EPIC HALL

Thursday 22nd May 2014 – I’VE BEEN OUTSIDE …

… in the garden again today.

Despite another late night, I was up at the usual time this morning and it was once more difficult to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing. I must do something about this and learn to discipline myself better, especially as I can no longer afford that woman in Soho …

Outside though, first job was to empty the beichstuhl. And it needed doing too. That’s all in the compost now, quietly festering away, and there’s a nice, clean beichstuhl ready for the morning. That will be a delight.

Afterwards I went in search of scrap wood. I needed some old laths, of which there are plenty around – it’s just a case of finding them and that took me hours as well.

During the lunch break, the weather broke and we had another torrential rainstorm. After my butty, I ended up in the lean-to doing a little tidying up and then did some concreting in the living room. Years ago I dug out a hole in the floor so as to take the batteries that I use. Once I’d done that, all nicely made-to-measure, they discontinued the model that I’ve bee using and so I have some larger ones. And so I need a larger battery box, hence the concreting.

The rain eventually stopped and so I went back outside. And with the old laths that I had gathered and some fencing that I had bought, I made two bean frames. They are now planted in the garden and all of the peas have been sown, as well as the very first double-row of beans.

I’ll be making some more bean frames tomorrow and sowing another load of beans. They seem to do fine in my garden so I need to encourage them.

Wednesday 21st May 2014 – I HAD A BETTER …

… night’s sleep last night. Going to bed before midnight always helps and I wish that I had done so tonight instead of typing this perishing blog at 02:15 because I can’t sleep.

Even with having been out and about on my travels during the night, I woke up all bright-eyed and bushy tailed and after breakfast set about the web site. i’m on the last lap now, out on the icebreaker smashing our way through the pack-ice in the Gulf of St Lawrence in mid-May 2012.

After that, I attacked the mega-cloche and gave it a good weeding. You’ve absolutely no idea how much rubbish has grown in there in the last 3 or 4 weeks, but it’s all out now. Once it was ready, I planted the tomato plants that I had bought from the supermarket at the weekend.

After lunch, I weeded around one of the pea and bean beds, the one that already has a few peas in. Some of them have germinated (but many others haven’t) so I filled in the gaps with some pea seeds that I’ve had in a damp paper towel since Monday.

There were plenty left over too so I repaired another pea and bean frame and sowed another two rows, one either side. With any luck, they’ll grow and tangle themselves in the netting and keep on going upwards. I need to make a few more frames for peas and a pile more for the beans, and I’ll look into that tomorrow..

We had an incredibly windy day – gusting up to almost 50kph throughout. And it’s one of those days where the bigger wind turbine produced more than the smaller wind turbine. As I’ve said before, it’s a fallacy to think that you receive more charge from a more powerful wind turbine. The more powerful the motor, the bigger the magnet there is inside it so the more force that you need to overcome the resistance. That’s why in low-speed situations (and nowhere is any much lower then here) the 70-watt turbine almost always produces more than the 400-watt one.

Except today, of course.

And I was a little too optimistic about that battery that I installed the other day. One of the cells has boiled up today and distorted. So now it’s on 5 cells only until I can get round to sorting some more out.

Wednesday 24th April 2014 – I’VE SPENT MOST OF THE …

… day in the garden today. And a long day it was too as I was awake and out of bed before the alarm clock went off – such are the benefits of an early night.

So after the customary few hours on the web site I went outside, and the first job was to sow some Witloof chicory seeds. Well – perhaps it wasn’t. First job was to hoe the raised bed in which they will be planted, put some potash in there and then hoe a few other raised beds while I was at it, and THEN sow the witloof chicory.

After that, I repaired a couple of bean frames, fixed them to a raised bed, and then sowed a pile of peas. We’ll see what happens to them.

After lunch I really got stuck in.

I sowed another row of parsnips and carrots, and put some beetroot and spinach seeds in to soak. I then went through the seed list and the little plastic greenhouse to see what there was, and now I’ve added some more

broccoli
aubergines
tomatoes
cayenne peppers
gherkins
peppers
cucumbers

Finally I gave everything a really good watering, but I needn’t have bothered as we have just had a torrential rainstorm.

