Flood, Fire, Famine & Peskineighbours!

FLOOD: I mentioned in my last post that the melt-water would render the vegetable ground unworkable for a few weeks.  Well, I wasn’t wrong but what I didn’t expect was that about 35% of my paddock would be under water!  At the deepest it was 1.3m and the whole grassed garden was deep enough to swim in.  Thankfully, the fine weather and strong winds have aided a rapid evaporation and as I type, only the very far corner is still submerged at a depth of 80cm.

Like riding a bicycle… I think the last time I made a paper boat was 40 years ago. This little beauty stayed afloat for half-an-hour until a big gust capsized it.

FIRE: The brilliant sunshine and strong winds over the last five days resulted in perfect conditions for all the dead grass to become tinder.  I have no idea how it was started but the ‘fuel’ was so dry that even a discarded ciggie would have been enough.  Anyway, last night as the sun was setting I noticed that the lower skyline was a different orange.  I ran upstairs to get a better look and…

It was a superficial fire covering about 100 hectares.

There was never any danger to life or property.  The emergency services arrived but found they couldn’t get to it because of the floodwater.  A fireman on a quad-bike finally arrived at my place around 10p.m. and i showed them how to get to the river avoiding the flood.  An hour later they were finished.  The wind had dropped by 9p.m. and so the fire actually contained itself.

FAMINE: It’s not going to happen!  A large-enough portion of the land I have set aside to veggies avoided the flood and, albeit tough to work, I’ve started to prepare plots for whatever I’m growing.  This morning, I tilled an area and planted some Roma tomato seedlings.  I’ve put the others (I had grown 10 seedlings) in the teplitsa and will plant them next week.  Other seedlings are sprouting well indoors (not one windowsill is free of future food) and they’ll be dealt with in due course.  I’m in the middle of tidying up the greenhouse; I have learnt a severe lesson about what and what not to plant in such spaces!

PESKINEIGHBOURS: I don’t have any!  Well, at least not yet.  Nearby, there are homes going up of which three are close to being structurally completed and another two are at the foundation stage.  You’ll be kept informed.

And so, I’m taking advantage of the fact that Spring is here, the weather is gorgeous and these weeks should be all about gardening.  I have everything in-hand on the building front and my first project is to get the living-room floor laid.  Now that I have outside water again and can clean my tools I have no excuse.

So, until next time..  cheers!

 

The Great Outdoors

I held a management meeting with myself (and a couple of beers) and decided to concentrate on the outside whilst the temperature is still cool enough to work comfortably.  That said, I’m as brown as a berry having worked 12-hour days in the garden over the last few days where it’s been between 24C and 28C in the shade.  The greenhouse is like a sauna!  By comparison, inside my house, with it’s 50cm-thick walls, the temperature is a cool 14C.  So, the plumbing has been put to one side for June as I concentrate  on the  barn, the garden and the vegetable plot.

To ensure I don’t shatter my back or become robotic I multitask to the max; let’s take Friday as an example:

• 0630 A little gardening in the greenhouse and watering
• 0700 Measured and cut beams for the shed
• 0800 Sanded and stained the wood (above)
• 0845 Drove to the DIY super-centre to collect my ordered metal tube and angle-iron
• 1000 Got the angle-grinder arced-up and cut several pieces of metal
• 1030 Got the welder’s mask and gloves on and finished the heavy roller.
• 1145 Affixed my beams to the barn
• 1230 Planted sunflower seeds and installed more of my drip-system in the greenhouse.
• 1400 Turned over more soil with the motoblok
• 1500 Attached the roller to the motoblok and took it for a test run
• 1545 Tidied away
• 1610 Looked at the thermometer and decided it was too hot to carry on
• 1611 Opened a beer.

Cabbage, Radish, pumpkins, potatoes, beetroot. But for some reason it reminds me of driving along the Brookton Highway

 

 

Sowing the Seeds…

We’re in full swing in the garden, now that the weather is fine.  The hot-house really lives up to its name; 18C outside and off-the-scale in!  The tractor has been down and ploughed then prepared the main plot.

And work on the garage/workshop has kicked in.  My neighbour, Artyom, will be doing the brick/block/concrete floor work whilst I get on with other stuff.

He tells me that the brickwork should be done by Friday and so we can, hopefully, pour the concrete pad over the weekend.  I’ll leave that a few days then order the blocks and the roof.

I really need this workshop to be over simply to de-clutter the house.  Once I can see the floors again in the home I can set my mind to the future: water-works, underfloor heating and the like.  That’s the next big job.

Spot the grouse

I’ve mentioned before that we have heaps of grouse (waiting for my cooking pot) living around the place.  There are several groups of what I term ‘Kindergarten Grouse’; last Spring’s new-born.  They don’t fly yet so when one comes upon them in the fields they don’t exactly rush away.  That said, they are masters of finding a spot where they know they are camouflaged.

I was leaving the Bottom this lunchtime and managed, finally, to get a photo.  See if you can spot them. Click the image below to get the bigger picture.

Answers on a postcard…

 

PS.  As you can see we’ve had plenty of snow and our hare has been; his tracks are all over our property and he’s been nibbling away at what little greenery still shows.  It is this hare that opened my mind to naming the place Harey Bottom.  I’ll have to wait until I install my security cameras before I get a shot of him to show you.

Here’s what you could have eaten…

I simply refuse to photograph spinach!

I would have loved to include photos of the berry bushes and cherry trees full of fruit but the birds ate everything!