Shedding

The new house has been cleared of furniture but the shed is a huge heap of detritus that I need to clear before I move in properly on Tuesday. I started with a dustbin full of junk and soon discovered that it was three-quarters full of water. I was very glad of my heavy waterproof gardening gloves as I extracted rusty tools, bottles of fertiliser, distilled water(!) and oil, boxes of nails, screw-hooks, rawl-plugs and - what?! - powdered sulphur, then a zipped bag bizarrely containing a waterproof jacket.  

In order for my own shed shelves to fit in, I needed to remove some very badly-built-in sagging shelves (extra). They were idiosyncratically interwoven into the structure with a combination of nails, screws and brute force, and attached to a wooden prop which was holding up a damaged roof-support. I half expected the roof to come down as I hammered and levered them free. The shed will be replaced during the building work on the house in six months time but in the meantime I need it to stand up, so I reinserted the prop and now hope for the best. Then the rain started and I realised that the dustbin full of junk had been placed under one of the leaks. Conundrum: how to waterproof the roof at minimal cost... 

I was interrupted by the sound of a bee in distress and found it trapped in a web being attacked by a spider. Agh - nature. Do I leave the spider its food or release the pollen-carrying bee? I decided the spider could go after aphids instead and freed the bee, carefully removing as much as I could of the sticky web encasing it. I hope it survived its ordeal.

I spent most of the rest of the day sorting the shed floor into usable items, metal recycling, woodwormed wood for burning, rubble and low-grade earth. A bonus bit of archaeology - discovering a quarry-tile floor under the crumbling overlaid concrete one.

For light relief, I continued yesterday's work of rescuing the apple tree from ivy. When I started I didn't know it had a rather attractive three-fold trunk but that's now visible and I have severed the ivy near its roots and started to unwind its strangling. The extra shows the branches still full of ivy.

I will not be short of work here, but I stopped a bit before 7 to give my hands a rest.

Please see yesterday's backblip if you have any interest in history, calligraphy or 'progress'.
And please forgive my lack of comments over the next little while. I have a lot to do.