Break, weekend, steel

Monday and back to this after a fair number of days so I've got a bit of typing to; onwards and as quickly as possible.

Lovely grain on the wood

Set up for staining

Bit of strimming done

Playing in the sand pile

Clearing the hugelkultur

I spent a chunk of the time off without the men getting some chores done around the place. Thursday, Friday and Sunday I put varnish on the banisters and they are looking great now. Today I turned them over and put a very thin coat on the underside and now they're ready for fitting. I also tried out my new strimmer a couple of times, played with Rosie a lot, and cleared out the rest of the hugelkultur, though I didn't dig it over yet.

Some lovely flowers (more have bloomed since)

Might these even be olives growing!

Having a wonderful BBQ with my amazing family

Saharan dust obscures the sunset

Rosie sitting. Awesome child

The rest of the weekend consisted of admiring flowers, and what may well be olives on our olive trees which is hugely exciting, having a BBQ, watching as saharan dust blew in and clogged the sky and made everything sticky dusty and humid and just spending time with Rosie while awake, and sleeping when she wasn't as I was feeling quite battered from the strangeness of the weather.

Starting to shift the blocks

Timer for the boiler

Our steel arrives

A little bit more tidying up

Now onto the vines

We have a timer

And so to today; the men turned up quite late and got started on the small tasks I had for them prior to the steel arriving. Sally and Halil were shifting the blocks round from the patio up to near the balcony as we'll use these for the walling we need to do. Bekir I asked to fit the new timer on the boiler in the downstairs washroom. Quite early the steel delivery arrived and was unloaded very quickly. Bekir then went back to the timer while Sally did a little bit of tidying on the plaster covering the toilet pipe from upstairs (we're STILL waiting on the delivery of the adaptor so the toilets can be completed) while Halil was shifting rocks and digging out for the vine supports, which is the first priority over getting started on the huge job of the balcony roof.

Pictures up above Rosie's Cot

Rosie's First Artworks

Halil mixing cement

Keeping the supports upright

Cement blocks to the balcony

Rosie's Hill, in place

At lunch time I hung the picture of me and Angela taken by our friend Celine walking down from Perperikon a few years back, and a lovely cross-stitch done by my Auntie Liz, above Rosie's cot and then put the first three pictures that Rosie had ever hand-painted on the opposite wall. I also fitted some brackets to the bottom of the shelf with Rosie's Hill on it ready for fitting in place. The men were on with the vine supports and got the uprights all in place and cemented in before heading off to lift the blocks onto the balcony. While they were doing that I got Bekir to mount the shelf and then we all went onto the balcony to discuss plans. They'll start that tomorrow.

So there you are; we had a good enough evening, with the neighbours in the field below digging and Angela went with Rosie to talk to them. It's taken far too long to write this so now I'm tired - hopefully tomorrow will be shorter! Hopefully tomorrow will be super exciting also.

Thanks for reading, as always.