… which might come as a surprise to many, seeing as it was probably the nicest day of the year and that I didn’t wake up this morning until … errr …. 10:20 and so I owe myself a couple of hours.<\/p>\n
But once I was up and about I started on the vegetable plots, and not before time either. I cleared away some more of the jungle and that will be where I’ll be putting in another line of raised beds – the spuds will be going in there this year to start them off. You’ll remember that I have about 10 raised beds, in 5 rows of 2. I’ll be putting in a sixth row and also a third bed in that row – the extra bed going behind the compost bins. Ultimately there will be three beds in each row, but that won’t be this year.<\/p>\n
I needed the pickaxe to pull up a few tree stumps too – there were in somewhat deep. It’s harder work the further down the slope I go because the further down, the longer the ground has remained undisturbed and the ground alder has got a severe hold down there.<\/p>\n
Mark, who comes to the Anglo-French Group, gave me an idea too. He doesn’t use a chainsaw for chopping wood (neither do I) and while I’ve been struggling with all kinds of methods to cut wood, he says he uses an ordinary saw but one with huge teeth. A while ago I was in Brico Depot and saw exactly what he meant – a scie de coffreur<\/i> – or joiner’s rough-cut saw. I bought one back then, and today I tried it out and I’ll tell you that there’s some mileage in this. It did an excellent job of cutting down overhanging branches.<\/p>\n
And so why did I knock off early? Well with it being so nice just now (3 days that I’ve had the fridge running and 2 days that I’ve had no heating) I happened to look at the water in the solar shower tank at 17:00. 28\u00b0C. And seeing as there was no wind, it was 15\u00b0C outside and bright sunlight, I filled a kettle, boiled it up, made myself a coffee and tipped the rest of the hot water into the solar tank. That brought the temperature up to 42\u00b0C and I had an impromptu, unexpected but most welcome solar shower. In March as well. That’s a new all-time record.<\/p>\n
And with the water temperature in the home-made immersion heater reaching 59.5\u00b0C today, I’m going to keep my eye on it. And if it gets up to that tomorrow, I’m going to do a load of washing using the home-made immersion heater to fill \u00a0the machine.<\/p>\n
That will be exciting.<\/p>\n
