Day: March 8, 2020

Monday 2nd March 2020: The beginning of Johns week off, the weather is on our side for today at least. We both did the morning rounds then straight on with the job of the day, the fence at the end of the veg garden. This is a job that had to be completed in one day otherwise the dogs and the ducks would be all over it. We kept at it all day with a few interruptions by way of Johns phone, going to get some gravel boards then a quick trip to the solicitor to sign some papers, a few cups of tea and by 3pm we had finished 22m of fencing and tidied up. I am pretty pleased with the result, the fence had to keep the ducks/dogs out which it will and it looks a whole lot tidier to boot. I will look forward to working this part of the garden now, it has been a bit neglected in the last couple of years and so brambles and stingers have taken hold but I managed to dig most of them out, I will have to weedkiller any new growth but it shouldn’t be much and the area outside the fence is now clear enough to mow so that will keep them down on that side. I gained an extra bit of planting space as we had a gate halfway along the fence but never used it so have taken it out, now the pathway leading to the previous gate can become planting area. Indoors for something to eat, a cuppa and a quick rest before lighting the Rayburn, feeding the birds and collecting and sorting the eggs, getting the dinner. Day one, ✅ 😀

Tuesday: The weather is holding though it’s a tad colder today, we did the morning rounds and then got on with today’s jobs. First make a raised bed in the polytunnel out of wood we have lying around, the ground in the tunnel has a clay seam running thorough and one side is particularly difficult to manage when it dries out, I found low raised beds gives better results. I now have a 10ft x 3ft bed to fill with compost from the heap. Then onto moving the strawberry troughs, these are about 8ft long and a foot wide but they are up on legs, the problem is there is a lot of ground underneath that I can’t get too so we took them off the legs and moved them to the sides of the beds. This was harder than it sounds as they are very heavy, the second one we had to use bars to roll it along and get it in position. Then onto making the arches, for the morning glory etc, a bit more secure than they were, this still needs a bit more work but it’s nearly there. Shelley called in with Florence and bought cake so we stopped for a cuppa and then I had a phone call from a friend to see if I wanted to go for afternoon tea, yep, not gonna turn that invite down. I still had a couple of hours spare so I planted up the area that is now free of the strawberry troughs. I had potted up enough plants from last year to fill it, stocks, chrysanthemums, delphiniums, achillea, aster, campion, verbascum, huechera and some more that I have forgotten at this minute. The bed will be for cutting flowers for birthdays and to bring in the house 😀 John went off to do some tidying elsewhere, objective achieved today 😀 And now I am off out for afternoon tea ☕️ perfect day, it’s not normally something I would be able to take advantage of but as luck would have it and John is off to hold the fort and I’m going lol.

Afternoon tea was a lovely affair, plenty of tea, cake and sandwiches and of course chit chat with my friends, by the time I got back John had fed the birds and done the eggs so that looks like the rest of the day off for me 😀

The turkey stag has started covering the hen, hopefully eggs will follow soon. If you have never been close to a turkey come and get a look at ours, the stag is pretty impressive with his ‘snoods’ and the sounds are even better, the ‘gobbling’ that everyone knows but also a low ‘booming’ sound, at first I wondered what the heck it was then I realised it was coming from within him lol. A description I read referred to it as guttural which is pretty accurate and scientists don’t 100% understand how the noise is made. They are originally forest dwellers and love to forage for insects, slugs and snails, berries and fruit, seeds, nuts and green foliage or buds so a pretty comprehensive list.

Wednesday: Despite rain being forecast it didn’t arrive until about 1.30pm which meant we were able to get a fair bit done beforehand. With the morning rounds done by John while I put on some washing and did some general tidying we then set about sorting out the rest of the compost heap and tidying that up. John went off up the back to burn some rubbish and get the rest of the mirror structure down while I pottered in the garden. Making good the extra area we created by doing away with the path, filling it with compost, putting an edge board up and topping up the wood chip in that area. It looks good and I have decided to fill it with flowers, as you enter the garden at the other end it’s the long view down and it would be nice to see a splash of colour. Again I have plenty of plants, rudbeckia, lupins, geum, probably some aquilegia and maybe some foxgloves as it has the Mulberry bush for canopy.

We filled the bed in the tunnel with compost and I have put a washing up bowl at the end with a piece of gutter and a stone in there, this is because I know we have frogs (I found a few today while I was working) and I know they like to live in the tunnel during growing season when it has plenty of foliage and gets watered daily. The bowl will be filled with rain water and the frogs can help keep the slugs down, win, win 😀 I did a fair bit of sorting out, plants that never made it through winter and picking up stuff that had been blown about by the winds. In the greenhouse I did a bit of watering and had a look at the seeds I sowed last week, most are showing signs of sprouting so I’m happy with the progress so far.

When the rain came I came indoors to put on more washing, light the Rayburn and think about dinner later while John went off to get some diesel for the tractor as it’s nearly out. It looks as though rain will stop play as it’s pretty heavy and not much fun to be working out in.

I spent 4 hours, yes that long, trying to pair my new camera with my phone, eventually giving up after reading that the operating software on the phone has a problem with the app I am using to pair, an app created by the camera manufacturer so that’s buggered that, eventually I tried it with Johns phone which is different and voila, first time 😝 I have two choices as I see it, use the camera and download to the laptop as I did with the old one or wait until I’m due an upgrade and choose a different phone, for the time being I will just get taking some pictures. My old camera is around 30 years old and I love it but the quality of pictures on the new cameras is amazing and I want to start cataloging the wildlife here not just the birds but everything I see really.

