@ Gandalf, I am going to check it out to make sure,. This was told to me by our local head building inspector but....I have been told that this may not infact be the case, or not enforced. With my grandkids though, its not such a bad idea to have anything they could run into or fall against in something alittle more forgiving than thin glass. I'm thinking of using the glass in the roof and gables. @ Curramore, These are quite old trees and have alot of different types growing. They have certain ones that are pollinators that have been allow to grow without coppicing. I'd say they are probably a mix of every type of hazel you could lay your hands on. Now that I have finally finished the summer work, I have the time to get back to this and will ask. @Chookie, yep, I will definitely post pics of it on my photoblog. I doubt that I will have the time to build it this summer.(technically, we are already into autumn and I have 2 1/2 months before the winter season starts in the begining of May, so, I expect to get it pulled down and stored over winter and have this as a major project for next spring/summer. I have just finished with the summer work thank goodness. The contract was up on friday, but I had the option of doing next week as well. I had to tell them I just have too much to get through before the winter season starts. I do so hate turning work down. Luckily they know me well and understand that I would normally stay through to see everything tied up. I need to sit down with a builder friend to go over what I want to use all the framing for. All going well. I will get the kitchen and dining room where I always wanted it as well as my office AND the glasshouse. All going well, you'll see the lot in the not too distant future. And best of all I am off alternate weeks and back on every week with my 'day'job.....and the boss came up to me today and asked if I was interested in picking up another contract with a mate of his. Just got to get hold of him on monday and work out the details. Oh YES!!!! I mentioned to the 2 I/c at the nursery, that I had been wanting to ask the big boss if I could make use of the fallow beds for growing my soy beans and a few other thing that I just did not have the space to grow at home...sort of checking out the lay of the land. It will take a while, definitely not this year, but maybe next. I just dont have the space to grow enough to make a decent amount of miso for example or flour corn,or.....alot of things. There may be security issues etc but I am quietly confident that we will be able to help each other out. On another subject, I have been looking at what I eat again and realised that I enjoy having muesli for breakfast. I really like the idea of growing the things I eat but realise that I just cant grow my oats for my muesli.....but, i just might be able to grow some of the other things that go into making it up...like the pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds and peanuts...and of course, fruit. I had emailed Kings seeds to ask them if they were able to source the hull-less sunflowers I had heard about but, didnt hear anything back, until I read the latest gardener magazine. Lo and behold, they now have hull-less sunflower seed for sale. Yes!I need to get some for the next growing season!! I have the Austrian oil seed pumpkin growing in the roadside garden again this year. It occurred to me that I didnt need to worry to much about the dried fruit I had always enjoyed cos I seem to have a shit load of fresh fruit that gets put in it too. What I have been doing is buying the rolled oats when they are on special as well as a bag of mixed nuts and dried fruit to make my own muesli. It works out alot cheaper than buying the pre packaged stuff. I told my brother about this when I was up for Christmas and now he is doing the same thing. I'm looking forward to being able to take this that next step further. Almost halfway there for at least one meal per day, and if my idea with the nursery works......that might be even better.Be great if I could grow all the oats I need too.
it doesn't take that much space to grow oats. it may be hard to protect the crop from the animals though. last season i grew wheat and rye and they did fine in small plots (few sq m each), ended up with about a kg of seeds from them total after letting the chipmunks and birds have their fare share. i haven't threshed them out yet, and probably will not bother. but i do have the bags sitting here in case i need some food. if you were closer i'd be able to grow soybeans for you in exchange for fruit. i have 20kg sitting here that are getting old and won't be used for anything other than emergency food too... *sigh* : ) good luck with your alternative site plans. it sounds like you have a great network of people going. : )
Mate! Have a go at making some Miso with it. I'm told soy beans are better for you if they have been fermented. I did have a go at growing the hull-less barley but unfortunately never got to find out just how much I had grown. I harvested it just before Christmas, had it wrapped up in some frost clothe til I got back and when I did, found that it had all been eaten by some nasty little rodent. That will teach me not to just stash things in the porch!!! I ate my first cob of sweet corn for the year, right there in the garden.A lovely long full ear. I accidentally learnt last year that you didnt need to cook them to make them edible when I was so hungry one day I just latched onto a cob and devoured it- delicious. Now I only cook them when I have company or feel the need of lashings of butter on them. My neighbour got to taste white raspberries for the first time. He was busy feeding my chooks bread through the fence when I turned up to check the raspberries out, so I just had to share the four ripe ones with him. There are plenty coming along, so I'm checking them out every day to make sure the dogs dont get them all. They shouldnt be able to reach them now that I have slung the canes up through the cherry tree. You just never know, the chooks learnt to pull down the barley stalks so they could reach the heads of grain, so they might be able to do the same sort of thing as well. Forgot to say that two of my work mates have started growing some vegies this year.Apparently, they decided to have a go after hearing me rave about how great my vegies tasted. One started with tomatoes but the other has done potatoes, lettuces as well.