Tomorrow i’ll sow the spinach and beetroot, and then I have other things to do.

-4

Tuesday 8th April 2014 – WHAT A WAY TO START THE DAY

Downstairs nice and early for a change, and … no gas. It must have run out just as I finished cooking last night and I didn’t notice.

Good job I’d bought that cylinder the other week. First job this morning was to couple that up so that I could have a coffee.

After the website, second job was to empty the beichstuhl. Such delightful jobs I have here. And just to prove that it never rains but it pours, the shredder packed up. And why a shredder? The answer is that you need something to absorb liquids in a composting toilet and the best thing ever designed for that is old telephone directory pages. Works like a charm when it’s shredded and I wonder what I’m going to do now.

Next thing was to check the state of affairs with the plants that I sowed the other week. I told you yesterday that a courgette plant was raising its pretty little head. So here’s a photo of it and its brother too, because we now have two courgette plants springing to life.

Still nothing doing in the carrots, parsnips and radish bed, but before lunch I sowed another row each, together with the beetroot seeds that I had soaking overnight

Talking of soaking overnight, I put pile of pea seeds in damp paper in a plastic bag. They’ll be okay in there for a while to help them germinate.

After lunch I carried on sowing and theres another pile of seeds now in the little plastic greenhouse helf thingy that I bought the other day.

It does occur to me that you haven’t seen it yet and so here it is in all its glory. You can see the bushes that I bought a couple of weeks ago, and all of the seeds that I’ve sown. In the plastic bag are the peas.

So what did I sow today?

Gherkins
Tomatoes
Sweet corn – but I’m not going to be optimistic about that. I found a packet with an expiry date of 2009 so if I was going to throw them away, I might as well throw them in the soil and see what happens

Thee was also quite a mixture of seeds floating around in the bottom of the box in which I keep the seed packets. Seeing as there’s an empty bed that won’t be used for a while, they all went in there and we’ll see.

After all of that I started tidying up outside, seeing as there was still some time to go. You can now see the herb bins in their pristine glory before they are all overwhelmed again.

It doesn’t look much like I’ve done any tidying up, but there’s a lot to do as you might expect. I can see the difference, but I doubt if anyone else could.

I’ve also cleaned the old “Westwood” ride-on mower. An ex-friend of mine found this for me and I never ever had it running because there are some bits missing. It’s sat here and not mooved wince 2002. Anyway, some time next week, it’s going. Someone is coming to pick it up. And you won’t believe the story behind this – you’ll just have to wait.

But whatever did happen to Paul? He was the best friend I ever had and he would do anything for me any time without question, something for which I was eternally grateful (and it goes without saying that I returned the compliment). But then he had his accident and he was put on medication, and that changed him considerably.

Finally, they changed his medication for another and I just couldn’t cope at all with the new personality. We were in Birmingham once, trying to make out which way to turn when a car (not unsurprisingly) blew its horn. He was straight out of the car going to thump the other driver and it was at that moment that I realised that I couldn’t keep this up.

I have enough problems dealing with my own issues without thinking about dealing with anyone else’s.

What a shame.

Friday 12th October 2012 – A RIGHT PICKLE!

I’ve been pickling today, and it looks as if I shall be eating beetroot for the next 100 years, with the amount that Rosemary and I bottled today.

And that tarragon-flavoured white vinegar didn’t half smell nice. By the time that we had added all of the spices to the vinegar and boiled it up, Rosemary’s kitchen smelt like a Babylonian boozer’s bathroom.

Still, it’s all done now.

We also shelled all of the peas and beans and I ended up with two jars of those. A few of them have chitted and so I’m going to try them out as winter plants under one of my patented plastic-bottle cloches. It might be worth a try.

Another thing that we did was to sort out the garlic and onions. I have enough garlic to last me all my life, I reckon, but not as many onions as I wanted.

I’ve no idea what happened to the shallots though – I had plenty of those a few weeks ago but I couldn’t find any the other day.

So first thing in the morning I went off to St Eloy-les-Mines. Firstly, to buy a recharge for the mobile phone, but the Post Office is closed for renovations for a few weeks so that was that.

Secondly I went to the dechetterie to dump all of the rubbish, but they are on winter hours so the blasted place was closed this morning.

