… moment this morning, like I do occasionally, you know, that I was going to be in for a session of working inside.

For the first time for I don’t know how many months. I woke up nice and early after my very early night, and the first sound that I heard was the gentle pit-a-pat of rain on the windows in the roof.

And so I set to work to catch up on the website for a change just recently (I’m now at the old Quebec arsenal), but right on cue, at 12:30 the rain suddenly stopped.

That was the only indication that I needed. I grabbed my trowel and dashed outside to work. Dodging the rain showers, of which there were more than just a few.

I’m rather pleased with the overhang that I built into the roof.

There were two reasons that I did that

1. I didn’t fancy cutting the long sheets of plywood
2. I wanted to keep the rain as far away from the foot of the wall as possible so that the damp doesn’t soak up into the walls from below.
   That seems to work, anyway. The ground was bone-dry about 15 inches from the wall which was exactly what I wanted.

And hammering stones into the gaps until they are thoroughly and tightly in is definitely the way to go

This is shown by the hairline cracks that are appearing in the mortar that I’ve been doing just recently (this is natural – as the mortar dries out, it shrinks). They are now running horizontally, not vertically.

Obviously this wedging of the gaps is holding the walls upright.

I’ve finished off the one half of the long wall of the lean-to, right down to, and in fact below the level of the ground as I’ve dug a trench about 6 inches deep and sealed the wall down there too.

But now I’ve started on the second half of the long wall – the last bit to do.

It’s not going to be finished by the weekend, or anything like it unfortunately

But there’s still two and a half weeks before I have to decide if (notice the “if” rather than the “when” – that’s a disappointment) I’m going away for a while in October.

So tonight I’ll sit here and recover for a while and then go to bed. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, and then it’s weekend.

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