Garden work

the back wall before

and after yard work

This past week our neighbour to the right side went to town on our common hedge with a pair of secateurs, and rather aggressively cut the lilacs down to around 150 cm height.  She is frankly not a very communicative person, and we would have been happy had she talked to us first... plus I am pretty sure that the rules for the height of a common hedge is a maximum of 200cm or two metres.

I did remark to her that we would appreciate it if there was some issue, that she could just talk to us... she mentioned that the ivy vines that were growing from behind the old composter were a problem, and the owner of the building with the brick wall had complained.  So I borrowed Christophe's ladder and yanked them all down.  The trunks were huge, some of them as big around as my ankle, so it was a challenge to clear them all out.

I also removed a hugely overgrown ivy infestation from the apple tree, which you can see close to the pavilion in the second photo above.  We received a lot of nice apples from it last year, and this year it's producing even more fruit. I suggested to our neighbour that we could wait until we harvested the fruit before trimming the tree too aggressively, and in the meantime borrowed Bryan's hedge trimmer and did some more cutting of our common bushes, just so that I could ensure that they were at two metres.  I don't want it to become a huge issue, as it's important to try and get along when you are living in a city with neighbours close by.

Our other neighbour in the row of houses lent us his wood mulcher, and so for the last couple of days we've been grinding up the pruned bits of wood and vine, and making a big pile of green mulch that we'll layer in with organic kitchen waste.  There will be more mulch after we take on the left side hedge, but that's something that will have to wait a bit, as we can't use the hedge trimmer or the mulcher on a Sunday.

We have to reorganise the entire composting area anyway, because we decided to take apart the composter and see how the organics inside it had come along.  The chickens had a field day with all of the grubs and insects and worms that were turned over in the process.  To our great pleasure there is a ton of finished compost, far more than we can use this year.  I built a riddling frame and so we've been taking out the larger bits of uncomposted wood and then sieving the resulting soil even further, and storing the final product in large garbage barrels.  It's a bit late to start a vegetable garden this year but the compost has been spread onto the front garden, and we've used it to transplant our houseplants into larger pots.

Yesterday Lawrence and Eden came for a visit.  Duncan took care of babysitting Eden while Lawrence and I ran a fairly brisk 14km, and then Lawrence carried on and ran that loop a second time while I came home.  The worst of my cold is over but there is still a bit of lingering sinus congestion, so I wasn't up for the longer distance.  We had a nice charcoal bbq dinner together to finish the day.

Malcolm has been working for Christophe a couple of days a week, helping out with the more labour-intensive cabinetry installations.  In between he's been working on his mandolin...  That has required some work rehabilitating the wooden bench vise on the old workbench, and he's also had to make a bunch of spool clamps using threaded steel rod, discs that he cut out of plywood, wingnuts, washers, adhesive cork, and epoxy glue.  These clamps are used to hold the back and top of the mandolin together with the sides (or ribs) during the gluing process, as you can see here...

 You can see photos of his progress at the following Instagram link:

https://www.instagram.com/malcolmrosezadow/

Meanwhile Duncan has been doing around an hour of math exercises nearly every day to prepare for his examen de passage at the end of the summer, and working away at his model-making hobby.  Maggie has made good progress on a summer dress, but today is also working out a cover for the cupola top of the pavilion...

As you can see from the second gardening photo at the top of this post, the grass in the back yard is pretty dry; we fortunately have had a couple of flash rainstorms over the last couple of days, the first in weeks, and the temperatures are more moderate than they were at the end of June.  But we really need a long slow rain to soak the ground and help the grass recover.

I got back at working in the attic this past week, and did some demolition of the old marble lintel, removal of old mortar, and finished framing up the wall on the side of the future study room that faces the street.  As well I've finalised some drawings of the space with the placement of the electrical receptacles, and made some decisions on the various wall finishes.  I was hemming and hawing quite a bit around the reinforcement of the wood framing where the radiators need to go; these wooden structures must be very robust as the radiators are very heavy, especially when filled with water, but I think I've figured out a suitable solution.

I have some interesting things coming up over the next little while artistically.  I have a voice lesson next week with two students that were referred to me by another colleague; they are both high baritones and it would seem that I have a bit of a reputation as a good technician when it comes to singing the top of my voice.  It's great to have support and a positive reference from colleagues, and I hope that I can help these two singers.

Secondly, I have a meeting in a week for a project job doing a little bit of singing teaching in the area... I don't want to jinx it yet by saying too much about it, but stay tuned, and hopefully I'll have some news soon.