Two days in one

Friday evening and the loud music season has very much begun; there is a wedding in town and it's almost like it is taking place on our patio. Not the most joyous of things. Maybe one day I'll develop a love for poorly played Turkish music; but not this day.

Of course this update covers Thursday and Friday as we were out last night so let's try to rewind to yesterday morning when we had still not been reminded of quite how loud those weddings can get.

Eating porridge on the balcony

Hikmet keeps chipping away

Mesut gets started on painting in the Games Room

Bekir starting on the ceiling lights for the Games Room

A made us porridge to eat on the balcony when she got back from collecting the men, which was just lovely. It seems like ages ago now. I had totally forgotten until I saw the photograph. It was just good to get outside and away from the dust that has got EVERYWHERE with the work that Hikmet is doing. It needs doing, though, and has saved us a lot of time when we come to the corridor as a task Mesut was doing his awesome thing and painting on into the Games Room now while Bekir had picked up the ceiling lights for in there.

Plums growing on the big tree

A's garden is doing so well

A plum on one of the orchard trees

An ant inspected what is either an apple or a pear

Beautiful wild flowers on the back bank

An orchid on the thin earth

Mo's Grave

An alternative view of the estate

We both love this tree; it's look and smell

A bunch of poppies blooming now

A headed out for some reason, I can't remember why now, and I took myself for a walk around the garden to take lots of pictures (as you can see) of various things that are coming into bloom or fruiting or just generally looking amazing. We're so lucky with the land we have and the variety of different types of soil and micro-climate. Such variety. It is also awesome to see fruit on our orchard trees. If it doesn't rain soon our routine is going to have to expand to include watering out there every night again.

The chooks have dug a hole chasing grubs

Lots of strawberries

One of many spud areas

Tomatoes looking healthy

After walking around the top bank I took a turn around the raised beds and garden areas which A has been doing such awesome work on. The chickens have really been giving the humanure in this raised bed a going over; they've nearly dug a tunnel to chase the tasty grubs in there. Our strawberries are looking really positive, we've loads of spuds showing up, and the tomatoes are also doing well; we've not planted quite as many this year.

The first of the ceiling lights

We have ceiling lights in the Games Room

Now time for the plug sockets

Inside Bekir had the first light hung and very shortly afterwards all the ceiling lights were up. They look really nice and I'm very happy with the choice I made there. With this done he headed into the Art Room to begin fitting the plug sockets around the walls; it was getting very close to completed and A, who was super busy with work, was getting very excited.

On the patio once again

Lovely prawn and salad in pita

Rambo and Thelma hide from the sun

Louise barking at something or other

By this time it was lunch time and A fried up some prawns which we put inside some garlic pita bread and ate while sat on the patio. It was roasting warm and too hot for Rambo and Thelma who took to the shade of the Tea Trees. Louise was pottering about and took herself over onto the grass and barked at random things. It's lovely to get to spend time out there at lunch now the weather is so much better.

By Room 13, scraping and tapping away

Painting the top half now

Tiles set in place on the windowsills

Cutting tiles for the windowsills

Hikmet saving the old school bell

Back inside and the men were still hard at work with lunch out of the way. Hikmet clearing the walls by Room 13 (which made the tap tap tapping very close indeed). Mesut had done the lower half of the back wall in the Games Room and was now up a ladder painting the top part while Bekir was working on the final bits for the Art Room which included putting the tiles around the window ledges. He had his tile cutting machine out and was making very short work of it indeed. I had Hikmet save the school bell outside Room 13; we may end up wiring this to a door bell but then again, maybe not. Maybe we'll put a switch so we can stop it working if it annoys us too much.

