Demolition Day

Just to let you know, I am blogging this all in the wrong order, but today has been so epic, I'm going to forgo chronology and tell you about the kitchen work weekend in a later post.

So today we demolished the garden wall. I say we, but it was actually Lloyd and Joe's dad, the incredible, wonderful, and ridiculously skilled George. Along he and Cherry came, bringing a digger on the back of a truck, and using his truly brilliant diggering skills, he brought the whole wall down without damaging anything around it. Amazing stuff.

I wish I could say we made some fascinating discoveries, but apart from digging out a lot more of the old retaining wall, and seeing that it used to have steps coming down to the road in the centre, nothing new was revealed. I'm rescuing any bits of the old tiles I can find, and we're reclaiming all the whole bricks we can find from the heap in order to build raised beds once the garden is done.

There's not much more to say, except that the issue we have now is that there is too much stuff. Even with a slope running up the garden for about 10 metres, the top of the slope is about 5 metres above street level which is more than a little bit terrifying to look down on from above. It looks like we'll have to get another skip to reduce the volume of stuff enough to make room for building the new wall. In the meantime we need to protect the slope, so on Monday we'll be sorting out securing it with some kind of netting.

I took a huge amount of photos and some videos, but to try to avoid spamming you I've put some into a slideshow, and I'll try to be restrained with the rest.

This is the view from the top of the garden, so you can't quite see how dramatic it is below.

Kizoa slideshow: Demolition Day - Slideshow

There's a little video below to demonstrate George's artistry when it comes to digger driving. Brilliant work. We're a very lucky co-op to know such skilled people.

I promise to return and blog the kitchen work weekend in the next few days. It looks amazing and everyone worked really hard. I'm off now to eat fish and chips and watch Dr. Who as reward for my part in it all.

- Hannah