glad you got to share those raspberries and enjoy the new gardening friends! : ) it sounds like this neighbor was a child? miso is way too salty. with it being just me making and drinking soy milk it became too much after a while, tofu is ok, but i liked soy milk better (less steps). tempeh i didn't like. my most likely use of them now is to keep feeding them to the worms, when i dig down to the bottom of a bin i can put some down there and they will soak up moisture and then the worms will get at them once they're soft enough.
Interesting, songbird and mischief, about the grains, hull-less barley and the soybeans. How much of your garden do you commit to them? And do you grow enough to last for many months? I've often wanted to try amaranth, and I like flax seed meal a lot for baking, and soy flour. Any advice?
mischief, your Austrian pumpkins, do you like them because of the oil, the pumpkin, because they are hull-less, or? Can you elaborate, or point me to some info on them? thanks.
i get pretty varied results from the soybeans because i don't always plant them in good soil and the critters can eat them. a good year will get 100-200 seeds per plant and the plants will use 1 cubic m of space. they make a good ground cover or chop and drop plant. some years the critters get them, like last year, i had no harvest at all from the edamame soybeans i planted. because they can grow fairly large i don't plant them around the slower growing veggies, but i have used them to shade and control strawberry runners. then when the plants are done i bury the stalks. flax is a pretty easy crop to grow here but you will need enough space if you want a lot of output. also the variety is important. i've grown two kinds of flax so far, black seeds and tan seeds, the black kind will grow for several years and then die off in our soils/conditions, the tan seeds will grow just for the one season and die back like an annual. to harvest the seeds you need a dry spell for the pods to finish and to get the seeds out of the pods. i just smush them all and then air sort them from the chaff. i like the flowers, we used to have a lot of the black seed variety here that took over some of the gardens, but i've now taken most of them out because we wanted more space for veggies. the grains i grew were as a one year experiment, loved the results from the winter rye when used as a cover crop and soil conditioning crop when turned under in the early spring. a half to a full kilo per 3 square meters for the wheat and the rye. i'm not sure about the barley (i wanted to grow some, but could not get the seeds when i was looking for them). small patches did ok, but the critters were having their fun raiding the seeds. both birds and small rodents had their fair share. if i were in a more arid climate i'd look into the perennial grains as perhaps some of those would fare better and it would be much less disturbance of the soil.
Thanks, songbird, that's really helpful. I should get the hang of it. Now that GMO seeds are invading seed meals, and carnations! it turns out, I want to grow my own but I have been reluctant. I'll research the flax seed and see what does best where, that is a big deal where I am, fussy climate.
