We’ve been back to the house about every second weekend. There have been some wet ones – including when my parents were visiting for the first time – and some beautiful sunny ones. All the hazel catkins are out along the rivers, as well as some of the early fruit tree blossoms. I think it’s too soon to be calling it Spring just yet, but as the days are getting longer, the sun feels lovely and warm when it decides to come out.
Bramble bashing has continued. Still plenty more of that to do!
We already have a small strawberry patch springing into life because the bundle of little plants Signe bought included too many for their patch. I’d love to be preparing more of the gardens now, but we can only get so much done with our short visits at the moment, so I’m trying to be patient until we live there in April.
Mum and Dad came to visit last week and we all sloshed our way up the hill in the cloud and rain to look at our little house. It was a shame to have our first visitors when there was no view but they loved it anyway and it was great to talk through various reparation ideas together. We also spent some time in Oviedo, our nearest city, which turns out to be lovely, enjoyed some restaurant meals and were treated to some cool new tools in the huge DIY store.
After my parents left, we had a bit of a panic that it was only a month before we wanted to have the place set up for temporary living and we hadn’t even decided how we were going to do it yet. So this weekend we got started on the foundations for our tent platform. We measured out the space, ordered the wood from the local wood yard for delivery next week and started moving the corner stones into position. We’re now three stones down with one to go…
Moving the first rock
Moving the second rock
And the third rock – hurray all level so far!
Hopefully we’ll be able to do the last rock and get started on the platform itself next week when the wood arrives.
As we count down to our arrival at the new house, time is ticking for us to get things done at Richard and Suzanne’s place before we leave. We’re still doing the pointing on the big house once a week when Jose Pedro is here with the scaffolding. And when the weather is nice, we’ve been out weeding and sowing some flower seeds in the gardens. The vegetable patch currently only contains a few rows of garlic, but I’ve started some seeds indoors. I was excited to find a patch of lettuces today that are growing by the compost pile – I’d laid down the lettuce seed heads there last summer after collecting them. I’m pretty chuffed with that – my seed saving efforts are paying off already with mid February lettuces that I never even planted! All I had to do today was transplant as many as I could be bothered to dig up, and they will soon be ready for harvesting.
My zero effort lettuce patch 🙂
Even when we’re over here away from the new house, there are new house jobs to get on with. At the moment we’re planning to order an off-grid solar electricity system with Tarje and Signe so that we’ll be able to power some lights and a washing machine, as well as charge our phones, laptops and batteries for power tools. We’re also looking at getting a solar water heater so that we can have a hot shower! Once all that’s in place, maybe we’ll never bother moving into the actual house.
-Anna
for people. for nature. 