Apple blossom

I went to take picture of the progress of getting to the cellar but decided that this apple blossom was more interesting as a picture.

In England we leased a few square metres from a local farmer and planted seven fruit trees. We then set-up a community orchard in the village and helped others set up another community orchard in town. As a result we had several goes at apple grafting. When we moved to France we brought one grafted apple with us, and went to a local group here to pick some grafted apples up. At the moment they are in pots and plagued with ants and aphids, but once the building work is done, they will get planted properly and I'm hoping to have some fruit from them eventually!  

The thing about the cellar is that it's not really a cellar at all. It was only when we looked at the outside of our house from the neighbour's garden that we realised that most of it isn't underground at all! One wall is a common wall with our living room, two of the walls are above ground and form the property border, and only one wall the one to the right in the extra picture from the inside, and now possessing a doorway is actually underground.

Building work continues, at the moment the masons are mostly tearing down the old weak concrete block work and casting reinforced concrete parts to tie the structure together. Once that's all done the carpenter will construct a timber frame for part of the upper story, and construct a roof. While the masons will then repair and render 3/4 of the existing house and the walls existing walls of the extension.

The walls are okay, and really should be carefully pointed with a lime & sand mortar, but is more than double the price and the stone work wasn't great to start with, and has been bodged & damaged over the years, so a solid lime & sand render will protect & strengthen what's there and is much cheaper to do... If money wasn't an issue I would have the walls repaired and pointed - even though the results wouldn't be perfect, but money is an issue so they get rendered....