After doing the weekly shopping though (seeing as I’m out, I’ll stay out and it’ll save me a trip tomorrow) I nipped off to Rosemary’s for the pickling session.

On the way back this evening, I “picked up a hitcher, a prisoner on the white lines of the freeway” to quote Joni Mitchell.

Only from Menat to St Eloy-les-Mines, but in my youth I spent lots of time hitch-hiking around the UK and France and I was always grateful for the ride, and so it’s nice to repay the debts that I owe.

I made it to the dechetterie and emptied a van-load of rubbish, mostly papers and glass bottles, and enquiries revealed that it is indeed true – if you go to the dechetterie during opening hours but during office hours, you can indeed help yourself to compost, which is freely available

So Saturday I’ll be having a working day – doing the radio programmes. I’m not going out at all, especially as there is not footy anywhere at all around here tomorrow.

Thursday 11th October 2012 – WHAT A DAY!

Someone told me that this was supposed to be the best day of the week.

Well, I suppose that if you were a duck, then they would have been right. It rained from morning until evening, with just two little breaks of about half an hour.

And did I say rain?

Yes, 11mm of rain has fallen today. It’s now been 5 consecutive days that it’s rained now.

This morning, I did the usual work on the website but before lunch went and dug up the beetroot and picked the beans and peas. They are all dry and rattling around in their pods after the summer that we had, and there are tons of beetroot too

After lunch, I did what I said that I would do, and emptied the verandah.

Well, I didn’t. I couldn’t face doing that, wuss that I am.

But all of the paper is out (and I needed the wheelbarrow to move it, there was so much that it was far too heavy to lift) and all of the glass jars, pots and the like have gone too.

Some jars and pots I’ve kept – others have gone into Caliburn to be dropped at the dechetterie tomorrow and once I take down the washing (if it ever will dry, of course) I’ll be able to move around in there.

That will be progress.

I also carried on moving stuff off the hard-standing.

It’s not like me to be out there in rain gear so close to knocking-off time but I wanted to sort out the glass before I go to the dechetterie tomorrow. There are tons of broken bits that need taking.

Looks as if I’ll be busy tomorrow then.

Friday 22nd June I DIDN’T HAVE …

… such a good day today.

I was up and about by 08:00 and that’s not something that happens too often as you know. And by 09:00 I was busy on the laptop writing up my notes from Canada.

Anyway, I became somewhat side-tracked, like you do …”like YOU do” – ed … with an exciting little story that I managed to piece together and which shows just how much of a role coincidence seems to play in people’s lives.

There are two neighbouring villages, St Sulpice and Lavaltrie, on the north shore of the St Lawrence.

In Lavaltrie is a man named Riel who has 14 children and as his farm is far too small to support them all as they grow up, the younger children disperse westward to where Canada is expanding.

Meanwhile, in St Sulpice is another family, the Lacombes, who also have too many children and the younger ones likewise disperse, one of them becoming a missionary to the Blackfoot Indians in Saskatchewan.

In 1885 a rebellion breaks out in Saskatchewan and the Missionary Lacombe is sent to persuade the Blackfoot not to join in the fighting. When he arrives he finds that the leader of the rebellion is busy trying to incite them to join in and butcher the Government forces.

And the name of the leader of the rebellion? Yes, he’s Louis Riel from Lavaltrie.

What a small world!

Of course the story is far more complicated than that, but I only have a small amount of space to write it. Anyway, you can see why I’ve been side-tracked for most of the morning.

This afternoon, when I finally did manage to go outside, I checked on the beans and peas. The peas are slowly coming to life but now there are about 20 baby bean plants busy battling their way out of the soil.

I definitely need some more climbing frames for them and so I’ll have to see about some wire netting tomorrow.

After that, it was up on the roof and put the second layer of lime mortar on the roof joint. Hopefully that won’t need any more attention. It should be watertight anyway as there’s plastic membrane there anyway and there is an overhang off the house roof that will shade it.

I used the rest of the mortar to fill in part of the gap in the rendering. There’s still quite a bit of that to do as well.

After that did some tidying up in the lean-to and noticed that I had some cucumber, courgette and gherkin seeds that are okay to plant in the beginning of June. As we are still a few weeks behind with the weather right now I hoed and raked an few empty bits of a couple of the beds and planted a variety of seeds there.

