Lockdown projects: the final anti-damp work and a Sphinx moth pupa

Long-time readers may remember that I have basically had to dig my entire house out of the mess that previous owners created by ruining the drainage. From allowing the kitchen sink to drain into a reed bed, to allowing rain water to run downhill against walls with nowhere to go once it reached the wall, to building walkways above the dampcoursing of the foundation, I have had to fix every wall around the house to get them dry and stop rain water flowing in at floor level in some rooms whenever it rained heavily. 2 years ago I dug out one whole side of the house, turning this

into this: a walkway built at the same level as the house foundation. We had to break a lot of rock to do this, the previous owners were too lazy for that and merely dumped soil against the side of the house and laid the walkway on top.

Last piece left was outside my front door. Here's an old photo of the house showing the paving built up to the level of the windowsill and the door. I thought it wasn't transmitting damp to the house walls but it was.

After lifting the paving, we came to a layer of concrete. Unsightly, and still high above the foundation layer. More digging and hauling soil required...

Finally, I am down to the base rock layer that the house was built on and there is no way that water can flow against the wall above the damp-proofing again

I've considered whether I want to build a similar walkway to the second picture but I decided that I will leave the higher rock layers exposed and place some large flat rocks like the ones on the right of the picture as paving stones wherever it needs levelling, fill the spaces with soil and plant groundcover. I like that idea and right now, I can't buy concrete mix any way due to lockdown. I'll show pictures once I'm finished.

While taking the paving up, I found this creature, who was fortunately unharmed. It's a Sphinx moth pupa. That weird-looking appendage is the pupating moth's proboscis. I don't know what species it is but it isn't a Death's Head Hawkmoth like the caterpillar I posted a few weeks ago but it belongs to the same family of moths.

The last time we were digging up the paving we unearthed a similar pupa but sadly the digging broke its proboscis and it died. I buried this one in the ground inside of one of my plant pots and hopefully it will make it through the winter.

So I have been far from bored during lockdown. We have had to manage without being able to buy many hardware supplies but it's been a good time to fix mess around the house.