More Stumps More Men

Hi - Another day another guest blogger: I'm June the wife of "Digger David" how on earth I'm going to live with his "change of career" at this stage of our lives I'm not sure!!! Today started off pretty much where it left off yesterday with the "lads" looking at moving two more tree stumps from the ruin (which we are now going to upgrade to calling "The Garage"). Cyrille the builder arrived (phew) to start work in earnest and wanted to do a deal - could he please use the little digger, because it would give him easier access to the cave, in exchange would the "lads" mind using his big digger.... well what a question, it took them about two seconds to say yes. He would just give them a quick demonstration and away they would go, he took out the two tree stumps in as many seconds to show them how easy it was!! Off they went to play - sorry work.

Sue went off to her french lesson and I pottered about making coffee for what seemed an army of men, in between time I was official photographer (David Bailey eat your heart out). The work went extremely well and in no time at all the ground in the garage was levelled and they set about knocking the stone walls down to an even level all round, by the time Sue arrived back all was finished and the car was ceremonially parked in it's new home.

The builders are levelling off the floor in the cave below the present main bedrooms, Sue thinks if they go down a few more feet they will end up in Australia and is now quite concerned about where all the rubble and rocks are going to end up.

I added my twopennyworth and said I wasn't worred where they put it but if they disturbed all my nicely redistributed stones from the side of the barn there would be real trouble. In between time "DD" reclaimed the small digger and set off to work at the bottom end of the garden on Sue's "dry river bed" which will come from a small raised birch copse and meander through to the veg patch and "fall" over the hedge.

I think it probably hit all four of us at the same time that the "small raised birch copse" would need an awful lot of building up... we had solved the problem of where the builders can put the rubble. Four brains four hours ... one solution.

The weather today has not been as kind, the early morning mist refused to shift all day and the temperature has not risen to t-shirt weather, well in Sue's case only four layers of clothes. We have been very fortunate so far, although the mornings have been cold, Wednesday and Thursday gave us a good frost, by lunch time it has been warm enough to sit on the patio and eat lunch. However, being the eternal optimist(s) we are hoping this is only a one-off.