They have two chances now, whereas in the packet nothing would ever be likely to happen.

I also made up a few pots with lettuce in. I’ll see what happens to that lot.

When I was down checking over the beans and peas I happened to look up the slope across all of the other beds that I had set out, and with all of the plants happily growing away in them I really did have a moment of pride.

With the drastic weeding since I’ve been back, I have to say that my vegetable garden looks the best that it ever has. The new climbing frames for the beans really do set it off.

Tomorrow it’s Commentry shopping, seeing what I can find for wire netting, and then maybe I’ll go for a swim at Neris-les-Bains. I must look my best for the village fête and evening walk tomorrow night in Virlet.

Thursday 21st June 2012 – I’VE HAD ONE …

… of those days that doesn’t happen very often, where I can sit back at the end of it all and say to myself “haven’t I done well today?”

Take the garden, for instance.

I was out there at about 13:00 hoeing at the raised bed that you can see in the foreground.

The front two rows are spinach, and I weeded and cleaned out a space behind them and that is where I planted 5 of the tomato plants that François gave me yesterday.

You can also see that I planted some bamboo canes there and I’ve tied the plants to them to keep them off the ground. And they needed it too – they are over 30cms tall.

As for the other 5 tomato plants and the chili, they are in the mega-cloche. You can see the bamboo canes that I put in there to hold up the plants.

If you look in the bottom left-hand corner you will see two old caravan windows covering part of another raised bed.

When I grubbed away a pile of weeds from in there, I discovered that half a dozen or so beetroot had taken and were busy growing away. So what I did was to clear a corner of the raised bed just there and plant a few more to see what happens

The carrots though have been a disaster. I planted a few rows before I went away and I have ONE CARROT. I hoed right through the part of the bed where I planted the seeds and I’ve put in another row to see what happens with that.

Everything that I planted, I covered with the caravan windows. It worked in spades for the leeks and spinach, covering them over while they germinated. It’ll do no harm to see what it does to the carrots and the beetroot.

At the bottom of the garden, the beans that I planted before I went (well, the four that did anything) are now really running wild.

As well as that, those that I planted the other day are bursting out of the soil like nobody’s business.

I had a rummage around in the barn and turned up with a couple of offcuts of wire netting and so I grabbed a few of the laths that we ripped off the barn roof in 2010 and made three climbing frames for the beans.

I’m going to need a lot more than three and so does anyone want to swap some brassica thinnings for any wire netting? Otherwise I’ll have to go into Commentry on Saturday and buy a roll.

You’ll notice too that the pea frame is doing fine too. The peas are finally starting to appear and the frame will give them something to cling onto too.

This morning I spent three hours on the laptop (I was up early for once) and I made an index page for my recent journey to Canada and uploaded another few pages.

I’m up to late morning of Day Four so far. It’s going to be a long, hard trip.

This evening I had a lovely, warm shower. The solar heat had pushed the temperature up to 37.5°C this afternoon but by 19:00 it had cooled down to about 34°C. However the hot water in the dump load was running at about 62°C and so 5 litres of that into the solar tank pushed that back up to 39°C and it was gorgeous.

And so this new nice and clean me then then went and hit the road to St Gervais d’Auvergne to see this music extravaganza that I had been promised, and much to my surprise I met Liz and Terry there, as well as a few other people who I know.

That’s a group that features on keyboards the young guy who is the assistant at the controle technique. They weren’t too bad but the drummer wasn’t up to much.

But then I come from a background that is much different than here and I have greater expectations. Living in this part of the world, I have to bear in mind the words of Samuel Johnson, who once famously said “it is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all”.

However, all in all, a good time was had by all and if the temperature hadn’t have plummeted I would probably be still there now. A good way to celebrate the Solstice.

A very good day for a change.

Tuesday 12th June 2012 – IT WAS A …

… much better day today.

A mere 3.5 mm of rainfall fell today, and given what we have had just recently that’s a positive drought.

This morning though I was on the computer and finally finished the spell-check on my notes from Canada.

