Repairing the fosse

You might remember that last year our fosse septique was inspected and we didn't pass. The fosse itself was fine, but we didn't know where the filtration bed lay and there were no regardes, portholes for examining the bed. We decided that, rather than digging around to find the existing bed and retrofitting the regardes, it would be cheaper to build a new bed. And that's what's happened last week.

Most of the fence above the South Forty had to be removed to allow the digger into the garden to dig the trench for the pipe. The old pipe was quickly found and used as much as possible.

On the first day, much of the 5-meter-square hole was dug out, and pipe joined in. (The building in the background of the pictures above and below is our garden shed. Ed added gutters for collecting rainwater from its roof.)

The next day a bed of sand and gravel was added, topped with the required piping to bring in the water and let it out the other side. The black cylinder is one of the regardes, allow inspection of the point where the pipe come together and exit the field. The wooden panel sits in front of the exit channel when no one's around to keep large animals from getting into the pit.

Then pit was filled with more gravel.

And topped with soil, after placement of two more regardes. Pogo's in the background admiring the work. Since mowing around the regardes will be a hassle, we need to come up with a garden "feature" to cover the spots. The regardes above the fosse itself are covered by a large pot (with an old sage plant) and a large stump. (Apparently, the lower part of the South Forty was quite wooded until a big storm in the 90s. We have quite a few large stumps around the hard and suspect they came when the fallen trees were cleared.)

What else has been happening? We went to another quiz, in a closer town, and liked it pretty well. We went to a piano recital at an abbey church in a town on the other side of Angoulême, and heard a most idiosyncratic version of Pictures at an Exhibition.

Pet news: Friday afternoon, Ed discovered that Sophie had a big open sore on her tail, plus some smaller ones. Off to the vet. She stayed overnight so they could anesthesize her to shave her tail and clean up the sores. When she came home Saturday morning she was goofy as can be, stumbling, unable to focus, etc. We suspect that when we took Oscar in for his first checkup, they recorded his weight on her record and so gave her an extra 1.5kg of anesthesia. They also prescribed the antibiotic for the extra weight. By Sunday morning, Sophie was back to her normal charming self, and itching to go outside. Unfortunately, with a gaping hole in her tail, she has to stay inside for ten days. Lots of togetherness with Oscar, oh boy!

We're at the end of a spell of lovely weather, with a rainy spell coming this week, just in time for visitors. But rain is needed. There are parts of the country already under water restrictions and summer's not even here yet.