Chicken Run – Enlarged
Posted: Sat 26 July, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden Leave a comment »Today we’ve been sorting out a new bigger, better chicken run. Putting in the metposts and fence posts, and lining the perimeter with 6 foot high chicken wire.
All told, it’s (roughly) 40′ x 20′. I haven’t measured it exactly, so that’ll have to do you.
Of course, the downside of them having this much larger fully-enclosed run is that Herself now wants two or three more chickens…
Demolition, Gardening
Posted: Sat 12 July, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Green Garden 1 Comment »One of the jobs that’s been hanging around for a while at home (OK, since we bought the house) is that there was a little dividing wall between patio and garden – and that wall was shot. There were various cracks and wobbles in the wall, and it wasn’t really all that safe to sit on, for example.
This weekend, we’ve hired (yet another) skip, with the aim of getting rid of the wall, and various other large bits of garden stuff (masses of willow branches, for example, and a couple of unruly bushes that just need killing) that we just can’t be arsed to also take to the local tip etc. So a skip it is.
The wall came down in two hours flat, and in that time it was only the bottom two rows of bricks that required any real input from the 4lb lump hammer. The rest came apart by hand – which, when you think about it, is pretty scary in itself. It’s all gone, and the patio area’s appearance has changed massively without it.
The garden stuff took a bit longer, but we’ll still be able to get rid of the skip on Monday morning, which helps minimise the costs of having it.
All told, a pretty productive Saturday.
Zeroed Owl – Update
Posted: Tue 8 July, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green Leave a comment »Following on from yesterday’s post about the OWL monitor, it looks like it was the batteries in the transmitter part that’d gone. (Annoying after only six months, but they were crappy cheap-ass Maxell batteries after all)
They got replaced last night, and things so far look to be OK again. We’ll see.
Zeroed Owl
Posted: Mon 7 July, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green Leave a comment »Back at Christmas-time, we bought an OWL electricity-supply monitor, which I’ve written about in brief since.
It’s still a good piece of kit, and has made us very aware of our electricity usage over the last six months.
Recently though, it’s been a bit annoying. For some reason, every so often it drops off-line, and just displays “0:00” for a while. It always comes back, and there’s no reason for it to do this – the monitor’s battery levels are fine, and the transmitter seems to be working fine except for these intermittent issues. (Although I do need to double-check the batteries in the transmitter unit, which I haven’t done yet)
Even with this minor glitch though, it’s still a useful device, and comes well recommended.
Mowing
Posted: Wed 14 May, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden, House Work 5 Comments »Last week, we decided to get someone in to do the mowing of the grass in our garden. It’s something I’ve been doing, but it takes up a large amount of time on a weekend when we could be doing other things – sorting out the veg patch, for example. The entire garden is something like 8,000ft² (roughly 165′ x 65′, which is just over 10,000ft², but there’s other stuff in there than just grass, so I reckon it comes down to about 8,000ft²)
So we got a guy round on Friday to have a look, and he quoted us £30 to do the entire thing – mow it, strim the edges, and clear it all up. Not bad at all – yes sure, we could get someone cheaper (as Lionel pointed out elsewhere) but for the moment we’ll see how we do with this guy.
He turned up yesterday when we were both out, so I came home to a fully mowed garden. And he’s done a fantastic job – everything’s been done, the mowing, the strimming – even the dog toys were tidied away, (with the exception of one tennis ball that died – hardly a worry) and all the clippings plonked into our compost bins.
All in all, £30 well spent, in my opinion. Although we may need to buy a couple more compost bins before long.
Bugfood
Posted: Tue 13 May, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Green Garden Leave a comment »One of the things I hate about summer is that I turn into a buffet bar for mosquitos. (and other bugs as well, but mainly mosquitos) There’s something about me that obviously tastes good to the little bloodsucking fuckers, and they just dive in for a chomp.
After having a meal outside on Sunday evening, I’ve got no less than five bites on my legs already, three of which have swollen up unpleasantly.
We’ve got a mosquito-repellent in the bedroom which seems to work OK, and we’ve got a UV anti-bug lamp, although I really need to sort that out and put it somewhere so it’ll actually do something to the little vampiric bastards. However, the UV thing can’t really go outside (not long-term, anyway) so I’m also considering an outdoor version like this one which might help zap the buzzing little tossers.
Ah, the joys of summer.
Garden Work
Posted: Sun 11 May, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Green Garden 2 Comments »Most of the weekend’s been spent out in the garden, which has been really nice. There’s been some hard work – finishing off the extension to the woodshed, so it’s about another eight foot long and will take another six months worth of wood. (at least)
Over the summer, we’ll be ordering another trailerload of wood, so it can season properly- we’ve got enough for a couple of months once it gets cold again, but we want to have more in stock than that, and be able to have it used in rotation – some of the wood we buy this summer may not get used ’til Winter ’09, by which time it’ll be good and seasoned. That’s the plan, anyway.
We’ve also been doing a buttload of weeding – it’s nowhere near completed, but we’re getting there and will continue with it during the week as well.
So that’s been the weekend, really. Not much else happened (except for seeing Iron Man, of which more in another past) but it’ll be good to go back to work for a rest…