You might be wondering why I was using a spell checker, but apart from the obvious reason, it also has a multiple-entry correction facility. And the speed at which I transcribe my notes from the dictaphone there are always the same faults and typing errors and the multiple-entry correction fixes all of those in one keystroke and that saves me ages.

Next thing was to go into my text editor program.

I use Note-tab instead of Notepad, and for a few good reasons too

it has multiple-page facility, which Notepad does not have, so I can have a dozen pages open all at once
it has a library facility. That means that you can build up your own library of common phrases or keystrokes and use just one click to insert the block of text instead of typing it out each time
There’s an excellent find/replace facility too. If you want to change – say, an é letter into its alt-code for web purposes, or change a name from Mike to Michael in a huge block of text, tabbing through the find/replace facility does it far more quickly than you would do it by hand. How long would it have taken to change the … (gulp) … 745 cases of e-acute manually one-by-one?

After that I went off a-gardening.

I’ve had some bean, pea and sweetcorn seeds soaking since Saturday and they needed planting before they go rotten. And the pea seeds were already chitting too.

This meant “weeding” and to my delight this was much easier than I had anticipated. The ground was so waterloged and the raised beds were working so well that the roots of the weeds were not in very deep at all and came out quite easily.

I did the bean and pea beds in no time at all.

But this was where I discovered that I had been rather too quick off the mark. When I returned from Canada I had checked the beans and peas and noticed that next-to-nothing had come up – hence the soaking of another batch of seeds.

But after weeding, I reckoned that the peas must have been slow germinators as there are now about a dozen or so rearing up their ugly heads, not to mention all of the seeds that I had just been soaking.

Anyway, I planted everything all ready for the second phase of gardening, and I also found the old pea frame. I gave that a going-over and then installed it over the pea bed to give them something to cling to.

You can also see one of the bean beds in front of the pea bed, a potato bed to the left, a compost bin to the right with a blueberry bush in front.

It did rather remind me of the story of the Crewe and Nantiwh Borough Council workmen, and the foreman ringing up the clerk of works on one particular job that they were on –
“the men’s shovels haven’t arrived yet on this job. What are we going to do?”
The clerk of works replied “tell the men to lean on each other until they arrive!”

In other news, I’m having phone issues again. The phone that I bought from a brocante three years ago for 50 cents seems to have given up the ghost. I have another Belgian phone that I could use to replace it but I don’t have a French (or a generic) phone cable – the one for the broken phone is a special type made just for that phone and isn’t interchangeable.

After much searching, I decided to buy a new phone. And this wasn’t as easy as it sounds either. The cheapest ‘phone is €9:99 but there is a €6:50 postage fee from amazon.fr.

There were quite a few others to choose from but the one at €15:50 comes with many more facilities and is also on special offer – free delivery, and so that makes it cheaper than the cheapest. So that’s on its way now and hopefully my phone issues might be at an end.

I did once have a spare phone but I lent it to a girl who used to live around here but she has moved – twice as it happens – and so I won’t ever be seeing that again, will I?

Wednesday 18th April 2012- I’ve finished the heavy work in the garden.

That’s all that it’s getting this year anyway. It can whistle for the rest.

If you compare this pic with the photo from a couple of days ago you’ll be able to notice the new frame that I made this afternoon. The soil that is in it has been dug over, hoed, raked and then hoed again, and it’s now covered up with a couple of offcuts of corrugated sheeting, for nothing is going to be planted in it until I come back and I don’t want it running to weeds while I’m away.

I’ve also sown a huge pile of beans in one of the beds, a few more rows of peas in another, and in one of the beds for root vegetables I’ve sown another row of beetroot and a couple of rows of carrots.

Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be sowing some more brassica, some parsnips and some spinach, weeding both the cloches and that will be the garden finished until I come back. And when I come back, there will just be weeding to do and (hopefully) not much else. I’m glad I managed to do it all anyway but I can’t wait to crack on with other stuff. I want to finish the lean-to this summer.

This morning I have been working on my website again and I’ve finally finished what I want to do – namely cross the St Lawrence from the Charlevoix to the Gaspé from my voyage in early September 2011. Tomorrow I can bring up-to-date the radio pages and then start on the footy pages. No more footy for me this season which is a shame.

