First floor joists are in

The last few weeks have seen some progress on the house. The walls are slowly rising from the ground. At the front the builders have started to build the front face in the local stone that the rest of the house is built from. There's one lovely stone with a perfect round circle cut into it, who knows what the original use was. On Friday they got the first floor joists up and suddenly it seems like we're getting somewhere!

The kids are enjoying playing in the extension, not bad parenting I promise, we only let them in whilst we're there.

Blossom sat on her eggs for the full three weeks and alas no chicks hatched. On Friday James popped into a local farm and picked up some day old chicks. He distracted Blossom by picking her off the eggs and I substituted them for the chicks. She was put back in to the coop and she instantly started gathering her babies under her wing. Ever since she's looked after them beautifully.

This weekend we've been in the garden again and are chipping away at the list of jobs. James stripped a damson tree of the ivy that's been sucking the life from it. It was a much bigger job than we'd realised. The damson tree had grown around the ivy so that it was hard to separate the two. There's only a little ivy left, it should just die now and let the beleaguered tree grow a few leaves.

I potted on a few more plants in the greenhouse. This week of sun and rain has brought up all the salad seeds in the garden, the onions are poking through and the peas are looking good. I have left a few leeks to go to seed and am looking forward to seeing them flower, it's not something I've done before so I'm excited to see the result.

The internet is being intermittent at the moment so we've got good old BT coming out to look at it next week. I don't hold out much hope after the last experience.