Stopped by the train at the crossing

Lots of rubble from the ceiling on the floor

One and a half walls done

Tiling the window sills

Painting the walls

Games Room awesomeness

I headed out to the builders merchant after lunch to get some more paint for Mesut and only just arrived in time as another lady was looking at the tubs of my paint. Fortunately she was told to come back the next day and another order was put in as I was leaving. I went both ways via the old bridge and was delayed on the way back by the train going past the crossing. The rest of the day involved a lot of rubble and dust, painting tiling and general awesome progress. The Art Room just needed some paint and a bit of grout to be completely finished while the Games Room is getting very close indeed.

The trail of engine oil on the cheren put

Dinner party

Lovely lasagne

I took the men home and we marveled at a trail of engine oil that went all the way up their cheren put; someone had taken it too fast in too low a car and drained the sump. That would surely not end well. We were heading out for dinner over at Nik and Emma's and so A was waiting at the top of the village with the puppies so I collected her and turned straight round and drove to their house. It was a lovely evening, with awesome lasagne and good company. We spent a chunk of it sat out on their lawn with the sounds of crickets and frogs for company and not much else. We also saw some fireflies which is very early for them. It was not a late night as I was getting tired and we drove back carefully in the dark.

A lovely pre-dawn sky

The plants have been moved to the balcony

And so to today; the problem with doing blogs less regularly, this one is going to be a long one, though there's less to write about today as I've been under the weather with a migraine most of the day. The day started with me with a headache and A feeling quite unwell. After a brew (we tried to go on the balcony but it was quite chilly with a bit of a breeze coming in) A went back to bed while I collected the men. I had a panic about the car keys then found them still in the ignition from the night before; we haven't done that for a fair while.

Hikmet still scraping away

Bekir working on the strimmer

And now he's putting the door trim on

Sat in the baking sun waiting for my turn 

It's a repetitive thing to type but Hikmet was back up on his scaffold scraping away; the corridor is such an expanse with 3m high ceilings and so long. He's doing really well and this will help so much as we plan when they will come back to complete the electrics and plastering in there. I'd wanted Bekir to look at the strimmer as it wasn't working and I'd like to cut some grass before we go away on holiday. Unfortunately he could not get it working so I planned to take it to the fixers today. He then got on with a few odd jobs including fixing the surround on the Art Room door. I had chores to carry out in town and set off for what I thought would take an hour or so but ended up taking over three hours. Suffice to say I was pretty shattered when I got back.

Sweeping up the rubble

A wall light in place

Grouting begins

Cleaning after grout application

The corridor looking clean

I spent most of the afternoon in bed with a stinking headache that was bordering on a migraine. Plenty of progress occurred during the afternoon, however. Hikmet got to a stage where cleaning was the priority and spent ages sweeping up and then removing the plaster and concrete and then spreading it on the driveway to help bind it together next winter. Bekir fitted all the wall lights in the Games Room so now there's only plug sockets and all the electrics are done. Mesut had finished the painting task in there complete and was grouting and Hikmet joined in with the process as soon as his sweeping had been completed. The corridor is going to look awesome once it is finished.

Early evening sweep of cloud

A wasp with its nest

Dramatic storm clouds that didn't come near us

Beautiful flags by the entrance path

The weather was changing as I took the men, with some impressive storm clouds developing. When I got back I did some chores like dragging in everything from the balcony and then headed onto the roof terrace to get some pictures. I also found a birdsnest, with baby birds, underneath the tiles (not ideal really) but couldn't get a good picture of it, while there are a few wasps nests appearing around the place. The clouds were still impressive but not as awesome as they had been. We had dinner sat inside as the weather outside was not appealing and then then brought the swinging chair inside, at which point A prompted me to grab the camera again to take a picture of the amazing show the flags are putting on. Not to be outdone the sunset was amazing; it continued to be even after this picture was taken as well. A lovely country.

The lovely Games Room

I'll leave you with this picture of the Games Room. What a space this will be.

Which makes the fact that at nearly 11pm we can still hear god-awful Turkish music from the wedding and this is nothing compared to what the summer will bring even harder to bear. Oh well, plans are in play and solutions will be found.

Thanks for reading this uber epic long post, after the couple of short ones this more than makes up for it huh.