Another thing that is a shame is that one of the ferries that I was planning on taking on my journey in a few days’ time, L’Heritage from Trois Pistoles to Les Escoumins across the St Lawrence River, has had its annual opening put back. I’ve been on it before and it was a bit of a rust-bucket then, but this winter it failed its four-yearly inspection and so it’s had to go for a refit at a cost of … gulp … $1,368,000 or whatever the equivalent is in local currency, and the start of the ferry season has been put back from April 21 to May 15, something which is going to inconvenience me rather considerably.

There’s another ferry that does something like the same route but that doesn’t cater for cars. The advert says something like “don’t forget your bike”. I can imagine one polar bear looking at another polar bear as I go cycling past, and saying “oohhh look – meals on wheels”.

I’ve also started backing up all of the files on my computer – moving copies onto a portable hard drive. You never know what is likely to happen when I’m on an adventure. If the ferry sinks and takes my computer with it, I shall be sunk – I’ll tell you that.

And not only am I likely to be sailing over a route where a passenger ferry was sunk by a U-boat in World War II, I’ll be passing over the site of the wreck of an ocean liner that went down with the loss of over 1000 lives, within sight of land, in peacetime 2 years after the Titanic disaster.

So as you can see, anything is possible.

Friday 13th April 2012 – I can’t remember now …

… what it was that I did this morning. One thing that I do remember however was sleeping through the alarm clocks and waking up at 09:35, and it’s been a long time since that happened.

I did spend some time on my web site again and did some more work, but round about 11:30 I must have been distracted because I’m having one of these mental blanks.

After lunch however, the interesting stuff. I phoned up my travel agents in Belgium and told them of my holiday plans. I was on the phone for about an hour because what I’m trying to do is not easy and neither is it straightforward. The net result of it all is that they have all of the details and they’ll work something out and call me back tomorrow. Or at least I hope that they will.

After that I went outside and dug over one of the beds that I’ll be using for root vegetables. and that wasn’t straightforward either. I put a plank across the beds to stand on while I dig the beds over, but this plank broke one of the sides of the bed. That caused a halt while I went to search for a suitable plank to cut down to size to remake the bed.

But anyway, that bed is dug over and properly hoed, and I’ve put two rows of carrot seeds and one row of beetroot seeds in, in order to see what happens. I don’t have any parsnip seeds, which is a surprise. What is also a surprise is that there seems to be tons of tiny plants in the bed, which look just like seeds that have germinated quite recently. And they look too focused to be weeds. I’m trying to think what they might be. It was brassica that was in there last year – did something run to seed maybe? Anyway, I’ve pulled most of them out but I’ve also left some of them in so that I can work out what it might have been. I’ll probably come home to a bed full of dandelions or something.

I checked over a few other beds too. The new potatoes are stirring now and so are the garlic bulbs. The peas too are looking as if they might be doing things but the beans are as yet quite quiet. Pride of place though must go to the brassica – the sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower. Those seeds were planted about three weeks ago, thoroughly watered and left under a black plastic sheet to keep the moisture in place and to heat up the soil. The result of this is that they seem to have gone berserk and there is brassica everywhere in the rows that I sowed. It obviously suites them under there.

Anyway, Liz will be coming to pick the strawberries while I am away. I’ve told her to help herself to brassica too. The rows will need thinning and so the thinnings may as well go into her garden.

Anyone else want any brassica?

Tuesday 10th April 2012 – I planted my spuds today.

Yes, that’s two raised beds worked over and thankfully they didn’t need much. I realised in fact that I’d dug them through a couple of times in February and so one needed just a once-over with the fork whereas the other one managed with a quick hoeing. And that made a change – usually it takes an age to dig over one of the beds.

There was some garlic from last year growing away quite happily in there too, and so I’ve left that for now. No point in disturbing it when it seems to be doing so well. i’ll pull that up when I pull up the spuds in the autumn.

The shallots and onions that I planted earlier this year are doing well too. Nice regimented rows of shoots bursting out of the soil. This year’s garlic and the leeks aren’t doing anything though – I suppose it’s too early for them.

I also planted another row of peas and another of beans. The earliest row of peas looks like it might be doing something although the rest – and the beans – are not doing anything yet.

