Today I picked everything that was left in the polytunnel, regardless of whether it was ripe or not. Nothing much useful is going to happen from this point on, so leaving them will just mean they start rotting.
Some gorgeous colours of sweet peppers
Cayenne peppers and jalapenos
More sowing today. And more poppies too, though this time for show rather than for seeds that will be eaten. And then some yellow beetroot, four seeds to a cell to be thinned to four plants if more germinate.
I actually sowed some seeds today! That was all I did in the garden, mind. The veggie plot itself is a complete horrorshow because of the mud. So, into module trays went some early calabrese, “normal” calabrese, red cabbage and poppies for seeds for baking bread.
I’ve “made friends” with a local business that does lots of cutting wood. And now they offer me their waste sawdust, which I will use as “cover material” for my compost toilet. There’s plenty of it, too. Today I was given sixty kilos or more.
Should last me a week or two 😀
As reported recently, I made a third insert for one of our kitchen drawers. Cleaned up and sanded down, here’s it.
I reckon that Halfords and other car battery suppliers who offer an installation service must keep a legion of malnourished five year olds on site to actually do the swap.
This is a new battery for a Skoda Octavia roughly in place.
Slightly above centre (and slightly out of focus) in this photo is the battery clamp and the bolt that holds it in place. Undoing it is possible with a long extension bar and a socket on the end. But don’t undo it completely otherwise who knows where the bits will end up? Once mostly undone the old battery can be wiggled out.
But how about keeping the clamp out of the way whilst the new battery is put in and then making sure the clamp is correctly orientated before doing the bolt up? I was probably still in nappies the last time one of my arms would fit down there.
Eventually I wrapped a wire around the clamp (and behind the bolt) to keep it out of the way whilst the battery was inserted, then slid the wire out (getting caught on all sorts of other stuff in the process, natch) before doing the bolt up.
I swear car designers make it this awkward on purpose.
For the drawer inserts that I posted about earlier. That’s “Cardboard Aided Design” 😀
This is how I started, as given the space available and the number of shapes and sizes to be accommodated, I had no idea whether what I was planning would really work. I even had these set up as a multi-layer insert with one tray resting on top of the other that I tried before this one. I really wasn’t happy with that.
Wandering around the garden today, I see dandelions flowering:
Blackberries in bud:
Nasturtiums (hiding under the leaves) and pot marigolds (calendula) in flower:
Clary in flower:
And borage, too:
Strawberries flowering as well:
Lots of flower on the chile plants (no chance):
A chive flowering:
Flowers on the rosemary:
And on the brambles:
It’s November, for crying out loud! How messed up is our world?
Last month I posted about making new drawer inserts for our kitchen drawers. These:
Well, you know how it is, same as last time. Sooner or later it happens…
“What you did is really wonderful. It’s made such a difference and I really love it. Now I’ve just got this other one that would really be good with the same…”
The first two were made from scraps of cedar with a ply base and I’d completely run out of cedar that I was prepared to sacrifice for kitchen projects (the rest is for beehives), but I did actually cut down and plane some pine at the same time, mostly as practice. So now I have it, I might as well put it to use…
Didn’t quite get it finished this evening, but just a bit of cleaning up of the escaped glue and sanding and it will be ready to put into use tomorrow.
Brownie points! Yes!
As if it didn’t strain credibility sufficiently that “Cruella” Braverman insisted that sleeping rough was a lifestyle choice, I was quite surprised to discover that despite her hasty departure from government, measures against people who sleep rough are still included in the Criminal Justice Bill currently making its way through Parliament. Specifically, allowing the police to “move on” rough sleepers, which is a slightly odd idea in itself, but then also to enable them to be fined up to £2,500 or even imprisoned.
Quite where someone who is sleeping rough is supposed to be able to find up to £2,500 I’m not really sure. Perhaps the Tories can’t imagine the idea of not having a few hundred thousand in the bank, even if the clothes you stand up in form almost the entirety of your worldly possessions.
And how is a creaking Prison Service supposed to cope with an influx of people who may have all sorts of mental and physical health issues, possibly including not being able to cope wth being in enclosed spaces? Being locked up in a prison cell is really going to help with that.
I just can’t see that there’s any logic to it, though with the current government that doesn’t seem to be any kind of requirement when it comes to drawing up legislation. I’m rather more tempted to believe that the measures are more about “playing to the gallery” of far right-wing nutjobs and trying to demonstrate that, despite admitting in Parliament to being willing to break the law, making laws that they themselves break almost immediately, lying about it and laughing in our faces over it, they are in fact the “Party of Law and Order”.
Somehow I rather think that boat sailed quite some time back.
