Gosh, I am constantly amazed by how much gets done when I have volunteers over. It’s been a beautiful weekend and I’m so glad to have spent it outdoors getting lots done, but I sure am knackered.
Elmo, in addition to tending a fire, found the end of the water pipe that should bring us our much-hoped-for running water down on the neighours’ garden path, under a stone slab. But it was unconnected. So a bit of plumbing is in order. Still, progress is progress!
Veronica and Michelle removed this glass and much, much more from the soon-to-be vegetable plot, which is nearly ready for planting (if it ever gets warm enough.)
Bob and Lisa were detailed to design and build a bench from some of the thicker bits of reclaimed wood. They seemed to take well to the task, and the resulting bench was a beauty.
In celebration, they sat on it while roasting sausages over the fire for dinner, and there was no collapse, so we counted it a grand success.
But the big news was the path. I wanted to get as far as we could with a gravel path so that my parents would have an un-muddy walk to the caravan when they stayed in it, but I never imagined we’d get so far.
Lizzy, Ange and Tom spent much of Saturday scraping the topsoil off the hard-packed gravel track beneath, which was much easier to do in places where we didn’t have to hand-excavate carefully around tree roots. Though to imply that it was easy anywhere would be a disservice to the team. It was very hard work.
But with a large team it quickly got done and we added the first gravel, flanked by bits of old skirting board, on Saturday evening.
The gravel filling had to stop while we finished the extremely time-consuming task of scraping the soil from around the large and established tree roots that crossed the path, but I an not allowed to harm the trees, and wouldn’t want to anyway, so it had to be done.
We also had to wait for Lisa, who turned out to be the best dry stone waller among us (which, I’m afraid, isn’t saying much, though she did a very good job) put up a bit of a retaining wall around the area of the caravans, where the path had to widen into the hillside a bit to make room for the porch I will be building in the coming week.
By the end of Sunday, we had a complete path from as near to the drive as we could get without moving the trailer right to the door of the caravan my parents will be staying in.
I am very, very pleased.
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