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Well, nothing happened yesterday. Except for an early morning call from the builder to say that the concrete wasn’t arriving until today now. Wish we’d known that Sunday night. We would have tried to sleep in instead! (Not sure that would have been all that simple to arrange. The kitties seem to like to visit us if we’re not up at whatever time they think is reasonable. But we would have given it a go!)

But this morning the builder and his two “boys” arrived bright and early to start banging in all the pegs for the string to mark all the levels etc. As it was still so frosty I pretty much left them to it apart from clearing the area of a few bits and bobs, and checking that my holes passed muster. By 10am there was some post cutting going on in addition to the stringing up. OOoooh! The excitement!

10:20am, the concrete truck arrived. 11:45 it left, having ripped up anything that looked like it might be close to a “lawn”, and having deposited it’s load in globs around the place. A frantic bit of wood-wobbling then followed, trying to get the posts all square and at the right level.

Lunch then followed while the concrete did some of its setting stuff. Then some more discussion about what was going to go on next seemed to go on, and then they buggered off to let the concrete dry. So it looks like the kitties can have a play on the poles for the next few days. I hope they like them as much as the holes!

Lovely still morning here yesterday morning after it had warmed up somewhat from the very frosty start. Perfect for finishing the last of the post holes!

So nice, in fact, that on top of the last remaining holes I managed to motivate myself to even dig the difficult ones in the corners that we were going to wait until Monday to do. In the end they weren’t that hard to get done. Some of the other ones were much, much harder.

So there we have it. Fifty-seven holes dotted around the place, just waiting to be filled with the concrete and wood. Assuming they all pass the builder’s inspection, of And a few blisters on my hands to show I’ve been working!

Aching back, hands, arms and legs all keeping me company, it was back to the grind of digging more holes yesterday. But this time I also had Bec and the kitties keeping me company too. And actually helping. Or something!

We managed to knock most of the blighters off. I think there are only about 2 that haven’t been started (excluding the 3 corner ones that will wait until a better tool arrives to deal with them on Monday), and 6 that need just a little more finishing off. Probably on hands and knees with an empty plant pot or something. Getting the loose stuff out of the hole has proven to be the hardest part of the whole exercise. There’s obviously a real knack to it that we haven’t yet mastered, and we’re running out of holes to master it with…

When we were in the UK we used to joke that NZ news headlines were along the lines of “Cat up a tree!”. Now we’re back we’re finding out it’s actually more likely to be about sheep…

So to bring things back into line with our way of thinking, here’s a cat up a tree story! In fact, TWO cat’s up a tree! At the same time even!

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that the tree that they’re almost to the top of is in fact the same tree that the fantail likes to sit in when he visits us. I suspect there might be a bit of an issue there at some point!

And yes, this does indeed mean that we’re letting the kitties out. It took a bit of coaxing. Coaxing me, that is, by Bec. I needed quite a bit of reassurance that they were indeed likely to come back, and that they’d be fine… But they have been, so far.

I think we’re up to four trips outside now, and both they and we have got more relaxed about them being outside.

The first couple of adventures were highly supervised affairs, with Bec and I tracking one kitten each, and keeping up with them as they really, really slowly made their way out into the big wide world, running back to us or the door whenever a car went past or a big bird honked, tweeted or quacked. Half an hour was their limit before we captured them and brought them back inside, where they totally zonked out after all that excitement.

The last couple of adventures have been less supervised. Today we just let them roam while we spent the time digging more holes for a couple of hours (more on that later). They were really good though, and came back inside when we called them. I think they’d had more than enough by then. Tree climbing can really take it out of you! Fidget even deigned to lie there and have his paws cleaned on a wet towel when they came in. He was a very dirty cat after playing in all the wet grass and the dirt from the post holes…

The one day that we were in town all week and it happened to be the day that a shipment of wood was arriving for us to finally get on and get a deck and some stairs done so we can remove the pallets lying around all over the place. So we just had to hope all day that the driver wasn’t too stupid, and put it all somewhere close to where it was going to be needed! Luckily he’d the sense to call Jeff who was able to give him some advice about the correct location. Whew! Although in looking for a quick way out the driver buggered up the only decent bit of lawn we’d managed to cultivate so far. Oh well. A decent roller will start to even it out again, but at the moment the push mower won’t cope very well with the tyre indents…

So that’s the timber sorted then. We managed to get the house builder back on site on Friday to start to build it all. But I thought I’d add my help too. I might regret that yet! First stage (after a long discussion about just how we were going to do it all and some measuring and marking, of course) is all the holes for the posts. Between us we got a fair few done (29 and 2 halves) with the aid of an auger and spades before he had to shoot off for the afternoon, leaving us to finish the rest (another 25) over the weekend. I think I might have mentioned before about how stony the round is here? But Ill mention it again anyway. The ground here is bloody stony! I think my wrists and elbows are suffering from all the jarring of hitting stones on every drop of the spade blade.

