nickjtj

Low sun high moon

By the end of November there’s not enough sun to generate any significant amount of electricity and anyway, by noon the sun is setting behind our (ever growing) trees. I’ll fell some of the closer and taller birches before spring. Our search for blewits continues without success since Tash’s initial find. We’ve read that youContinue reading “Low sun high moon”

Barnacles for supper

We were still waiting for our better soil when, with frost imminent, our seventy five Rosa rugosa arrived. I heeled them in up on the vegetable plot. We made a couple more seaweed forays and prepared the first four tree pits by partly back-filling them with some of the soil we’d dug out, then addingContinue reading “Barnacles for supper”

First frost

Paul said he’d bring us a dumper load of soil next week. We can then assess whether we arrange for more to be delivered or whether we hire a small dumper and load it by hand when the Plot 1 building site is not occupied. Whenever Tash swims she returns with a big bag ofContinue reading “First frost”

Nightlife

I stayed up late playing guitar, making the most of having the house to myself, and after midnight went to let the cat out. She paused, lowering her head to sniff at something on the metal threshold, then moved on. My first impression was perhaps of a cat or marten dropping, right size and taperingContinue reading “Nightlife”

Bodies, machines and landscape

Doors: I’d bought what I needed and started making two doors to replace the black polythene sheet on the bike shed. Two sheets of ply, treated timber (left over from verge) exterior varnish, glue, fifteen millimetre larch boards (2nd hand) hefty hinges, screws, coach bolts, and bolts (for fastening and locking the doors). I’d cutContinue reading “Bodies, machines and landscape”

Visitors and a frog in my ditch

Stone: Compacted stone makes embedding the verge board round house and workshop a wearing task. Not just wielding the mattock and levering out bigger-than-my-head stones, but lugging buckets of gravel, stone and soil, riddling out the soil (for future planting), then casting the stones into the barrow to backfill the trench and hold the boardsContinue reading “Visitors and a frog in my ditch”

Watch your step

Tash gets home tomorrow and Poppy caught the bus this morning so I thought I’d go fishing. Then I changed my mind. After a delightful week off work, with Poppy here, and with two friends coming for two or three days this coming week, I should crack on with the verge round the workshop asContinue reading “Watch your step”

Send slate, now!

We’re sliding increasingly quickly into autumn: the swallows keep a low profile or have already left; bracken is browning and starting to subside; ling and bell heather are flowering; days are shorter and last night at three I caught my first glimpse of Orion. The year’s excellent blackberries are gone, the remaining fruit soft andContinue reading “Send slate, now!”

Power down the drain

Over breakfast Tash said the swallows were making a racket round the back of the workshop, we should keep an eye out for fledgelings. Then she noticed that on the local WhatsApp group Annie had a wooden wall-mounted plate rack to give away. She’s been looking out for one since we arrived, but failed toContinue reading “Power down the drain”

Bat time, EV time

Hemi-parasites: In the past six weeks I’ve noticed lots of eyebright here, but is it generally spreading or is this just a good year? Like yellow rattle it’s a hemi-parasite of grasses, ‘stealing’ water and nutrients, weakening them, which incidentally helps other plants establish. I’ve been wondering about the relationship between eyebright and yellow rattle,Continue reading “Bat time, EV time”