Memory Lane, 26th October 2022: Is this the last of the peppers?

I’m really not sure, to be honest. It’s not the last of the fruit on the plants and the weather is still very mild, so it may well be that they aren’t. We’ll just have to wait and see if there’s enough warmth left for them to ripen.

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More plywood than I know what to do with

A local business generates a fair bit of scrap birch ply, mostly 5.5mm, but some larger sizes too. I’ve been exchanging small amounts of cash for their offcut sheets (which are often just under 4′ or 1220mm square and therefore aren’t useful for cutting a second part from) and building various beehive parts from them (more later). In the last week or so however they’ve apparently cut something like fifty sheets, so today I nipped down there and filled the trailer.

I now really do have more than I have any idea what to do with, or even places to store. More beehive parts may well be a start, but only if I get more colonies this year.

I also picked up a large plastic sack containing perhaps 30kg of sawdust which I’m hoping will come in useful once I get the compost toilet into use (more later, again).

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No dig diary, 27th March 2024

The weather still isn’t on my side 🙁 This afternoon has been wet and windy, but before it got too bad I did at least get a few more wheelbarrows of compost spread on the beds in the veg plot. I also realised that of the main seven beds, two and a half were used for potatoes last year and have no need of a further dressing now as I used a second one last year instead of earthing up the plants. That actually saves me a fair bit of work, about which I am certainly happy.

Frankenstein’s Greenhouse still contains the strawberries that I am trying to get an early crop from. They’re a bit in the way, or will be when I start wanting to plant stuff in the beds. Today it struck me that what I really need is a long shelf along the back wall that I can put the pots on so they’d be out of the way. I’ll have to have a look at what’s in the scrap pile…

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So, isn’t cellulitis fun?

I suspect that prior to this year I’ve had it perhaps three times, though the second an third weren’t that big a deal and my body dealt with it before it really got a hold. The first time was a bit scary as I didn’t really know what was happening. I was out in the veg plot after lunch one day and suddenly my muscles all started to convulse, having felt absolutely fine not two minutes earlier. I ended up almost crawling back to the house, going to bed for twenty-four hours and on the following Monday, having woken up with a hugely swollen foot and lower leg, was prescribed heavy-duty penicillin with instructions to not pass “GO” and go straight to hospital if it got any worse. Fortunately it didn’t and in a week I was up and about again, though rather entertainingly the top layer of skin peeled off my entire lower leg as though I’d had a bad case of sunburn.

In January I had a bad case again. This time it kicked off just as I was contemplating going to bed. I suddenly felt very tired and got upstairs to the bedroom at which point I was again suffering quite wild convulsions which rapidly turned in to a raging fever once I managed to get into bed. Knowing the drill at this point, I contacted the local doctor who again prescribed heavy duty penicillin from just looking at a couple of photos of my leg — I didn’t even have to attend the surgery. My fever had really taken a hold at that point however and I woke up at one point almost swimming in my own sweat. It was horrible. I don’t think I’ve been so bad even when I had genuine flu.

In retrospect however, the most scary thing was that I’d started to hallucinate. Not just those odd little “imagining you’re seeing things” hallucinations that you sometimes get when you’re sleep-deprived however. I’d started to create an entire new reality. I only remembered it later on, perhaps because at the time I was trying to explain what was going on in this utterly nonsensical world to my wife (who I’m now fairly sure wasn’t actually even there). I was quite shocked that my brain could have invented this utterly implausible new reality that I completely bought into at the time regardless of the fact that it made no sense at all. It’s certainly given me a little insight into how some people who have got themselves into that sort of state can then make decisions to do things that make no sense to a rational person.

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Latest list of jobs advert hates

This list seems to get longer every day, but what can you do (other than not apply for the job)? So, in no particular order, here goes…

  • Requiring good communication skills when the advert uses poor English or hasn’t been properly proof-read (unless you’re looking to employ a proof-reader 🙂
  • Stating the job is “fully remote” and then adding “(within London)” or somesuch
  • An ad that is really just marketing fluff and doesn’t actually say what the job is or what skills will be required
  • A job description that doesn’t match the list of skills required
  • Not giving the sector in which the prospective employer does business
  • Trying to hide the fact that the employer is really just a body-shop
  • Not giving at least an approximate location for the employer
  • Demanding “skills” that are not actually skills
  • Describing a job as “exciting” or similar when, honestly, it’s really not
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Memory Lane, 26th October 2022: A different kind of harvest

My compost bins have been slowly gaining a roof of corrugated plastic sheet and a gutter to collect the run-off. Today it was time to play with the 3d printer again, and produce this

It’s a downpipe rain collector/filter. (Hopefully) clean water comes off via the yellow hose, whilst excess and rubbish should get washed out of the bottom via a downpipe that I have yet to connect. The water from the yellow pipe is collected in this old 1250 litre (275 gallon) oil tank that I picked up from Freecycle.

At present it is supported on concrete blocks so the tap is high enough to get a bucket/watering can underneath. I don’t know if that will be stable enough, so I may need to change it later.

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No dig diary, 26th March 2024

It appears that I may have an muscle injury impinging on a nerve for my left arm, which has slowed me down today. On the positive side it doesn’t really stop me doing anything, but it is constantly nagging at me and causing random pains up and down my arm. Still… stuff gotta get done…

So, starting off with something easy I got rid of all the volunteer potatoes that had sprouted in one bed. It’s a bit shocking how many I missed last Summer, really. I lifted a few bunches of salad onions that have over-wintered too and sorted them into ones that weren’t big enough to eat (which went on the compost) and ones worth keeping. I have a couple more patches too, and I’ll get to those shortly otherwise they’ll start to fatten up. After that I spread more compost on the beds. Not much more than that, but it’s progress. One positive note is that some beds had two dressings of compost last year, because I used the second to “earth up” the potatoes. So I needn’t do those again, which reduces the area I need to cover by almost a quarter.

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I’ll just leave this here

I don’t believe any further commentary is required.

North Korea TV censors Alan Titchmarsh’s trousers

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Memory Lane, 26th October 2022: Zombie caterpillar

I’ve not noticed this before, but it seems to have been a pretty good year for Large White caterpillars and therefore presumably for their predators. I was confused as to what was going on at first, what the little yellow “eggs” were and why the caterpillar hadn’t pupated.

After a bit of research I discovered that the “eggs” are not eggs, but pupae cases themselves, for Cotesia glomerata, a small wasp that parasitises the caterpillar. The parent wasp injects its eggs into the caterpillar and when the larvae hatch they “take over the mind” of the caterpillar. Having had it take them to somewhere “safe” to pupate, they eat their way out of the caterpillar and it even defends them from predators until it finally expires.

Quite horrifying in a way, but I often feel that Large Whites particularly don’t deserve a good end 😀 Even more astonishing perhaps is the fact that the wasp in question is also parasitised by two additional wasps.

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No dig diary, 24th March 2024

I already feel so far behind with this year thanks to the weather. But what can you do when the veggie plot makes the Somme look like a Forest School mud kitchen? So despite the fact that I should already have planted out the early potatoes and the peas, this afternoon I finally got around to preparing the bed they’re going to go into.

I spread a 50/50 mix of council green waste compost and my own home-made compost over the bed, raking it to around 5cm/2″ deep. The forecast rain tomorrow should settle it down and if the weather is better then I can start planting later in the week.

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