More gardening

28 Jan 2018

The past few days have been lovely, and we've pressed on with distribution of manure.   Dave's been working on the vegetable beds, while I've tackled the hugels and the artichoke and herb beds, then started on the trees.

 Moringa seeds sprouting on the windowsill.  Much happier this year with the house being so warm.

If we can keep them alive, they will be six foot high trees by summer.

 Four stand-alone trees (counting the not very visible one right at the back by the hedge) with enlarged, manured pockets, ready to be straw mulched when we get a bale

 Second hugle ready too

 The vegetable beds, ready to go

 The artichokes, which seem to survive without any attention, but I enlarged their bed and fed them some manure, so maybe we'll get larger chokes this year.

 The old overgrown herb bed.  The top end is luxuriant oregano and rosemary and fennel, but the other end wasn't doing much.  I cleared it up, and found chives (to my surprise), some wild thyme, just outside the bed on the left, some wild spearmint and a patch of indeterminate sprouting bulbs.  I protected them all, weeded out the couch grass and put down manure.

And another tree.  A peach, in a very bad position, behind the water tank, but just growing big enough to poke out into some sunlight, also cleared and fed.

Making toys

27 Jan 2018

With Dave being a multiple Grandad, and a great uncle, and me now a new Grandmother, and a recent aunty twice over, it's time to get stuck into making soft toys:

Little elephant in the making.  Only five - or is it six? - new babies in the last twelve months.

Making bales

25 Jan 2018

We continue to go to Lefkogaia to help with the recycling on every Thursday we can.  Our most recent visit required us to make up a cardboard bale.  It wasn't a bad attempt, just a bit loose by the standards of more experienced balers.

That's our first cardboard bale, the loose one on the left.

Disentangling the old electrics

22 Jan 2018

This was a job in itself: now the second fix electrics are done, most of the sockets and light switches are working, so our extensive cat's cradle of extension leads could be dismantled. 

However, despite the joy of proper lights almost everywhere, (especially in the kitchen, hurrah!) we still do not have the big new solar system operational.  Tomas was all set to throw the switch, when he found that we didn't have the right connectors for the panel wires.  Serious frustration.  We had to order two sets, which take 24 hours, and wait for Tomas to be free again - at least another week.

 The heap of old extension leads, waiting to be sorted into working/safe and not working/not safe

An update on the funny little plywood panel over the side kitchen window.  The panel looks very neat, and the new spotlights very fancy.  Just need to cover up the wire, now.

Making the beds

22 Jan 2018

The weather has turned fabulous, and the wood for the ceiling boards has arrived, but we just want to be outside, making beds ready for planting.

 The mini-hugel bed, with thriving artichokes and strawberries, and an avocado that just turned up

 My precious comfrey plant, struggling a little, but still alive - so I straw mulched it.

 The big hugel bed, cleaned and manured, and waiting for mulch

There are about seven of these little trees growing up in the hugel beds, they may be apple trees from pips in the compost, so I protected them.  They may not amount to much, but all trees are good and may provide shade in a few years. 

Let there be lights!

20 January 2018

We had ordered light fittings on the last occasion Tomas was here.  Which was quite a job in itself, involving a lot of scrolling through Greek websites and making decisions - trying to do the whole house in one go.  Dave rapidly lost interest and declared himself happy with whatever I chose.

Tomas rang on Friday night and said he could come Saturday, and turned up with a mountain of boxes.  So I opened them all.  Tomas and Panos set to work fitting sockets and switches and lights, and I showed Dave my choices.

 The light fittings arrive

 The last panel is lifted up to the roof

 Wires dangle from the panels ...

 and are fitted through the hole left in the wall for that purpose

 Sometime later, we have switches (and sockets and lights, oh my!)

My indulgence: a set of three fancy lights over the stairs

Putting the chickens to work

19 Jan 2018

We finished off the third Moringa bed, deciding to put a plank walkway through the thickest part, so it will be easier to get to things.  The woodchip heap that Panos and Dmitri made a couple of months ago from the mountain of olive wood trimmings didn't quite fill it, and we had to use some scrapings of leaf mould from the compost pile to finish.

Meanwhile, the chickens had a day out in their working run, it's quite a large area, maybe 60m2, so it'll take quite a bit of scrabbling.  It is quite a job to get them there, as they are easily distracted en route, and have to be chased and caught and transported by hand ... phew!

