All I want for Christmas…

… is a bulldozer of my own. Just kidding. But have a look at this beauty parked in front of the house.

And its big brother is coming this afternoon to dig a huge culvert beside the top road.

All praise Monsieur Dumont. He nipped up this morning for a spot of landscaping and to talk through what still needs to be workeed on.

The sun is shining and life feels much more promising again. It’s one of those days where you can see that real progress is being made on the farm and it might all work out. 

Jean Daniel stopped by to assure me that we will get the road repaired; Bebere and Etienne are back breaking the wall in the cellar and I’m moving soil.

Oh yes, so much for the cerebral life of screen writing and research. It’s blistered hands and a gently aching back for a day. And I must confess it feels great.

I showed Monsieur Dumont the huge pile that came out of the pool last month; but its definitely sitting in the wrong place.  It is on a huge tarp near the duck pond and below the swimming pool  But it needs to move back up to the top of the farm. I have no soil left where the hedge once was.

I can do it on my own of course, one bucket at a time; but with the chance of a bulldozer here for one more full day’s work I was yearning for a bit of help.

You could just picture me wringing my hands in desperate supplication as I asked to add it to his long list.   And so soon after I had begged him to remove the fallen wall. Poor man.

He scratched his chin, paced out the width of the track and delivered his verdict. It can’t be done.

Argh. But he did say that if I moved all the soil down the hill and at the entrance to the road he could pick it up in his bulldozer and whip it up to the top of the farm in no time.  I would just have two hours in which to do it.

Now anyone who is a gardener knows that I didn’t even pause before racing up to grab my shovel and wheelbarrow and heading to the pile.  This is great topsoil.  It can finally get  it to its proper place.

This is my lunchtime progress and I think I can do another hour or so of shovelling and ferrying. It’s 60 metres down the track to the new pile,  but for once in my life, I get to do something with a downhill slope.

I’d get on my hands and knees and praise the god of good gardeners. But I don’t think I’d be able to stagger to my feet again.