4 Earth Panels, Shoji Cleanup and some Worms

This weekend saw me coming up supported by PeterO, my wife Yuko, and my kids Maya(4) and Sean(5mths).

Peter and I tackled the heavy work straight away - we mixed up dirt, stamped it to a nice plaster and slapped it into four wall panels. We were so hard at work for the second half of the day, that we couldn't take any photos or video. Anyway, this is the view on the next day:



A little bit on the right remains, and one full panel in the centre right. We ran out of daylight, sand, reed sticks so postponed the remaining work to the next time. The centre left panel will be filled by mud bricks at the bottom, to store heat.

On Sunday, Yuko, Maya and I took off paper windows from the Shojis. Usually this is pretty simple and quick work if done properly every year, however it looks as if the previous owner changed his Shoji paper ... It was a quite a bit of watering, scrubbing and scratching, and all had to be done with utmost care not to damage the soft wood of the frame. We'll stick on the new paper another time, when no more dirt is generated by our construction.



Maya was also interested in studying the local wild life, and took a sample of the local fauna: