After the first part of implementation I was wondering how the 2nd part is going to go. I had felt overly occupied with getting all the different aspects of my life taken care of, which was really difficult at times. This lead to re-working the project plan as mentioned previously, which turned out to be much closer to our real capacity. It limited the size of the job so to say and made everything look achievable and not overwhelming. We worked down the list of tasks pretty consistently. At this point there are a few things not completed, like the planting strip is not planted yet or small gravel has not been put in between the foot path pavers on the West side of the house. Overall though, things are finished as planned and we actually added a few elements and tasks. The two largest pieces not completed are the Northern portion of the driveway including a footpath to the house door and the porch/greenhouse.
As long as Berta's nephews were here I continued to prepare daily work sheets of all the different tasks and things I thought we will do on that day, based on the general plan. That worked out nicely and gave Noah and Daniel a pretty clear concept of what was expected.

This was an extremely busy phase and we all worked quite hard. There was hardly any time for anything else, which put me behind in several of my IS client projects. I was able to work enough to take care of the immediate needs of my clients, though. The need for speeding up our work a few times made me think about how speed can be detrimental to doing it sustainable. When things have to go fast for whatever reason, ecological, ethical and sustainable considerations are easily left behind in order to meet the schedule. So, slower, with more actual design work first and maybe not being on time, but within the sustainable paradigm, is preferable to me. Hard physical labor as well as an ambitious schedule both benefit greatly from well chosen short breaks. I remember one time we were digging a lot and took a break eating some watermelon. Once we started working again things were going so well and quickly that I started joking and telling Noah and Daniel that we will have watermelon now every day several times!

As we had found our rhythm in working together the only difference seemed that the continuing physical labor was showing its effect as a certain tiredness and resulting slowness started to set in. As before, several times we got into good talks about all matters concerning ecological and sustainable ways of living, planning and designing.

This output seems so far to be even less stress than the last one. Since our help has left, everything is so much quieter and calmer, of course, not as much gets done either. I can plan my time much better and don;t get interrupted often. The experience of crunch time has subsided towards the end of this phase. And it looks like I will be able to complete this output more or less within schedule - maybe 4 or 5 days later.