and today i have mostly been...

[steve_earwig]

And it's in bits again I didn't get to ride it, t'wife came back in the early hours of yesterday morning but with storms forecast I was too busy gardening all day (visions of 100+ tomato plants destroyed had me pinching and tying like a loon) so this morning as it was pi$$ing down I tidied the shed and then I thought "what else am I going to do?"

I have a few ideas gleaned for the owner's klub

Specifically http://www.carpe-tdm.net/ipb/index.php? ... 7&p=350340 where the chap found his misfire was caused by a worn choke plunger.

What they're meant to look like:


What mine look like:


I'm not 100% sure this is the problem as cylinder 2 (r/h) was running ok but I live in hope. I also checked the emulsion tubes (another possible) but they look fine. I've ordered up a couple of plungers from the website in the link. Fingers (toes and eyes) crossed

[Doggy]

Hope that sorts it out.

Today, I haz been assembling youngest grandson's birthday pressie pedal go kart.
Dog ramp currently has about a 90% success rate, (he's got fed up a couple of times and jumped into the car without).
Fleabay version in service, supplier agreed to take the newbie one back for full refund, but I pay the return carriage. Reasonable compromise.
Sun's shining, turkey schnitzels for tea, had worse days.

[steve_earwig]

The sun has got his hat on etc. It's drizzled on and off all day here, in fact it seems to start raining every time I step outdoors to do anything I had my little strimmer's (ancient Tanaka) carb in bits 'cos it's a pig to start. I started off by cleaning it - I don't know what this degreaser I picked up at the hardware store is but it made my fingers sting and turned the carb black Take to bits, clean and blow out, inspect, put back together... It's still a pig to start but there's no adjustment on the mixture and there's no primer bulb: it just seems a matter of winding it over a couple of dozen times times whilst fiddling with the choke plate, getting it going any old how, letting it warm up without touching the throttle for a few minutes and it's fine. I could put a stiffer air filter (i.e. washing up sponge) in it but it smokes a bit when I rev it, so I guess the mixture is rich enough as it is. Oh, and the fuel line was dropping to bits, good job I had some spare.

Dog ramp currently has about a 90% success rate

Which is much better than expected no doubt. Ollie wouldn't bypass it, I have to lift him into the car at the best of times, one end at a time. Just as well it doesn't happen too often. Speaking of which, t'wife needs to call our vet Mirela to arrange Ollie a haircut. She'll come here, it's much easier...

For lunch today we had trout (t'wife cooks a mean trout) with (my) Swiss chard and boiled spuds, laced with (my) garlic

[steve_earwig]

Yes I Can Drive (Drive) My Very Own Tank
fh3lf2i5mWc

Awww, I wanna go

[Welly]

With the absence of much else to do I have recently been concentrating on tidying/simplifying the front and rear Gardens.

I removed 5 x large bushes which were planted at the front 18 years ago and had become unruly brutes. I hadn't realised how much of a 'view' they had blocked for my neighbour reversing off his drive who was very happy to see them go (sorry John ). Once the two-manned root ball excavations were complete [read: digging, sweating and heaving for hours] we were left with surprisingly fine soil - the sort that raked flat with ease and seemed like it had come straight out of a new bag

A plan was hatched to 'blend' this 4m x 2m area into the existing lawn so I leveled it to the same contour as the existing, bought the best quality grass seed imaginable and set about sowing, covering with nettage and copious waterage daily. It's now sprouting on the rapid and from an angle looks a complete lawn I is well chuffed with that! pics to follow sorry.

Saturday I de-weeded all the borders (they weren't that bad) and re bark-chipped around 45 mtrs of border which now looks amazingly neat so again pleased with that, I don't grow anything on the boundaries - just keep it neat between the lawn edge and the hedges/fences.

Trying to get the garden so that it's fast to maintain, I have the lawns treated by a company (ooooh get me) so the grass looks superb, barked or gravel edges and some planted pots on the patio - that'll do me.

[steve_earwig]

Sounds like it's worth a picture! I have lawns that are mainly weeds (I sowed the front one but the weeds grew faster than I could hoik them out) and flower borders where the plants either... hold on...Grow like the clappers and then fall over

(mirabilis, kiwi, echenecia and what was meant to be sweet pea but they don't grow here) With the odd surprise

A cherry tom what was in the compost.


