Stove update with pics

First of a few pretty pics.

View while planting trees. Too pretty to pass up on.


Here's Tallis on the first section of the new wall underneath the house. Doesn't it look great here. Those plants really took this summer.


Labhana rutting on the floor. I just couldn't resist, she was so sweet...and practically smiling to boot. Hah.


Knight II, impatient when I didn't come inside fast enough. That window in the main gate starts at chest height. He doesn't mind.


DOGPILE! It happens every now and then, and of course they were right in the way of where we were walking. Hah.


And Chaos, stroking himself on both the downed eucalyptus branch and the plastic. Insane dog. He enjoys that waaaaay too much.


But okay, let's get started.

Song of the day: “The wild rose” by Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave. Such depressing song, but pretty regardless.

Yesterday wasn’t an entirely good day for me. Most of it because I was feeling a little under the weather, and no matter what I did, that didn’t change. Ah well, it was a day, it’s not like there won’t be others.

Work involved inside stuff mostly, despite the sunny weather, and that didn’t help either. These days I’m not at all good at being inside for long anywhere. I wanna be out there in the fresh air, preferably in the full sunshine and with hands and feet in the dirt.

But anyway, we were putting up the glass brick wallsies, which got done with quite a bit of effort. It’s our first time with the friggin’ things, and figuring out how to get them stuck together and sturdy wasn’t as easy as it should have been, but it got done, and it looks good. Very eighties, for some reason, while the stove definitely looks antique. Those two styles, along with the rustic atmosphere of the house, should make for an interesting combination.

We didn’t finish yesterday’s masonry until well after three in the afternoon. At which point I was just about ready to go up the walls. Hah. It got a wee bit better when I headed down into the yard and hunted for pumpkins and caterpillars.

A new field of cabbages got planted, and there was some watering to do, but all in all that was about the extend of yesterday’s activities, prior to a fruitless nap (was too wired for some peculiar reason) that I gave up on after half an hour, there was a cooking session of instant mash potatoes and fresh chard plucked from the yard. Yay. Very delicious, thank you very much.

Yesterday’s edit went well despite my being tired, and we’re now less than a dozen pages away from the end, which is…like, totally awesome! In fact, we had to stop in the middle of the last action scene since we had to go fetch another donation in town. Not a lot of it, but well worth the effort in the end. Heck, I didn’t even fall asleep on our way home. Hah.

Which brings us to today…I will be so glad when this whole stove thing is over and done with. That way we can start the morning workouts again at least, because I miss them somewhat fierce. But it will be another two days at least, so I better not think about that right now. Grrr.

We hauled the wood stove in today, put it in place, started hanging the pipes and cut a good-sized hole in the ceiling to get the pipe up to the chimney. There was some more metal working for me to do, like making a covering for the inside of the hole, getting the stuff big brother needed to get it done, and all that. Making progress is grand, I’ve got to admit.

Here are some pics of the whole process.

First off, tenants stove after I painted it the other day. Cute, eh?


Day one of the stove thing...and so on on consecutive days.










All finished, except for one tile which I put in right after this picture. I know, I should have put it in first, but I got impatient.

Looking good, I'm thinking.

Today’s work inside (cleaning left over glue, scraping dust, dirt and rust) was interrupted by a quick trip down into the yard to check the greenhouses, the tomatoes for miners (lots of those again) and the cabbage species for caterpillars, less of those what with the temperatures lowering.

There was a lot of wind this past week, but since about three hours after the last blog the wind suddenly died and things have been blissfully quiet since then. Seriously, if you find a spot away from the shade, the sun is wonderfully warm.

Once we finished what we could of the stove today, there was some serious tree-trimming going on. Grandpa needed to have space on top of the old bus, so we took off a couple of big branches, and we needed space behind the upper wall, meaning that we had to take out a rather big branch of the eucalyptus that was growing over the wall.

We also had to unload the car, but that was done relatively fast, and lunch consisted of pumpkin soup, which was delicious, meaning that in the evening I could fix an easy supper of baked carrots with mash potato on the side. It filled me up pretty well, since it is still there, hah. While food was simmering I managed to fit in a quick session with Dani’s hair. I’ve been promising to cut her hair for more than a week now, so I figured we might as well get it over and done with. I think it looks nice.

Well, I better get to the edit. We might actually make it to the end of S.N. tonight, and I can hardly wait. Yay!