South side done Monday, 15-Jul-24 22:03:16 CEST

Sunday, 21-Jul-24 23:22:41 CEST

Finished mounting the cement boards

I finished mounting cement boards over the foundation around the house this week.

Monday 15 July

Today, we are halfway through July. Well, July has 31 days, and that is 744 hours. So, at 15.5 days, we are halfway through July. At lunchtime today, we were over the first half of July. I feel it was a productive weekend, and that makes me happy. It feels like we found a mode to survive the slugs.

It was lovely weather. At lunchtime, Merida was lying resting on the ground. DW also enjoyed the shade under the cherry tree.

At that time, I was working from home in my home office.

After work, we returned the signed papers for the shed to the building company. As a result of this, we are committed to building the shed. The building permit process has started. I think it will be built in the winter or early next year. We will see.

In the evening, I finished last week's blog. While doing that, I promised to blog daily for the following blog.

Tuesday 16 July

Before going to work, we looked at the garden.

	Sprouting carrot seeds.
	Flowering courgette.

I discovered two interesting things. We bought the carrot seeds on 29 June that I sowed on 1 July. It will be essential that the slugs will not get to feast on these carrot sprouts.

The courgette flowers are magnificent! They are three or four inches wide and brightly deep yellow. It is such a nice thing to see in the garden.

I had the ambition to have a flower garden, but now my focus has shifted to nicely looking-vegetables. I will continue to explore that idea. There are a couple of varieties of eatable flowers; I need to add those to my garden.

Wednesday 17 July

This morning, I discovered that the cutting celery had sprouted! We bought the seed on 29 June, and I sowed it on 2 July. The seeds were tiny.

It is going well with the chard and the line of red radish. I also discovered that some carrot sprouts cannot be found anymore. I suppose some slugs have been munching on them.

Today, I worked from home in the morning. It was a beautiful day.

I started to arrange for holidays in September. After lunch, we moved the sheep to a new area. They are now grazing on the northwest side of the property outside the dyke.

Then, it was time for mounting boards. I continued on the west wall. The trade lifts are fantastic. I managed to get the boards up without digging a trench. This sped up the process considerably. In the evening, I also mounted two boards on the north wall.

We had lemonade in the shadow of the cherry tree when I finished the west wall. DW cut the grass in the previous grazing area.

I moved one of the temporary sheep shelters we had on the south side of the house since last summer. I wanted to place it on the north side of the garden to provide a little protection against wind.

Apparently, tomatoes are getting ripe from the availability of ethylene gas. DW has a couple of tomato plants. It is unclear if the gas occurs naturally, but we think many plants in our garden would do better with less strong wind. I moved the sheep shelter to stand beside the north side of the garden. On the way to the new location, the shelter broke, and I took two pieces. Let's hope that it works well.

I also transplanted chervil, which we bought in a pot in the supermarket some weeks ago. I first transplanted the chervil into several pots. Now, it was time to transplant them to the raised bed. I transplanted half of the bots I made. The other half can wait for a couple of days.

After that, it was time for the regular slug elimination tour through the garden. I removed a lot of slugs. DW was sowing on a garment.

It felt like I had holidays. I had just an afternoon off but still had a proper feeling of being on holiday. Perhaps this was because I achieved much more today than I thought possible. The work progressed with a good flow, and the tools were good and at hand. Lovely.

Today was the tenth anniversary of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 catastrophe when Russia shot down the civilian aircraft. Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky, and Leonid Kharchenko were found to be guilty of the murder of the 280 people on the plane, of which 197 were Dutch nationals. I do hope that justice in this matter will be served.

Thursday 18 July

It was a marvelous day yesterday. The weather was excellent, and I made good progress yesterday on the boards for the foundation. My feet were a bit sore, that is true. I had been sitting on the ground working on the boards. Today, whenever I stood up, I walked away like an older person. Much older.

I tried to sow more radish today, but only three seeds were left. So I sowed these.

Then I went to the new office. There were two new people in the office today. One of them brought a dog named Olaf. I took a photo of Olaf on 28 March. Olaf got his name from Disnays Frozen. I have not seen those movies, but the owner ensured it was the best movie ever made by Disney. Merida got the name from Merida the Brave. I sat working really concentrated, fidgeting my feet, and Olaf disapproved of that behavior. Especially since I had my wool socks on. It is challenging with a snorting dog that wants to chew on your feet while you are trying to solve an issue with a content management system.

After work, the weather was so lovely that we had dinner in the garden. We sat outside the garden where the sheep usually graze when they are here. Merida has been surveying an area at the property's south edge where we planned to put a gate someday. Until then, we put up a temporary pallet. She is sitting on the pallet looking for mice.

Then she was lying on the ground, sleeping in the sunset. So cute.

I have been thinking about whether the convicted felon was reelected; he is saying he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Will he? Suppose he intends to do it by giving away large chunks of Ukraine to Russia. How would that be? That would be annihilating all we learned from past wars. Geneve convention, who cares? Is Geneve convention just a woke construct? If Trump gives away Ukraine to Russia, then yes, indeed. What would the consequences of that be? This means that the world will become far more dangerous because, suddenly, there will be no rules. Or said differently, the urge to abide by rules will be lost. That means we have no United Nations or war crime tribunals. A complete chaos, but most notably. The way nations interact with each other is rolled back two hundred years. Is that what we want? Countries with imperialistic ambitions would be encouraged to go ahead and start doing it. I do hope that people around the convicted felon and former resident of the white house remind him of the Budapest Memorandum. I placed a link here about the memorandum explaining that Russia, the US, etc, promise that Ukraine will not be attacked.