Hi Sweetpea, I like the Austrian Oil seed pumpkins because they are hull-less. I doubt I could ever grow enough to get oil from them. I love pumpkin seeds. The flesh isnt the greatest but does okay cooked down to a pulp and frozen for when I need them for soups and stews....or I feed them to the chooks, who love them as is. I have been growing the hull-less barley as a cover crop mainly and havent worried too much about how much grain I get back from it so long as I get alittle more than I need for next years lot. I have had too much going on to have the time to harvest the grain/thresh it etc... so I just let the birds- wild and chooks go hard. The straw is a great mulch and really does keep the weeds down and keep the soil moist. It holds its shape for ages and looks lovely and golden under the new lot of plants. I havent grown Soy beans this year or last. The first year I did the chooks left them alone and I got a smaller amount than I thought I would get and the second year the chooks ate the lot before it had had a chance to flower. Both times I had them growing in alternate rows with my sweet corn. Both times the sweet corn did really well. Not too say that it hasnt this year as well but this year I fed with liquid fert. Just spent the last week removing glass from the glasshouse. I'm pretty sure that if it had not been gummed up with silicon, It would all be out by now. Still have the roof of the last half to take out. Alot of it has been broken (by the neighbours kids taking pot shots at it with their air rifle, but I havent told the boss that....I know cos I know friends of theirs). Today, I took a mate out to have a look and give me some idea of how best to dismantle it. He's a builder not a demo man but from what he could see, it should come apart in sections. With a tandem trailer, I should be able to get it all home in sections rather than pieces, which is what I was hoping he would say. I had been told that a cottage just up the hill from the glasshouse had been condemned, so I had a look around it to see what was salvageable. Unfortunately, it didnt look like it should have been condemned so I had a chat with the nursery manager and told him how I was looking forward to helping strip it for them but..., they had already got a second opinion and have a new owner collecting it shortly. Ohhh, such lovely floorboards too that would have looked wonderful in my dining room...oh well. My builder mate also has a millsaw and cut a nice piece of gum for part of the kitchen bench. I showed him how I was going to have the kitchen and gave him the sizes for the other two benches. So when he cuts the next lot soon, I'll have all three. Just not too sure about the sloped side, I think it might be alittle too sloped, but I did say I wanted something alittle different. My brother in law dropped off the cupboard doors they scored doing the 'inorganic day' hunt. So now I have the bench top sorted as well as the doors and handles. Just need to work out how I am going to have the under bench area done and score a shit load of floor boards. Its going to take about 18 months for the bench to dry out properly so I have plenty of time to work that out and get building. And for play, he also dropped off a lovely old sideboard/dresser thingy that is in need of some TLC. One of the glass doors is broken, so I will get a chance to do a bit of leadlighting on a curved piece. I havent done anything curved before so I am looking forward to getting stuck into that.
mischief, thanks for the info. Yeah, those birds are really good at what they do, aren't they? I have yet to just scatter seed of any kind and have it work. Between the birds, mice and pack rats seeds don't stand a change here. Such adventures you are having! I'm glad the greenhouse seems to be working out. Well, just focus on the floor boards you want, picture them every day in your mind, and hopefully the vibes will go out and connect you up with great ones
I have found that it helps to have a really good idea of what you want, but with the willingness to change it if someone pops up with a better solution, put the word out for what you need then get on with something else while you wait with a 'willing to accept' attitude. I love the concept of paying it forward. I figure that if things arent happening when I feel things have slowed down too much, my 'account balance' must be getting low and act accordingly. That probably sounds wrong, but it seems to work. Sometimes, I just get so busy doing my own thing, I dont have alot to do with others. Putting my attention on what other people need or want gets that bit of balance going again and stops me from being to much of an isolated island, so to speak. It recently occurred to me that if I had not had my hours slashed as they were, then I would have already have put concrete footings in for all the raised beds. Because these are still just sitting as is, I can change the layout to accommodate the glasshouse without too much drama. So, from now on I dont look at set backs, but see them more as glide time waiting to see what pops up further down the road. Actually, this changing the way I look at things has been helping me deal with the on going drama with