Temporary

For donkey's years, on the East side of our house, just outside the kitchen window, has been a temporary pergola made of all sorts of bits and bobs of spare wood. Gradually it has become more and more rotten and frail as the plants it supports have become more robust. The longer we delayed, the more difficult it would be to replace it with something permanent without causing the plants some serious distress. So last month we invited the metal-working team round, they measured up, metal was ordered and the work scheduled.

The house is heated in Winter by a single log-burning stove in the very centre of the house. No matter whether it is an open fire or a stove, a fire needs a chimney for the smoke to escape and an air supply for it to continue to burn. Normally a fire will take its air from inside the house and this will cause a draught, so Spouseman has installed ductwork directly into the firebox from a hole he made through the wall above the back door on the West side of our house. He had planned to put a grille over the hole to prevent creatures from getting in but this hasn't happened yet and every year, just as it becomes warm enough for us to stop lighting fires, we hear the sound of birds claws scratching around in the ductwork. A couple of days ago we could hear the cheeping of newly hatched chicks and this has become steadily louder.

I popped round to see J and to collect from her the little Canon she has so kindly offered me while the Sony has gone to meet its maker. It's a metallic red jobby in a smart red case and I practised with it taking picturesque shots of the village as I returned. Back at home I donned painting overalls and together, Spouseman and I painted the top rails for our new pergola with grey primer.

We were working on the West side of the house with the constant chirruping of hungry bird-mouths and tiny parent-birds flying in and out of the hole above the door. On the East side of the house was the awful racket of holes being drilled into walls, steel being cut and a huge amount of hammering. We felt rather guilty about our guest below in our cottage named 'silence', but she didn't seem to mind in the slightest.

I chose this picture of freshly primered rails over the more pedestrian pretty village shots for the Canon's inauguration as part of SaraEvans' descriptive challenge. I might put the pretty village pictures up on Facebook (which I am increasingly of the opinion is a Right Royal PITA).