It's starting to resemble a quarry here, diggers, trucks, piles of earth, rock faces of all descriptions.
The mounds of earth have to stay as they will be used to backfill behind the retaining wall once it is built, although the large stones unearthed will be added to the giant 'rockery' in amongst the nut trees at the far end of the paddock. One day far, far into the future when we are long gone, someone will ask 'how did those giant rocks get into the middle of this woodland, the gaps between the trees are too narrow for them to fit" ;-)
As I type the cement mixer is here once more disgorging it's contents on the far section of this huge wide trench.
It's hard to get a sense of scale from photographs no matter how hard I try to take shots from different angles I don't seem to be able to manage it. This already poured and set concrete is about two metres or maybe a bit more, wide, The metal rods you see sticking up will be in the center of two block built walls and then concrete will be poured between them adding an immense amount of strength to the walls, and holding back the hillside no matter what happens to it in the years to come.
This is a job that is being done slowly, noisily and messily ... but most important of all correctly, with building control monitoring our every move ... and me recording every step for both posterity .... and so that in years to come when someone says 'aren't you lucky to live in such a well planned out place' we can smile, agree and remind ourselves of what we went through to get that 'luck'.
Oh, and my man up a tree .....
... one of the myriad of jobs that we managed to accomplish this weekend was to fit the Codling Moth' traps to the apple trees. Last year most of our apples were damaged by the codling moth caterpillars, so we are fitting the traps to a couple of the trees, each trap works for a five meter or so radius which neatly encompasses our sets of trees both inside and outside of Chicken World. I don't like the idea of the male moths struggling to their deaths on the sticky sheets of card inside the traps but I guess needs must. They had the apples last year, this year I think it's our turn.
I caught Lovely Hubby unawares on the top photo, I was just holding the ladder while he got up the tree thinking I wish I had my camera on me, and then I realised it was in my back pocket.
So I got him ..... something else for posterity!! ;-)
Sue xx