my work truck. Just accepting what is and not having a meltdown over it, but taking each needed steps to deal with it and get it corrected. Consequently, I was introduced to a mobile mechanic, who helped me get it fixed properly and is helping go through the court process to get my money back from the other garage. My boss lent me their yard truck so I could do what I needed til it was fixed, which has taken about three months. When I gave it back, I thought nothing of putting it through for a warrant of fitness and putting a couple of tyres on it.He was absolutely thrilled that I had done so, which was abit embarassing cos I consider that to be the right thing to do. I've just about got all the paper work together and will be filing it at the courts later this week. Mum lent me some money to get a double cab ute that I do need now I have grandkids and dogs and only two seater vehicles. So if for any reason my work truck is ever off the road again, I have a back up and I can take all the kids and dogs to the beach or where ever. Just need to sell my little car that is really surplus to requirements now, as much as I love it. In order to clean out the glasshouse, I needed to demolish 6 work benches. These were made out of of all things, decking timber. So these have been carefully taken apart and denailed,(always denail as you go!!! Saves alot of hassles and accidents). Some of the lengths werent good enough to be used for decking. These have been cut up and now replace the windbreak mesh I had in the top half of the chooks forage yard that it now the "Puppy Palace". Being on the highway, means I needed to be able to lock the dogs up if the gate had to be left open for some reason. Now they will be safe. The nursery pulled the skip over to the glasshouse for me today so I could dump all the broken glass and the rest of the mess...all that lovely eucalyptus and Oak leaf mulch that cant be used cos its full of old broken glass. I managed to get the ridge flashing off and was delighted to see positive confirmation that we should be able to dismantle it in sections, including the ridge...whatever you call it. Its 2 halves bolted together, in 8 foot lengths, all the way down. Yay! My local timber supplier-Goldpine, has a sale going at the moment, so I am going to get what I need to put a base in for my glasshouse. I'm hoping to be able to at least put up each section of wall, rather than dismantle and store it til later. If we can get the roof framing on as well that will be even better.
Just bought a duel cab ute as my old 4X4 was struggling a bit. What a life changer and with kids it makes life so much easier!
Mischief, very nice yin and yang theory, there. Paying it forward, isn't that a little like karma? What goes around, comes around? And I think it was our third US president, Thomas Jefferson who said, "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it." It's spring here, and Ma Nature has me on the run, but you make me feel like a slacker! Any pictures of the progress?
um, I forgot. I do have some on my phone of before I pulled it down, mainly so I had a record of how it all went together. At the moment, the first section is sitting tied up to the dog kennel so it wouldnt blow around with this cyclone we just had, not that there was much in the way of wind here, thankfully. I've just got the wall sections to pull down tomorrow and bring home, hopefully on sunday. I'll see if I can figure out how to load photos from my phone to my photoblog next week, but it will only be the old glass house and the sad shot of no 'house'. Next week, I am sanding down a speed boat for the mechanic friend who has been helping me get my work truck back on the road. He has been very patient with me -just organised getting that done for him today. It was his birthday so I dropped off a box of his favourite beer to keep him happy til Tuesday when I get started on his boat. I am not sure of the concept of 'Karma'. Personally, I think it is something we should let go of. It seems to be acceptable that, if something happens to you, you must have done something to deserve it. hm,to a point, but I think there is more to it than that. I am working more on the track of...if bad shit happens to you, run around in circles for a bit, have a bit of a meltdown over it, then get off your butt and be pro-active about sorting it out. So I guess its more a thing of accepting responsibility for what happens in your life rather than blaming yourself for past misconduct. To be honest, when I recently read (or started to) a book on the Khrishna belief and saw that they thought that your station in life showed how 'advanced' you were, or not. I decided that this was seriously flawed. The 'higher' station,ie from a wealthy family, is absolutely no measure of how spiritually advanced you are. Something got messed up in the interpretations, in my humble opinion. Same thing with the concept of Karma- if it was correct, then we should feel little for kids who are abused, for example....they must have done something to deserve that......NO! no way. something is not right with the this. It sort of works on a social, superficial level, but not when you start scratching passed the surface.
