Marty

In other news... The bread is in the oven, and the kitchen smells divine.

I'm sure I'm possibly beginning to annoy some of you with my continuous stories and photos of my progress in the garden. But, then again, quite a few of you did clamour for before and after pictures when I first announced that I had bought this property. Mind you, I think you may have been talking more about the house itself, rather than the garden. Here's the ladder the other side of the wall, in the neighbour's garden: Now, when I say neighbours, perhaps I should point out that both the property beside me on the main street, and the two story stone built house next to the upper garden, have stood empty for the past number of years. So the gardens of each of them are a bit overgrown, which means that I am having to clear away brambles and saplings in order to be able to find the space to safely rest the ladder against the wall. But I made a bit of progress today, and I estimate two more days work should see the main job of clearing all the overgrowth from the two sheds just about finished. Although I shall then have to decide what to do with the sheds themselves... For reference, the building you can see behind the ladder, on the other side of the wall, is the two story stone cottage in my lower garden. You can see the roof of my own house to the right of it. The met office have issued a 24 hour yellow alert for rain from tonight in my county, with the possibility of up to 50mm (2 inches) of rain. That means that it is unlikely I'll be able to get any work done outside tomorrow. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that the rain won't continue for days on end. You'll notice the wall isn't actually rendered (parged) on the neighbour's side. The stonework looks to be in good order, so maybe I'll see about getting the rendering removed from my side eventually.

Not sure... But possibly somewhere in Control Panel/Power Options, if it can be done.

Jayzus, bro! You had me worried there for a moment! I thought you were telling us your computer had completely died. As in: kaput died... Can't tell you just how happy I was when I read the "so I had to reboot" bit.

My bread dough is currently rising. Can hardy wait for it to go in the oven and fill the kitchen with its delicious aroma.

Greetings. young Albert!

What Tim said!

Sweet dreams, young fella.

If you really found it so funny, I can't help but laugh at the fact you gave it an Angry emoticon...

I'm away to bed. Catch yous all tomorrow! But before I go, I'll just drop this here. And dedicate it to Albert.

Oh, I certainly believe in miracles! I see them happen almost every day. I believe in magic, too.

Another view showing the current progress on clearing the overgrown sheds. Taken from the upper garden...

And, talking of food makes me think of passwords for some odd reason... Warning: Contains several instances of the F word.

Mushrooms, @Valkyrie! (Pity it wasn't green peas rather than beans )

Definitely does sound yummy! I will need to bake bread tomorrow. Mine will be normal yeast bread, using stoneground wholemeal flour. And this week marked the fifth anniversary of me starting to bake my own bread again, after a break of about 15 years.

Because of another Zoom session today, I didn't get as much work done outside as I would have liked to. I did, however, move the ladder even closer to the unsafe gable wall of the first of the two stone sheds and continued cutting away some of the overgrowth... And sure enough, a number of the stones on top of that wall collapsed as I was carefully cutting away the vines and ivy that were all that was really holding them in place. I knew I was safe, however, as I had the ladder up against the main boundary wall, and the way the stones were hanging meant they would fall away from me, and into the old shed. Here's a photo showing the current state of that gable. If you look carefully you can see I have since moved some of the fallen stones to just in front of the pile of cut branches outside the shed. Tomorrow (weather permitting) I intend moving the ladder to the other side of the boundary wall, and continuing clearing the overgrowth from that side. I think that will be the safer way to work at this stage...

Are you telling me some people actually don't?

Greetings, Page! All good in Pageville, I trust?

It could just be a faulty memory due to my advancing years, but I'm sure that when Drew started using that avatar a while back that he said he was only going to use it for 24 hours... (How much did you pay him, dugh?)

Drew? Being good? Is that actually possible?

Is that one of the hogging the bed cats that Bucket mentioned earlier?

Greetings, young Drew!

You deliberately catering to my armpit fetish there, Gary? If so, thanks!

I had to look up the meaning of parged (and parging) there, Gary! I see it is what I would call rendered (or rendering). Indeed my spell checker put squiggly red lines under your terms when I just retyped them. Which is strange, in a way, as when I googled the word one of the first sites suggested was the British Gypsum website. So the words are obviously part of the British English lexicon. It must just be an obscure technical term this side of the Pond. I'm not really happy with the rendering (parging) that has been done to much of the wall, as I would also prefer to see the exposed stonework. But I'll probably leave what is already there in place, at least for the time being. The exposed stonework may need a bit of mortar added between some of the stones; especially where the ivy has loosened the stones in a few places.