What's everyone busy with now?

[Millymollymandy]

Got some tree surgeons coming to quote over the next few days for taking down some tall dead (potentially dangerous) alders and going to get a quote on taking down several enormous sycamores to see whether it is worth it pricewise compared to buying in firewood. We can manage to chop down small trees but these are way too big and dangerous for us to tackle, but would keep us warm for several years!

God this was really a rather scary coincidence..... OK so guy comes round, looks at the stand of dead alders and says yes they are splitting apart at the roots so need to come down blah blah blah.... that was in the morning, in the afternoon we went to the village to do a few things, come back and.......4 of them have fallen down!!! And most amazingly, in the one and only little passage where they didn't land on either my walnuts, the little road to two houses, neighbour's barn roof or his sheep! One was a tall one which hit my fence on the other side of the orchard but it was so rotten it broke itself up into nice metre long lengths and didn't do more than bend the sheep wire fence.

So I guess that has saved us a bit of money! Just hope to god the other 5 don't fall because they are all leaning in the wrong direction i.e. towards the above mentioned things. Eeks.

Other good thing is he said it will be cheaper for us if they leave the wood on site and chop it into lengths (not split though) than having to take it away and dispose of it. We like that!

And even better, stump grinders have finally made it to France (they didn't exist 8 years ago and nobody had ever heard of them).

[Odsox]

I'm busy rebuilding my greenhouse.
I built it in a hurry 14 years ago from 2nd rate timber that I bought at an auction, never got round to painting it properly, no wood preservative, so unsurprisingly it rotted a bit over the years.
I dismantled it earlier in the year, got nearly all the glass out intact, with the intention of slowly rebuilding it over the long dry summer ... hah !!
At last this month has cooperated and I am well on the way to getting at least some of it in place and hopefully getting it completed by early spring.
All the timbers have been (or will be) given two coats of preservative, a coat of primer then undercoat and finally two coats of gloss, with the intention that this time it will outlast me.

It's also a big experiment as I am going to convert the front two thirds to hydroponics, with three 18 foot long troughs that will work on the ebb & flood system.
Exciting stuff.

[Green Aura]

I'm just going out to clear some of the polytunnel and stick some spuds in - might not be ready for christmas though

Might also have a go at peas - the trouble up here is the lack of light, but it's worth a try.

[Millymollymandy]

It's freezing here and I'm going to spend the afternoon making myself a pumpkin cake and keep close to the fire which has just gone on. Had to go out early this morning and walk about whilst the car was being serviced and it was real hat, scarf, gloves, winter jacket and long john weather. Only I only had my autumn jacket on!

Will a photo of me stuffing my face with cake count as 'keeping warm' for the photo competition I wonder?

[Green Aura]

Sorry honey, it's glorious (long-sleeved) t-shirt weather up here

[Millymollymandy]

Ha , well we had it last week. Trouble is the change in weather is just so sudden, a few days ago we had nighttime lows at 15C and yesterday the daytime high was 8C !!! Call me fairweather but I don't want to do anything outside until I get acclimatised!

I have no motivation whatsoever indoors either (sod housework!) and my cake which I decided to bake in two tins has come out as two pancakes.

[Gem]

The OH and I have put the allotment mostly to bed for the last time :'( Just the leeks and root stuff left now which we are eating our way through.

I really also need to get into the fruit cage but I just cant quite face it. It really is horribly neglected! Maybe I will be good and give it a bit of tlc this weekend.

[Millymollymandy]

Will a photo of me stuffing my face with cake count as 'keeping warm' for the photo competition I wonder?

Absolutely! everyone knows that we don't eat cake because we LIKE it, that's just plain silly - it's quite obviously ingested to keep warm plain and simple

Susie

Like chocolate then.

[Green Aura]

Like chocolate then.

Chocolate is the universal cure, so I'm sure hypothermia must be included

[Millymollymandy]

Have to say that pumpkin spice cake, even rather thin ones, sandwiched together with orange butter icing, did the trick!

Sun's shining again today so I feel more energetic, gosh yesterday was soooooo dismal!

Still got to transplant out last few strawberry runners and then start a big clear up of the veg patch weeds and things that are over or frosted.

[Green Aura]

We've just harvested 5 sacks of spuds - well they will be in sacks when they've dried a bit.

And planted - more spuds that were chitting, in bags; peas; cima di rapa; pak choy; mustard greens; chervil; winter lettuce and mixed salad leaves in the polytunnel. I have no idea whether they'll grow or not. The light levels can get so low here during the winter I'm not convinced really. But it's worth a few seeds to find out. Who knows - we could be eating homegrown veg for christmas dinner yet!

I think up here that would be pretty good going

[Millymollymandy]

I hope it wasn't your mother who did the planting!

[red]

Ive harvested the last of my sweetcorn, and done some digging, before more log stacking. lovely sunny day. had to come in to work though

[Green Aura]

No MMM- she's been faffing with my aloe veras in the house. They may not survive but hopefully well get identifiable veg in the places we put them

[Gem]

Gem wrote:

I really also need to get into the fruit cage but I just cant quite face it. It really is horribly neglected! Maybe I will be good and give it a bit of tlc this weekend.


Thank God someone else is putting off the fruit cage! We made a disasterous error in putting down woodchip bark between the rows and the weeds have grown beautifully in it! I really can't face it either but we (yes we OH !)are going to have to gird our loins pretty soon and attack it.

Susie

Oh we had exactly the same problem. I thought the whole point of woodbark was to repress the weeds but they loved it, to make matters worse, whenever I do try and pull a few they cling to the woodbark so now have patches of bare earth as well

Oh well, we had a wasps nest move into the middle of the strawberry patch as well so it was a good excuse to just leave it be until the nest died.. which should be soon if the forecast is to be believed..