Once again, my place is looking rather like Steptoes with all the glasshouse framing stacked up in the parking area and courtyard,roof windows in the lean-to by the old wash-house and all the doors,brackets and other small stuff stashed in the old wash-house. I decided to keep the ventilation piping as well, but as yet have no idea what I am going to do with it. I am wondering if some of the wider bits could be used to make my rooster weathervane and conical lid to go on top of the water tank lid. I figured if I couldnt have a real rooster at least I could have a rooster shaped weather vane and I wanted to make a pointy top for the lid cos I dont like the look of the flat one.When its all limewashed it should look better.(working towards this tower in Tuscany theme). With the glass that I did keep, I have safely stashed it in the mesh kennel so dogs and kids cant hurt themselves tripping over it all. The frames are stacked against this on three sides and are sitting up on some of the old pallets I had lying around. The beds where the glasshouse will be going have been cleared and marked out so I can see where exactly the walls are going to go and have most of the posts and bags of concrete delivered this week so I can make a start on it all. I was hoping to get abit of help from my brother this weekend but he wasnt able to come down. Mean while I have the sand paper and rust fix stuff to treat the parts that have alittle surface rust. I have checked out the best way of dealing with this to make sure there are no problems with this further down the track and am going to be slightly sanding the rust to remove any flaky stuff, was it all down to make sure it is dust/dirt free. Dry it then spray on this rust fix then coat the whole frame with primer and glossy roof paint. All going well, while this is happening,the posts will get measured and cut to size,concreted in place and the bearers from the old house get painted to seal them and secured to the tops of the posts. Because these are quite old, I'm not too sure just what sort of treatment they have been given so I thought it best to seal them so I shouldnt have to worry too much about them. I couldnt help noticing that these lengths are alot denser and heavier than what I buy today and that was with them being bone dry. To make sure they stay that way, these have been put in the garage on top of my kitchen bench slabs. That way, if there is a rainy day when I want to be working on this, at least I can make a start painting these. The reason I am using these old bearers, is that it will make it easy to put the gable ends up-the sides the doors go on, because the bearers fit these frames exactly. I'm going to use the single door frames for the glasshouse and leave the doubles for when I fill the gap between the house and the old wash-house. There is a side wall section that also has a double door which I will see if we can use for the bump out kitchen window. This will need alittle playing with to make it work and hopefully, I'll be able to extend this bumped out bit over the the back door so it has a little porch too. The sanding of the speed boat has just about been finished. It would have been if he had the wire brush so I could do the rough no-slip parts, so not much more to do so I should have time to get back to the hazelwood grove and finish cutting these out before winter too. I had to put that off because they were busy nutting and these were causing havoc with the mulcher. Just got my paper work back from the courts and will be going to court on the 3rd of June....damn another day off work- I'll be back at the nursery for the winter season by then, ne'mind. Just one more thing thats almost seen to. We are still gorging ourselves on the Ivory raspberries and there are Still baby fruit coming along. This one has been amazingly productive. I'm not sure if its just that type or being in one of the forage yards, it has a more suitable microclimate (and all that chook poop). I have had fun helping a couple of mates share their surpluses this week. One had way too many watermelons and another the same problem with Pears so they got to swop. I didnt know we could grow the larger type of watermelon here and have been doing the smaller golden midget ones. Next year, I might have a go at the 'normal' sized ones. Last weekend, while I was helping my neigbour celebrate her 50th birthday, one of our friends was telling us how she came home from work one day last week to find somebody had left a concrete twin tub along with its two 'legs' in her back yard. She has absolutely no idea where it came from or why and non of her mates have owned up to leaving it there. She didnt want it and didnt know what she was supposed to do with it, so I asked if I could have them. This is now sitting up on the terrace, waiting for me to fill up and plant out the last two types of mint I wanted-eau de cologne and peppermint. I didnt put it on the stands because without walls, it would be way too easy for this to be toppled, so they are safely tucked away under neither on their sides instead. That way, if ever somebody comes along and says that they have been looking for these- they will still be in good condition and re-usable. The tubs arent due to a very large crack in one of the tubs. I managed to get these up the five steps around the water tank by myself with the help of a few 12x12 blocks bits of wood and bricks and a car rachetting tie-down....only took 3 days to do it, lol.
mischief, I hope you are taking Before and After photos! Sometimes things in piles might not feel like anything to take photos of, but you are working so hard, you should have the pleasure of remembering how far you came to get your greenhouse into place! Amazing! I'll bet you had visions of Egyptians building pyramids during the whole process!!
