A week of weakness

A whole week to update on today, but in honesty, there is little to report in terms of my own progress. As the title suggests, weakness and exhaustion featured more than anything. I was under the weather for most of the week in fact and did as much as my body allowed, so here we go.

Monday

After a lovely roast dinner on Sunday evening I decided that I would make some soup from the stock I made from the chicken carcass. It was rather nice to get back into doing this again, I miss my bowl of lunchtime broth.

Boiling it up

Whilst at the supermarket I had the foresight to stock up on the soup veg and before very long, the chicken was strained, meat separated, a couple of treats for the pups before the veg went in and hey presto!

Healthy

In the pot

The thing I always remember my Nana saying to me is, "a boiled soup is a spoiled soup", so this simmered for almost two hours and it was delightful. I got most of the week's lunches from this. Simple things.

Next on the list was to have a quick rearrange of the wood store. This was mainly to make some room for the kindling that was still stored in the green building in preparation for winter. Winter is a looming demon here at the Old School and there always seems to be a big push to work towards making life as easy as possible for ourselves. It of course means that there is very little rest, even when you think you could wind down! Not a complaint, well not really. I am admittedly struggling with my motivation at the moment. 

Wood store

Excess from last year

Sally 2's achievements

Kindling for winter

Overflow

So as you can see, there is a slight overflow in the green building. Let's hope it sees us through winter. If not, there are more branches that can be broken up should we need to. Thelma and Louise are here to show you where and were on the trawl of rat sniff, I believe.

Ratting

Having had to almost tell them off to get them out of there, I was fettling around and doing a bit of a tidy when I heard a lot of commotion around. Coming from the garage, I found these two little blighters had jumped up onto the roof tiles and climbed in through the open window in the green building, rummaging for yet more rats amongst the pile of stuff the Mister has to clear before winter. We will probably have to have a bonfire, but not until it rains here as it is way too risky to start a fire at the moment.

Maybe one day they will actually catch a rat. That would be nice.

Last task for me on Monday was to do something with the oversized logs which came with out winter wood delivery. With the chainsaw now back in operation, I set to it. It is very surprising how quickly you forget and also, how quickly you must get used to performing an action you have never done before. I do not remember the chainsawing being this hard last year. I can only guess that I got more used to it because I had so much practice. This was just harder work than I remember.

Cutting and splitting

I got the axe stuck like this a lot

The splitting was the hardest part of this task. I am definitely moving that to the "blue job" list. I am only so strong.

At the end of my day and just as I was preparing to think about dinner, Little Lady and her son arrived with a huge pole and a couple of buckets to try and collect the walnuts from the land. They are late this year, but coupled with a bad drought this summer, there were very few to gather. They handed me over the bucket once they had finished and we'd had some coffee, but we still have a huge box of them from last year that we are never going to get through, so I gave them back to her. Feels good to give back as they are so good to us and also, because they had a smaller harvest this year from their own trees.

Harvesting walnuts

Tuesday

As I said at the beginning, this week I have been feeling rather odd. I have no pictures from Tuesday at all to show you. I was back at my job and at my desk and I had absolutely no energy at all, so I mainly worked and slept.

Wednesday

Wednesday was chicken fun day. Again, I was working and I took a nap at lunchtime and whilst a bit quieter, went down to see what the birds were getting up to and how they were finding their freedom. It seems they are having quite the ball! I was washing the dishes when this happened:

Guests

Followed everywhere I go

They trail me no matter where I go.

Thursday & Friday

Another couple of non-eventful days I am afraid. I did go to do the weekly shop on Friday and that was possibly as much energy as I could muster. I still have no idea what or why, but I am certainly starting to feel better again thankfully.

Saturday

We had the men back and not just Bekir, but also Sally. They had returned to get further along with the roof terrace, as mentioned before, before any rain gets down in behind the insulation and causes damage. We are praying for a continuation of the dry weather. They were sharing the task this weekend. Bekir is usually the tiler, but Sally was hands on and doing his bit on his section of wall.

Bekir's wall

Sally's wall

They had developed a time saving method for the mixing of the terracol and grout whilst they were up there. I went to the garden mid-afternoon to move the hose onto another bed in the vegetable garden only to find the hose had disappeared. My memory is shocking and I just thought I had moved it somewhere stupid and forgotten about it, No. Not so. 

Smart

They had switched from the free water to the mains water at the manhole and were currently enjoying not having to traipse up and down stairs with a full water bottle or bucket. They of course returned it to the garden for me in the evening. Such stars.

Not being totally idle all week, and starting to feel a little better, yesterday brought me a couple of chores. The first was to split the plant that S&S bought for us, way back when. This is the one which shoots a pink spiky flower from the centre and S has done some research and she said that the "babies" growing to each said of the mother plant are the new flowerers. She told me I should separate them out as the mother plant (central) dies and the two "babies" start to produce flowers. So I did.

Before

After

Close of play was late. They tried so very hard to get the chimney finished, but sadly time was just not on their side. Bekir got slightly distracted by a leaking standpipe in the garden which he replaced the tap opener on.  However, it is still looking really well and hopefully the lighter colours of the tiles will help to keep this a more manageable sun trap for my fair Irish skin!

Close of play

Sunday

Today has been a much better day for me. I was up and about around 7.30, letting the animals all outside for their morning exercises. I had watched a film on Saturday night and was quite late to bed, having gone out for my dinner. Oh, I almost forgot! I have been hankering after this all week and I finally felt well enough to go out and have a meal away from the School. It. Was. Divine.

Kunefe - a Turkish dessert that is just to die for. Recipe here, with obviously some regional variations: Kunefe.

Kunefe

So, back to Sunday. First off it was the chicken house, which was well overdue a clean out. I hate this job and it is actually more the thought than the doing as it really doesn't take any more than 45 minutes. 

Not much straw for summer

I cleared the room and squirted a fair bit of this stuff, Diatomaceous Earth to help with any parasites they may or may not have. Although seeing they are coming out of their moults, they are looking in quite good condition. Still, can never be too sure.

Diatomaceous Earth

Finally, the extra bedding for the colder nights was in place.

Clean hay

What else did I do? I tidied up mainly in the kitchen. I hoovered with my new Vax hoover, which I have to say has fantastic suction and I am pretty pleased. I also tackled the deep fat fryer, which admittedly has been neglected and so needed a huge scrub clean. Other than that and pottering around finding tools and things that I am going to need over the next week or two, I have mainly been chainsawing. It is hard work, but worth it come winter.

Starting small

First of two lots

That is the week so far and if you made it this far and read to the end then you deserve a bit of a giggle. I forgot about this video last week, but it still makes us both laugh very much. So until next time, leka nosht!

 A xx