Progress with the car port, at last.

 27.5.2021

 

We have been lucky. The weather managed to stay dry and warm enough to allow work on the car port.  Josh dug the mud out of the trenches and he and Edd laid down the drainage pipes and covered them with chippings. They then fixed Drain cell to the walls and put in the down pipes that will take water from the future guttering.    Then it was a matter of getting Skiddy, our geriatric skid steer loader and carefully tipping scoria behind the walls.    Edd worked the loader and Josh got behind the walls and raked it into the correct places. My job was sweeping up spilt stuff and painting water proofer onto the front of the wing walls.

 

The result pf all this effort is that we are no longer worried about mud being washed down into the cavity between the walls and the earth cut out. Actually, we now need mud there and hopefully a bigger, younger piece of equipment will arrive next week and move the huge pile of dug out mud into its final location.  We can now park our cars in this space, but we cannot put the roof on until the steel beams arrive.  Edd borrowed Josh’s car and drove up to Shepparton last week to put in the order for the steel, so that is on the way too. 

 

We just got our work done before a storm hit us. Lots of rain turned the drive into a muddy mess and the power was off for most of the evening.  We have candles and Josh has all sorts of torches so with the gas cooker we could do all the usual evening stuff.  The water can run by gravity, even without pressure pumps and the fires use the dead wood we have collected. Josh has set up a way we can have music on our speaker from our mobile phones, so we had a very relaxing evening.

 

Edd is still feeling very sore after running into the glass door at the post office last week.  

(This is dead true; I swear I did not hit him).  He got two black eyes, a massive scab on his nose and a sore hip and wrist from when he fell backwards.  The people around him wanted to call an ambulance but he just came home and has been going a bit slowly.  He found that working on skiddy made his head woozy and his hip painful.  He has stayed at home until he has begun to look a bit more presentable.

 

This meant that it was only Josh, Bo and I who went to the opening of a friend’s exhibition in town.  The traffic was awful, and it took ages to get there but we had a good time to talk and enjoyed the exhibition when we finally arrived. The art was all these pastels still life works that vibrated with colour.  Josh liked one of sunflowers the most. Sadly, our friend’s husband was not there due to worsening dementia, that was just starting when we were last together about two years ago.

 

The big news is that Bo’s family is considering buying a Tesla car. Simon is test driving one this week. We get together with Bo’s family most Sunday evenings for a family meal around the huge table in her new house.  The whole family is much happier in the new place.  The boys are both in trade apprenticeships and only Silky is still at school.