Hellebore-d during lockdown?! We’re not!
Friday
Meeting, meetings and then the architects arrived. They were a nice couple of ladies, Leila’s husband is English so she’s pretty fluent. We showed them round, had a chat about our plans for the house and showed them the plans we’d drawn up. What we really need to spend some time on is working out the budget but it’s a bit of a catch 22 as it’s hard to budget when we don’t have a starting point – how on earth can we possibly know what the cost of a stone mason will be to widen the door or to get someone to plaster the ceiling unless we can get them to come round and quote for the work??
Quick trip to the shops and having cheese, bread and wine for dinner. Probably should have put the bread on though. It was 6pm by the time I remembered so we were not going to be having dinner till 9, oops!
May as well make the most of the time we have this evening to push on with preparing the back wall. There are a lot of big cracks that need filling before we can move forward. Definitely time for a serious mask – if this dust sets like stone I probably don’t want it in my lungs!
Lots of up and down the ladder and filling done but it’s going to take time to set.
Time to wash up and have some dinner. After dinner we have a drink and catch up with the kids.
[12 February 2021]
Saturday
Lots of rugby on today and unfortunately since we had to pack the filler on pretty thick in places it’s still not dry. The daffodils are certainly starting to pop up all over the garden though and the bees are starting to visit.
Matt took the opportunity to clear out the last of the loose plaster.
[13 February 2021]
Sunday
Still need to get the gaines run for the bottom part of the wall. However it seems that this is not quite as easy as planned. Having tried to drill directly down, it appears that the wall in the basement is in fact much thicker than it is on the ground floor. A fact that was quickly borne out by drilling up from the basement, missing my foot by a second or so as it came through half way across the doorway where I was standing.
While walking around the garden we spotted the neighbour cat again. She’s definitely getting more friendly, although I think that the cheese offcuts probably help. Trying to think of a good name for her, I was thinking maybe Florence and Lucy has suggested Floria.
Time for a romantic valentines walk. I have honestly never seen so many wild hellebores on one walk, we never managed to find the remarkable tree so still not sure exactly what is remarkable about it, but we found some great picnic spots for the summer.
Followed by a bit more gardening prep. Unfortunately most of the pictures were blurry so only have this one of it covered up to prevent the weeds growing back.
I’m not entirely sure that ribs are considered the most romantic meal but they were pretty delicious and there were roses so that counts right!
[14 February 2021]
