Day One

This may look like a builder’s manual for how to get a shed up, so the pictures won’t be stellar.   But it helps to explain just how much work goes into this creation.

Because we are on a mountain, the north side of the studio needed a good long trench of concrete to save the wood from deterioration.   Forty centimetres wide, forty deep and six metres long.   In went the cement.   For the rest of the edges deep holes filled with concrete sufficed.

Charming pictures, you must agree.   And where did all this lovely concrete come from? Why Dario and I had a rendez vous at the local builder’s merchant Madame Felix first thing on Tuesday morning.   Trailer loads and car loads of stuff.   And we ordered the delivery truck (a mighty beast) to come with the extra wood and all the gravel that I suddenly decided we needed as well.  

The delivery charge to drive all the way out to the farm means I try to squeeze as many heavy and important bits of kit onto the vehicle at the same time.   This week it was to be two cubic metres of gravel.   To fix the bald patches in the courtyard and to do lots of remedial work in the garden.

And luckily as the cement work was something I couldn’t possibly do – how on earth do they wheel heavy loads of full cement in a wheelbarrow down such steep slopes to the building site?  I got on with greener things.

I have about thirty eragrostis curvula plants waiting to go into the bank above the pool.   Wisdom advises moving all the plants in spring.   I have decided to try ten of the creatures now.   So up they came from the nursery bed in the vegetable garden and into the bank.

It’s sporting getting them in on such a steep slope. But I’m hopeful they won’t die over the winter.   And rain is predicted for the weekend, so they may even get a bit of a drink.

Not having any potting shed anymore, I was forced to prick out my winter lettuces crouched on the path near the barn.   I wouldn’t recommend it, but needs must.