(Nicociana (which smell wonderful while I'm slug hunting) with a castor oil seedling each end)

Or they're weak and straggly

(rose, red hot poker which I hate, spider flowers and hollyhocks)

Or they don't last very long and then look like crap for the rest of the year

(Digitalis, Aquilegia, tiger lillies, comfry which grows like a weed, something that looks like woodruff)

But, as I've said many a time, I like plants but a gardener I am not.

Anyway, strange fruit:


Once a year when I don't have anything interesting to do I maintenance all the wooden handles on all the tools that are likely to spend any time outside. Clean, repair, dip the business ends in fungicide/insecticide, then stain. They seem to last a bit longer like this.

I don't know what this degreaser I picked up at the hardware store is but it made my fingers sting and turned the carb black

It's not too good at cleaning paintbrushes either

The (microscopic) blerb says it's a 2-component alkali degreaser, shake before use. It also says it's concentrated, but I thought that was just marketing bollocks, like sticking "turbo" or "smart" on everything, but now I look I was meant to dilute it 10:1. Oops

[steve_earwig]

I've just been up t'garden for some veg:


Nothing's growing that well this year, probably due to a hot dry spring and then a cool wet summer.

I have tried growing a few new things this year, I have kale and sprouts looking like they'll need some encouragement to be ready next year maybe, spinach, which grew a bit and then died, and somebody gave me some "hot" chilli seeds:


I've no real idea what I'm going to do with them (I have 20 plants) but I thought it might be interesting. I'm not even sure when they're ready but I just tried one - when the locals say hot things are usually mild to me, but I cautiously cut a tiny slice from a fairly small chilli. 10 minutes later and I've stopped sweating but my tongue is still burning. Jalapeños anyone?

[Welly]

The conspicuous area is where them there bushes were growing (over the height of that brick wall and encroaching on the road by a couple of feet ).

The grass was sown by me and this is how it looks after 2 weeks of watering every night and a very quick mow yesterday - treated the Mountfield to a new Blade (ouch ££) and a new Carburetor / Gasket set and she's purring, just got to 'feather in' the join to the existing with more seedage which was laid yesterday in time for all this rain today and proposed Sun (remember that thing?) later this week:


I also broke out my 20-year old plumbing skillz and reconfigured the garage sink plumage due to numerous frozen bursts and abandonment of the whole idea. I've introduced emergency valves and drain-off capability, however the plan is to trace-heat the whole lot and insulate (stuff we do at work ):


And the Sink now recommissioned:


Typically, I pre-ordered everything I needed....began the work....and due to cutting out more damaged pipework than I envisaged - ran out of copper tube and also realised my 15mm 'Pipeslice' tube cutter had a chipped blade and kept deforming the tube end just enough for the soldered fittings to 'not fit' causing much head-scratching and ANOTHER trip to the DIY Store (donning a bloody mask etc)......but finally after far more hours than it should have been I got it done, sink plumbed back in, outside tap relocated and all burst pipes replaced with new.

[steve_earwig]

Horse chestnut looks a bit unhappy (they range from unhappy to dead here). Lawn's looking good, good idea to fill in those bald bits before the weeds take over.

Sink with hot water in the garage! I iz jealous. I had a sink in the garage of the house I just sold, only cold water mind, and also very important to drain it down for winter. Insulation's good but empty is safest...

I'd love to run hot & cold water plus c/h into the shed here, but as it's about 25 meters from the house I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.

I usually overbuy plumbing stuff, I figure I'm going to need it eventually. Akchewerly I've not long used up all the 15mm fittings I had spare fitting a radiator in next door's new bathroom. I'm trying not to use it for plumbing as I've noticed a pronounced drop in flow when I've moved stuff, all the plumbing I did for the upstairs bathroom is 18mm.

