Spring Sounds

Spring continues to slowly evolve. The days are warmer and brighter and over the last few days we have seen the solar panels deliver about 10kwH. More flowers are showing their heads in the garden with patches of colour appearing in the borders.

The greenhouse has been pressed into action. A paraffin heater keeps the frost away and fills the greenhouse with a characteristic smell which is very evocative of old men and allotments.


We are trying to recycle the as much as we can. Hopefully the tubes from inside toilet and kitchen paper rolls will make pots for seedlings. If they survive long enough, without degrading, they should allow the plants to be transplanted into the ground with minimal risk of root shock. We are also using beans which we found from the previous owner of the house. These french, runner, and broad beans are quite aged so we are taking a bit of a gamble. However, if in a fortnight they have failed we should still have time to get beans going.

We found a large cold water header tank. This was rusted and holed in many places but has been recycled to act as a local incinerator.

Some heavy digging in the near end of the woods has uncovered a large drainage pipe. This should allow us to drain some of the bog down there. It might also make an outlet for a duck-pond. It looks as if, which some unpleasant muddy work, we could dig out a reasonable pond here. Fortunately we are probably having visitors in March who might be enticed into heavy manual labour.

Chicken looking amazed by recycled incinerator.
(Another chicken with a blasé expression was cropped out)

This clip might also give some idea of our recent activities :- Sound