Feeling rusty

Like these poor tools, I'm feeling a little rusty at the moment. I was using them for doing the taping and jointing before we left the build in Autumn 2009, so they've had a lot of time without being used.

In fact, coming back to the build, a lot of things felt a bit 'rusty' - a bit disheveled.

Of course, the more we looked around, the more there was to do.

Once the tools are cleaned up - I'll have to get back to that taping and jointing ... and in a weak moment I caught myself wondering how on earth, I (novice) was meant to do a great enough job at it that we won't need to plaster the walls - no pressure then! Hmm, a novice perfectionist - smells like trouble to me.

There are wires sticking out of walls everywhere waiting for connections and sockets .. and plans to come together.

Outside, the rendering needs to be done in those small awkward places (and get which novice perfectionist will get to do that?)

Inside, mess abounds. Here's the pantry in waiting - filled with cardboard (mulch in waiting)

The hall is full of plasterboard, waiting to go upstairs, when we put the walls up.

The kitchen is full of insulation, also waiting for upstairs.

Upstairs actually looks pretty calm right now - and I do love the openness of it as it is, but rooms are very useful, so the stud walls will go up - once the ceiling is finished (which will be completed once the plumbing for the solar panels goes through the roof).

In the picture below you can see the the ceiling is up (part way up anyway) on the left hand side only.

Outside is looking a bit rough too. The pond is covered in green sludge, see below.

Nice, huh.

At least there was some frog spawn in a clear patch.

In a sunny spot my beloved Melissa (Lemon Balm) is starting to show - there is nothing quite as lovely as fresh picked lemon balm tea in the summer - bliss.

I removed a lot of strawberry (Sophie) runners from the gravel by the old strawberry bed and potted them up - not too late I hope.

It's looking a bit messy there, as you can see. I felt like more of an archaeologist than a gardener at times - trying to figure out where the bed edges had been.

Of course, I was under the supervision of Miss Sally Bongo (morale officer extraordinaire) so I managed to tackle a bit of weeding.

The membrane (that was at the entrance of the tunnel and is now just the entrance to the veg bed) was really weedy and has become very brittle, so I'll have to put another layer on top and will gravel over that.

Here is some path excavation that I managed before rain stopped play. I'll need to memebrane all the paths. I didn't want to cover them in gravel - as it can be uncomfy under knee - but we have spare gravel so I might do it anyway .. and use my kneeler.

We'll be down again tomorrow and will be sure to celebrate, as it's the house's 2nd year anniversary. The shell went up on 10th March 2009. It was such a memorable day. The huge lorry that had our house on board (that almost toppled over on the way in - all the fun of the fair before 8am), seeing the house being craned into place, section by section (and playing guess where the section will land). I don't think there'll be another day quite like it. Here's a quick reminder of the flying house.

So, we have come on quite a bit since then (I hardly dare wonder what it will look like this time next year).

Latest building and planting progress

Leo seems to have found the catmint I brought down for him, just as it starts to grow again. That's one happy cat.

Time shoots on and I thought I'd better give an update before I forget what we've been up to. I'll also show some progress pics.

We really did so well with having Neil over for two weeks of hard graft. As well as the highlight of 'studding' they got loads done.

First the plasterboarding of the downstairs ..

They nearly made it look easy!

Then the erection of that shed. It now holds the pressure vessel for our borehole .. the blue pipe is where our water comes out. So, we now sort of have running water!

There is also the marvel of the 'portable' chicken house made entirely from scrap wood (seen here being treated with preservative by my good self).

It was so cold at night in the house recently I though of kipping in the chicken shed myself!
In theory the chicken house is portable, but in practice it is a bit of a struggle - with two people .. but it is VERY sturdy!

It is rumoured that quite soon we will have some chickens to go in it .. and even sooner there may be a couple of ducks (Khaki Campbells - the best egg layers) to test run it - until they get their own house.

Anyway, this week I've finally got on with some seed sowing (and ordered my severely oversized polytunnel!). I've sown tomatoes, sweet peppers, chilli's and melon. First I sprouted them for 24hours in tepid water (it works for sprouted seeds for eating, so I think it will help the seeds germinate quickly), ... I had a lot of varieties so had each variety in water in a tea light case and put them all in eggboxes ..

then I put them in damp compost in seed trays and took them around to my lovely neighbour Jenny, who is kindly letting me start them off in her wonderfully warm airing cupboard - thank you Jenny! The hot water bottle propagator is not forgotten though - I'll get that up and running to keep the chill off the seedlings when they are little. The polytunnel is due to arrive in a couple of weeks, so should be offering them some protection pretty soon afterwards.

The rest of my potatoes went into car tyres and old compost bags and next up for planting will be the jerusalem artichokes and Oca (other odd tubers).

I also had some edible seeds sprouting - alfalfa (which suffered in the cold), aduki beans and sunflowers. As usual, I felt guilty eating the sunflowers (I keep imagining all those sunflowers that would never be if I ate them - silly, but true) so I potted up some of the more advanced ones.

Some of the aduki beans were pretty advanced too (had sprouted little leaves and had good roots) so I potted some of them up too in the hope of getting a crop this summer.

Work on the house has slowed a bit this week (we're suffering from the loss of Neil - he was such a hard worker .. I fear we are slacking a bit!) and we seem to be mostly moving wood about so we can move more plasterboard in.

It has been really wet the past couple of days, so the pond is filling well. Here is an earlier pond pic.

It may just look like a big clay puddle to you, but to me it holds great mystical charm. I am utterly amazed at how captivating a body of water can be (I've never had a pond before - could you guess?). There are already water boatmen and other creatures finding it and when the sun shines I could spend my entire day just gazing into it. I love how the sky reflects in it, how you can see the wind and rain affecting it (whilst sitting dry in the house), how the refections change when you see it from a different angle. I'm looking forward to getting a few pond plants in and getting more life in there.





Finally, we've had an article about the house posted in the county paper - the Leitrim Post - and .. it was all good (they found out about it from the blog apparently).




Well, it isn't everyday a house appears in 12 hours. People are still stopping buy for a look, even now.