Muckspreading

Weds 17 Jan 2018

We've used up all the wood we had for the ceiling boards, and have decided to get one large order for the rest of the mezzanine ceiling.  This will have to wait some days for delivery, so in the meantime, we can get on with some gardening. 

We have already sorted out two of the on-contour 'Moringa' beds (named for the trees we want to plant here (and everywhere else!), but the third one had never been finished.

 First the bed is dug out with a ditch on the uphill side and a mound on the downhill.  This will help the bed retain rainwater.  It should be a one-time only setting up dig.

 Then we lash well-rotted goat manure all over ...

 cover it with cardboard ...

 and rake woodchip over the top

 The cardboard acts as a slow biodegrading sheet mulch.  The manure feeds the soil, and the woodchip holds water and also slowly releases nutrients into the soil.  In a few years, this will be great topsoil.  In the meantime, we'll plant some nitrogen-fixers and mineral accumulators to help the process along.

 Dave goes on his first 'horta hunt' of the year (horta means 'edible weeds' in Greek).  Yummy, fresh greens for supper!

 And my new doormat (from Turtle Mats) has arrived.  Far too pretty to wipe muddy boots on, but that's what it's there for

Panels aloft!

Thursday 11 Jan 2018

Tomas the electrician was able to come on Tuesday this week, a gloriously sunny day - and he and his mate spent all day indoors, checking wire runs and setting up for the sockets and switches.  At the end of the day, Tomas said he'd be back on Friday, to install the panels.  We pointed out the weather forecast was for a downpour, so everything was left hanging again.

On Thursday morning, Tomas rang to ask if we had rain, as he had swapped his schedule around.  We didn't, so we decided to risk it.  The day held dry until just after lunch, and 14 of 15 panels were installed on the roof. 

The worst bit was that Dave and I had to pass the panels up to Tomas and Panos on the roof.  I found this difficult, they are big and unwieldy things, and fragile too.

 Handing up the panels, Dave and I lifting, Tomas and Panos reaching down to grab them.

 Getting on with the installation

 Fourteen panels fixed, then we find out why we had an extra two rails left over - the final panel needed an extra couple of centimetres of rail, so the last two had to go up.  Dave went on the roof to install them, and having started - removing tiles and screwing the mounts into the rafters - he couldn't finish until the roof was waterproofed again.  The drizzle started while he was up there.

 Meanwhile, Tomas and Panos were inside, warm and dry, seeing to the wiring.

Still on the roof - four o'clock and very damp.

On the mend

8 Jan 2018

After our week of drowning in mucus, we started to feel better on Monday 8th, and finally sorted out the last panel of the bedroom ceiling.

Grandmother!

6 January 2018

At the height of the snuffles, we sat through three days of vicarous labour by text message, and were eventually presented with my first grandchild, Noah, born 6 Jan 2018.

Waiting and snuffling

First week of January 2018

Struck down hard with the 'flu, very little happened during the first week of January.  The weather was miserable, and we used most of our efforts on getting enough wood in.

We were frustrated, too, waiting for the electrics to be fitted.  The weather made it impossible for the panels to be installed on the roof.  There were a few jobs we had to press on with, making wall holders for junction boxes, and other odd snaggy jobs.

 Dave makes a little plywood panel for a patch of wall that was never finished 'cos we couldn't decide what to do about lighting here.  But then we realised it would be part of the kitchen eventually, so we needed to put spotlights over the window - so now we could run the wires out and fit a panel there.

 Below, a structure made and fitted for a junction box in the pantry

New Year

31 December 2017

The last day of the year was gorgeous, so we upped onto the bikes and went for a ride.  We planned to go round to Dessimi to see the sea, but we stopped at the boatyard to check the boat, and found that I was a bit sick and dizzy, so we turned round and took a gentle ride to the Elite cafe and admired the view.

 New Year's Eve at the seaside

 The house from the South - with rails awaiting solar panels ready on the roof

 The bedroom ceiling boards in place, all except the last cavity to the right.

In close up - the last piece of the bedroom ceiling to be insulated - first it needs a bit of wall to replace those pillows in the gap between the music room.

For the next week, we did very little indeed, as the flu struck us down, leaving us huddled in blankets round the stove, with no energy for anything.  We had decided to try being vegetarian for January, so we lived off lentil stew, without energy even to make more interesting meals.