… yesterday about the snow.
At about 15:30 this afternoon the heavens opened and for a couple of minutes we had a snowstorm.
Not totally unexpected either, because between about 14:00 and 15:00 the temperature dropped from 8.3°C to 4.1°C – quite a dramatic fall in temperature in such a short space of time – and it carried on dropping too.
Having spent much of the morning doing computer things, I went out to move these tree stumps that are in the way of where I want to put the compost bins. But rather than spending all of the time moving the stumps, I spent much of that time taking the handle out of an old abandoned spade to put in the garden fork.
That’s another tool handle broken – I’ve lost count of how many just recently. I’ve no idea what’s causing them all to pack in.
However, when I was at Bricomarche the other day I noticed a pile of tool handles. I shall have to go and mortgage my life away.
“But why did it take so long to change a tool handle?” I hear you say.
Probably because the handle in the spade was well stuck in and in the end it was a job for the angle grinder to cut away the neck of the spade. As for the fork, that involved drilling out the broken bit of handle and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either.
But now the big tree stump is out, and so are a couple of smaller ones. I didn’t have time to remove the rest so that’s a job for tomorrow, always assuming that I can see them through the snow that is forecast to fall tonight
Another thing I did was to plant the lettuce. Did I mention that I bought a dozen baby lettuce plants on Saturday? A dozen cost €2:95 and the price for 6 – also €2:95. So seeing as a dozen lettuce all ready at the same time would overwhelm me, I planted 6 and gave 6 to Liz at the Anglo-French group this evening.
What I will be doing is buying a few small lettuce plants every few weeks and running them throughout the year.
A big mistake that I made last year was that I left the final lettuce out in the open and the frost got to them even though they were stiull going. I’ve therefore planted this lot of lettuce in the cloche with the strawberry plants and put the glass (really two old caravan windows) over them to keep the bad weather out.
And the lettuce from September onwards will also go into the cloche to see how long they will keep in there under cover
I also bought a few packs of seeds from ALDI and LIDL – €0.29 and €0.49 a packet depending on size. Not many varieties but enough to keep me going. I imagine that temperatures of -16°C have done for the seeds in store from last year.
I also need to think about seed potatoes, onion sets, garlic and shallots. It’s getting to be about that time.
All in all, things are starting to become busy around here. I need to put my skates on.
