it is clear that these things will grow anywhere. Similar to the Red Orachs of which the "cultivated" plants are only a small percentage of the crop growing on my land.

I set to work on the raised beds

After finishing the fencing as far as possible with our materials we headed inside and A set herself to doing her paid work while I did the same. With a few breaks to give the dogs a run we stayed there til after lunch (chicken from last night, with more of the plum and mint chutney which is really lovely actually) and when I reached a natural break point I decided that I would get a bit more exercise and make a start on the cold frame/raised bed building. The first task was to dig out the trench and I measured it out using the empty window frames (having shifted the layout a bit to be 2 x 2 rather than 1 x 4) and scraped with the pickaxe so I knew the extent to dig out.

The trench gets deeper

It took about ten minutes to scrape the grass and weeds off the surface, and another 25 or so, and five wheelbarrow loads of spoil dumped onto my collection plastic sheeting, to get the ditch dug to the depth I was looking for. This is the kind of work that helps you get fit as you're swinging the pickaxe to break up the hard packed dirt and then the shovel to lift it out. I was wearing my gloves to prevent blisters and I think I did well as I could feel the wooden handles slipping as I was working.

Breaking rocks in the hot sun....

As I got to the far end of the trench I hit a problem. Literally. There was bedrock only about two inches below the surface and it was the super hard white rock. I cleared all the soil and then set to with the pickaxe, swinging hard at knees and, after a few minutes, getting quite efficient at finding the natural fault lines to split the rock up.

Trench dug to the correct dimensions

It was really quite hard work (Orhan came down for a drink from the free water and must have told Bekir I was going crazy as then he appeared on the roof and was watching and smiling) but I leveled it enough up to where I'd dug, and then extended the trench 15cm the other direction to get it long enough.

Chopping the wood down

With the trench dug, and looking the correct dimensions, I turned my attention to the HUGE pile of wood that had been delivered for the purpose of building these raised beds. By my reckoning I'll have to grow food for about twenty years to make these economically viable but hey, it's fun. I waited for the men to finish their break before asking for the extension lead from their radio, but then found they had batteries in it anyway.  think cut down two long lengths, and three short, which will establish the bottom section. The wood is super solid and very heavy (I can just about carry one of the long lengths) so I think it may have be built in place. I couldn't continue with the construction today as I don't have enough long screws. I'll get some tomorrow and fix this first bit together on Sunday.

Loads of duskat going on

As I finished up and was just about to tidy I saw that the window men had arrived. What a pleasure. I really like these guys; they are so smiley and patient with the crazy Englishman in the Old School. We spent a while walking around the school specifying the next windows to be done (the men's room, the little water room next door, Sassy's room, the lab, the downstairs store room and the bedroom windows in the guest suite - the bathroom window is being left until the bricks are in place) and then we went up to the roof to have a look at the doors out to the sun terrace. I am still being firm that I don't want to design the windows by the side so that gap is just going to be bricked up this year. They headed off saying they would make the windows and be back though I don't know when. I was very impressed, as an aside, when I went up to see just how much duskat had gone onto the roof already.

Duskat delivery line

While the window men were here they fitted the fly screen for the internal window to the window so that should be the end of mosquito attacks. I waved them off, let Rambo back out the enclosure where he had been locked while they were here, tidied up, then went up to the roof to thank Bekir again for helping explain about the terrace double door. I found them working again to get more duskat onto the roof. Orhan was down on the balcony, Beker sat precariously on the edge of the wall accepting the planks as they were passed up and then flipping them behind him to Sally who was stacking in the middle of the floor; such efficiency. I watched for a bit, then went down to start preparing dinner.

As of this week

It was my turn to take the men today and so I chopped the pork strips up for my special pasta, then left instructions while I took them. It was a nice journey today, with some conversation and a lot of silence and, after I picked up 10 eggs from their shop, I was back to find that the instructions had been followed admirably. It was very tasty as it always is and I must admit to having four bowl fulls and now being quite full. Lovely. The status picture occurred while it was cooking and you'll have to look closely to see the duskat on the other side of the roof but believe me the progress has been substantial.

Guest suite - red lines are new walls

I had a request to provide more explanation of the guest suite and so this morning I put a really rough photoshopped sketch together of the new walls that are going in, and it should give some idea of the dimensions and layout. The top left door is already in onto the corridor, and the right hand bedroom will need a new door knocking through into the window. Both the windows in the bedrooms are having tilt and turn and the middle window is the one which requires bricks putting in before we know the final dimensions for the window men.

Anyway, there you are. I'm takling to my parents in 5 minutes (currently Elvis is entertaining us as I type this) so I am going to get those pictures in and publish. Just to warn there may not be a blog tomorrow as we are out gallivanting.