August 2002
My first job was to replace several woodwormy floorboards in the attic. There was a lot of junk up there accumulated since the house was built in 1960. Together with Frau Riedler, who has lived in the house since it was built, I cleared most of it but it's still in the garage waiting for an opportunity to borrow Mike's firm's lorry to take it the dump.

After filling in the pond I planted a heather garden. If things grow well I'll extend it. It may be difficult to stop the field from encroaching on it.

The patio was initially on a slope, so plates and glasses slid across the table.

This was the first thing we had a go at in the August holidays.
We decided to terrace the garden a bit and the patio was to be the top level with 2 steps down into the garden. Later we'll put another level between flower and kitchen garden. This meant leveling the patch on the other side of the central garden path as well.
The paving stones that had been the foundation of the aviary all around the pond were put in as a wall and then the irregularly shaped stones were all taken up. We had ordered 3 m³ of gravel and 1 m³ sand and this had been unloaded onto the parking space at the top of the steps.

It all had to be brought down the steps somehow...

The gravel didn't slide well but we had help from 5-year-old Jasmin, the youngest of the 3 girls from the house opposite.

She often comes over and sometimes I put up the hammock under the apple tree and she swings in it happily. If there is any work going on though, she wants to muck in and soon learned to shovel gravel or use a screwdriver !

It was hard work but finally the patio got leveled and the new garden furniture could be unpacked. (No pictures yet.)

After Karl left again I decorated the staircase. The high wall was too high for me to paper, so I painted it. In all it took me two weekends and 4 evenings but it's done now.

It's hard to picture this as our future living room at the moment, but we'll get there some day.

It looks a lot different already... the next page is now online.