But that was all that I did in the garden and I knocked off early – at 18:00. It was teeming down with rain on and off and I ended up soaked to the skin and thoroughly miserable. I sat up here, watched a film and wrapped myself up in the quilt to try to warm myself up. It wasn’t very nice.

But this morning I was up before the alarm and breakfasted before the second alarm went off. And I’ve been working on my website again. High time I caught up on that. But the next time we have a sunny morning and I can run the inverter early on, I’ll update the Radio Anglais blog now that I’ve finally managed to find an mp3 converter program that seems to work.

Wednesday 28th March 2012 – PREPARING THESE RAISED BEDS …

… is not as easy as you might think.

I did another one today and all in all it took me a good four hours to have it ready and planted.

This particular one has the shallots and also some of the onions. And I hope that I have better luck with them than I did last year. I didn’t find a single shallot and neither did I find a single onion.

Anyway, here’s a photo of the garden as it is at the moment.

Down the right-hand side you can see the land that I cleared a couple of weeks ago when I had my garden fire The framework for the greenhouse and the windows to fill in the framework are there as you can see.

You can see the drain to the right, and then right on the extreme right-hand edge is the stone wall that marks the property boundary.

There’s also a pile of gravel and a pile of broken bricks there too.

The white metal that you see is the remains of an old Ford Transit and in it is a pile of wood from trees that I cut down when I started to clear out this area, whenever that was.

The other pile of wood in the right foreground is from trees that I cut down this winter.

On the left side are the raised beds. Down at the end is the newest of the beds, which will have the new potatoes. To the left of it is the new compost bin.

The three beds covered in black plastic – they were last year’s beds. They are dug through and they will be having beans and peas in them.

Then, by the cloche are the two beds that I have dug out these last two days. The two beds that will be having the brassica and that I dug out last week are the two covered in black plastic by the old grey Ford Cortina.

So just four more beds to dig out, and two that need just a quick going over, and then everything will be ready for planting. But I need to put the early spuds in soon, and the cabbages will soon be past their planting date if I don’t get a move on.

Wednesday 21st March 2012 – I WAS GARDENING …

… this afternoon

High time I had another session in the garden now that spring has sprung and the grass is riz.

And having been meithered by the guy at the football, who chats to me quite a lot about gardening and who has been telling me for about four weeks to plant my peas, I put the first row of them in this afternoon.

That involved digging over one of the plots that had spuds in last year and pulling out the weeds that had grown since I did it a week or 10 days ago, hoeing it to break up the lumps of clay, raking it over, adding some wood ash and hoeing that well in, and then putting in the first row of seeds.

I bought a new packet this year because with all of the seeds from last year being out in the lean-to at -16°C and even colder over the winter, I’m not sure how they might have survived.

Anyway, I put a new seed and a last-year’s seed in the same seed hole to make sure that something might happen. I can always pull up any excess.

I’ve put one of my black bin-liner covers over the raised bed – to keep any frost out and to attract the heat of the sun. When I go for row 2 in a fortnight’s time, I can check on the germination of the peas that I did today.

After that, I dug one of the raised beds that had had the peas and beans in last year. That was pretty much overgrown and it took some clearing. It looks quite good now.

But I’ll do it again tomorrow before I attack the bed next to it. It’s in these two beds that the brassica – cabbage, cauliflower and sprouts – will be planted this year. Some of that can go in now and so I’ll do a couple of rows tomorrow.

Normally I would plant these seeds in small pots and let them grow in there but that’s very time-consuming and I’m struggling for time. I’ll just go for planting right from the beginning in the raised beds and let them take their chance.

I’ve also been clearing up around those raised beds – piles of thistles, brambles and nettles underneath the old grey Ford Cortina and so I raked them out as well as much as I could. Now I’m back with the tingling hands again.

I really must wear gloves when i’m ripping up nettles.

So that was this afternoon. This morning I had a pile of stuff to do on the computer but what with winding down after my efforts of the last few days I didn’t do very much. I really need to get weaving as the stuff is piling up.

And talking about the efforts of the last few days, I had a letter from the Post Office at Pionsat. It was the receipt for the sending of my paperwork yesterday.

And they did indeed manage to send it off in time if the datestamp is anything to go by. But not that it will do much good with some of the important stuff missing.

GRRRRRRRR!