Both front and back terraces are now finished. The back one was finished first as I mentioned last time, but we had to pick up more wood to finish the front one. That was done a couple of weeks ago and the back one given its coat of oil stain. The front one we only just got oiled this weekend and it has dried nicely now. The stain is untinted and it turned the wood very golden brown. It literally glows in the sunlight.

It is May Day today and luckily it falls on a Monday this year, so a long weekend. Weather was pretty good as well, sunny and warm, but a bit windy. So most of the weekend was taken up with outside jobs (and BBQs :-).

Down the back of the section there are a bunch of willow trees going nuts and they have spread out into a giant bush. I took our old chainsaw to one on Saturday, but I run out of oil for the chainsaw before I could get through even one of the trees. After the attack there was a good sized pile of wood, branches and twigs. Cutting that all up with the chainsaw is going to be painful to say the least and by hand it will take all week. So probably Tuesday we pick up one of the Black and Decker Alligator electric chainsaws. It should handle even the larger branches okay without the hassle of the ordinary chainsaw. Then I can chop it all up to firewood size while I am cutting down the trees. The only problem after that is what do we do with the stumps. They aren’t nice clean ones, but a mess of branches sticking out all directions and the roots spread out with new trees sprouting from those. Easiest thing might be just to chop back any new growth and let them rot. We are keeping the back section in sort of forest/semi wild anyway, so it should be okay.

Last thing on the agenda today was putting up the last of the downpipes at the corner of the house. We had ordered the parts a few months ago and they were sitting in the storage room. So at least there is a little more space now.