Yep. I have heaps of photos on my phone of how everything was when it was up and I wrote on all the framing with exactly which side and section number in permanent marker......I did mean to re write them all when I found my white out pen.....then it rained......and alot of has washed away...!@#&*! Its pretty easy to see which is roofing framing, which is wall and which is gable ends. The gable ends still have their original numbers on them and have been stored in pairs. I did write on the tops and and bottoms, the bottom ones might still be intact.I'll get to see when it stops raining. I do wish I had been offered this in summer, it would most likely be up by now. Alot still have my doodles on them so I am patiently waiting for the rain to stop so I can go out and rewrite all those ones. It shouldnt bee too much of a drama cos I measured the sections and they are pretty much the same except for those that had been shortened to fit the original building. We actually had proper rain over the last couple of days. Amazing, real rain. At any other time I would have been thrilled,haha. Oh, well, the story of my life. Its never dull. Actually, my biggest drama at the moment is that my computer will NOT let me print....ANYTHING. I need to print off bank statements so I can do the last two months accounts so I can send this all off to the accountant to check out for the end of year stuff. The print icon changes to 'save' so fast, I cant hit it when it still says 'print' and of course I am hopeless at finding out where to go to fix these things. I'm going to see if a computer wizz friend will be able to sort it for me, just got to catch up with them. On the getting up the steps....yeah. For something that is not really very big, it was heavy. I took my time so to make sure it didnt accidentally fall against the tank and learnt afew tricks along the way. That tie down made it all possible. I was getting sick of asking my neighbour to come help all the time, not that they probably mind, but still. Not much happening at the moment. Harvested the oil seed pumpkins and will be hauling in the butternuts shortly. Still eating ivory raspberries. I did look back to see when I got my first ever lot and saw that it was in June.? So why am I eating them now? Odd, will have to see what happens in June this year, be interesting to see if it fruits then as well although I cant see how it could. The six apples that grew on one of the baby Ballarina apples were delicious. A few weeks ago a friend gave me some kumara plants. I did ask her why she was growing them so late and did she get any tubers off them? She said she did, so I took half a doz and planted them in the bath I had filled with soil specially for them. I think I will have to put frost clothe over them to try to keep them going for as long as I can. Hers do grow under some trees so maybe she does get a crop. I still think its alittle too late for them but we will see soon what happens. The only other interesting drama I had this week was taking the tool box off the back of the ute so I could put it in the tool shed to store my tools in it. Luckily mum turned up so she was able to help hold the screw driver while I got underneath and took the bolts off. I got stung by some random bee in the process which did not improve my humour. I dont why I did it, but I spray some CRC on the sting and it didnt seem to hurt so much.
OMG, mischief, what a bummer about the numbers and markings on the greenhouse parts! Not fair! And I meant pictures of them in piles in your yard before you start, so that you can appreciate how much you moved and you made sense of it all! What's CRC? There is a very funny character in a goofy movie I've seen where one of the characters puts window cleaner on every physical issue for every reason. Not that that is a good idea! But it's very funny in the movie. I've had good luck using cortisone cream several times a day on different stings/bites/itches. They say that bee stings are good for arthritis.
