What a busy day! These pictures were taken at the end of the day because I was so busy all day I never got around to taking them earlier. In fact, this one was taken by my husband. In this shot, you see the barn with the windows and siding complete on the ground floor.

Also, to the left of the barn, you can see my fabulous truck, which was a gift from my husband one Christmas. Above the truck, kind of in front of the water tank, you can see me coming down the hill. I look like a plant, because I am dressed in my green gardening clothes, and you wouldn't want to see me up close, because I am very sweaty and dirty.

Here is the front of the barn with the siding complete.

Earlier, Kai was standing on the board sticking out of the second floor, but of course I was to busy to THINK of taking a picture.

Here is a view of the south side with the door where I will keep my gardening equipment. The windows are so high because most of this floor will be used for storage or garage and we need to be able to put shelving on the walls.

There are no windows on the west side because it was in the plan to have a future office for me built in front of that wall, but now I think it will never be built because I have plenty of room in the 2nd floor.

Here is Kai and his helper getting ready to go home. The real point of this picture is Kai's dog Ginger, who has taken her place under the shelf behind the cab in the shade.

She is an old dog and loves to kiss everyone. She spends her days lying on the cool concrete floors of either the guest cottage or the barn.

Here is part of what I worked on today, although my helper did most of the work. We planted a row of 6 olive trees, which Mark and Karen had given me several years ago. They have been languishing in pots all this time and I hope they do better in the ground.

This is also a good look at our north view. The grass has dried out almost completely in the last two weeks and the hills have turned gold. They will stay gold for a while and gradually get grayer and grayer until the rains come.

This has been a very dry year. I notice a spring on the east side of the pond, which has run year-round for the last 3 years is dry already.

Here is a little closer view of the row of olive trees. I hope that now that they have some room, they will grow a little faster. There are six different varieties of olive which make up a classic Tuscan olive oil blend. However, they have been so unhappy in pots, that they are not any bigger than they were when I got them.

They keep putting out tons of olives, but my uphill neighbor, who farms olives, tells me to take off the olives so the trees will put their energy to growth.

You can see how puny my poor little trees are here! Irrigation gets hooked up on Monday but it has been a cool weekend, so I am sure they are ok.

In this shot of the guest cottage, you can see what I did after the crew left—worked on selecting an exterior color. Those boards of different colors of brown propped up against the front of the slab are various colors we are trying out.

Here you get a better view of the colors. The upright brown board on the right is a contender and the very yellowy-brown board on the far left, partially covered by the other board, was a contender, until I mixed up a new color which knocked it out of the running. The main thing is that the color not be too red-ish or orange-ish—like the one lying down, because those colors fade to a sickening pink in our relentless sun.

We need that color right away because I need to have my helper repaint the shed and the crew needs to stain that siding before it gets sun-damaged.