Two of my sisters – Ginny and Diff – came down from Caithness this weekend, to help with various things. They made a serious start on stripping the textured wallpaper from the guest room, something that is going to be an ongoing project for some time, I suspect. There are some patches in the house – the stairs being the worst one – where it has clearly previously been deemed that to remove the paper was too hard a job, so it has just been plastered over. Naturally, the plaster is now falling off in chunks, aided by little fingers that can’t help themselves. As much as the work ahead of us is really only just beginning (I describe our very-much-loved family home as being a “many year project”), it felt good to be making a start on some of the comparatively frivolous improvements we’ve identified.
The next morning, we set up some solar-powered lights in the pagoda in the garden, an endeavour which caused much hilarity. Meanwhile, Euan finally finished setting up the regulation size basketball ball net that he got for Christmas, while the girls ran round getting colder and colder in the bitter wind, but having a hilarious time switching between garden toys and sticks and shells.
March is currently being lion-like rather than lamb-like, but it is exciting to be heading towards spring. There is much to do outside, and I can’t wait to carry on chipping away at it all.
