Aussie Overload!

Wow, what a wonderful surprise this is!

I was only back from Serbia a few days, had barely sorted out my backpack from the trip, when 2 Aussie volunteer girls booked in here for a month...and turned up just 5 days after I arrived home myself.

...with their Vegemite!

Needless to say it was a great help to me in this weather...

We do a few hours of yard work in the mornings and a few more in the cool of the evening when the sun is about to set.

In 3 days we have absolutely smashed it out of the ball park and for the first time the yard itself is tidy and ready just to grow grass now.

Zoe and Kate, throwing javelins...well, sort of!

This is amazing, as for 2 years grass has grown through the sand and gravel piles, over the pallets of bricks and completely covered piles of timber that were waiting to be moved somewhere else...but the somewhere else always had to be prepared first...which was impossible to do at the time.

Week 2 we will be painting the entire inside walls and ceilings and I'll paint the windows and doors, both inside and out. Everything will just be white for the time being, as I'd rather add colours in the wall hangings and furnishings etc for now and see how it looks. If it is too white, I can easily paint the doors later on for a change.

Zoe is lovely and tall, which makes it great for us to work as a team...there's virtually nothing we can't do now! Kate is the other girl, one from the Gosford area and the other from the Sydney burbs. They are on a 5 year trip over here as both have UK parents and Zoe was born in Ireland, so it makes their 5 year plan much easier.

My  lovely roses...

Week 3 we'll complete the left over furniture that Eric could not complete and also level the big deck as the guys barrow out the dirt from the 3 door shed before they put down the floors in it. Can't wait for that to happen as then we can finally empty out the end room of tools, the mower, the cement mixer and put them in their new home...the tool shed.

Then we make a lounge room out of two thirds of the end room, which is the room with the cellar entrance in the floor and the other third of the room will have the medieval wall around the hole in the floor leading downstairs to the cellar.

The end room has had many purposes on paper, firstly a bathroom, then a bedroom now a lounge room. As windows have been added, the entire feeling of the rooms change and I'm so pleased with how it's all falling into place now.

The apple tree laden with fruit...plus a carpet of apples on the ground...

So many apples! Am making stewed apples now and onto the 3rd big boiler of them. Will freeze most of them for winter.

Found a cement paver for the path underneath the rubble and we made a test one, so if the made one fits, we'll make 4 more and complete the path next week.

The oval garden is coming along nicely now...

Love my hollow log planter, was an old drinking trough...

Dog chomping on her turkey leg bone...

Sitting on the end couch looking at the tasks ahead for next few weeks. Walls and doors painted, my computer desk and chair painted and this room swapped around to become a private bedroom with ensuite in the corner where my cream coloured desk is now...

Week 4 we'll get down into the cellar and do the medieval make over there.

I'll get the wall put in up top around the stairs down and remove the door on the floor.
It will be exciting for sure as we take the furniture down and arrange it for a farewell medieval feast before the girls leave for Split in Croatia on 27th July.

The guys start work again on the 3 door shed floor next week and leave most of the outside and internal rendering until the other outbuildings are all completed.

Then they can just render everything at one time and not muck up my nice clean yard with stuff laying around everywhere!

OK...more pics next week of the nice tidy yards and extra things we've done.
Bye for now,
M
xxxx
Temp 25C, much nicer than the past heatwave week!