A whirlwind of a day - or should that be hurricane?

Well Windy Acre certainly has lived up to it's name over the last 24 hours!

By crikey, we have been seriously buffeted.  The wind really got up, as forecast, Monday evening, and since then (and still ongoing as I type heading towards midnight tonight (Tuesday 31st), the southwesterlies have raged non-stop.  Interestingly, the BBC weather website is only describing this as 'fairly windy', but there is some real power in it.  It's quite weird, not gusts as such, almost a constant wall of wind that is just rolling towards you. And it knocks your breath out of you (especially as you're desperately struggling to stop the kitchen door being snatched out of your hand at the same time!) March madness.

Meanwhile, in other news today:

I have started with the cold virus from hell. Fabulous. Just what I need when I have two children on holiday from school to entertain...

Evie has it too.  Bless her, I can barely understand her when she speaks, her throat is that swollen.  Her poor head aches and her tubes are obviously squeezing her too - she's managing about half an hour of activity, lightweight colouring in, bit of biscuit making, before looking pale and going for a quiet lie down and read for a bit.  She isn't often ill, and I don't think she really knows what to do with herself.  She thinks she can just carry on as normal and then seems really surprised when she feels so horrible suddenly.

I could have quite happily put us both to bed today and stayed there, were it not for the other one, who is now merrily recovering from bringing this lovely germ into the house last week, so up for the full monty of holiday entertainment but with the added fun of a 'not quite well yet' short fuse and erratic blood sugar levels. What fun!

But also...

...the builders came to knock the Snug Room chimney opening out...I had hinted that progress might be imminent in this quarter, but as it was just a tiny 2 hour job for them, I was suspecting I might get bumped along the queue in favour of more pressing work.  Bless this high wind! Stopped them going up ladders and carrying on with the roof they are working on - and my job is a nice inside one, not weather dependent... hurray hurray.

Remember how it was the other day:

Well, I took no time at all for them to take it back to the opening we were hoping for:

A discussion was then had regarding the old crazy paved hearth that I had hoped we would be able to relay, and made the Engineer label and store so lovingly.  The consensus reached was that it was best for it to go, and have a new hearth nice and flat and easy to lay.  So they proceeded to knock out what was left of the old hearth and we found this:

The old Baxi that used to be under the fire (the one before the one before the nasty inset woodburner), which the Engineer discovered the other end of the ventilation pipe under the floorboards directly in front of the hearth.

Then the sides were made good and the worst of the holes in the pointing filled in, in preparation for my exciting foray into lime hemp plaster - to be continued once school is back!

Of course, now we need to decide upon and source a new hearth.  But I suppose I half expected that to be the case.  I had a feeling that the Engineer wasn't keen on rebuilding the old jigsaw hearth.

Now I can get the chimney sweep to quote me for lining the chimney, filling it and fitting in our little old stove from the big inglenook, and the end of this long game of woodburner chess is potentially in sight.

Rather cheekily, while I had the possibility of additional brawn captive on the property (even though I was running a temperature and less than useless myself) I convinced the nice builder chaps to help us spin the shed around in the veg patch and move it across into it's new position.

The Engineer has been working away at the preparation for this over the last couple of weekends, when he's had a moment.  But there was no way we could have lifted it by ourselves - it needed a person on each corner minimum.

Here is the shed in it's old position - ok, but not brilliant as it makes the access to the compost heap (to the far left) very tight and almost impossible with a wheelbarrow.  Also, I wanted to have more room for several compost heaps side by side, and the shed is currently sat in the middle of the space.

Process underway - existing compost emptied and spread, structure removed and new flags for feet in place. The Engineer then had to excavate a bit to get posts underneath so we could lift and move it.

Here it is spun round in it's new position...like magic!

Now we can re-construct a whole series of compost heap enclosures side by side, and once the greenhouse is re-sited to it's new position (I like playing chess with large heavy things, can you tell?!) then we will have a sort of 'yard' area alongside the compost heaps where the greenhouse is now, where sacks of potting compost, etc and the wheelbarrows can be stored.

We're nibbling away at it, slowly.

Speaking of nibbling...

Anyone for a slightly rotund gingerbread man?

Oh, the joys of the Easter Holidays!