Taking a walk

29 November 2016

Strolling around our land, we found some more crops for our harvest festival:

 Our first fruiting orange tree.  Not one of the ones put in this year, we've had it about three years, but this is its first time in fruit.  Nine!

 An unusual angle on the house, from the lowest south east corner of the land.  Showing how far we have to go with the forest garden ...  And the strimming.

And finally, some olives on one of the olive trees we planted ourselves, back before the house was started.  Nice looking olives, if not very many.  Barely a teaspoon's worth of oil.

Seeing the back of the bales (not)

Monday 28 November 2016

Despite Dave not being too well, he struggled out into the cold and damp, and made two mixes of plaster.  I just kept plastering, finishing the last panel in the light of a rechargeable work lamp, at 6pm.  It was worth doing, as we now have all the interior sections of the outside wall plastered.  They will still need three coats of limewash, but getting the plaster done is quite a milestone - hurrah!

There are also some sections of internal walls to be finished, so the plastering isn't yet over with, but it's getting closer ...

 East end of the living room - finally plastered!

Evening and morning shots

A letter to the future

25 November 2016

As the last of the lathing on the inner face of the external walls nears completion it is our last chance to embed something in the walls - a letter to the future.  I've wanted to do this for some time, but it was only as the last laths went up and it became now or never, that I actually got on with it.

It may never be found.  But how wonderful, if you were doing up a house today, to find a written message from the Victorians who built it, say.  A little bit of local history.  So Dave and I sat in the sun, drinking tea (of course) and composed our letter.  We started by introducing ourselves and explaining about the house, and went on to describe our beliefs. 

Here are some extracts:

 "We want to be among the people who choose not to be swallowed up in a commercial, anxiety-driven, greed and celebrity culture.  We want to gain knowledge and understanding of our land, grow food that nurtures and respects our bodies, and divorce ourselves from unnecessary materialism.

We can't understand how there can be people with children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, who can willingly obstruct the development of clean energy, electric vehicles, pure food, and other initiatives that will clean our bodies, minds and environments.

That there are people who believe that money is the answer, who think the more money they make, the better their descendants will be able to survive.  People who condemn everyone on this beautiful planet to a future of struggle to reverse the damage of a few greedy, thoughtless generations.

We write this in the hope that the future has learned from the lessons of the last century, that changes have happened.  That as you look around, you see wind farms, solar energy collectors, marine reserves, electric vehicles, respect for resources, plentiful polycultures and self-restrained consuming.

 We send our love out to you, the unknown future, and apologise, deeply and sincerely, for our personal failings: for every unnecessary use of fossil fuels; every purchase of single-use plastics; choice of synthetic fabrics, and all our other unsustainable choices in the five/six decades we have had custody of this glorious planet.  We strive to do better in the days remaining to us.

 We hope the future contains people who can read this, and that things are better for you.  There is so much more to say, but time presses, and this must be sealed into the wall.

We love you, the future, and we hope that the few who believe and think as we do will grow through the new generations to become a force that will overturn greed and fear, to create a better world for all people, animals and plants."

Strange Harvest

24 November 2016

After setting the puppies off on their journey to a new home, we walked back to the house and huddled up with tea until it got light.  Then we started clearing up.  All the paths needed checking for dog deposits, and everywhere around the area where they were tied up.

With that job done, we could finally lay our olive nets out and get on with the harvest.  We managed two trees (and only a quarter sack of olives) before needing a long sit down with more tea.  We also decided it was time to dig up our one successful sweet potato vine, and see if it had made any tubers.  Well, we were astonished.  Some massive tubers, and a really good crop overall, for our first go.  Very impressed.  We gathered all our harvest together for a photo shoot.

 One day's harvest: clockwise from the onion on the left: cherry tomatoes, still fruiting; strawberries - amazing, in November!; olives (a small sample)' mushrooms - which we were hoping might be chanterelle, but we weren't enough sure, so they went in the compost; sweet potatoes - wow!; and the lemon tree, finally producing fruit - lots more on the tree.

  Close-up of the sweet potatoes - two enormous tubers in there.

Strawberries, really very sweet, the plants are having a field day, putting out suckers all around

Dave models the largest potato - what a whopper!

Tea break

Dog days and a walk in the dark

23 and 24 November 2016

The puppy re-homing charity is taking Pepper and Scamp to Holland on Thursday.  So Wednesday was 'the last walk'.  We wanted them to get as much exercise as possible as they would be spending Thursday in a box.

 Even after 6 weeks of being told not to, they are still jumping up when they see us.  Here Scamp demonstrates her flying skills before being brought up short by the chain.

