Spring has sprung

As I sit typing this update we have Sally working in the lounge to finish off the railing around the staircase and Bekir working with Yulhan to finish off Room 13; this is a super awesome thing and we are both very excited to have them back. There is a short list of "must haves" to be done and then further work will very much depend on me getting work. For now, however, it's lovely to have activity again.

The three puppies on the top bank

Rambo trotting back over to me

A beautiful flower on the top bank

Louise sniffing around the fire pile

All set up for some hobby time

Gundabad Berserkers ready for some colour

View from the painting station

Louise having a look at what I'm doing

However that is now; it's been a week since the last update so let's take ourselves back on last Tuesday and after I published the blog post. It was a lovely day, warm and sunny, and we took the puppies up onto the back bank again to throw their toys and let them have some fun; it's so good that we are doing this more as even though we haven't been for as many walks as I was planning it has meant that we all get exercise and have fun together. Louise, as per usual, was only involved in the toys up to a point and spent a fair amount of time sniffing out the area, including clambering onto the bonfire which is still there from last year. I decided to enjoy the sunshine a little more and combine it with my hobbying and so I took some models out and sat and put some paint on them while the sun beat down. I actually found that it was too hot as the paint dried on the pallet. Louise was very interested in what I was doing but after about an hour or so I went inside as the wind was picking up and the shadow was encroaching.

Sun rise on Wednesday morning

Some of the jams and chutneys

Getting the patio furniture cleaned up for summer

Wednesday dawned fine and clear and this early promise was born out through the day. I had a small list of things to get done, the first task was to go through a big box of old preserves and jams I made a couple of years ago and clean them all up, remove any "bad" ones, and relabel any that had been rat-attacked and had the labels chewed off. It didn't take all that long and now we have three boxes of good cleaned up chutneys and jams and I can go back to eating them again. I've had Pear Preserve with yogurt gifted us by the Little Lady over my cereal all week and it has been lovely. A, for her part, had no work in first thing so she pulled the chairs out to carry on renovating them for use this year. They had got into a very bad condition having been left outside into the snow (my fault - I kept forgetting to pull them inside) so she got the sander and cleaned them all up. It really was lovely weather for working outside and even better weather for relaxing in the sun. The neighbours had a delivery of hay arrive while we were relaxing with a brew so I put my boots on and went to help out and it was a good thing I did as the bales were huge and they actually needed my help to get them in; it was wonderful to be so useful for them.

Putting up shelves in the gardening room

One wall done

The end of our lunch time and all the puppies are hungry

A pretty good temperature for 22nd Feb

Thelma loves her toy

Sisters relaxing together

My second job of the day was to get into the gardening room and begin tidying it up; A had picked up some brackets so I could put some shelving up. We had saved some wood from an old unit that had fallen apart and I was going to use that for these shelves. I must have been feeling energetic as I finished one wall in the afternoon and this despite the new drill playing up. The chuck is starting to slip and so I ended up using the new drill, with it's more variable speed control, to begin all the guide holes and then my dad's old drill, older than me (I think), to finish them all off. I was pretty tired by the end of this job. I did have a glass of fresh milk also gifted us by the Little Lady and that was superb. We took a break for lunch outside and sat in the sun round the corner at my "painting station" which is a real sun trap. A put the thermometer out to check out how hot it was in the sun and it read 54 degrees! Of course one cannot be outside without playing wtih the puppies and Thelma had a good time with her hoop, and on the sand pit.

Glowing coals from the night before

An attempt to rekindle the fire. It failed.

Shitty neck attempt

Fighting over a stick

She did not want me to rest

While it has been lovely weather for the most part during the days it is still cold enough for a fire at the bookends of the day. I came down on Thursday morning to light the fire and found that the embers were still glowing away. I did make an attempt to use them but eventually gave up and used a firelighter; it would have caught I'm sure just not quick enough for me. True to form the day turned out to be gorgeous however I really was not on form. I took one of the recliners down onto the front lawn to have a rest but was disturbed so much by the puppies (mostly Rambo who kept bashing me with his tail) that eventually I gave up on that idea. The girls were having such a great time and playing loads together; Thelma would find a stick and then sit happily chewing it then Louise would notice, steal it, run off with it, eventually get to keep it and then Thelma would find another stick and rinse, repeat. So funny to watch and they were tearing around the garden after each other. I got called over for coffee with the neighbours at one point which was lovely. In the afternoon I was trying to watch a YouTube video when I realised I'd been sleepnig sat up for at least the previous five minutes so I took myself off to bed and slept through until about 6pm. I felt like I could have slept all the way until the next morning but got up to eat something. It was not a late night for me that night either.

