Autumn is definitely upon us, and somehow that makes bonfires extra fun. Elmo, uncharacteristically, let us have a bit one to burn all the rubbish wood around the place, brush-piles and not-very-useful firewood, ivy stumps, etc. Bit smoky, but lovely to have cleaned up the place a bit.
Sylvia came round and helped me cut the shiplap for the enclosing of the gables. Both are now clad from the outside and the bedroom end of the building is insulated. I’ve got to wait for a day Elmo isn’t there to insulate the other end, because he’s in the way when he’s working at his desk.
He’s decidedly not in the way when he’s being tall and therefore able to reach the topmost nails. Very useful he is then.
Now that the building’s been rendered (all except the front, which I think will have to wait til spring, unless we have a very warm autumn) it’s looking all quaint and beautiful. I want to put some decorative trim under the gable. And maybe paint all the woodwork. And definitely get rid of that water tank.
I bought a lampshade on sale for almost nothing, but then after getting squished a few times as the bed got pulled up to the ceiling, it fell off its thingie. So I had to sew it back on, and obviously that’s an opportunity for a bit of bead embellishment. There’s never a wrong time for bead embellishment.
At the weekend we had six for dinner and I made slow cooked chicken (becoming a bit of a speciality) with onions and garlic, plus a sort of ratatouille-ish thing and rice. Apple crisp for dessert, with a handful of the last blueberries and the only decent blackberries on site. Not a good year for fruit, it’s been way too cold. I can’t even find damsons or sloes anywhere, so I’ll be reduced to making cranberry gin instead this year.
This is the view I get when I am lazily still in bed and Elmo’s up and eating breakfast at his computer. The morning sun is so beautiful through the end window. I can’t wait to be in the real house, with the south facing wall of glass getting full sun all the time. All the time that there’s sun anyway.
The guys from BT finally came to dig the hole for the pole, so we are one (tiny, almost invisible) step closer to having a phone and broadband. They were late and didn’t have time to actually put the pole in, of course. They are meant to be doing that today, and in preparation we had to clear a bit of ground below the bottom greenhouse base, which it soon became apparent had been the dumping ground for fifty years of broken greenhouse glass. The blue tub and about eight more like it are destined for the tip. I wish we could separate out the glass and use it as heat-sink in the house, but I don’t know how we could do it. Actually, I haven’t quite written it off… I might have at think…
A lovely image to end on. On a shopping trip in town I dodged a shower by having a cup of coffee and a lovely piece of the new gluten free cake at The Bear. Very, very good, which I don’t often say of gluten free cake. I love that place.
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