Pottering on

Third week: 15 - 21 July 2013

Now the heat really has hotted up, and we move a little slower - Dave and I do, anyway.  Rowan seems indefatigable.  I finished laying the paving stones in the kidney bean, and ended up without stones small enough to fill this shape.  To me it looks like a dolphin, Dave said it's more like an Ichthyosaur, as dolphins don't have tails like that.  Whatever, it's begging for a mosaic, which is a nice static indoor kind of job, so that's me sorted for a while.

Rowan mentioned to Jade that I was on the lookout for broken tiles, and she turned up with a large bagful.  Apparently Neohori village has a dumping ground for tile display boards, so there's plenty more if I want them.  This is what I came up with.  Just got to decide whether to install it in the doorstep now.

One night this week, we were making a night-time pilgrimage to the loo / compost bin, and put on a torch at the top of the stairs.  This must have awakened a sleeping hornet, which chased us back into bed, quivering under the mosquito net.  It continued to harass us through the net until we squirted it with insect killer.  Next morning I found out what she was being so protective of:

... little baby pottery nests.  I don't think we'll keep them, not if there are potential inch long hornets inside.

I didn't take many photos this week, but Dave started lowering the floor level in the bathroom, as we've researched limecrete slabs and they need about 10cm depth, so he's pick-and-shovelling dirt.  I finished the wall around the front door, both sides up to level, and filled the main doorstep full of broken roof tiles as hardcore.

The afternoon temperatures are in the very high 30s in the afternoon, so we'll take any excuse to do some 'research'!  But seriously, we are being messed around by the potential bale supply people, and started to properly consider a technique called 'straw-clay' as an alternative to baled walls.  We originally dismissed this option because of the cost.  It requires a wooden framework into which you stuff straw that has been tossed in clay slip.  We already have half the framework in our wooden wall structure, so we'd need to build a second framework about a foot / 30cm out.  But since we found out the cost of build-quality straw bales, the extra wood required for straw-clay doesn't seem so daunting.  The big issue for us is that until this decision is made, we can't continue with the stem wall.  Straw bales need a 50cm wide wall, and straw-clay only 30cm.  Lots of research needed - in the shade, sitting in comfy chairs, drinking tea ...