But it’s started. We’ll see how long it takes to complete!

Late this afternoon we were getting in a bit of snooker practice when I noticed a bit of flitting around in the temporary nursery that has been set up in the courtyard until we decide what to do with both it and the plants. A focussed look revealed a fantail jumping all around the tree that’s there!

This grainy photo’s all we managed to get as it was pretty dark and horrid, but it is proof.

I’ve no idea where it came from or went to. We’re pretty much in an empty paddock except for the house. But I’m stoked that it came and said hi, even if it doesn’t come back for a while. But I hope it does! We might have to have more trees in the courtyard than I thought if that’s what they’ll bring in.

We keep trying to get a decent photo of all the swallows that seem to have made the house a regular venue for a snack, where they come and hover just under the eaves and pick off insects. But they’re just so fast that getting a decent picture is a bit difficult.

This is the best I’ve managed so far:

Reminds me a lot of Top Gun, for some reason! And they certainly fly pretty close and fast to both the house and us when we’re working.

A few days ago we made a bit of an attempt to hide all the septic tank gubbins.

A few grasses and iris and stuff seemed like a good start. We’ll just have to see if they do the job, or whether we need to get out a pail of green paint and attack the concrete and plastic. Hopefully we’ll remember to take another photo in 6 months or a year to compare the view.

Remember way back when I got my little red thermette? Well, today we were down the back doing a bit of general tidying up when I came across some of the gorse we chopped out a while ago. A random synaptic fit led me to link the dry gorse and thermette together, and a fun experiment was had.

It actually worked pretty well! Gorse seemed to burn pretty hot when it’s all the little leaves and spikes burning, but it didn’t really like to catch the larger stalk logs I’d sawed off. And it can give off a lot of smoke! But I got there with a bit of careful tendering. Boiling water for a coffee with a jug just isn’t the same!

And yes, I did risk the water and drink a coffee made from the thermette. Tasted like any coffee made here so far. Maybe a small hint of smokiness coming through, but that might have just been off my clothes!

We’ve had a couple of good frosts this week, and they pretty much did it for the zucchini, pumpkin and butternut-squash plants, so we harvested what was there. Two pumpkins and a single butternut. Oh well!

Bit of a shame though there were quite a few more butternuts just starting to grow. And actually, if I remember rightly the pumpkins were actually meant to be butternuts too. Oh well. We’ll try again next year.

But getting rid of those expansive plants at least let us weed the “paths” between the garden “plots” for the first time in some months, and get that plot ready to take some attempts at winter growing. No doubt we’ll let you know how that goes too.

And we have to admit to being pretty exhausted this evening after clearing about half of the remaining pile of stones and given more “lawn” a cut. Still not quite cleared what we see as the house plot, but we’re getting there. Maybe by the end of the week. Maybe. If we can move off our chairs again. Everything hurts!

Yesterday was such a stunningly warm and sunny day that we had to make the most of being outside, and what better way to enjoy a day outside than to start to get through the list of chores that had been building up!

First task ticked off was installing the mailbox so when all the house-warming gifts arrive they’ll have somewhere to be delivered to.
😉

That went pretty well, and pretty quickly, so then it was onto the more of the clean-up of all the builders mess along with all the stones that had been left lying everywhere. After a few barrows of grot, we were ready to give some of the greenery around the house a bit of a trim. Which we did. With a combination of post spade, weed-eater and donated push-mower. Yes, that’s right. A manual push mower! Hard, hard work, but probably the safest way to give an area its first trim, as then you can more easily see the nails, plaster, wire, stones, pebbles and rocks that come flying at you. And pretty satisfying too to clear all the area with personal effort and sweat. And boy did I sweat! I did mention that it was a fantasticly warm and sunny day, didn’t I?

So now we have the start of some “lawn”. Or at least some short green stuff!

And this morning before the rain came I’ve cleared a bit more. The problem’s going to be working out where to stop!