I asked what we could write about in the journal.
Anaïs replied with six voice notes, photos and a to-do list as long as a Friday without an apéro.
While I was looking for an angle, they were working.
The garden had taken advantage of a month and a half without mowing or brush-cutting to stage a coup. The grass was too high to cut in a single pass. The accessible areas needed two passes, followed by negotiations with the slope.
The slope is not known for negotiating.
The new mower makes the work less painful and, above all, quieter. Bolo tested it in the garden; the neighbours heard the difference. For a machine that cuts grass, that is already quite a career.
The plantings from July, meanwhile, held their own.
The coffee tree has settled into its partly shaded corner. It already stands between 1.5 and 1.8 metres tall, which is a fairly clear way of saying it intends to stay. The Plectranthus neochilus surround the outdoor shower and release their scent whenever someone brushes past. The yellow and orange Costus are beginning to screen the view towards the shelter. The hibiscus are taking their time, but the first buds are there.
We’ll take it. Not everyone has to work in a hurry.
Then there was the electricity.
It is less photogenic than a tropical garden, but considerably more useful when you plug something in. The power cables were upgraded to the right gauge. The outdoor sockets are now protected by weatherproof boxes. The electrical panel has its circuit breakers and residual-current devices. A central light has joined the string lights beneath the shelter.
The two-way switches will come later. Even I no longer believe in lists that end.
The deck was sanded and sealed too. Nothing spectacular changed: it is still the same terrace in front of the same cabin. Only now the timber is protected, the garden is usable again, and the electrical installation no longer runs on optimism.
That is often what maintaining a place looks like. A lot of work so that nobody notices it needed doing.
The A-frame is now booked until 2027. For a while, there should be less dust, fewer tools and fewer lists left on the table.
The cabin can breathe.
We probably can’t.
— Nox