At the end of my last blog, I was wishing for rain; the ground was so dry and hard and we were already having to water every day. My wish was granted the following evening, in spectacular style, with a huge thunderstorm and buckets of rain. We sat on the balcony for a couple of hours that evening, watching the near constant lightning and enjoying the sound of the rain, until it started blowing in onto us, when we beat a retreat. The rain continued for four days, a total of 56mm fell, doing the garden so much good and by the end of it, the new grass had sprouted in the garden.
Nick was getting pretty fed up even before the rain arrived; he couldn’t do any more in the bathroom till I’d done the joint filling, only likes doing “big” gardening (ie with the digger) and had finished all the remaining sand and cement. He’d dug out the base for a false well he wants to build, to conceal the water tub that collects treated water from the septic tank, before it’s pumped to the other side of the garden for use watering the veg plot; but until we got sand and cement, he could go no further. At last I managed to get in touch with the man who can deliver building materials and yes, he could do it the following day. 2 cubic metres of sand and 10 bags of cement later and Nick’s a happy bunny again.
A few weeks ago, I painted the drawers Nick had made for my workshop and for years I’ve wanted to make the plain white cupboard doors more interesting; this felt like the right time. We took the doors down and put them on the gite kitchen tables, where I set to work. Many happy hours playing later, we rehung them. It may not be to everybody’s taste, but I’m pleased with the result.
Once that was out of the way, I was able to start filling the plasterboard joints in the new bathroom. This must rate as one of my least favourite jobs; hours and hours of filling, sanding down, refilling, sanding again, again and again and by the end, if you’ve done a decent job, you don’t even see it. It makes my back, arms and shoulders ache, especially the ceiling. It’s not far off finished now though, so Nick will soon be able to lay the floor tiles and apparently some DIY shops have reopened, so we can soon go looking for wall tiles.
The weather’s been lovley again this week, so while I’ve continued the never ending task of weeding, Nick’s been mixing up heaps of cement to lay a screed on the terrace. He hasn’t got enormous stocks of the wood needed to frame it, so is doing one section a day; another 3 days and it should be finished and we can start tiling it, using the tiles we bought about 3 years ago.
In the meantime, the grass is growing and from ground level you can hardly see the join; it’s beginning to look like a proper garden at last.
