Building fence week Sunday, 10-May-26 18:38:25 CEST

Sunday, 17-May-26 21:59:01 CEST

Garden architect

This week, I made good progress clearing out the atelier. We also had a visit from a pavement company that will finalize our driveway.

Monday 11 May

The morning was beautiful, but the rest of the day, the weather felt really strange. It was windy and chilly as if it had been a storm in the autumn. I had started hardening the zucchini plants on the weekend. One leaf broke in the wind. The big tomato plant in the pot fell over. Luckily, no damage. I was so close to starting to transplant zucchini plants, but I am glad I did not.

Tuesday 12 May

Good morning! It is 8°C with scattered clouds, and the wind has subsided. I’m biking to work.

Someone had dropped a glass bottle on the road, so I stopped and took it away. You know what I am saying: common ground is made for pissing and looting. I bought extra-strong tires for this bike, and that is good because I rode over several pieces of glass before I realized what was going on.

So DW thought it was a good idea to put our temporary fencing in such a way that the sheep could pass the corner of the neighbor's with the berry bushes. So I asked DW if she didn't think they would get stuck in the wrong area, and garden people would make them afraid? She didn’t think that was a problem. That is exactly what happened, but the sheep are nimble, and in a quiet moment, they ran back to the rain roof, passing the scary garden people, and I closed the gate behind them. The garden people were digging a trench along the neighbor's fence. I met the neighbor this morning and told her the fence poles now have a weaker foundation. Well, I don’t know, but I’m an engineer, and I know when something doesn’t have a proper foundation. On which she said she was a style person, knowing when things look beautiful.

Perhaps I need a fat bike Hoodie and large Bluetooth headphones to fit in better in the city center.

It was a nice day at work today. I finished part of the software so that we can reconsolidate our product offerings. My business development manager started using it right away. In return, I got the mock-up of a new product he wants the user interface for. Really cool!

The wind is picking up again. I’m feeling great. It’s not that I have so much to say, but I’m feeling great. It could be that I have the wind in the back?

The cow parsley has been harvested. There is no need to feed insects, butterflies, and bees.

Today, the photos of PIL's house were taken. Photos of the interior and the garden. They also used a drone to take pictures of the house. It will now be posted on websites for sale.

Wednesday 13 May

In the morning, I worked from home. There was a power failure in the area, interrupting my work. DW went to a wool event.

After work, I continued clearing the atelier.

Thursday 14 May

Today, both of us had a compulsory holiday. It rained in the morning. I continued clearing the atelier. DW did her wool activities. When the rain was over, she worked in the garden.

We got a library chair that MIL gave us, and it is standing in the atelier. One joint had to be glued. So we glued it and moved it just outside DW's studio.

It feels tiring to clean out the atelier. I got several dozen buckets with nits and bits in them. They have stayed on the temporary shelf in the hallway of the house so far. I have now moved them out to a shelf in the workplace. The newly created space in the house can then be used for items we still have in the atelier that we would like to keep there. Then I move a couple of those things, such as a box with cleaning detergents. Then I move more stuff to the workshop in the barn. That way, I went back and forth, bringing things from one place to another, occasionally throwing things away. It goes on and on.

After a full day working like this, it started to feel like spinning around for a long time. It almost made me dizzy. It was a little unsatisfying to work on the details, losing sight of the whole. After dinner, I went to the barn to sort a couple of buckets of mixed nails, nuts, and bolts. I have a large collection of mixed buckets. It feels great to know I can sort and make buckets redundant. Every time I create a better order, it makes creating things much more fun. When taking a couple of steps back and viewing the whole, it feels better.

Friday 15 May

It was a cold night. The changeable weather continued throughout Friday. We cannot transplant our seedlings just yet. Today, both of us had a day off, and I continued on my carousel of moving things around. I freed up so many things, it was time to move the shoe rack and the hat rack to the hallway. We will look into whether we can reduce the shoe count so we can keep the shoes inside the rack instead of around it.

In the atelier, we had a temporary shelf along the south wall. I took one part of it to the barn workshop. That felt like a leap forward. There isn't much left.

