Tag Archives: apple tree

Monday 20th April 2015 – WELL, I’M ALL SPENT UP NOW.

€790 in IKEA today, and I didn’t buy anything like what I was planning to do.

None of the kitchen worktops impressed me except for one – and that was a mere €399 per m², which is perhaps a little over the top and in any case, I don’t have the machinery to cut the marble.

I’ll have to see what’s on offer elsewhere.

But I now have my bed and a nice and expensive firm mattress, as well as a pile of new bedding, and a nice dark-brown deep-pile rug to go by the side of the bed. I’ve also bought some mirrors for the bedroom.

And that’s where all of my money has gone today. But it’s all good stuff anyway.

This morning I finally finished off everything for the rock music programmes that we’ll be recording next week, and I’m well on the way to doing the next month’s too.

Then it was off to pick up Liz and down to Gerzat to record the Radio Arverne sessions, and then we went to IKEA.

spectacular clouds st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceOn the way back, we had some spectacular clouds. This one over St Gervais really was impressive – much better than it looks in the photograph.

And the town over there, bathed in the sunlight, looked quite good too. All in all, it really was a beautiful evening to be out and about. We could do with a few more of these.

buds on apple trees les guis virlet puy de dome franceDown at Riom and Gerzat, the trees are already in full bloom, so I was quite impressed to see that the fruit trees that I have in buckets outside the front door are now blooming too.

It’s all of a couple of weeks late of course, as I have said already, but it’s still as beautiful as ever when it does arrive. It’s a sure sign that summer is on its way.

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Wednesday 9th April 2014 – IT’S BEEN A WOODY DAY TODAY.

Yes, I’ve been dealing with some timber issues.

But first, I was up even before the final alarm sounded. I’d made breakfast and coffee and was back up here with my food by the time it went off.

I was on the web pages at 08:45 too and that has to be something of a record and I did two full pages before finishing at 12:00 and then it was off outside. And first thing that I noticed was that two more courgette plants are rearing their pretty little heads.

Now, if you remember the story of the raised bed that will contain the soft fruit, that was hacked out a few years ago of what was the jungle. But with all of the old weeds dying off and the new ones not quite established, it was possible to clear quite a large area around it, and so I attacked that today.

Surrounding the bed are lots of those horrible ground elder trees that sprout up like forests in just a year or two. I’ve hacked down about a dozen of those and they are stacked out to dry for a couple of years. One day, I’ll pull up the roots too.

Now, the sunlight streams onto the soft fruit bed almost all the day, which is what should happen.

There was an apple tree that had been flattened and was growing horizontally. I had a couple of tree stakes and so I’ve now staked that tree upright in the vertical – and it’s blooming now.

When I cleared the ground for the bed, I stacked some of these ground elder trees and od course they are now bone-dry. I ended up with two barrow-loads of small kindling that will do me for much of next winter and there’s still plenty to go at. I need to clear some space though in order to have a decent garden fire.

Final job was to water all of the plants in the garden. A hot day today, so they needed it.

And I can see that I’ll have to start some weeding soon.

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Wednesday 13th April 2011 – I’m having a change of plan here.

Well, not a strategic plan, but more of a tactical plan. I’ve finished my Labrador pages and I’ve been making a start on the Newfoundland pages of my mega-voyage to Canada.

However one thing always leads to another and once you make a start you’ll be surprised just how many other things that there are. I now seem to be writing a mega-opus about the Viking exploration of North America. Ahhh well.

So that took me to midday and then I went outside and made more progress planting seeds – more of those that I planted two weeks ago. And to my surprise I now have some baby leeks sprouting – the first of the seeds to come up. I wish the others would get a move on.

Those of you with long memories will recall that ages ago I built a heat exchanger that was basically the radiator out of an air-conditioning unit. I put a 70°C thermostat in it – to switch on a water pump when the temperature reached that figure – but that was far too high. It only ran 4 times that summer. After that I stuck it on one side and forgot about it. I bought some 50°C thermostats a couple of years ago and so this afternoon I rebuilt it, and I’ve sited it next to the solar shower unit. The aim is to run some electricity to there, plug the pump in and wire it to the thermostat so that when the temperature inside the heat exchanger reaches 50°C it will start to pump water through the heat exchanger so that the water will heat up.

Once that was fixed up (but not wired in yet) I took down the old heat exchanger and demolished the old beichstuhl. That was another link with Liz that has now gone, but it was redundant since I’ve had the dry composting toilets and apart from being an eyesore, it was in the way and I’m in a vague tidying-up mode as you know. Still in gardening mode I dug a small patch out at the end of the raised beds, just under where the apple trees are, and then planted the 2 blackcurrant and 1 blueberry shrubs. I’ll be in jam-making mode later this year I hope.

