Vacation at home

This year there hasn't been much travelling during summer, nothing that I really mind as I think home is the best place to be (despite the quite boring weather that has been pestering Skåne since I have been on vacation).
One of the reasons why it is nice to be home - although I do love travelling - is that there is a lot to do and it needs to get done. So, why not take up the sleeves and start to dig into the different tasks?

Despite a slow start, I have finally got a flow eventually in the middle of the holiday time.

Firstly, in the garden there is an eternal fight with ground elder and ivy. While I managed to attack properly some areas with the ivy, nearby the garage, I haven't managed to defeat in the way I want the ground elder in the slope behind the pool. I simply don't have enough time for it.
But this year, instead of just cleaning it out, I thought of starting to plant some things, hoping that they will keep the weeds away.

The effort on the small piece I managed to clean out

At the same time, we have finally started to remove some bushes jungle near one of our hedges, which looked horrible and hinder also cutting the hedge.

Now part of the jungle is gone

Our gardener will come one time more to complete the job. Some of the plants, chervil mainly, got moved to another part of the garden, hoping he will undermine the ground elder job. We couldn't spare though some of the nice flowers that had spontaneously come up there...

On the other hand, inspired by the visit of Andre', a window carpenter within the byggnadsvård domain, I started up again the work on the poolhouse.

First, I have now painted with the first layer the windows.

The window wood was very dried and I did have to oil it 

Then, I started to continue focusing on the poolhouse. While the weather has been decent, I have focused on the eaves of it and even one round of it takes many days and I am not yet done with the first layer. But I am getting closer...

First layer for the north east part

Probably I was starting the second layer for the southern part. I have lost count.

At least one can see a bit of difference, finally

Now, vacation is almost over and I definitely need to complete cutting the hedges that are remaining (about 3 of 6,5 we have), continue with the ground elder and try to finish off the poolhouse. Theoretically we should have started to use it in June, but well, I was very optimistic then...

Finishing and restarting

It is summer and, even though we are not travelling this year, it seems that the amount of tasks we are dealing with never decreases.
The days pass by too fast to have reached the feeling of completion when one of the eternal tasks we need to address are actually done, really done.
There are always a lot of leftovers and even if it is summer and we are here, things accumulated from last year are still waiting for us.

The escutcheon is back

With a certain satisfaction I can state that our garage doors are soon completed. We finally managed to put up the last escutcheon, after losing the screws in the grass just outside the garage. A memorable story that one, which should be spared from this site.

Anyway, still some minor steps missing from the door per se', but we are getting closer. 

I am though desperate between the rain and the amount of things just piling up and I don't manage to get really a momentum with things that should have been done few years ago.

Hence, I really pushed myself to go out with the brush and color and start to pain the roof in the poolhouse as we have some decoration ideas that should be implemented as well (luckily, those not by us, since probably they would happne in 30 years).

There, now I have started painting

I never understand why my base color is very thin in pigment although I mix it properly. Maybe for that reason I always end up with three layers of color...

View from the ladder. I have got quite some nice bushes there

 Now, it is "just" to wait to dry. Not a problem. There is plenty more to paint!

One of the two chambers