Strim to win

Last week saw a whir of activity, with terrace strimming, pergola building, electric fence positioning, raking, bonfire-tending, and some paid work in between. The week culminated in what felt like one of the busiest weekends we've had in a long time.

For me, the theme of the entire week was strimming - four days out of five during the week after I'd finished my office work I got togged up in work clothes and associated safety gear to go out and finally complete the first - the most difficult - strim of the grassy terraces behind the house. This took about 2 hours each day, but by the fourth day every terrace had had at least a rough trim. 

Safety gear for strimming includes the obligatory safety boots (an integral part of our work clothes), goggles to protect eyes from flying dust, grit and foliage, ear defenders to defend against the drone of the four-stroke engine, gaiters to try to stop grass and shrapnel from gathering in our boots and down our socks, a baseball cap to keep grass out of hair, and, new for this spring, a face mask. The face mask helps against the pesky flies that virtually turn the air black when you kick up the grass (urgh), but its main function (and the reason for keeping it on despite the annoying tendency for the goggles to steam up as the mask funnels your hot breath up into the goggles) is protection against "pooby traps". 

Since about October last year, we have been walking Reggie solely around our own woods - no longer taking him out in public places where we run the risk of running into the things he finds most difficult to cope with (other dogs, other people, cyclists, joggers, cars...). This seems to work really well - he loves a good run around our woods, is getting plenty of exercise (especially now we have upped his walks to twice a day), and even gets to chase deer every now and then. We are also saving a small fortune in fuel costs and on the time it takes to drive somewhere suitable to go for a 'public' walk. The downside is that he does like to lay a "pooby trap" (for the faint of heart, look away now): part of his walk-time ritual is to, ahem, empty his bowels at the start of his walk, and now that we are giving him free run across our own land, he tends to run off, do his business in a spot unbeknownst to us, and then carry on as normal (I swear with a sneaky grin on his face). It's often only when partway through strimming the long grass that we suddenly discover these little minefields he has left for us, and we have learned from painful experience that a face mask goes a long way towards being suitably protected from the fallout (nobody likes a pooby trap to explode in their unprotected face).

When the grass is as long as it is at the moment, it tends to form tough clumps, and the strimmer struggles to do much more than flatten the grass then just send it whipping around in circles around the base of the clump to which it is attached. This makes the strimming process more tedious, more time-consuming, a lot less rewarding and significantly less visually pleasing than it can be at other times of the year when the grass is shorter and more evenly distributed. Thus, by the end of the week despite my efforts, the terraces still had a look of having gone three rounds with an angry hairdresser. 

For Stuart, the project of the week was the guest pergola. In our first year, we bought various sun shades for the guest patio - each of which lasted approximately five minutes before being twisted by the wind and ending up on the rubbish pile. Last year we watched with shame as our poor guests had to make do with huddling their chairs up against the fence in single file attempting to seek out the tiny bit of shade afforded by the fir trees above. This year we were determined to provide a better solution - and thanks to the efforts of my husband, we now have a fully functioning guest pergola constructed for the princely sum of... nothing (other than hard labour).

Rather than buying wooden posts (the pergola on our own patio is constructed from chestnut posts bought from a local agricultural supplies shop), Stuart decided to fell some small-ish acacia trees, strip the bark from them and cut them to size. The result is impressive! 

From cut trees to pergola poles - Stuart stripped the bark from the acacia trunks he'd felled.

Bark-stripping implement.

Pergola frame taking shape.

Pergola frame complete.

Pergola complete - all we need now is to lay down gravel on the floor to even things out.

Other than the pergola, Stuart spent a fair amount of time reinstating our electric fence (with plans to plant potatoes in the next 7 days we didn't want to take our chances without some form of protection against those potato thieves!) and doing general tidying of the veg growing area and tending to the fast-growing seedlings in the poly tunnel.

Stuart has reinstated the electric fence - this time with a smart new box to house and protect the power unit.

The fence now covers the perimeter of all our new beds.

Tyres and wooden slat frames ready and waiting for potatoes.

Leeks

Lettuce

Artichoke

Rainbow chard

Beetroot and  Brussels sprouts.

Cauliflower

Lettuce

Coriander

Celeriac

... and the garlic going well!

After a busy hour or so on Friday evening helping David shift a pile of firewood from his drive to his wood storage area - racing against the fading light with barrow after barrow of logs, Saturday was yet more physical work. We spent the day on our uppermost terraces giving them yet another raking and another strimming with a blade (the strimming we shared this time) so that they are now in a state in which we can more or less leave them without fear of the brambles encroaching once again.

No sooner had we come in from the terraces than we had to set about cleaning and tidying the house and turning our hand to prepping food for dinner as we'd invited Mara and Franco for another of our amazing 'the spicery' box curries. These spice box kits never fail to deliver, and this time was no different and we had a lovely evening with our friends sharing the range of interesting dishes the kit had instructed us on how to make.

Despite a late night on Saturday, there was no rest for the wicked on Sunday. On Saturday afternoon Stuart had taken a call from a German couple who were looking to book some accommodation in the area and had stumbled across our apartment. The catch? They would be arriving the next day (Sunday)! So we spent an intense few hours on Sunday morning clearing tools out of the apartment (as Stuart has been doing some jobs in there over recent weeks, it had become the temporary home for most of his work tools) and putting things back together, before doing a thorough clean of the place ready for guests to arrive that evening.

While we could quite happily have collapsed after an intense morning's cleaning, we kept going for the afternoon and spent a few hours back on the uppermost terraces doing yet more raking as well as having a bonfire to burn through the piles of rakings we had accumulated.

We finally packed up our tools in time to enjoy a well earned glass of wine on the patio and watch the sun go down after a hectic but most satisfying weekend.