A nearly day

That’s the only way to describe today. It started off OK as my first job was to unload the latest (and hopefully, final) batch of wood that I’ll need for my fencing that I bought a week or so ago but have left under a plastic tarp on my trailer ever since. What really shocked me was how much of it was covered with a thick greenish mildew, presumably because it was wet when I bought it and the warmth under the tarp subsequently provided ideal conditions for it to take root and multiply. It looks pretty horrendous but seems to brush off quite easily so shouldn’t give rise to too many problems, and when I eventually come to paint all of the fencing – wood, posts, horizontal bars, gates, everything – with preservative, it’ll be killed off anyway.

This wood is what I’ll be using for the horizontal bars on the fencing sections in the front of the house and the vertical bars of the gates. It actually consists of the outer sections of the trunks that are stripped off before the trunks are sawn down to make planks and I chose to use it because I think that it’ll give a pleasant rustic effect. But more of that when I come to do the job in a few weeks time. Here are some shots of it after I’d unloaded and stacked it prior to re-covering it.

After a quick lunch I decided to tackle a job that I’ve been thinking about for a few days. There will almost certainly be a few more cold snaps before the temperatures really start to climb as we go into the full Spring, but we’re already experiencing more and more lovely days when it would be pleasant to be able to sit outside. I acquired a couple of ‘tonnelles’ (small marquee type tents) last summer which I’ve never used and have been stored in my new ‘abris’ for the past few weeks.

They have curtains on their four sides that can be pulled back selectively according to the weather and the degree of privacy that is required and my idea was to place the first one close to my caravan with the round glass-topped wooden table that I had in my kitchen at Plazac and its matching four wooden chairs inside it. We originally had this set in our conservatory in the UK with a matching 2-seat sofa and two armchairs which I have also kept in storage, so it will be quite suitable for the intended purpose. My second job today was to get the ‘tonnelle’ erected.

It was actually much tougher than I thought it would be, partly on account of its size that made it unwieldy for one person to handle, and as a result it took longer than I thought it would do. In the end I only managed to get its basic frame structure and roof completed and here’s how it looked at the end of the afternoon after the sun had dipped behind the trees on Malbec on the other side of the road.

But there was still a problem. The the roof covering fits very tightly onto the bars that form the roof structure – too tightly in fact. Try as I might, I couldn’t get it to stretch enough to pull over one of the pockets into which the ends of the roof bars sit securing it on the roof frame, without the risk of ripping it. Here’s what I’m talking about.

I don’t yet know what the solution is. As the photo shows, I’ve released the fixings that secure the roof bars to the horizontal frame rails but it still won’t stretch enough to go on, so I’ve left it until the morning to see if I can work something out. Who knows, maybe if the roof becomes wet with dew it’ll stretch a bit anyway, but I doubt it because it’s probably made out of polyester fabric which doesn’t stretch the way a natural fibre like cotton does. Anyway, that’s for tomorrow…