Sunday 10 June 2018


There was an area in the back garden that was just gravel . Unfortunately the cats used it as a toilet and it stank no matter how much I cleaned and bleached it. I decided to  pave it . Getting older I find things happening I thought I was immune to , not as strong as I was , thinner skin that damages more easily , getting tired quicker so I decided to keep it simple and put the tiles onto the gravel..

 I didn't think to keep a blow by blow account of this work . so I don't have a picture off how it looked originally and as is always the case the work involved escalated so removing all the gravel (several cwt) and renovating the fence and redoing the guttering . I planned to lay the paving on earth get it flat and even then use a thin layer of sand to bed it . Every time I flattened the earth I ended up with a wheelbarrow full of earth and I seemed to be endlessly lifting and replacing paving blocks .
The picture below gives some idea as I worked in squares doing one side then the other and here I had to remove the jasmine plant which I founf had smashed out of its pot and grown down into the ground.

I have hoarded stuff ready for when I needed it . My plan now is that all these items will be used or binned so the fence , the guttering and the soffit all came from the garage .








 
HOWEVER
In the middle of doing the garden my wife decided to start to rub down the walls indoors ready for painting and ended up removing the paint so that I had to stop the outside work and sort out and finish indoors . Fortunately it rained so I probably didn't lose anytime and I have during my working life had plenty of practise at prioritisation , organisation and project management to cope . I also always plan for the worst so I managed ok. the picture below isn't  blurred its dust from sanding.


 


 
I decided to try my hand at bone carving I got a piece of bone from a pet shop intended as a dog chew and did this . The picture is ink , indian ink but not stable and I am not sure what to do , it washes off but not completely and soak into the bone blurring and discolouring it. At first the bone seemed unworkable and I thought this cant be the way to do it but I find as with all things the more I tried the easier it got and basic tools such as saws, drills  and sanders are all it needs. I haven't had time to do more and the smell of burning anyone who has had a tooth filled will know the smell ) leads to protests from my wife , even though I use the garage , so I have to wait for her to be out.
 
 

 
 
 
A couple of times I have found myself with nothing to do or at least with nothing I want to do . The day drags when this happens , you cannot be idle once you retire , it is I think the way to decline . You need to keep active both in body and mind. I went back to doing painting and decided I wanted something bigger than I had done before. I took pictures of each step though the first one , the drawing maybe harder to see...
 

I used oil paints . Some off these paints are nearly as old as me. I bought them 50 years ago . Now I want to use them up . Not perhaps a great reason to paint but as I hate waste I want t use them rather than bin them . Also oil has never been a successful medium for me which is why I have had them so long. Here is my first attempt.