To finish off, I gave everything a thorough watering. About 100 litres of water has gone onto the plants and seeds this evening and they needed it, that’s for sure. There’s been no rain of any substance since a week last Monday.

Now it’s back up here with the Vikings. I’m enjoying writing this.

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Thursday 24th March 2011 – Nothing really special happened at all today …

 although I am fed up of the blasted French Air Farce. At 16:32 precisely this afternoon one of their jets flew over my house so low that it set the wind turbines going off. It was unbelievable – I’ve never heard such a racket in all my life. And what did I do to deserve it? I haven’t had a UN Security Council resolution made against me, have I?

So that’s me thoroughly fed up and I’m going to declare my house a no-fly zone. I’m going to see if I can’t track down a Stinger missile somewhere (the Taliban still have a few that the Septics sold them back in the early 1980s) and set it up in my garden. The next b@st@rd who thinks it’s funny to fly over my house at zero feet will get more than he bargained for when I light the blue touchpaper and retire. All I’ll need to do after that is to see if there are still a few Scud missiles left buried in the sand in Iraq (the Scud, by the way, is a direct descendant of the German V1) and drop a few of them onto the French Air Farce headquarters. See how they like it.

B@$t@rd$

But it wasn’t just the French Air Farce that set off my wind turbines. It’s been quite windy today here too and round about 12:00 we had a good half an hour of high winds. I had 2.1 amp-hours of wind energy off the old AIR turbine and I’m impressed with that.

raised beds les guis virlet puy de dome franceMeanwhile, back at the ranch, I had a good day in the garden and I now have two new raised beds installed. The one on the left is for the new potatoes and the other one, together with a third new one that I shall be installing in early course behind the compost bins, will be for the old potatoes.

But while I was hacking away in there I came across one of my original apple trees in the jungle. It’s weighted down with brambles and scrub but it’s still going with loads of buds right now. It might be possible to save it and so I had a go at clearing away much of the rubbish that was dragging it down.

Another solar shower too – water at 36°C rhis afternoon although it had cooled down to 34°C by the time I knocked off. It didn’t feel that warm when I was standing underneath it having a shower but I feel that I ought to be taking advantage of the warm weather and keep myself clean.

It can’t keep up like this for ever, although of course I wish that it would. This time last year we had a few days of 20-odd °C, I notice, but the weather soon collapsed.

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Wednesday 31st March 2010 – Yeeuucchhh

A couple of weeks ago I made a comment something along the lines that summer had finally arrived because over the previous 7 days the minimum temperature had risen from minus 9 to plus 9.

Well, a week ago we had just had a 7-day period of extremely minimal rainfall. This last 7 days though we have had a grand total of 54mm. 7 days ago I did a load of washing and noticed that the water butts were running really low. Tonight they are overflowing.

Terry and I went down to football training but there was no chance of any football tonight. Those girls from Saturday could have held their swimming gala on there, there was that much standing water.

But the plants seem now to be bursting into life. The herb trays are bursting forth, the radishes have gone berserk and now the carrots, spinach and beetroot have come to life. They are obviously enjoying this weather. I’m glad someone is.

This morning I did two hours work upstairs. I’ve transcribed all of my outstanding footy notes and I can bring the football website up-to-date. But while I was transcribing the footy notes I came across some notes that I had dictated on a journey to Hamburg back in early 2007. I’d forgotten all about those.

After that I carried on laying the paths around the raised beds and I’ve done as much as I can. That’s another pile of builders’ rubble and old slate accounted for. So bearing in mind the garden springing to life I’ve started to dig over where the last (for now) of the raised beds will be. And while I was digging up tree roots and the like I noticed that one of the apple trees I planted all those years ago seems to be coming to life, even though it is thoroughly overgrown by rampant ground alder. I reckon I ought to have a go at clearing some of that rubbish away from it to give it some room.

But back at the football there was only a handful who had turned out for training and someone suggested we practised dribbling around some old bollards that they have for training purposes. But I cautioned against it. It recalled too many memories of when this kind of training became a la mode back in the late 1960s. Crewe Alexandra, my home team, was one of the first to try it back in 1967 and during one of the very first training sessions the sports editor of the Crewe Chronicle rang up the club
“How’s this new training session going?” he asked.
“Dreadful” replied Ernie Tagg, the club manager. “The bollards are winning 2-0“.

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