Half moon

A hot, still and clear night meant that the half moon was very clear tonight.

You could see the major features and craters with the naked eye.

Issaquah Sunset

A Photosynth of tonights sunset:

You will need to get the Photosynth viewer to see this.

Sunny and warm

Grandma and Grandpa are arriving on Thursday – it looks like a perfect week followed by a perfect long weekend.

Building paths and steps – part 4

Phew. A long day.

On Saturday we completed the steps – today we finished the path across to the ropebridge and castle.

Moving rocks; moving more railway sleepers (railroad ties), packing down rock, adding gravel and sand and then the blue bricks for the surface.

Once all of that was done it was time to finish the landscaping – moving topsoil, bark – and then watering all of the plants.

I think this looks pretty good – certainly it finishes off this end of the garden.

The next job is to research, order and then install the flagstones for the steps themselves.

Building paths and steps – part 3

You should look back at part 1 and part 2 of this post – that should give some background. We also had 1500kg (3000lb) of concrete blocks delivered during the week.

Yesterday I started building the steps themselves; cutting back to the gravel and sand layer, packing it down, laying the blocks, levelling the tops and packing that in too.

Grania helped by moving five wheelbarrow loads of blocks (heavy!) and we were done by late afternoon.

The quantity surveying was spot on – we have half a block left over.

Today we will be finishing the landscaping and the path to the kid’s castle.

Time Team

I like the Channel 4 program Time Team.

Grania detests it.

Last week I showed an episode to Aoife – and she was absolutely enthralled. We’ve watched about four episodes from 2007 – and she now tells people about archaeology, digging up old coins and houses. She even wants to dig in the garden to find dinosaur bones (!) and an old house. Aoife told me she would really like to become an archaeologist.

Grania’s reaction? “At least it keeps two people off the street”.

Ladybirds for pest control

We used ladybirds (ladybugs) for pest control in Utah.

We decided to do the same here. Grania ordered a “pint” of ladybirds – that’s about 9000 starving insects.

They arrived this afternoon – and early this evening we released them in the orchard, on the roses and on the vegetables.

Aoife and Hugo were a little hesitant – but as you can see – they soon got tickled by them!

Lost dog

Aoife lost her toy dog in the park.

I made posters this morning – we’ll put them up at lunch: