Passing the Buck

On Friday morning we drove over to Santa Domingo which is where the town hall for the region of Garafia is located. We went over there for two reasons one was to pay the water bill, which we were unable to do as the girl wasn't there. The second was to pick up a letter from the post office which needed to be signed for. Now we knew that the letter was from the Cabildo but we didn't know what it was about. So when we read it we discovered that as the part of the road where we had the accident with the rock is currently being worked on that the responsibility of the cabildo is suspended for the duration of the works and that our claim had been sent to the Consejeria of Public works and Transport. So our claim for the money for Bertha has now gone up the the Canarian Government, not just the island government. So the chances of us getting any money soon have just got slimmer.

Spring has sprung

After what has seen like an eternity and like some one just flicked a switch spring has finally arrived in La Palma. Overnight we went from it being cold and rainy to clear blue skies and sunshine. OK at the moment we have calima which is when we get the wind from off the sahara along with a lot of dust. This generates very warm dry conditions and you also get a misty effect like a mild fog.
But with the warm weather arriving we can finally start to get some things done on the outside of the house. One of the major jobs we have been doing is the annual trimming of last years growth off the vines. And as part of this job this year we have been re arranging many of the poles which support the vines top bring them a little bit lower. This has also opened up the area around the old pig pen to the sky which is kind of good considering that I will hopefully be turning it in to an observatory later in the year.

The future home of the telescope the old pig pen!!!!!

The other thing at this time of year is to asses the damage that has been done over the winter.

What last year was just a small collapse!!!

Believe it or not this was just a small area of wall which had collapsed last year however the winter rains have made it a lot worse. so this will need to be cleared so that we can pour concrete in the base and start rebuilding the wall.
The other thing that has started recently is work on the walls outside which eventually become part of the outside kitchen but at the moment they are just mainly there to hold the earth in place and enable us to have a more usable space outside.

The first of the support columns for the wall goes in (and Tabby investigates)

The wall has now been raised to the same hight all along the house terrace

One of the problems we have is that now we only have the small car it is difficult for us to get some of the materials that we need but this week luckily help was at hand from our friends Anne and David from La Casita who kindly offered to pick us up some building supplies while they were out.

One nice pile of reinforcing bars thanks to Anne and David