Helping Hands

“Many hands make light work” or in our case… “many hands fill ditch in & stop lightning striking”!

Here’s who’s been mucking in over the last few days…

Blazo & Vedran made short work of 3.5 cubics of ’slunak’ (large gravel) and really helped move things along.  Their strength & youth made us feel old & weak but we were grateful anyway!

With those 2 on the only barrow and Steve preparing the ditch for the boys (ie. digging out where the mud had fallen in & packing the sides with fresh mud/ clay when they had collapsed & were too wide), I started to tidy up areas of the grounds.  This is where the wood pile used to be:

Just got to get the last of that muddy spoil levelled out & the paths around the back & side of the building will be clear again.  The soil I am trying to shift is so horrid – blue, glupy, clay they call ‘dead earth’ here.  So once we have scraped all the clay level we will let it settle for a while and one day, when funds allow we’ll invest in a load of top soil and grass seed and make it green again. The best way to shift the clay is to pick it up with our hands …

(No, I have’t dyed my hair – it’s just had all the summer blonde cut out of it!  Not the best shot of the new hairdo, but hey…)

And throw it…

Here’s the new location for the wood pile:

And here’s another area I have lovingly removed the rocks & clods of nasty clay from & raked level-ish.  It’s the nearest patch of earth to the compost chambers & it will be where we unload our well rotted compost from the loss this summer.  It’s also nicely in the shade & so I’m hoping to grow lettuce, rocket & other summer greens there that refuse to grow in the raised beds at the height of the heat…

Matt brought over his climbing ropes and got up on the roof to attach the lightning strip to the ’sponjicas’ at the top of the roof.

Meanwhile his sidekick, Lubo, shovelled & barrowed gravel.

Here’s a shot of the ditch a couple of days ago. It’s even closer to being finished now but I’ll wait until it’s DONE (and tidier) before I take more shots…