Today we got the appliances for the guest cottage. What you see here is the washer, dryer, dishwasher and stove.

Because Friday is a pretty quiet day in construction, Jim went to the property to help receive them from the shipping company The general contractor had one employee there to help Jim and once they got everything inspected and put away, he left for other duties. By the time I got there, it was just Jim, me and our helper who was at work down by the pond.

We were obliged to unpack the appliances when they arrived, because you must report any damage within eight days or you cannot return them. Once they were out of their boxes, it became apparent that the boxes would not fit into the space we had to store everything until we are ready to install them in the cottage, so we put them away box-less.

This is a picture from the door of the storage area. As you can see, space is pretty tight. The water pump equipment is also in this room as well as a lot of the contractor’s supplies. It is a pretty tight squeeze to get inside.

After we ate lunch and Jim went off on his rounds, I took a look at the plants we have planted recently to see how they were doing. I was very happy to see that all the roses are doing well—even the ones which look kind of yellow.

This Sally Holmes above the gate is covered with buds for another round of blooms. The Phyllis Bide up the hill from this rose, looked very yellow, but when I got close, I could see that it was covered with new leaf buds.

Here is a branch from one of the little olive trees. They all have new growth and are a much better color than they were when in the pots. I think they HATED the pots and are so happy to be in the ground with room to expand. Evidently, olives can put on quite a bit of growth when young, so I am expecting big things from these trees.

Through the grass you can see some big rocks. Those rocks actually came out of the pad where the barn and guest cottage are now.

When the pad was dug, in the middle of it was a rock the size of a VW Beetle. I was at the site that day and when the men working on the pad asked me what I wanted done with the rock, I told them to put it where it is now. They moved it there with a bulldozer and then using the excavator, moved two more rocks into what now looks like a completely natural arrangement.

June 23—This afternoon, I got a call from our up-the-hill neighbors to say that it looked like a sprinkler was going off in the middle of the house pad. I drove up to see what was going on and found that the hose-bib on the house-water standpipe (that white line above the red garbage container) had busted off and water was geysering out!

Who knows how long this had been going on before I got there. The water tank was emptied and the pump running full bore. It was so muddy around the standpipe that I could barely get close to it and sunk at least 4 inches deep into mud. I had to shut off the valve to the entire irrigation line, which means that all my sprinklers are off until this is repaired.