Itś been a cold couple of days and I´ve had to curtail my long days working outside. My back, and especially my hands don´t like the cold damp weather weŕe having. So I thought I´d settle down by the fire and write you a note.
We didn't get the long, warm Indian summer we usually get in October, but we did get our first Olive harvest in three years since the big fire stunted most of our trees. Both these reasons put me behind in my preparations for winter. My big job is to get a good load of firewood under cover before the rains come. We have a load of un-cut lengths of scrap from the lumber yard left over from last year. They were cleared off the driveway this summer and moved off to the terraces where they were caught by early October rains. We bought a load of cut and split firewood to make up for shortage but my tools, such as they are, had to give way in the woodshed in order to keep the wood dry. This forced me to work double-time in constructing a temporary shelter to replace the one that burned to the ground during the fire. I had no intention of replacing that first temporary tool shed, but serious delays in getting building permission for a proper garage has left me no choice.
Luckily, we were approached by a friend offering us free building materials in exchange for dismantling her pergola which she had built without permission. This provided me with lots of metal roofing and stout beams with which I could design and build my own shelter. I tried to design something sympathetic to the hillside that wouldn;t offend the neighbors. Limited by available materials, I had to change my design a number of times.
This time, I was determined to provide a level, dry floor. That required getting the old cement mixer going and doing a little site work.
Thatś Harry, our young English volunteer who took over my gardening jobs while I concentrated on the shed. Here we have tilted up some walls on the platform. The roof was to be the metal pergola on itś post and beam structure and I had planned to marry the two once everything was in place.
Of course, everything must stop as soon as the olives are ripe and the weather behaves. 
So here´s Harry again sitting down on the job among the olive netting. This took a couple of days and we were very lucky with the weather as well as a good yield of fine olives. About 35 litres of bright green, piquant, fresh olive oil. Lovely.
So here´s Harry again sitting down on the job among the olive netting. This took a couple of days and we were very lucky with the weather as well as a good yield of fine olives. About 35 litres of bright green, piquant, fresh olive oil. Lovely.
The weather then turned blustery and I went to bed every night convinced that the wind would carry off my fragile, new roof before I could get all the bracing and screws in place.
Then it was a matter of bringing the walls up to meet the new roof. The back wall remained a vague idea until it occured to me I could put to use some enormous doors we had recovered a few years ago from another demolition project. I had to learn how to set new hinges (which I botched first time!). These things proved agonizingly heavy. On my first attempt, I got alexś help but she banged her head on a beam I could clear without injury. For the second try I had to use levers and cantilevers to get them hung properly but it was quite rewarding when they dropped into place.