[Welly]

The 'conker tree' is my rescue tree, lives in a half-barrel which used to look way over-sized for the tree but is now so big and heavy I'd need some equipment to lift it

I think all Horse Chezzers suffer from 'leaf minor' disease now, the leaves appear in May/June and look absolutely perfect in a nice Lime Green colour and then turn to sh*t with brown patches. I looked into a sprayable treatment but it was ££££££ so all I try to do is keep it well watered and fed as much as I can.

I do appreciate your gardening knowledge steve, to those who don't 'do' gardening and growing stuff then your gaff would pretty much be a full-time job.

[steve_earwig]

Who, me? Thanks, but I aint no gardener Before I came here my experience was laying a tiny lawn with turf, maybe a few flowers, I remember having to mow the lawn when I was a kid (2/5ths of an acre), raking leafs and helping out with the veggy garden by, erm, breaking lumps of soil up with a broken hoe, and I had a bean growing in a flowerpot. I like looking at plants but that's about it.

When I first came here I was helping out with watering, maybe a bit of weeding, but there were 4 of us then. Now days there's just me. You know when the sergeant major asks for a volunteer and all but one soldier takes a step backwards? That's me that soldier is.

I can't say I have much idea what I'm doing, apart from a bit of research it's all just an experiment. Sometimes things work out ok but at the end of the day I'm not doing this to keep us alive, if I didn't plant anything I could still just go to a store.

Meanwhile...

Not the prettiest but it'll be ok for soup or sauce.

[Welly]

Dare you to make a 'doorstep' Cheese + Tom Sandwich

When you say there used to be 4 of you I can't remember this?

I know you had your own gaff first and then moved in with t'wife and t'mother in law *shudders* a good few years later.

I always thought your first move to Croatia was your 'fresh start' away from this shi....err....lovely UK and a kinda lone step into the unknown

[steve_earwig]

Just cheese and tomato? How boring. How about cheese, tomato, garlic, sliced gherkin and mayonnaise?

Originally there was me, t'wife, sis-in-law Tanja and bro-in-law Ivo (Tanja being the main driving force behind it all), but we lost Tanja in 2013 (already almost 7 years? ), Ivo seems to have disappeared up his own bottom and I think, as far as my wife is concerned, gardening is something that happens to other people now (she says Scooter won't let her out of the yard but he doesn't have a gun or anything).

I only lived in my gaff for about a year, I was spending more and more time here and then there didn't seem to be any point in rushing home every evening. I was there twice a day to feed the cats of course but then we moved them here and then it was more like once a week (or less ) to mow the lawns, shovel snow and check the boiler in the winter and empty the post box.

I came out here in 2004 following my (Croatian) buddy after his marriage went tits up (lost everything to greedy lawyers, same old story). I'd already been to visit, I liked it here and it looked like I could live here with far less money (debatable...) At the time BT was offering a wad of cash to get shot of some employees, so it seemed like fate. I was also miserably single at the time too. So the choice was take a chance, maybe it'll be ok, =or= carry on slogging away for good old British Telecom for the rest of my life wondering what might have been. And here I am, 16 years later, a married pensioner. Meanwhile my mate I came here with hated how much Croatia had changed in the 28 years since he left, alienated everyone to become a recluse and eventually buggered off back to the UK to live on benefits.

[Welly]

Wow, that's some story, I didn't know some of that, how weird though if you think back if you had have stayed with BT etc...

I've had opportunities come and go and I sometimes kick myself for not taking the plunge, thing is I settled down with Mrs_Welly when I was 22 then we had a baby at 24 so I kinda stuck with what was putting food on the table. Now though I really REALLY wish I didn't have to work as I have had the Construction Industry kick the life out of me over the years.

So go on then, how did you meet t'wife?

[steve_earwig]

You mean I didn't say? Oh, ok. In 2004 I decided I needed someone to teach me Croatian, lots of my friends said they'd teach me but I thought if I actually hired a professional I'd do my homework, treat them with respect and hopefully get somewhere. I enquired at the local college but they didn't have any one, so they put me in touch with a rather nice lady that did English and Spanish evening classes from home, she'd never actually taught Croatian but didn't think it would be a problem. We had classes for about 4 months but we spent most of our time chatting and having a laugh, soon I was practising my DIY skills around the house, helping out in the garden and, er, we got married in 2008

My Croatian still sucks of course