Post erection

Early summer really is being lovely; today has been another glorious day all day.

A (pretty poorly taken) shot of a lovely sunset

Having balloon fun before school

Starting to line the posts up

Making sure it is upright

Front fence progress

Welding the post to the guide metal

Getting my strimmer action on

The sunset last night was pretty special as well but I only had my phone on me so the picture is pretty rubbish sadly. This morning Rosie woke up full of beans and we had lots of play before it was school time. The men were in again nice and early and when I got back from dropping Rosie to school they were already welding the first of the fence posts to the support. I can pretty much say that they did this all day, and now have done every post so Monday will be shuttering for pouring the concrete. I think, actually, they may need to do some more blocks by the side of the duck pool, and one more fence post there, but that shouldn't take long. At lunch time I went to use Mo again but he blew loads of smoke. I checked the oil and it was a bit low so I left him until Angela could pick me some more oil up (which, being awesome, she did) and took the strimmer out to trim the areas that I can't do with the ride-on.

Rosie arriving home from school

Mo ready to go to the car-doctor

Rosie playing Pitch&Plakks again

After school Rosie was still full of beans but when I went to check Mo again, put a little more oil in, and started him up he was still blowing smoke. Bekir got hold of the shop I bought it from and they said to run it in but as I went to mow it lost power and got very uneven. Not the best advice in the world; Halil smelled the oil dipstick and you could smell fuel in there. They helped me push him onto the trailer and tomorrow Rosie and I will have a road trip. Oh well. After that palaver I finally got to spend some time with Rosie and we playing Pitch&Plakks for a bit before dinner and cycling.

So there it is; here comes the weekend, back on Monday. Thanks for reading.

Ramps and a storm

 Another day in this wet year, and the storms haven't left us alone yet. Indeed the forecast is not looking happy for a little while to come yet. The pool is not full either, not quite.

The pool, early morning

Clearing and digging

Digging through tangled roots

Building the wall

They're "strimming in the rain" (I couldn't resist that one)

It was another hot hot day all day until later afternoon. The pool had kept filling and was now deep enough to swim properly in finally; I did get out at lunch time for about 10 minutes tops but that is all the use I got of it. Angela also got a lovely swim and really enjoyed it but by the time Rosie got back it was raining and stormy and we had covered the pool again. However we are getting ahead of ourselves. Bekir and Halil worked today on the other side of the ramp and it was hard going with lots of very thick tangled roots from the tea trees to hack through. They got it to a good state, however, with the wall completed and drying just before the heavens opened. Not put off they went into the chicken enclosure and strimmed it all down for us while the rain fell.

The storm, incoming

The pool, being rained on

Rosie admiring the pink riders

As I've said there was a crazy storm, it dumped huge hailstones on our friends up in the high mountains near here, but mainly missed us however it did dump some quite heavy rain and it was rumbling continuously without a single break for ages. It did blow over and it has been clear since, however another very similar one is brewing right now. This has meant that Rosie got no pool time, sadly, but she did enjoy watching Mark Cavendish winning the stage of the Tour de France today. I got a sore throat from shouting so loud.

So there you are; let's see how the weather holds for tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

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.

Home Alone

There is a reason I do not like leaving it so long between updates; I have currently got 44 videos and 870 photographs in the folder for the past few weeks. A lot of them are of Rosie, so will be removed straight out of the running to appear on here, but enough are of thunderstorms and other adventures that this update is going to take some time to write. Here's hoping I can get it done before A arrives back on Wednesday.

In the traditional way of these "too late" updates I'm going to group things together into a few headings and when I feel I've babbled enough I'll post. This could be the longest update for a while, though.

Bekir Returns

Of course the main thrust of this blog is around the renovation of the property and this last few weeks we have had Bekir onsite for a few days doing some small jobs that were urgent. We are not sure if he'll be back later in the year or not (very cash dependent) but these things needed doing whatever.

Bekir is back for a short time

A hornet nest inside a cinder block

Mixing cement by hand; no need for my cement mixer

Getting close to done on that wall

The second wall goes up

Scary Electrician

First of all Bekir was outside at the humanure collection point building the next two walls for our more permanent collection structure. I'd spotted that one of the huge hornets we have around a lot this year was flying in and out of one of the cinder blocks stacked up from last year so I pointed this out to him and sure enough we found a nest with a load of wriggling larvae in it. Not good. Bekir made very good progress during the day and even got time at the end to switch over the circuit breaker in the main circuit board for the kitchen. This was fun as there was a problem and he works with the power still on (though switched off to the rail) and the lights were flicking on and off as he was trying to fix it.

The sun is out as Bekir gets back to work

Putting the final touches to the wall

The Green Building roof needs fixing. Again.

Making a better job of it this time

Sharpening time

Securing Bekci's enclosure

The next day Bekir was back and finishing off the walls around the humanure. This was just in time as the other areas were full and I had a few buckets backed up waiting to be emptied. With this done the next urgent task was to secure the green building roof again. This time he has both cemented it in place and also used strong wire to tie it down to the beams inside. Hopefully this will prove strong enough even with the excessive wind we often experience during storms. He completed this and had time to help me by sharpening the strimmer blades, and then finally fitted a couple of supports to Bekci's fence as she was making good progress towards knocking it down. It was only two days having Bekir here but definitely worth while.

Storms

As is traditional here we have had some very impressive weather over the past few weeks. I've taken very many photographs and videos and here present a few for your enjoyment. Just now as I'm typing this (rushing to get it finished before A gets back hah!) there has been another huge rumble, though it's still warm and sunny right now in the early evening.