It didnt turn out to be quite so bad, at least most of the wall sections still had readable doodles on them. The ones that didnt still had at least one number on where I had written where each bracing from wall to roof went, so that gave me an idea of where that went. I spent an afternoon sorting through everything and re-labeling as much as I could. As well as that, I made sure the wall sections were all stacked according to where they came off the original building And I wrote a map in my diary so if the new labels come off for what ever reason, I will still be know which is which. The end gables are pretty easy to work out and some of the roofing sections were still labelled. Some of these obviously go at the end by the gables-I can tell because these have notches so they slide together properly. These have been moved to inside the courtyard area and are jammed up the little bank and into the plum tree there so they are not so likely to blow over if we get fierce winds this winter. I thought it was going to be a nightmare but wasnt too bad. The roofing sections were the main ones that werent labelled, but by the time I got to to these, I realised that it might not be such a big deal. Because the original building was so big, almost 25 metres long and I wont be using all of it for either the glasshouse or the house add on's...and they seem to be mostly in 2+ mtrs sections, I shouldnt have too much trouble putting things together. Before I started pulling it down, I wasnt sure how much was going to be just junk and thought it was better to have too much to work with than find there wasnt enough. As it turns out there is really only one dodgy section for both wall and roof. I did get the posts and cement and was going to get started on putting the posts in, but put it off til I re measured everything, mainly to make sure it was going to be high enough for the door to fit. The Original had a concrete floor and the door was lower than this and the last thing I needed was to put the wall bottoms in only to find the door now needs to be shortened so it will fit. Once I got the gable ends pulled out, I could measure these to work out the right height. I admit to feeling somewhat intimidated by the thought of getting started on building. It didnt seem like such a big thing while I was pulling it down. Now that things have been reasonably sorted and restacked, I have more room to move around. I will have to take the clothes line apart again so I can work in the courtyard though. Cos its so close to my winter season, I have put off doing anything more than rechecking and drawing everything up . last year, we started earlier than I expected and got caught out. This year, I think we are going to have a late start....but, you never know. One thing I did do was get a new ladder, one that separates into two scaffolding ladders. My old one is fantastic but being almost 20 years old, is getting alittle wobbly. It will make putting it up alot easier having two to work from. CRC is a spray on lubricant. The can is is the truck, which is down at the mechanics getting a post fixing tweaking so I cant read the label to explain it better. It seems to help undo rusty or stuck things as well. I dont know why I sprayed it on the sting, I guess it was shock from being stung in such an unlikely place- how often do you get stung on your thigh,while lying down on gravel under a truck? And no, I didnt hit my head trying to get out from under there. I dont usually put anything on bites or stings. When I came home from work this saturday, I found the dogs out of their pen....again...but couldnt work out how they got out, so today, I put them back in and waited to see if they would do it again. What I found was a fence paling that had been pushed out and moved so they could get out. That puzzled me because I knew they couldnt have done that by themselves. The neighbour must have done it, but why? The paling got nailed back in place and I had a look around to see if I could work out the reason. What I found was a very wet bedbox, so there is now a tarp over the front of this to stop any driven rain from getting in. I am assuming that they were crying due to having nowhere dry to go to get out of the rain and the neighbour helped them escape. He knows that they can get back into the backyard which is where I found them- still absolutely drenched but happy. Some of the leftover roofing sections of the glasshouse will now be going to make a roof over the bedbox area so they have some decent permanent shelter here. I had butternut for dinner last night. Lovely. The one I grew this year is a mini one that only grows 6 inches long. Most of them were that although afew were only 2-3 inches. I wasnt very impressed with how many I got from the plants though, so I think next year I will go back to the Walthams butternuts. The firewood I had stacked on a tarp in the parking area has mostly been cut up and put in the shed. The bits that are left are the stumps that have knots in them, so I am not going to bother trying to split these. Instead, they are stacked up by where the glasshouse will go and will be used to do a Hugleculture sort of thing in the beds of both those inside the glasshouse and out side of it. The edges of the beds are going to be raised to just below the metal parts of the walls, so they will be just under 2 feet high. I should be able to get some old wood chip from a friend to help build up the soil level. I'm hoping that doing this will mean I will not have to dig out the soil inside the glasshouse every year as I was told I would have to. Yay, now I can move around in the parking area and when the time comes to start building, I can lay everything out here to check out which bit of roofing will go with the wall sections, before I put them all up. ps. Found the camara and am charging it now so I can take pics of all the bits and bobs stacked up. I might sneak over to the nursery and take pics of the 'no house' too. I havent been able to figure out how to down load the pics off my phone.
Mischief, know what you mean about being reluctant. I have had a big project or two that made me hesitant to start it because I didn't want to find out the hard parts! Usually there are hard parts, or sticky parts, or parts that have to be undone because something got left out, but that's probably just to be expected. Usually when I stall out I find I short-change myself in the time department. I lose time for those extra runs to the hardware store before it gets dark, or the extra week it takes to do a section that needed a change, or the time it takes because the help I expected didn't come through. And it seems that having enough time to get through a project is my best ally, even if it gets a little frustrating. But how wonderful to have that up and usable next early spring! Keep the prize in sight!!