In the barn, I have been able to put things next to each other in semilogical places. It feels like a long-overdue task to create that order. I often say that if you don't know what you have, then you don't have it. This ordering creates value. All the things I keep increase in value when I know where they are.

In the afternoon, Pawel came to discuss options for paving our driveway and the area in front of the barn. There are many great options, and we came to Nature Stones on the driveway itself and concrete slabs for paths. We will produce a map for Pawel to work out the offer. It is not going to be cheap. The natural stones will receive a thin top layer of earth to allow plants to grow between them. DW suggested thyme and other low-growing herbs you can walk on.

Saturday 16 May

We had a slow morning until we realized that one of the pavement companies Pawel had suggested had opening hours until 12 pm. The aim was to arrive at the company outside Utrecht before closing hours. This company does business-to-business sales, but they are working together with Pawel, so that is all right. Here, they had the tile we were looking for, suggested by Pawel. It is the Schellevis tile. It is just a regular tile, although it has a porous surface. It looks nice and isn't slippery, so that is good. It was not an especially long visit. We walked around the maze of show gardens displaying different tiles, found our tile, and it was nice. So that was it.

Near the tile company was a huge second-hand shop we had never been to. It was tempting to go and check it out, but that would take us some time, and time was not something we felt we had in abundance. It had been fun, but it did not feel as if we had the time for it.

Next up, we drove to another tile company, DSV, with which Pawel also does business. It was a tile company in Druten. This was about 45 minutes on the motorway. Here, they had cobblestone pavement as well as the Schellevis tiles. It is a mix of different stones in colors and sizes. Their receptionist was a helpful girl, and when she heard we came from far away, she offered us a cup of coffee and an apple turnover pastry. This came in handy because we had skipped lunch to make it in time.

I made a limerick in Dutch about her. It is a poem in the AABBA form.

Een tegelverkoopster uit Druten,
Verkocht prachtig natuursteen aan snuiten.
We reden heel ver,
Maar zij was de ster,
Met koffie en appelflap om te smuiten!

Here it is in English.

A fine tile vendor hailing from Druten,
Kept customers lining up, recruitin’,
We traveled afar,
For she was a star,
With coffee and apple turnover, our proper conclusion!

Satisfied and happy, we drove home. We drove another way than we came, but we were now at the time of day when you can expect a traffic jam, and indeed we got stuck in one. This did not put a lid on our mood, though. We were enthusiastic about getting a well-functioning and beautiful driveway. When we got out of the traffic jam, we went to a second-hand shop. This was a small shop we had been to before. We did not find any spectacular finds.

When we came home, I started right away with producing the drawings that Pawel needs to give us an offer. I used Fusion by Autodesk. It has been some time since I used that program, but I still know how to use it. I used this program to design our house and also the barn. I used it to design the property's layout. Now it was time to draw the driveway and paths we want Pawel and his team to make. It was late when we went to bed. At that time, I had sent Pawel a first version of the drawing.

Obviously, there was no time for clearing out the atelier when I worked on this. This body has only two hands.

Sunday 17 May

This morning, we arranged sheep protection around our trees on the south side of the barn. We used the nets from the building fences. Now we know the pavement work will start sometime in the autumn, so it is better to let the sheep graze this area as much as possible. We need a solution for that. We are saving the three chestnut trees, but the rest can go—oaks and whatnot.

Today, we made a little addition to their grazing area around the corner of the barn. Here, they could eat from an oak tree that we do not want them to eat from. There are some other bushes as well, and they enjoyed eating, but it was scarily near the road, so they only stayed there together with us.

Then I started on a new version of the drawing for Pawel. We discussed how the pavement should be done and weighed the pros and cons of several factors. Here is the final result.

I made a drawing of my design so that it is as clear as possible what we want. Unless given, the measurements are in meters. Natuursteen is the Dutch word for cobblestone. We are aiming for the product by VSB called Utrecht. The Schellevis product is a concrete slab with a porous surface. So now I am also a garden architect, who would have thought?

Here ends this week's blog. I wrote 1872 words this week.