Friday 19 July

This morning, I sowed more radish. The previous row is far from ready to be harvested, but I think it could be nice to have more rows in progress simultaneously.

It was supposed to become really warm today, but it was not until the afternoon that it started to heat up.

DW found that the iron had given up a couple of days ago. I suppose it did not like to be on for such a long time. I talked about the iron in last week's blog post on Sunday. DW ordered a new one, and it arrived today. It has a built-in timer that turns itself off if it is forgotten.

The building company building the shed has officially submitted the building permit application to the municipality. We will see how that goes. We did the building permit application ourselves the last time we built our house. That was a tedious process. It is excellent we can let professionals do this for us this time.

After work, I suggested DW and I eat at a place where falafel is made. We ate from his kitchen during the festival on 1 June. The restaurant was called Falafel & Zo, and we went there by bike. The restaurant is not so much a regular restaurant. His kitchen is in his shed, and we could sit and eat in his garden. It was delicious. He knew Swedish, can you imagine! He had been living in Norway but knew Swedish. He told us he had built the house entirely on his own. A talented man, indeed. I liked the atmosphere of the local area. I hope there will be more places like these.

The heat had started to mount, so it was warm in the restaurant's garden, and the wind entirely still. We went home and had coffee.

Saturday 20 July

This morning, Merida came purring while lying in my armpit. She is now a cat of almost four kilograms. It was an orange, lightweight tuft when Merida was a kitten, lying purring in the armpit. Now she is four kilograms lying more along my side in my armpit, purring. Purring loudly. I stroke her under her chin when she stops, and she starts purring again.

We decided to go to the upcycling station with the polystyrene I collected. The aim was to get there as early as possible before the worst heat. This went well. I had put the polystyrene and dirty soil mix bags in the small trailer with the blue hood.

When the carriage was empty, you guessed it! We went to the second-hand shop near the upcycling center. At the second-hand shop, I found a disco spotlight! It had a clever design. It was a box with mirrors arranged inside in a spherical pattern. I suppose LEDs shine on the mirrors shining through a lens. I could see what it looked like in the shop, and I was satisfied. It was 3.99 euros.

DW found preserving jars, a glass vase, clothing, a glass, etc. Great fun.

When we came home, I could practice reverse driving with the trailer on the car, using only mirrors. Sometimes, it goes really well, and sometimes, it is as if I lost the skill entirely. I got the trailer back in using mirrors only. That was well done. For the rest, I still need to practice more.

The heat had started to pick up. We had coffee, and I started working on the boards on the north side of the house. It was okay-ish with the temperature on the north side. I took it easy.

With the bump, it is impossible to slide in the boards without digging a trench. I made a shallow trench, so that worked out well. Then, I prepared the beams until the end of the house. I have a door, so I will need to cut out the door in one plate. Luckily, the door comes in a good place in the middle of a plate, so I can mount it on either side of the door. That was when I stopped working on the house for a day. It was now 33 degrees Celsius, and that was hot.

Today, we got a snail mail from the municipality saying they received the building permit application.

We planned to go to the PILs tomorrow, but MIL called and said they got Corona. It is unfortunate to be over ninety years old, have Corona, and get a heatwave over you simultaneously. I do hope this ends well. We will stay at home.

Sunday 21 July

This morning, Merida was so lovely. She was lying at my feet, on my chest, and she stood on my belly, kneading it. Well, I had to go to the toilet, but never mind. Such a lovely morning. After kneading my belly, she literally dropped her entire body weight into my armpit while purring loudly. She did not lick my nose or put a paw on my lips; there are limits, even for Merida.

Today, I worked on the boards on the north side of the house.

	First, I lean the plate on the wall below the façade.
	Then, the plate is lifted.
	Here comes the magic! Lowering the plate while pushing the bottom towards the wall. These steps are repeated until the plate is hanging in the correct place.

It was not that hot today. The overcast dominated the day. There were showers a couple of times. During lunch, it rained. I crunched a rib while sitting and working on the ground. That was not pleasant. Especially sneezing was terrible.

We went shopping for groceries in the afternoon. After the shopping tour, I mounted the final plate. This does not mean the project is completely finished; I must still add gravel or sand to the boards. I also need to put corner boards to make the corners more beautiful.

This evening, Biden announced that he would not be a candidate for the 2024 election on 5 November. I was surprised by this turn of events. I had thought it was too late for Joe to step down. He can do whatever he wants as long as the convicted felon and insurrectionist is not taking over the Oval Office and the world. I still want to see the US run with accountability and honorable behavior. We will see what happens next. Well, Joe endorsed Camela. Let's see how this goes.

The PILs were better this evening. They are coughing and going through a heavy Corona cold, but it is good that the temperature is lower today. It makes the situation slightly more bearable.

I viewed a movie by James Prigioni tonight. He gave a motivational speech about gardening. I feel you must be a brick, not be inspired by this movie.

This week, I finished putting up boards around the foundation. The project is not over, though. I still need to fill up with gravel, and I want to put up corner pieces.