 Pepper doesn't trust the camera (which is coming on by itself)

 and then apologises for being distracted

 Tails moving too fast for the shutter speed

 Dave & dogs

 Sara & dogs on Wednesday afternoon's walk

 Then at 5:30 am the next morning

 Waiting patiently at the rendezvous, with no idea what all this strange behaviour means

 but looking a little hurt and betrayed, nonetheless

And even more so, when crammed in a box in a car for the drive to Thessaloniki, there to take a plane to Holland.  Not a fun day.  In the end, it was hard to part with them, especially Pepper, as they are lovely dogs.  But they need a lot of training, and training takes time, and we don't have the time if we're ever going to get the house finished.  It wouldn't be fair to them to keep them.

Once more, my plinth has come ...

22 November 2016

Neil came back to put the next layer on our foundation.  With rebar and threaded rod embedded in the concrete base, he laid breeze blocks to form a plinth skewered by the bars.  When we get the wood to top off the ring-beam, it will all be bolted together.

While inside, we've moved the scaffolding to the east end of the living room, for the final sections to be lathed ready for plaster

Singsongs

18 November 2016

Another choir performance, followed at the weekend by an all day singing workshop.  Lots of song!

Supermoon

14 November 2016

With all the buzz about the 'Supermoon' - an unusually close full moon on 14 Nov - I decided to try out the tripod and have a go a taking some photos.  The night was slightly overcast, but I had fun setting up the shots.  It turned out that moon rise was directly outside the kitchen door, so I could click the shutter for a long exposure and make supper at the same time. 

 Dusk falls

 First show of light in the sky

 Moon briefly visible before rising into cloud

 From the kitchen door, through olive trees

Nice clouds, badly framed photo!

Lucy in the Gallery with Paintings

Saturday 12 November 2016

Our friend Lucy has been very daring, and presented a show of her paintings in a gallery in Lefkas Town.  We and many others went to the opening night to support her.

Dave, Dmitris and Panos provided light background music.  Later, two other greek musicians joined in, and for the first time, Dave played in an otherwise all-Greek band.

Whitewash!

10 November 2016

Lots of days painting the interior wall sections with limewash.  While the scaffolding is set up for plastering, I thought it would make sense to paint the high level panels as well, so we don't have to shuffle all the furniture and protective sheets back and away again later.  Three coats in each section, washed down all around between each coat.  We're doing a lot of work to give ourselves a smart 'half-timbered' mediaeval finish, but it does look rather fabulous as it starts to come together.   By Thursday 10th, almost all the west end of the living room is painted. 

 The two big bedroom wall panels - they took some doing!

 While waiting for the high level sections to dry, Dave and I painted the lower ones too, so that this job moved much faster than we'd expected.  Which is a nice change!

 Then, excitement!  Rowan came round to measure for the remaining windows and doors.  He reckons he can do the outstanding downstairs casements and the front door before he leaves for the UK in December - wonderful!

 Puppy portraits.  

Now named Pepper (above) and Scamp (below)

Trombe wall foundation

Thursday 3 Nov 2016

Neil arrives to dig out a trench and pour concrete for our new little foundation.  This will form the base for a wood-framed glassed-in space that will help to heat the interior in the winter.  We are still deciding whether to have glass panels that lift out completely during the summer, or to shade with trees or blinds.  The idea of a thermal mass behind glass is known as a 'trombe wall'.  We didn't take the time to build a cob wall, as we meant to, for this facility, so we will have to put our thermal mass in the floor or elsewhere.  Meanwhile, we're still calling it the 'trombe wall' (just to have a name for it).

 Neil and Dave set to with pickaxe and shovel

 The puppies are unamused

 The trench dug and levelled

Meeting the house main foundation, past the gravel trench and 'French drain' dug all round the house by Dave.  The new ring-beam will encase the drain in this one spot, which isn't a problem.

 Neil drills holes into the main beam for reinforcing rod connections.  We want this little ring beam to move together with the main one in an earthquake, so they need to be properly linked.

 Cutting wire for the beam

 and laying it in the trench

 Then the first concrete is poured - after the mixer broke down and Dave had to jerry-rig the pull-cord mechanism.  This meant that we had to keep the mixer going, as it wouldn't start again easily.

 But the day just kept getting stormier ...

Neil leveling the base.

After this, the rain started, and I stopped taking photos to protect the camera.  Dave had been digging earth and shoveling sand all day, so I joined in to help keep up the momentum (concrete needs to be poured all at once to avoid sheer lines).  So I shoveled sand into buckets, Dave carried them to the mixer, and Neil poured and leveled; and we all got very wet.  We finished at ten past four - I made it to choir practice, showered, changed but still bedraggled, by four-thirty!