Now what?

This morning Don went off to St Fillans to play golf with Gordon. I put a load of wash in and was about to shower when Jamie, the Skye man, came to the door to install our Skye cable service as we've been getting less than clear reception for some time now. Well, nothing is ever easy, is it? (Or have I asked that already recently?) The satellite dish that was already on the house will work even though it is larger than the new ones and is aimed toward another satellite. Jamie says it will work just fine once he points it toward the Skye satellite. But the thing is, the tree next to the house will have to be topped, he says, or we'll get no signal at all. Right. So he takes away the "magic box" and says he'll be happy to come back once there is nothing between the satellite dish and the signal. Now we're not talking about a big tree here. It's just a 15 or so foot tall redcurrant with thin little leaves. I would have thought that if a satellite could beam a signal down to earth from all that distance, surely it could go through a few little leaves. But no.

So this afternoon, after Barclay's visit (about which more in a moment) and while I was at book group discussing Silas Marner, Don tackled the job of pruning the tree as well as topping it. Some of this involved him up a ladder with the electric hedge trimmer. By the time I got home at 4:45, he had made great progress but part of the job required that we work from our nextdoor neighbour's side yard. We both went over to explain to her what we needed to do and that we'd certainly clean up after ourselves. She had us in to sit in her parlor and chat a wee while about the renovations and the garden. She was happy to give us her blessing to get on with it.

It's now a little after 6:30. We've finished the job and cleaned up after ourselves--next door, that is. There's a whopping pile of green debris in our garden that needs to get bundled up tomorrow and taken to the skip. In fact, there's a second pile from an earlier pruning job I did while Don was at golf. The mock orange in the front garden had gotten so big that is was cascading down over everything near it. So I had a jolly good whack at that, taking it down to about 9" above ground. Suddenly the things all around it are bathed in sunshine as they should be. We've now accomplished about 10 percent or less of the pruning and cutting back that needs to be done.

Barclay came by this afternoon to look at the space and get more precise measurements for the cupboard he's going to build for my studio. With holidays coming up soon, he says it will be the middle of August before he gets it finished. [Sigh.] Fortunately, I can continue to work in my studio without a closet just as I have done, but it will be so nice to have the pathway lights and that cupboard done. Oh yes, and there's the painting of the garage. Just this week we selected a colour for the garage. It will be a similar colour to the outside of the house only a few shades darker for contrast. I'm not sure when that will happen, though. Another job that remains to be done is that insulation needs to be put into the attic spaces above the new areas. The joiners are waiting for cooler weather for that job. Once all that is done, we can truly say we are finished. Except for the drapes, of course. Yesterday we were going to go to the decorator fabric shop in the village to look at drape fabric samples, but when I checked the door of the shop for opening hours, I discovered they are on a month's holiday and won't be back until July 24th. Perhaps we'll go to Perth tomorrow afternoon and see what we can find there.