Day Four

I have so much to fill in on this week’s work. So I shall just work backwards and hope I don’t miss anything out.

Here is the progress today. The frame on the outside has gone up. Dario and Sandro worked until well after 6pm to try and get things in place for the weekend’s break.

It is going to be a bit of a race against time for my seedlings that are lurking just outside the shot here.   Frost is predicted on Tuesday and the temperatures are dropping every day now.

Note the little friend in the shot: Ulysse is delighted to have people around him while he eats his way through the grass in the home paddock next door at Jean Daniel’s.   And he is spoilt with two apples a day now as I have a huge crop from the tree.   And checks on the progress of the building site as much as I do.

The wood is an expensive and heavy commodity. So every delivery that Dario orders from Madame Felix I have been asking them to add another cubic metre of gravel for the garen.   I would never order it on its own as it’s cheaper than the delivery charges.   But I now have two lovely cubic metres in a pile up on the road.

I have no way of getting it to where I want right now in a heavy wheelbarrow.   So it’s a bucket at a time.   I get the feeling the pile is going to live on that spot all winter.   But it doesn’t take long to make a difference.

Here’s the path just beyond the open barn.   It has been a muddy and weedy track up to the potting shed for three years now.   And in about an hour (listening to fulsome tributes to Dame Joan Sutherland on my mp3) I have transformed it.

Now the big question is: do I keep going? Do I make a lovely gravel path all the way up to my brand new studio? It will be logistically tricky to stop the gravel from being washed away in heavy rainfall.   I shall ponder and decide.

The rest of the afternoon (in between a massive trip down to town to pick up lino, roofing material and parts) was spent in the vicinity of the chipper.

The mirabelle trees will be put to good use.    I’m determined this winter to get as many saplings and bits of branches transformed into mulch for the garden.   All part of my plan to have less weeding over the next seasons. Here’s the mulching results from day four.