Even scaffolding in front of the  kitchen window has its charm on a nice bright and sunny day – part of looking on the bright side of life. The builders are now celebrating their week-ends and peace reigns again, at least until next week. They have now finished the noisy work on the East side of the building and have removed all the old insulation and covers. We now have a naked building, but no more noise, or dirt.

The guy in charge of that part said they would begin on the other side the next day and covered my complete West garden with plastic to prevent it being crushed from falling stones and other refuse. This is all very well, but the best laid plains of builders etc. and so they did not arrive last week on that side of the building but began at the end of the building. Our garden resembled a work of art from Cristo, all packed in plastic. My plants were stifling and had breathing difficulties not to mention the lawn which was threatening to turn yellow and eventually die.

We were waiting for Godot the builders and they did not arrive. I spent a disturbed night wondering what to do and the next morning I was in action. It rained during the night, it was almost a deluge, but undaunted I put on my pink plastic garden clogs and removed the plastic sheets, shaking the rainwater into the garden. My garden could now breath. They even encased my growing climbing rose. You do not wrap a climbing rose in plastic. I defied them all and now I have my garden back again. The week-end is upon us and the work will probably continue on our side next week, but they will begin on the appartments next door. I will then observe how much heavy material will really fall and give my instructions to the buiders how I want my garden protected. I am convinced they were overdoing their care, they could no longer see the forest for the trees, the plastic sheets for plastic.

In the meanwhile I had another brilliant idea. I have a nice steel plate in the scaffolding in front of the kitchen and have now organised some bread pieces on it for the birds. I do not usually feed them in Summer, but crows are not fussy and within a few minutes one was already perched on the hedge. This is all in the name of photography and I have my zoom lens ready for action.

The positive side of this whole building operation is that next week the messy part should be finished and the plasters and sculpturers will move in. That is apparently quiet work, and no machine noise is incurred and I will have new material for my camera. I am already living in a different world on the East side of the appartment where we have our bedrooms and my computer headquarters. We can now open the windows in the morning and air out the rooms, it is almost like back to normal.

They removed all our blinds including the summer blind, which is very big and lowered on the West Side. It was a very nice blind, with grey and white stripes. We have now discovered that this will be replaced by a new blind, with colours suiting the new makeover. This was not mentioned in any records and is a surprise to all. Mainly it concerns us and the neighbour as one appartment is empty and the other two appartments apparently knew about this as they were in the organising committe. We will now be confronted with an extra bill for removal and mounting of the new super blind, as well as the cost for the new blind which is not cheap. A further irritation and cause for annoyance. Apparently an offer was made, but the unknowing parties have not seen or heard of this offer.

And now to move on. Mr. Swiss has a dentist visit, just a short one, and we discovered that our bread rations are short for a complete week-end so he will also be on the quest for bread. Take care everyone, there might be falling masonary – you never know.

Here a photo of the removed plastic covers. I am registering everything.