Dornröschen

we have not quite won the battle against the brambles in the piece of  land under the walnut trees, but lets say the situation is under control. Maybe next year we get a volunteer who wants to dig out all the roots..

Meanwhile I have started the project "sleeping beauty 2". To save as many of the trees in the "steep slope"  as possible. While we saw the sorry state of them we ignored them earlier because we did not realize they were ours until last year.. :-) Many many generations of brambles have succeeded to crawl on top of each other, and even another plant that is making hanging vines that would please even Tarzan, but also suffocates the plants. So I took to the cutting instruments and dedicated an h or two in the mornings to this. It is actually quite fun, if also a bit painful, the brambles are not giving up without scratching quite a bit, but luckily I have the magic cream for that.

Today i had to cut off a few branches from a hazelnut tree and a cherry tree that were dead and/or broken. This was actually a very hard job, probably more craving than a full gym workout. But the sun was shining, the cat was sitting in the shade watching me and at that moment, life could not have been better.

trees almost suffocated by the brambles and vines

Pergola

a few weeks with intensive visits have passed. First Astrid and Ursula were slaving away in the lower garden, pruning the trees and making firewood out of the twigs that were cut, and there was even time for a trip to the beach with public transport. Then mom and sister with her husband arrived last Monday and stayed until this morning.Their task was to save the vine from destruction after the Pergola has collapsed from the snow. First Mom and I erected a new set of pillars for the construction, then Uta and Stefan helped raise one of the big pillars that had collapsed and now leaned against the little house that was once used to dry the chestnuts. It took a bit of engineering and some fixing with rope, but now it is done and I can build a new pergola and then put the old wine back onto it for magic shade.

meanwhile the plastering of the lower floor walls is getting on and looking good!

Uta and Stefan posing after successful work

Rebuilding the Pergola

first layers of new plaster on the walls

Making a plan of attack

smart ramp to avoid all the stairs in the house

hope springs eternal, even for a collapsed pergola

Mom happy and in pole position

Atrio

forgot to put the 'finished pics' up on the blog from the Atrio and here it comes

dem inschenjör ist nichts zu schwör

when i started studying, there was quite a lot of 'engineer' jokes going around, as the German word for engineer has a bit of an unusual spelling. So when Niklas posted 'mission impossible?' for the brick laying around the heater, it reminded me about some of those bad jokes. Well, this was NOT an easy task, first there was the problem that there were no bricks slim enough to have the front door 'inbuilt' - the bricks would always stick out a little when building in front of the legs - and also on top of the front door, where we actually found a long long brick to lay.

Then there was the problem of the height. I had to set up the scaffolding and climb up it, and since i have a mild case of being afraid of heights, i was wondering how that would go, but it worked fine, so layer by layer i built this casing and now it is up to the professional plasterers to make it beautiful. One more project done, check. Now I am keen to work on the flower bed under the terrace!