Nol van Schaik

Today we started a new landscaping project: Pebble Road. We have enough of all that gravel flushing away with heavy rains, so we decided to do it the old fashioned way, make the pathways in the garden around the house with pebbles and cement. Adrian and Antonio are helping me out, they love doing these old style jobs. Good neighbours are not hard to find around here.

It is not real difficult, the most intensive part is collecting the pebbles from all over the place, literally, we pick them up, make small piles and then load them in my car.

Maruska is looking on as Adrian starts to fill up the open cracks.

The cement mixture is almost liquid, so it can sink in all the way under the pebbles.

A big jump, the reason I am not in the pictures is because I am the photographer too. So during the filling in I did not take any pics. This is the first piece, now we have to clean the pebbles back up.

Adrian looks on with a joint and a smile, it starts to look like an old roman road.

Looks good, thirty more meters to go!

The pavement looks real good besides the castle tower. This will the pool bar coming summer.

My friend Dau Kojima, a regular visitor of our Willie Wortel Coffeeshops and our Harvest Parties, has made a Japanese version of this blog. Dau also translated my book and the entire Hempcity website into Japanese.

This is Dau while taking part in the Hempcity Nolympics. Thank you, Dau Kojima, for being my number 1 friend in Japan.

For those who read japanese, here’s Dau’s Cannabis studyhouse project:

http://www.cannabis-studyhouse.com/54_cannabis_blog/nol_index.html

It is nice to have a pool, never had one before. I did not know it takes a lot of work to keep it in order.

We had some more scrubbing to do, but we did the job completely.

We used more than 10 boxes of ‘agua fuerte’ to get rid of all the plaque.

It was nice to be able to sit on the shiny bottom next to the Sativa leaf, with an indica joint.

Meanwhile, the three feminised seeds have sprouted, they look good, time to find them a nice sunny spot.

What a re-leaf! The pool is filling back up, who is up for a dip next Sunday?

Today was the day we had planned to clean the pool, in advance of the arrival of our first paying guests. We want to make sure the leafs on the bottom make good pictures.

This is the acid crew, ready to go rid the pool of plaque, with a load of acid to get the job done. Paco, myself, Adrian and Alex about to go at it.

You can see the difference between the first and the second bank, the acid and the manpower are doing it right.

The banks are clean as they never were before, time to hit chalk bottom.

First things first, we rolled a fresh fatty and went for the sativa leaf.

It came out fresh and juicy, we gave it a loving but firm scrub.

The acid foams where it is not spiffy clean yet, that means hard brushing, foam is no good.

This is what we got done today, we will finish the indica leaf and the reast of the bottom tomorrow, I hate brushes and acid!

The little ones are doing fine, they need little care yet, we had some rainshowers, so I do not even have to water them. More brushing tomorrow.

We have a nice size swimming pool available for our visitors/clients, with a special bottom logo. The next pics are part of a slide show intended for the project’s website.

We had a few truckloads of big rocks brought in, meant to enforce the ends of the terraces.

Diego, the man with the machine, is an expert in puzzling with rocks, he can read rocks like I can read Dutch.

Digging a big hole for the pool.

Materials and construction workers on the job.

I have never had a swimming pool made before, but the way they do it here was surprising, as I did work on a few pools as a construction worker in my early twenties.

The steel enforcement is in, the plumber starts tubing the pool up.

The concrete was made on the spot and projected on the floor and walls with a special nozzle, the water is added in the nozzle.

It does go fast, in the blink of an eye. This way the company garantees the pool will never leak nor break, it is one solid piece of enforced concrete.

We have two nice sitting levels made on one side of the pool, you don’t have to submerge to stay cool.

The mosaic guys are doing their thing.

Most pools in Spain have Dolphins on the bottom…

We filled the pool with water from our own well, then added 200 kilo’s of sea-salt, the pool is eco, makes it’s own chlore from the salt. very skin friendly.

A bit of concrete around the pool, Maruska protects the marmolina for cement spots.

Hard work, no fancy pumps this time, a wheel barrel at a time.

Puzzling in the flagstones.

The pool was made before we started renovating the farmhouse, note the difference between this picture and the next one.

The Farmhouse now consists of 5 apartments, we live in one, we are renting out four. The apartments all have a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom and a terrace out front. The apartments will be available from May, at 100 euros per day for two persons, includes a daily local treat. I will put up the apartments this week, will make the last pics as soon as the terraces are equipped with plants.