Thursday started with a 4am trip to the garden with Reggie for his pre-planned middle-of-the-night relief. I stared at the sky above (through one half-opened eye) that was filled with stars while he quickly did his business then led me back up the steps to the house and hopped into his crate for his 'bed biscuit'.
Helen, in exchange, got up at 6.30am to do the breakfast rounds, let the geese out and take Reggie for a walk along the drive while I snoozed some more, dragging myself out of bed in time for breakfast with Tess and Nick.
After breakfast, I set Tess up with the chopsaw to finish chopping up the pile of wood they'd all collected last week, while Nick and I went back to our fence-building duties.
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| The fence is coming along nicely. |
It was a very cool and crisp morning with clear skies and you could see you breath in the air. It wasn't until about 10.30am that the sun finally made it up over the hill behind us and promptly warmed us all to the point of short sleeves again, heading to around 17°C at midday.
Coffee break came and went on the patio, as did lunch, by which time we'd progressed as far as possible with the fencing on the lawn, although it still a gate in the archway. I left Nick constructing the gate while I made a start on ferrying the piles of rubbish to the bins.
Four trips to the bins and back later, it was 4.30pm and the guys had packed up - Tess having single-handedly chopped up all but the largest pieces of wood (which need a chainsaw) and having made a rather substantial pile of wood towards what we hope will be next year's winter heating, while Nick's gate was proudly swinging in the archway ready for some wire netting and a latch to be fitted tomorrow.
On my final return journey from the bins I could see that the sun had just dropped low enough to put our house in the shade, but that Vellano - the next village along the valley and some 400 metres higher than us - was still basking in the last of the day's sunlight, so when I got in, I suggested that Helen, Reggie and I hop into the bus and drive straight up to Vellano for a walk.
The skies were amazing - some low cloud was catching the late sun and looking like Turkish delight floating along behind the mountain tops. The scene across the valley and down to the plains was very wintry indeed, and when combined with evocative smell of wood smoke it made us want to head home to start our own fire and settle in for the night.
Reggie seemed to enjoy his walk around Vellano, discovering new things look at, new things to smell, and new walls to try to peep over the top of. It was getting chilly though, and there wasn't much light left, so after one circuit of the village we headed back home, Reggie sitting on Helen's lap in the car.
So we got the cats indoors, the geese into bed, Reggie into his crate, Reggie back out of his crate for the toilet, back into his crate and back out again for another toilet trip, before I could finally light the fire and write the blog for the day sat in front of it with a glass of beer wishing for once that the weekend wasn't as close as it was - the amount of work we get done around here and the progress with the extra hands is addictive and working outside in this weather is an absolute joy - as is working with Nick and Tess; we've been so lucky with both of our first two HelpX experiences that we'll be looking forward to more next year.
So for now it's about time I wrapped up this post so that I can start dinner (pea and mint risotto) but before we go, by popular demand, a couple of gratuitous shots of Reggie!
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