More weeding!

Yes, more weeding has been done, but this time I imported some help!  Carol and Graham came briefly so that Graham could do a bit more to his rocking chair.  It's really coming on and all the bits are shaped and all the joints are cut and have been tested.  Now, Graham's a precision engineer and Bob has reverted to his old precision ways now he's making furniture (things in an old house can't be done with that much precision) so you won't be surprised to know that one of the joints was so tight that they couldn't pull it apart again and Bob has blisters on his hands from the effort!  Anyway, Graham has gone away with sanding homework and if he has time to do that they can start guleing it together next time they come.

So, while they were doing that Carol and I did some garden jobs.  Bob and I have just about finished the stone wall for our forst bit of terracing and so behind it were all the reject stones that didn't get used so we sorted them and moved them to their appropriate places and then pulled all the weeds out.  Now it's ready to have a dose of well-rotted horse muck and some topsoil from our mountain (the one we had to move to lay the lawn).  Course, since we laid the lawn, the mountain of soil had grown its own forest of lush weeds. 

 At least they stopped the chickens from spreading the soil all over the place and so we do still have some left.  So that was another job to do.  That was actually quite good fun because the weeds were big and thick, but because the soil was quite loose they came up easily and it was quite satisfying.  So, good job done.  That's the finished wall behind Carol, ready to backfill with soil and plant.

Last weekend we had a working party to Mum and Dad's.  To make things more manageable in their garden they have taken out the hedge and wanted to put a fence in, so Carol, Graham, Bob and I launched ourselves at the task.  Mum and Dad had done all the planning and got the timber roughly cut to size and with its first coat of fence treatment and the posts and rails were already in.  So over the two days we nailed the boards on cut the top level and put all the top pieces on and gave it another coat of treatment.  We also re-treated their two little sheds, made a new handle for one and dug over the border that had got well and truly trampled in the process.  It ended up a bit like that old program 'Ground Force' as Mum took the opportunity to do some inside jobs and we ended up racing against the clock to get the border dug, stones picked out, raked and swept up before Mum came out to offer a cup of tea at 3.30 (she didn't know we were doing that bit so we wanted to surprise her with a job finished)!  It was actually quite good fun and everyone worked well together and around each other and we got a satisfying amount done.  There were quite a lot of people walking past when Carol and I were nailing the boards on (Bob, Graham and Dad were doing the more technical 'boy jobs' like cutting joints on the top rail).  I think people were quite surprised to see 'girls' doing that sort of thing.  One elderly lady looked quite horrified as she asked her friend if that was 'ladies doing fencing'!  Oh, if only she knew . . . fencing, roofing, building, underpinning, demolition (and barely a broken nail in the whole time!).

We're off to the proverbial p***-up in a brewery tonight.  Stonehouse brewery where we buy our beer from are having a bit of a do to raise money for charity.  They have a couple of local bands playing (I think some of the lads that work there are in a band), a hog roast and beer - naturally.  Should be good I think - they've sold 160 tickets - just a shame I have to work tomorrow!