Progress

 I can't believe we are a week in to April already. How did that happen? 

I missed showing the progress on these steps:

They have been like this for a few days. There's still more to do, but they will definitely make it easier to get through this part of the garden once the wet weather starts. The bluestone pitchers are these ones.

When I came home from work yesterday, one of the "temporary" kitchen lights had been replaced. 

Then today a second

and then a third were installed:

I bought these pendant lights a couple of months ago, and it is lovely to have them out of their boxes and hanging from the ceiling now. The cardboard ones from Ikea did the job (for 5.5 years) but I think these ones look a lot better.

I've been working on my WOOFA unfinished project for April, Trail Mix:

So far I have only stitched in the ditch between the blocks, but it is progress.

Late today a couple of ducks joined the menagerie:

The two on the left are the new ones. They are like clones of each other, so we will never tell them apart. They teamed up with the old ducks to form a flock quite quickly. None of the "pecking order" conflict you see with chooks.

As I was waiting for the ducks to get close enough to photograph, I noticed some little eyes looking at me from the crabapple tree:

It is a tiny Ewing's tree frog!

Kitchen Floor

 New tiles on the kitchen floor:

The arrangement is random, to match the wall tiles, which I couldn't quickly find a photo of, but you can see them in the pictures in this post from four years ago. The colours are a pretty good match, considering they were bought online without ever being seen in real life.

They are made of some sort of plastic stuff. I hope they will be more forgiving than the concrete was when things are dropped.

 

 

Four Years

Yesterday was four years since we moved in to this house.

Here is the front yard the day we moved in:

Today:

And the front of the house in December 2015 because I didn't take one from this angle the day we moved in:

Today:

Obviously not quite the same spot I stood back then, but you can see a few changes.

More Concrete

The position of the walls and the door of the outdoor living area mean stepping through dirt or mud to get to the front of the house. So an extra bit of concrete was called for. This morning before I went out:

 This afternoon when I got home:

Next job will be to create a garden bed around the new concrete, with a stepping stone to get to the tap.



End of month stash figures for April:

Thread:
One spool emptied
One spool purchased
Year to date - down 6 spools

Dress fabric:
Nothing used, nothing added
Year to date - down 2.25m

Quilt fabric:
Used 0.6m, nothing added
Year to date - up 2.3m

Screened

All the screen panels for the outdoor living area are now in place:

There's a door to go in the opening next to the pizza oven, just visible inside the screens.  Neither of the doors have been installed yet.

First Screens

Actual wire screens added to a couple of the frames. Very hard to see! I couldn't tell at all from inside the house.

More Building Progress

It is a while since I showed the progress on the outdoor living construction project.

Since the last post, the builders have added the steel cladding. Now the frames for the insect screening are being made in-house. Once they are complete the builders will come back to add the doors.

More Construction

I came home this afternoon planning to spend some quiet time relaxing after a stressful morning. But I was surprised to find this happening:

Builders at work!

They had lined the previously seen framework, and were adding the gold-coloured insulating layer. That will at some point be covered in colourbond steel to match the rest of the house. Also note the concrete base for the walls is in place. That was done earlier in the week but I forgot to photograph it in progress.

Under Construction

Building work commenced today on turning this verandah-like area into my screened outdoor living room:

Signs of Summer

The shade sail going up out the front of the house:

The sun doesn't come into the house at this time of year, but the glare does. The shade sail cuts down glare off the concrete and from the sky.

Water lilies opening:

The pink one has three flowers open today.

This is the only white one so far.

Sail

This is what yesterday's posts were for:

Providing a bit of shade to the front windows. The windows are designed to stop the sun coming in on the longest day of the year, but now, and later in summer when the sun has some heat, it is at a lower angle so does come in.
This shade sail is a temporary one - if it seems to do the job we will get one made to fill the space between the house and the poles. The sail and poles are removable so when they are not required they'll be packed away out of sight.

House

Compare these two photos:

The top one was taken on the 3rd of September two years ago. The lower one is today. Of course the sunshine helps, but it is nice to remind myself that the garden was a sea of mud just two years ago.

Daffodil-eye view:

The new arbour is hiding in the trees at the top right of the photo.

Welcome Visitors

At six o'clock this morning, I looked out the kitchen window, and saw this:

He had a sniff at the red-hot poker plants (in the dark soil), but didn't try eating one. Then he turned and hopped away down to the grass beside the road.

At eight o'clock, the plumber arrived. He thinks the leak was caused by soil movement.

The large pipe at the top takes water to the tank. The narrow pipe takes water to the house, and that was the one with a split in it.

Here's how it looked when I got home tonight:

 I celebrated by drinking several large glasses of water, then having a shower. What luxury!

Playing in the Mud

After yesterday's rain the fishpond-to-be accumulated a bit of water. The water attracted some insects. The insects attracted Dot, who spent ages trying to catch them or chase them off:

Getting very muddy in the process!

Just after lunch I noticed water flowing away from our water tank, out to the street. That shouldn't be happening. Somehow a pipe underground has developed a leak.

That's the pipe, although we can't see where the hole is. The water blew up to the surface, and we lost thousands of litres before we noticed it. The water pump was turned off before this picture was taken. Unfortunately our plumber is away, and won't be back until Monday morning. So we have no water until then!

Because it is a warranty issue, we can't just get another plumber out. So it is going to be a fun weekend. At least our plumber is only away for the weekend and not off on a round the world trip!

Carport Panels

We went back to the metal-cutting place, this time looking for 5 panels to go between the carport and the garden. They will be part fence, part gate. There weren't 5 like either of the previous designs, but we did find 5 of these:

One propped up in place for effect.

These cut-outs are for exhaust gaskets.

Complete Gate

The second part of the gate from last Thursday is now installed:

For anyone who was puzzled what the cut-out shapes might be, they are for brake pads!

Demolition Yard

Took a trip to Lal Lal Demolitions to look for gates for our garden walls:

 They've got lots of possibilities

but no prices.

You can't help thinking that prices are made up based on how keen the customer appears. We asked the prices of a couple we weren't really interested in, and they seemed a bit steep. I was afraid to ask about the ones I really liked!

And if you are wondering how there can be a demolition yard in a small town like this, apparently this stuff did not all come from Lal Lal. They wreck houses all over the state, but mainly Melbourne.

Walls Done

Yesterday the brickies completed their work on the walls. A couple of photos taken after they had finished:

The various openings will get gates. And once the walls are completely dried out, we can decide if they need painting. At the moment they are almost the same colour as most of the house.

Just as well they were finished yesterday, as today has been non-stop rain.

This and That

Noisy visitors this morning:

About 25 sulphur-crested cockatoos, Cacatua galerita, (and a couple of galahs, Eolophus roseicapillus) dropped by as I was eating breakfast. It wasn't easy to get a good shot of them. This is what happens when a dog jumps up on the window seat to get a better look:

Cockatoos taking off!

None of my photos would have earned a place here:

There were some lovely photos, and even the primary-school children had taken better wildlife shots than mine this morning!

Next stop was a small quilt show in Creswick, where this was my favourite:

Kaleidoscopic stars, in purples which of course look bluer here. The card pinned to it didn't have the maker's name or the pattern name, so I can't give credit where it is due. It was for sale for $1500 though.

This made me happy later in the day:

One of my quilts finally hanging in the hallway.

Second Wall

Lovely sunny day! The brickies made good progress on the second wall:

This photo was at 1:30 this afternoon. They did quite a bit more by their knock-off time, but somehow I didn't take a photo later in the day.