The sun rises behind clouds

She finally succeeded

A sewing, with some "help"

See how helpful Louise is being

Rocks for a rockery

It's back to salad season

Friday was a cloudier start with the wind that had begun the afternoon before really whipping across the land. Fortunately I was feeling a lot better and had the energy to get back into the Gardening Room and put up some more shelves. Louise, meanwhile, was outside and finally managed to get "shitty neck" again; I was cheering and A was getting ready to clean her up. The wind really was quite strong and while A did manage to get some sewing done on the cover for the hanging chair this was after attempting to work on the chairs for the patio furniture and having to give up as it was just too gusty. Louise made her best job of "helping" by sitting on the fabric and prevent A from being able to move it easily; she's a helpful little puppy. After my brief trip into town for post I loaded Thomas up with white rocks for us to take to Chaz and Ivan on Saturday for their rockery. That evening we went out for a meal at our favourite restaurant and it was really lovely; we'd not been for a few weeks so it was good to get it back.

Thelma is playful, Louise isn't so sure

Super breafkast for the morning after

We were up and out on Saturday at about 9am and drove very carefully (due to the weight of rock in the back of Thomas) to our friend's house. It was lunch time when we arrived and miserable and it never brightened up at all which meant that one of the reasons for going, to take pictures of the hotel for them, never happened all weekend. After a trip into town we chilled out then went to the bar then came back for some lovely food with one of their local friends joining us; the puppies were most happy about this as the kid loves them and played with them continually. I headed to bed relatively early as I was exhausted but the others sat up and A was rather delicate the next morning. The sing-song from the girls probably didn't help but it made us laugh. We drove back rather faster than we had gone and the rest of Sunday was a washout; there wasn't even a roast cooked.

A chopping up all the wood

Playing in the dust storm

Bekir getting stuck in with the plumbing in Room 13

Yulhan mixing up cement

The drier up in the kitchen

Gardening tools nice and tidy

The best bit about Sunday was receiving a phone call from Bekir to say that he was able to come back and work for us. Monday morning the alarm was set much earlier and A went out to collect them, returning with Bekir and Yulhan, the same guy we had previously. We'd be seeing Sally on the Tuesday, it seemed. A was on a mission yesterday and she managed to cut all the remaining wood up into firewood so we now have a relatively clear wood room. The puppies were in attendance as usual, getting covered in sawdust and sniffing around for bits to chew. I wasn't idle; I got both my jobs done early; first of all putting hooks up in the Gardening Room for the tools (I ran out of hooks though and I've just realised that, having been to the shop just now, I forgot to pick more up. Oooops) and then putting the new internal drier up in the kitchen. There's still a little to do on this to secure the laths properly but it's up and works and seems secure.

Thelma digging up a mole hill

She found the tunnel

Louise joins in

Her nose is covered in soil

Sweetcorn starting to show

Courgette seedling

Cleaning up the windowledge

Other than that it was another beautiful day. We were out in the garden a bit and laughed at Thelma who has found a mole hill, dug down to the tunnel, and was busily digging along it to try and get to the mole. Which reminds me they finally did something useful last week; I found a mouse and they managed to catch and kill it! A first solo kill. Here's to many more. Anyway, she was digging and digging and we had a bit of trouble getting her to stop. The reason for us being out was to get the seed trays under glass for during the day and, very excitingly, we have green showing. It's even better today but you'll have to wait to see those pictures until the next update. Upstairs progress was good with the plumbing in for the boiler and cement poured around the windows. They even got to doing some plastering on the ceiling. We had a bit of trouble with the internet in the afternoon so had a technician out and found that the damage done a couple of years ago to the cable coming into the house had finally broken through and destroyed the signal. Fortunately this is a good thing as we had far too much cable anyway so now it's been trimmed and is the perfect length.

So there it is; I've already got lots of pictures for the next update, which may arrive sooner than they have been recently as we start to get back into more progress around the place. I'll see how I feel. Thanks for reading.