Self-Sufficiency in Style
march 2002 diary
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Self-Sufficiency in Style march 2002 diary
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The tempo of the self-sufficient year
quickens. |
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We don't grow many flowers, but value the few that we do.
The month started with a mystery - our tulips flowered before the tulips, reversing the normal order of nature. We shrugged our shoulders and assumed that the warmth of the walled garden had made the tulips early. |
Early Tulips but Daffodils late. |
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For the egg thief
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Then we began to lose eggs from the hen-house.
This has happened before. Magpies! An attractive bird but a robber of hedgerow nest and smallholder nesting box. The trap was sent for and placed in the orchard, to be baited first with an egg and later with the first captive. A magpie will fly down to join another. But no magpie was caught - and we had not seen any about. We had earlier caught a weasel in a rat trap, but he was so pleased to be released we doubt if he would come back. |
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Then we caught the culprit red-handed emerging from the henhouse pop-hole, egg in mouth... later in the day the same criminal was caught biting all the heads off the daffodils ....a strange kind of bird. |
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Confined to the House.... |
...until the daffodils have finished and either we have made the pop-hole
smaller or Star's head has got bigger.
...actually we relented, but are keeping a closer watch. |
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The pump has been completed. It is situated between the conservatory and
the acid loving fruit beds.
Rainwater is collected from the roof and stored in an underground reservoir. We live in a hard-water area. Blueberries, cranberries and the citrus in the Conservatory don't like hard-water, so we now have a supply of lime free rainwater. |
The Pump |
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Tidy by the cowshed |
We have tidied up an area by the cowshed to have a clean area for washing
boots and walking to the car.
A brick terrace does the job nicely. The wall has a fan trained apricot on a south facing wall and... |
| ...a Japanese Wineberry has been planted on the old corrugated iron "pig cotts" facing west. |
The corrugated iron takes away any pretensions to this little terrace. |
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No, it is not a poacher. |
Allan the builder/carpenter has been with us for more than two years. We
are just at the point of finishing the walled garden.
The gates should be finished by Easter. We will have a chat with the lads at the airstrip down the road to see if we can get them to take an aerial photograph....providing they don't take that as open permission to buzz us every Sunday afternoon. |
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Work on planting is in full swing.
We have been using some plastic cloches to warm the soil in preparation for planting asparagus... ...well we were, until spring gales sent them all into orbit. |
Asparagus preparations. |
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Well worth the effort |
Gardening indoors continues too.
Mushrooms are something you can try in the smallest house or flat. We have always been successful with these kits, but have failed to produce anything worthwhile on a bigger scale. We do get wild mushrooms in the field, but they taste terrible. |
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Spring Flowers at the unattractively named Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner. |
