1°C, snowing.
Heavy snow all day. I’m fizzing for a ride but packing ought to be done.
I’m moving in a month and have a 4 bedroom house to pack by myself.
Boxing up my life, and snow.
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Category Archives: Home
A damp patch.
Warm, 18°C, windy with a few showers.
In one corner of my living room is a damp patch in the wallpaper. Coincidentally, it’s above a ventilation vent. It’s the vent that housed a wasps’ nest last year, if you remember. There is am easy way to investigate, take the vent out and have a look.
The result, one surprise and one confirmed suspicion. First, the surprise- I have cavity wall insulation. Having lived here for 20 years, I should have known.
I scraped out some mortar and pieces of brick. They must have been the means that carried water involved wall inner layer. The mortar was quite damp to the touch. Guilty as charged. As you can see in the photo, there is a stubborn piece that is tightly wedged in. It has refused to budge today, but I’ll have another go tomorrow.
…but is it enough?
Rolling out the green carpet.
14°C, sunny to start.
Turf rolls are best staggered to make the joins less vulnerable.
This photo was taken at lunchtime, which means rolling out took about two hours, plus a bit.
The final step is to seive fine topsoil along the joints to encourage the rolls to grow into each other. Eventually. The whole lot should form a shingle mat.
Stopping now, I have a stiff back and I’ve run out of chocolate. All done for £126 and I’ve got 4 rolls left over. Do you want them?
Laying a lawn II
16°C, sunny and dry.
So far, the topsoil is down and level. I’m writing this while I wait for the sprinkle of water to sink in. The top soil arrived yesterday was very dry and quite dusty. In fact, it was really quite warm.
Raking out was fairly easy. I used a long piece of wood to check for level.
Ready for rolling.
How many barrows?
18°C, sunny with some heavy showersDelivery: this time, the lorry can’t get around the back. All those years ago, I had 6 tons of gravel delivered to cover the mud lawn. When I used to have dogs, they would run mud into the house each winter.
So how many wheel barrows did it take to move one ton of topsoil to the back garden?
How do I get those down?
17°C, set fairApple tree: it’s in a poor state really. Lower branches are dead or scrawny. There are some good looking fruit at the top. I suppose a skilled arborist would have cut the tree so it would grow more favourably. It needs good, young branches lower down.
I have cut out some poor low branches with enough stumps to climb up. Either I can reach the fruit, or I will make a scoop to pick them with.
Shower doors can explode.
Tempered glass doors sometimes can shatter violently. It only takes a slight flaw, a break, a scratch or an imperfection.
Ours burst with a roar about ten minutes after going to bed. Nobody was in the bathroom and the door was shut. It may be relevant that the central heating had gone off so the house was cooling off into the night. Nobody used the shower for at least 12 hours and we’re not aware of any damage that could have started this.
Beware.
Moss.
5°C, sunny but something is changing
These things are charming.
I’m some books, mosses are categorised as primitive plants (non-vascular, and like the lichens, they don’t have roots). That means, as a group, they’re actually very old. Their sophistication is perhaps, not visible. Internally, I suspect, they have advanced features.
They are easy plants to keep, you don’t have to ‘plant’ them, nor prune or feed them. Just leave a pot somewhere damp and then ignore it. A badly drained saucer will help. You probably have mosses growing in hidden parts of your house, most probably the gutters.
If only we could stop and look closely more often.
Wasps’ nest
7°C, sunny and dry. Light wind.
Remember that wasp nest in my house last summer? I decided to investigate it today. The tent was ready to pull open after I cleared the nearby ivy. The interior volume was filled with paper structures to a volume of about 1 litre. The tent gap a hard plastic tube connecting the interior and exterior walls of the building. Lining the tube was a complete layer of paper honeycomb cavities. Inside that layer was a 3 layered structure which was effectively 3 floors. Some of these floor had dead eggs or larvae.
fascinating isn’t it? Up to last October, I heard their daily routine start at sunrise. The buzzing must have been workers ventilating the nest. All summer, there was that sinister chewing and cutting sound. None of that has affected the vent. It must be the sound of paper construction amplified in the tube.
There aren’t many dead wasps in there. Either they had already left, or the pest treatment dispersed them. I’m glad really. I like to think they lived their year’s lifecycle to its normal conclusion. They disperse after the spawning and live a more solitary life until the first frost.
The tube now has some of the honeycomb shelves back in place. Wasps don’t make nests in old sites so this should deter them next season.
I’ll never know about the other nest, it’s entirely inaccessible in that roof space.
Winter, a Saturday.
1°C, light wind but heavy rain.
Winter, a respite from the cold and a day to recover from work.
Olafur Arnalds: Island Songs.
Micycle 