The rebuilding exercise

Back and connected. We had the most tremendous thunder storm last night. No really, this one was different from the past two (or is it three?) nights of wild storms and torrential rain. Great booming crashes of thunder.

And as a consequence this morning we woke to electricity (a thrill) but no telephone or internet connection.

I ambled up to town to buy bread and ask to borrow the baker’s phone. And Madame Courtial laughed and said that every third customer was doing the same. We need to call and check whether all the lines were down or did we need to book up the engineer to fix our particular part of the netwok.

Luckily a recorded voice assured us that our region would be reconnected by 630pm tonight.  I wonder if the power station at Chalencon took another direct hit.

The sun actually shone today; so we raced outdoors to marvel at the novelty. And I needed to get my hands grubby and do some work.

First I had to mop out the basement floor (which has flooded) and then our builder turned up. He is a great bulder;  which is this part of the world means he looks like a hippy, can fix and build anything, is a not so secret tree hugger and plays a muscial instrument in a local band.

I swear it’s true. Musicians and builders seem to go together here.

Anyway, Bebere wants us to fix our beautiful but collapsed bread oven. We need him to repair the ravages of flood number three.

So no creativity there.  But they will start next week.

My flood damage them continued with an eight metre low wall (24 feet) which I built to go alongside the top road.  It might not work, but I am tired of having flood water stripping off the topsoil. So it’s an experiment. And it only took a few hours to create.

I cheated by stealing festuca grasses from nearby.  They are a brilliant weed for building. I just forked them out, flipped them upside down and then added more soil on top. A stomp and  a dance and you have a small wall.

I didn’t make time to clear away where I forked out the grasses. The poor area looks like a skin graft.   But I was too busy racing about removing outer articles of clothing and grabbing the weeding tools.

Artur frolicked. And I headed down to the orchard.  I was ashamed to walk past the 15 trees in their weedy dress.  (We are making plans to renovate the stables so the three of us trudged past so the builder could measure up.)

Late afternoon sunshine blazing, and all the bases of the trees has their weeds, brambles, and gunk removed.

Much better. The apple at the far end of the orchard is in a sorry state; mainly because the flood water is seeping out of the wall just above it.  I don’t think any tree would be happy for flood water to swirl around its base for long.  Thank goodness our soil is free draining.

But another front of rain is coming, so the farm and this farmer has to endure another drenching.