This first video I shot stood on the balcony with A. The storm was a long way off, though I think it did end up coming our way and wakening us in the night. This took us both back to our first year here when we used to sit on the balcony, before it was done, on deck chairs in the night and watch storms over the mountains. Happy memories, and it was good to re-live them.

This next video was taken after A headed to visit her parents, the trip she is getting back from tonight. It woke me up very early so I got this video at about 4.30am, then went through to the office as I could not drop back off...

... a bit later on and this was the sky... what an incredible colour...

... and again a little later on that same day another storm came flying through; it only lasted a few minutes but while it was here it was torrential.

This video is a bit longer, and was taken on the same day as the previous three videos (it really was a crazy day) but I've captured a few amazing lightning strikes so watch it if you have time.

A shorter video to show what happens when you forget to shut the balcony door, and a storm blows in with driving rain.

This time we have a series of videos taken over the period of half an hour or so as a monster storm blows in after a glorious start to the day. This was a cracker, including very heavy hail that fell for a few minutes. Crazily enough about five minutes after the hail storm the sun was out again.

If you only watch one of these videos, this is the one to watch. A stunning sunset would be worth seeing, but then suddenly (as you can see from the still) lightning struck! Only a short one as well.

Finally shot last night another distant storm, and also a few fireflies flying around the land.

As you can see we've had some VERY exciting weather but it hasn't all been terrible as the following pictures demonstrate.

I love when the sun shines from behind a cloud

A procession of clouds across the valley

The sun sets, with a variety of clouds around

Moonlit across the valley

Weekend relaxing done right

Really fascinating cloud formation here

Wildlife

OK so that's a huge quantity of videos and photographs and if you've got this far, here's another video and some more pictures, of the wildlife I've seen over the past few weeks. This time the pictures first.

A lovely moth on the back door

Hungry Colorado Beetle - none of these survived

An interesting bug on the spuds

This lizard got into the kitchen but I caught it

Easter Bugs eating a dead caterpillar

A beautiful caterpillar

A Nursery Web Spider

Lizard that lost its tail, but got away

A bug predating on a Colorado beetle larvae

Another interesting creature on the spuds

A beautiful orchid

This chap visited me while I was hanging the washing out

I've been outside more than usual recently mainly down to the fact that I caught the Colorado beetles in the act of hatching and so have spent about half an hour every day picking every single one I could find off the plants and dropping them into vinegar. I normally feel terrible about killing anything living but these, not so much. During this time I've spotted most of the little bugs shown above (I've not seen the spider since so my identification is still uncertain as I didn't get a close up of its eye structure) however it did make me think twice before sticking my hand into the spuds without looking. They aren't deadly but their bite hurts, apparently.

Strimming

With the strimmer having been repaired I've been out a bit clearing down the grass.

It's nice to see progress after a short effort

The driveway really needed clearing

Taking a break from scything; I was hot and tired

I managed to break my scythe

Job finished with the strimmer

Front lawn even more clear

I've not finished it yet, mainly because of being too busy and also all those storms came through and wet the grass again, but another couple of sessions and it'll be done. I've got a better harness delivered as well which will really help. One time I decided to use the scythe and had great fun with it; I did all down one side of the driveway and then as I was starting to come back up the other side the tip caught a bramble stem and BAM the head snapped off! I finished up for the day with the strimmer, and still need to get a new arm for the scythe. I've spent a fair bit of time trying to reduce brambles which are really hard work, and fight back. When A is back that will definitely be a task for this weekend for me.

General

What a long update. I'm going to wrap it up with a final few pictures about other things that have gone on. If you got this far, thanks for sticking with me!

Getting close to completion

Converting some reigns onto a camel rider

I've had a very successful hobby time, getting my 75th anniversary model completed for 6th June to commemorate D-Day (read the blog about it here, with more pictures) and A was wonderful and took a load of great photographs having made me a little lightbox. I've also spent a chunk of time painting and converting in time for ArdaCon which we have decided to still go to. I've got lots more to do but I'm on target.

Another visit, and it's so beautiful up there

The car I drove over with my mum has now been imported, which was a bit of a mission as per usual but I was pleased with myself for completing the task without any help from a local. A has since driven to the airport in it and that's proven its worth already. Thomas had an issue over the weekend with one of his leaf springs falling off so that'll need to be ANOTHER garage trip; it happened after visiting the mountain house and after all the rain we've had the back road was so terrible I'm not surprised something fell off him!

The last slice; it seemed like a good idea when I started...

... but it took me hours to bring myself to eat this final mouthful

Going back to 1991 - walking badges

I've also spent some time mourning my dad; I finished the final piece of the Ginger Parkin that he had made to bring with them when they came to meet Rosie (the trip that was planned for just days after his accident) and this did bring on quite the crisis. It took a long time to eat that final bite. In more positive news, however, I've mounted the walking badges of his, all but one of which I walked with him, and it is now on the wall next to my desk where I can see it every day. How I miss him!

BRUTALITY! has arrived

Almost finally... I had a game deliver from KickStarter, and a mate came over for a meal and to have a game and we had a great time. I'm looking forward to getting this on the table with A as I think she'll have a blast with it as well.

Louise knows how to sleep

They both love the sun

Thelma also knows how to sleep

Louise on the wrong side, but not giving up

Captured mid-back-scratching-roll

Thelma wants me to wake up

So does Louise

Thelma got a lovely shitty neck today

Of course no update will be complete without pictures of Thelma and Louise and so here are a selection that have been taken as they continue to give us such joy (and have kept me company while A has been away.

So there you have it; 51 photographs and ten videos and I did get it completed before A returns. She's in the air right now; I cannot wait!

Thanks for reading :)