Thursday: Still cold but not raining. John did the morning rounds while I got on with some household bits and got something out of the freezer for dinner tonight. John has been busy tidying up the back area and we had a lot of scrap metal bits, old tin sheets and chicken wire that has now thankfully gone to the scrap an and earned us a whopping £14 🙄 He has also been busy stacking wood in the back, you can do an awful lot of work and it doesn’t look like you have done much but we know it’s done so that’s what matters. Meanwhile after sorting indoor stuff out I went to the poly tunnel and planted up the chitted potatoes. I decided as these were first earlies, which I don’t normally do, I would grow them under cover, we have had a lot of rain and I would hate for them to rot away. They are now in 6 bags that have compost in and each time the greenery pokes its head above the compost I will cover with more compost, this way i am hoping to get nice clean early potatoes with very thin skins. I also moved a few things round, the citrus have now gone from the greenhouse and into the tunnel which gives more more room to move in the greenhouse. The bottom end of the tunnel is becoming my ‘exotics’ area, with the citrus, lemon grass (if it survives) cape gooseberries, grape vine, lemon verbena and a pineapple guava, if only I could grow bananas and avocados I’d be set for life oh and chocolate of course 😜. Other than that I sowed a few flower seeds, these were free so might as well give them a go, dwarf delphiniums, rudbeckia, dahlias and amaranth. When John went off to the scrapyard I came in and lit the Rayburn and got the dinner sorted for later, we have shepherds pie and an apple and blackberry crumble for dessert.

Random thought of the day, how come the turkey stag only ‘covers’ his hen and doesn’t try it on with the chickens?

I have been listening to the radio talk about stockpiling, it never ceases to amaze me how much food people buy especially at Christmas or snow days, do people really eat that much or does a lot of it get wasted. I try very hard not to waste anything if I can help it, but I am aware of the need to have a few things in the cupboard just in case. For me it’s extra flour and dried milk because with what I already have in the freezers or cupboards I can pretty much knock something up, we don’t eat pasta or rice really so what I have will suffice and we seem to have accrued a few tins of fish in various forms so that will do us in a crisis. We did buy extra tea bags and coffee and I still have my 5ltr of olive oil from the Brexit crisis 😂 Luckily we are going into the growing season 😀 and I have plenty of seeds on the go for that so hopefully we should muddle through any problems in the supply chain. I agree it is a worry, I mostly worry about the grandchildren and that they will be able to get enough food, I’m sure it’s just people panicking and it will all be ok in the end 🤞‘don’t panic Mr Mannering’ I can hear the Dads Army cast saying lol.

On the topic of not wasting anything I had a net of clementines which were sour, you know the ones that make your face twist lol, not wanting to waste them I made a jar and a quarter of jam with them, hopefully it will taste better than the initial ingredient 😀

We made it all the way through to Thursday before John got a call out to an emergency, that’s pretty good going, this one was someone deciding to take the shower apart and now they can’t stop the water from flowing 🙄 He had his ‘not happy’ face on when he left lol, though I think he secretly likes to be a super hero plumber 😜

I am keeping an eye on the rhubarb, it’s getting there but it’s not quite long enough to start picking just yet, we could do with some warming sun on it after all the rain we have had, that would give it a spurt of growth I think. I can’t see any in the weather radar for a couple of weeks yet so just have to hope it’s not far away.

Friday: I can’t actually remember what we did in the morning but in the afternoon we had the twins while Mia went to her swimming lesson and then Shelley and the kids called in.

Saturday: Today’s the day, the new sofas are arriving and I’m a bit nervous that they won’t fit through the doorways lol. John did the rounds and then we got the old sofas out, I then cleaned the room while John did some outside jobs. We got a phone call to say that the delivery was only 5 mins away, they arrived, a lovely couple of chaps, easily got the sofas in, phew, put them together, tidied up and took the packaging, easy as that we now have new sofas though we are not allowed to sit on them in our work clothes 😂 Now they are in it is noticeable how shabby the old ones had got and I am delighted with the new look.

In the evening we went to get a few bits of shopping for Johns lunch next week, pretty bemused to see some of the shelves are empty of goods, not a piece of chicken to be had, no ibrufen and the toilet roll shelf was empty 🙄 I guess the panic buying is in full swing then, there was no bread flour and no yeast, this is a big uptake of people who are suddenly going to bake their own bread, I buy these all the time and never struggle to find them normally. I’m not sure which camp I am in to be honest, on the one hand it’s selfish behaviour because there are those that can’t bulk buy, either because they don’t have the money or they physically can’t get it home and on the other hand I think, what if we have to self isolate, you are going to need supplies. For the time being we will just carry on shopping as normal I think and if push comes to shove we will have to make do. On a bonus note I was looking for a lightbulb under the the kitchen sink and I found a box of face masks ( I had these when we had bird flu in the country and used them when cleaning out the birds)

We have in fact also taken around a third more on eggs this week, a good week or an indicator?

Sunday: More rain overnight and the wind is cold today but if you can stand in a sheltered spot when the sun is out there is heat in it so it won’t be long before we get some nice Springlike weather hopefully. John did the morning rounds and I did some potting on in the greenhouse, then I mentioned the ducks needed cleaning out which I had intended to help with, the next thing I know John has done it (I like having a helper lol)

We are on the last day of Johns week off and we haven’t managed to strangle each other in fact we have done quite well with hardly a cross word between us 😜 although he does do some things differently to me which I find annoying such as marking up the egg boxes the wrong way round (because he is left handed) I kept quiet 😝 I will miss having him around to do the daily tasks while I get on with other things but I will also look forward to having my space back 😋

We pretty much got everything done that was on the list though there are always many more jobs to do, they can wait until Easter weekend now. ✅ 😀

Have a good week and stay well 🤞