Goat Bottom in the Sunshine

25 - 29 October 2016

Our supply of 'Goat Bottom Strawbale Eco-house and Forest Garden' business cards has pretty well run out, and as the picture is now two years old, and shows the East front newly baled, and without plaster; we need a new picture.  So I took a few, and think this is my favourite, so far.

 Jane's last day - abundant sunshine, finally

 Bloomin' roses

 As a run-in to getting the real work re-started, I spent a day fixing up shelves in the pantry.  The shelves can be lifted out, as the plastering still needs doing, but it could be a month or more while we concentrate on areas needing the scaffolding.  I can't wait that long to organise the pantry, it's been in turmoil for too long.

 A place for mops and brooms, which will be behind the pantry door, when we get one

 Then back up the climbing frame, Friday and Saturday, to do the tall panels of the bedroom wall, and the remaining sections on the diagonal.  Only one little section remains (hidden by the scaffolding) over the window to have this whole end of the living room complete.

A fabulous 'second coming' of the cherry tomato plants!

Up the Mountain

23 October 2016

Our friends, Tree and Mike, were celebrating his 80th birthday, so we trekked up into the hills of Vournikas to their villa, where Dave played and we sat round the pool till the heavens broke, whereupon we retired to the kitchen and sang songs till home time.

Big window and final pantry wall

20 - 21 October 2016

Out of the blue, the Glass Men came to measure the big 'Cathedral' window.  I had given up on attempting to do this ourselves, and decided instead to risk getting the glass suppliers to measure, cut and fit (all enquiries made in pidjin Greek).  At least the glass would be transported and lifted without our involvement!

 Using a piece of glass (clever!) to trace the outline of the curve at the top of the window

 The new regulator arrived, so we collected it from Lefkas, and Dave installed it.  This is the damage received by the old one - we suspect a lightning strike.  Dave's biggest worry now is that one of the battery banks (the newest one, worst luck) has been fried.  This appears to be the case.  Even on a sunny day, the lights go out around 9 pm and we have to run the generator.  Not good.

 With Jane staying, the music room is out of bounds, so we've stopped plastering the living room for the week, as the dust and debris from woodwork and plastering would be difficult to live with.  So I decided to lath up the section of the pantry wall that we used as a door while the living room was a bale store.  I cut and drilled the laths outside to keep the dust down.

 The puppies - not allowed in the house - pushing the boundaries to watch me work

 In action!

 And the Glass Men came back with the window and fitted it.  Also the two semi-circular tops.  The remaining rectangles will be opening casements, and we're waiting for Rowan to make them.

 Lovely to have a bit of a view from this corner at last

Family & Friends

16 - 20 October 2016

Last few incoming flights of the year into Preveza - Sunday brought friends, Wednesday brought family. 

 An impromptu supper party - Dave, Amanda, Geoff, Maraid and Fran.  Fran helped plaster the south wall a year ago, while waiting for Geoff to bring their boat from France.

 Another shot, with me in it!

 Sunday at the airport, collecting cousin Jane, returning after a seven year absence!

 Stopping to admire the flamingoes on the way home

 Goat Bottom in bloom - September rains bring a 'second spring' of flowers

 The Moringa trees - doing fabulously, given that we have been cropping them for salad almost every day.

Jane snuggled up in the living room, adapting to our building site as if to the manner born.

Tricky Corners

14 - 17 October 2016

Back to the lath-and-plastering.  Almost every section has its challenges, from glass bottles and plastic pipes to olive wood corners, but the biggest challenges of all - and the bits I've laid awake nights trying to think how they can be done - are in the diagonal corner where the south wall steps back to meet the interior wall of the entry.  These are 135 degree joins, complicated by the roof slope where they meet the ceiling.  One section at a time, these challenges were met and resolved ....

 Vertical panel left of the window, laths had to run up and down, rather than across. Plaster has to slope onto the main upright, rather than butt up to it.

 Opposite side, the join was too acute, and went too far behind the main upright, so a piece of skirting board was fitted vertically to neaten the join

 The curved corner around the bathroom wall - so much nicer, if rather more trouble, to make this a gentle curve.  The skirting board was a real challenge, but vigorous sanding and filling should make my dodgy wood-butchery largely unnoticeable.

 Walls plastered as far round as the bathroom door - hurrah!

 The big picture, to date

 The finished effect gives no idea at all what a struggle it was to fit batons and then laths to the top, sloping section.  Those acute angles where the sloping rafters meet the diagonal wall are impossible to get a drill into, so lots of creative fixings were required.

Moving on to the highest point - the outer side of the bedroom wall.  Insulation going in first ...

 ... then laths, with me on the scaffolding and Dave on the mezzanine to drill each end.

Woodstore Day

12 Oct 2016

We've left it a bit late this year, so the last few days of rain have soaked our available wood.  Time to stop plastering things and get our woodstore set up for the winter months.  We don't have much olive wood, only a few hard-to-cut stumps of our own wood, and some branches donated by Robbie and Sue from the villa they garden for.  We do have a lot of cypress, but it will burn hot and fast, so not good for sustained heating, only for quick starts.  We collected, cut and stacked what we did have, but it left us deciding to order in a truckful from Robert Tatos.

 The big woodstore, only one-third full.

 Dogs not too happy about the chainsaw.  Keeping well clear, luckily.  We've been in touch with the re-homing charity and confirmed that we will continue to foster these pups, until they can be given permanent homes, probably in Holland, where the charity is based.  Meanwhile, we need to take a trip to Lefkas to get collars and food supplies.

 They really are very nice dogs.  At the vet's in Lefkas, we happened to meet a man and his daughter who recognised the puppies from our photos.  Apparently they are three months old, and are from a litter of seven pups born to a mother owned by a Roumanian living for the summer in Katouna.  They understood that three of the pups had been re-homed in Nidri, so someone has decided not to keep these two.  Up till the point they were thrown out, they have been well looked after, and have nice natures.  They are both female, even the black one, which is going to be a large dog.  I named her 'Pepper', because of her colouring.

The white one is very demanding of attention, but Dave refused to call her 'Me-me', so she got 'Scamp' instead.

 Under the bottles is our crop of tumeric.  As it pokes up out of the ground, the crickets home in, so we're trying to protect it.  It may not cope with the winter, as it likes tropical temperatures.

Nice Pepper!

Puppy Dog Eyes

7 - 12 October 2016

On Friday, I heard something nosing around the sardine tin I'd put out for the cats.  Going outside, there was a puppy in the yard, I chased it away, and another one appeared.  I chased them both away.  The black one ran off up the track, but the white one circled round behind me and went in the house.

Not being a very doggy person, I shouted for Dave, who scooped it up from behind the kitchen table where it was cowering, and threw it out.  That night, they sheltered in our front porch.  In the morning we chased them off again.  This went on until Monday, when we could no longer avoid the realisation that if we didn't feed them, they would starve to death on our doorstep.

We assume they'd been dumped by someone who expected the British to come to the rescue.  We lived up to the stereotype.

 A rough-and-ready shelter, on an old blanket that dyed the white one pink

 Bedraggled in the rain, and starving - how to resist?

Two days later, now they adore us.

Flowering Aloe

6 Oct 2016

The Aloe Vera has flowered!  We bought the plant from Lidl, when we first moved on to the land, and it lived in a pot for a couple of years, before I built the dry garden and planted it.  Suddenly, after years of struggle, it has put out a long orange spike

 This little cob house is on top of one of our windows.  We don't know what's in there, but we've limewashed around it.