Clearing continues

 Another day done, and another national holiday approaching so two more days off for the men; we won't be back with another update until Monday.

The final sweeping behing the garage

Big lump pulled out of the ground

More cable than I realised

Clearing down the orchard

Today was a simple day for Bekir and Halil, though hard work in the hot sun. They finished up clearing the back bank behind the garage with loads of rocks and rubbish removed and dumped by the rubbish pile. There were some huge lumps of concrete that they had to dig out as well, left over from when the school was open, and additionally the small loop of armoured cable that I found while I was mowing turned out to be quite a lot of armoured cable buried just under the ground. After a while I told them to just cut what they had excavated, and rebury the rest. Hopefully it'll stay under there. They also removed some of the saplings that we don't want as they had started growing too close to the house. After this Bekir took the strimmer to the orchard and reduced the growth levels in there as well. All in all a good result.

A random Mulberry tree

Huge pile of rocks to be moved

Lots of rocks piling up

Clear area behind the green building

The edging rocks have gone from here

We have lots of saplings sprouting all over the land, most of them we will be removing as they are either trees with lots of thorns on them, or too close to the buildings. There are two that we will move into the orchard, this Mulberry and the Walnut tree that self-sprouted by the Hugelkultur. After finishing up in the orchard the next task was a really heavy one - moving all the rocks piled by the end of the Green Building and putting them in for the backfill. We are getting quite the collection of stones there now but need many more. By the end of the day that rock pile had been moved, and so had all the stones down the right side of the driveway. I put those stones in as edging for the drive but it has never really worked.

Fixing the mower again

A path to the back bank

Rosie painting

I got the mower out again and managed to knock the belt off again hitting the blade on a huge stone; I really must be more careful! Fortunately it was easy to fix, though I have now ordered some more spares which should be here in the next few days. One thing I did get done was mowing the path up to the top bank; I did this by hand with the sickle last year so it was nice to use the mower this year. Rosie and I had our usual fun time before dinner and she did art and I read to her. Always lovely!

Sun descending

Gone behind the trees

I'll leave you with these two pictures, taken while I've been writing this update, as a glorious sunset has developed. I've been able to watch from where I'm sat. We are lucky to live here!

Thanks for reading and see you Monday.