We've been busy (and my cold's gone)

Yep, my cold only lasted a couple of days - just left with a tickly cough now.  Ho hum!

Last evening we had a BBQ (just the two of us) which was very nice after a day building a dry stone wall.  It was a lovely evening so we put some wood in the brazier after we'd cooked and stayed out until 10.30pm with a bottle of wine watching the stars appear one by one and looking out for shooting stars.  Think this was the end of the week of meteor showers, so we were a bit late and didn't see any.  The sky is amazing here though with no light pollution, very black with millions of stars - where we used to live the sky was always orangey-brown and never really dark.  One of our criteria for where to move to was a black sky at night - tick that one off then.

So, jobs we've got on with in the last week are:
Finish the retaining wall - all the steels and sleepers are in and secure (phew).
Re-inforce the stone retaining wall - because we had to dig down to build the extension, we've had to reinforce the old stone retaining wall.  So we've put some pretty hefty stones along the bottom and up about a metre and continued that round into steps in front of the end barn door (a bit steep, but it's only really a fire escape so won't get used much - hopefully!!).  I went into the woods yesterday and got some pretty little ferns out of the wall up there and pushed them into some of the gaps in this new wall to try to make it look a bit more established.  We're now in the middle of building another section of stone retaining wall.  We're certainly get through our supply of big stones - thank goodness they're free.  If you had to buy these, they'd be about £20 each!!
Downpipes - yeah! at last, we have some of the gutters attached to proper drains and soakaways.  Up until now they have been real Heath Robinson affairs of my making using all sorts of bits of pipes, upside-down ridge tiles, tree guards and tilting buckets.  I quite enjoy doing that sort of cobbling together - reminds me of diverting streams and building dams when I was a lad!  Ahh, what fun.  One of the downpipes was a bit short, so we stuck the end into a piece of old salt-glaze drain pipe we found and built it into the wall.  Because it is bigger than the downpipe and has a socket on the end, we could actually put some little trailing plants in it which would look novel.  I'll take a photo some time which'll make it easier to picture, but it's too dark at the moment.

Oak beams in the kitchen are all in, shaped and sanded and even levelled, so in theory we could put the floorboards in upstairs.  Might wait until the walls are a bit further on first though.  When Bob finished levelling the beams he came bounding up to me to ask if I wanted to go upstairs (hey up, I thought, my luck's in!).  So we climbed up the ladder and balanced precariously on the beams - I was OK until one started swaying.  Oh yes, forgot that one wasn't attached to anything at the other end and was just balancing on a post!  Bob took this photo by balancing the camera on the top of the wall, setting the timer then legging it across the beams before it went off.  You should see the one before this - he looked a bit scared because he'd just run along the wobbly beam!

So, we are now waiting for the timber for the oak-frame extension.  It was supposed to be delivered at the end of last week . . . . still waiting, so I guess we'll have to ring the timber yard again tomorrow.  Still, we've got lots of loose ends finished while we wait.

Oh, and we've had four eggs now - all with shells.  One of our chickens is very clever - think it is Elvis bless her little cotton socks.  I guess the other two have retired.