The last task was to mortar the edge of the main terrace where it has been lifted by tree roots above the rest of the paving, meaning an ugly wide fissure which needed mortar filling. It took surprisingly little time to fill and tidy. In the meantime the watering system had popped a joint and needed a few final tweaks!
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| The yard all sorted |
The yard looked so much better for having all the scruffy bits tidied up. Ali and Sophie were delighted - it was such an improvement from 4 days before.
Sophie took us out on a quick visit to a lovely little upmarket precinct, Fourth Street, which was full of design shops. A very pleasant half hour's wandering before heading to Berkeley Bowl Market for a giant shop for the four days at Lake Tahoe.
Sophie's mum Diane was coming round for dinner and to stay to look after Juni the dog while we were all away in Tahoe so we did a quick bit of preparation and fired up the BBQ with its fresh new bottle of gas.
Diane duly arrived, and it was good to be able to meet her in person and get to know each other a little.
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| The bbq has been christened |
Dinner was very good, a selection of sausages and vegetable all bbq'd up. We made a bit of faux pas with some vegetarian sausages. They were individually sealed in a covering, which we took to be a weird edible alternative to normal sausage casings. Nicely browned up, they proved to be impossible to cut, and we eventually found that the casing was plastic and meant to be discarded! Very odd.
