Tomorrow the World!

Do you remember that plant that I mentioned the other day - the one that had taken over the greenhouse? It's actually a gherkin plant and here you can see it setting out for Montlucon.

At the rate that it's going, it'll get there before any UK Council Worker or British Rail porter will, and who knows where it will head for next?

I've been gardening again today. Or at least, this afternoon. We had done as much as we could as the tiles that we had ordered for the roof hadn't arrived, the cement on the stonework at the side of the house hadn't quite set, and we hadn't had instructions from Lieneke about the inside. Terry and Simon needed to price up some stuff and so we decided on a half-day on the roof.

I dug up the garlic and weeded the onion bed - that was the first thing. Strangely, only half the garlic had taken and the other half was in its single clove. The latter I replanted in one of the herb troughs to see what happens. But there's nothing like enough garlic - I'll need to bear that in mind.

And while weeding, I noticed the onions. Nothing like enough of them either but they are there all right.

I also tidied up all of the wood at the front of the barn - the left-over new stuff at least. I need a rainy day so that I can have the time to stack it correctly inside. In fact I have tons of jobs to do really - let's hope that this week will see us finish the roof.

You'll notice a couple of little changes in here too. I've moved a couple of sheets of iron and now the end wall is totally exposed. I've fitted (at the top, at least) two demi-chevrons that will guide me in forming the top of the wall. There was a full drum of waste in the mixer and it was a lovely chalky mix and so I did a pile of pointing, including that corner of the other lean-to where I lived for a while and which was getting damp.

I cleaned out the mixer with stones again. built a couple of thin walls and poured the mixture in between. I hadn't quite sealed the wall as you can see - some of the stuff leaked out - but it's progress all the same.

A solar shower (the summer sort-of came back today) and that was my lot.

The automatic water-heater switched on too - and a temperature of 45.5 degrees. This is looking quite optimistic.