In Which Our Heroine Discovers Once Again That Some Things Really Need Two People

I have been fired up to do DIY recently, partly inspired by the success of the garage door and partly driven by the knowledge that when winter is really here I won’t be stirring far from the fire let alone going up ladders.

The title of this blog is explained by my attempts to repair a hole in the plaster of the kitchen ceiling.

 

Now my plastering skills aren't brilliant and I know it would look better if a real plasterer did it but this is about frugal living, unlike one of my neighbours, I cannot call in the professionals even if ‘he was ever so reasonable, only £500’.

So there were two alternatives either a) live with a hole in the ceiling (I’d tried that option for the last 18 months) or b) try to fill the hole with plasterboard and plaster over the joins.

Oh dear.

This is where I needed a second pair of hands. I discovered that when standing at the top of a stepladder trying to balance a piece of plasterboard against the ceiling with one hand, while reaching for the prop to hold it in place with the other and then watching the prop slip out of reach and fall onto the floor.  By the end of the day, I’d discovered several more things , most importantly that the plasterboard adhesive just wasn't going to cut it and  a belt and braces operation involving screwing it into the ancient laths was also needed.

However I did manage to get most of the hole filled in.

It then just needed a couple of smaller pieces of plasterboard and the gaps filling in, but the weather has been so good over the last week that I was seduced into working in the garden instead.

When the BT engineer came last week, my garden looked like this

Now it looks like this:

I decided to sacrifice the lilac tree, which does have its moment of glory in May but then spends the rest of the year either casting a shade over the garden or demanding I prune it.

I didn't do it all by myself, I had help:

Once I have got the roots out, which will be a job and a half in itself, I want to replace it with a dwarf cherry tree which will match the lilac for pretty blossom in spring but then give wonderful fruit in summer. I will put two or three gooseberry cuttings in front of the wall where the brambles were running wild and then the rest of the garden will be filled with herbs and salad plants. I do have a hankering for training a grape vine round the doorway though which led to the realisation that I really must paint it first.

I’m ashamed to say, that I think some of it (the orange bits ) are still the way they were when we moved in twenty five years ago and not unreasonably are in very poor condition.

Yesterday, I sanded and painted all the bits I could reach with a stepladder. Unfortunately the green paint I’d used on the garage door ran out halfway through the front door.

I’d already decided that this green was a bit too bright and I was going to find a darker one but then when I went to the shop this morning, there was my paint at £6.80 a tin or the market leader at £17.95. Maybe the brightness will fade over the winter.

So today’s task is painting, but tomorrow I may well be back up the ladder wrestling with the kitchen ceiling as the weather forecast is rain for the rest of the week. It doesn't really matter which I’m doing, either will move me closer to the sort of house I want to be living in.

A Brief (Ha Ha) Update

Good Morning All !
I realise that it is several weeks since I wrote, and that fact has been languishing on my conscience and featuring daily on my to do list (or facienda) for at least the last week. The trouble is that the longer I left it the more there is to write about and the bigger the task appears. I think I shall just have to write an overview today and then write several more in-depth blogs. The weather forecast for tomorrow is for heavy rain, a perfect day for sitting at a computer.

Firstly the soapy business, the Great Yorkshire Show was very hot and very busy and a little like an endurance test, I was there from 7.30 am to 7.30 pm being pleasant and chatty and basically saying the same thing over and over again 'It's all made from beeswax, an amazing natural moisturiser. I am a beekeeper you know' By the end of the day I was sick of the sound of my own voice and pitied my poor neighbours. Like at Bramham I met an amazing bunch of entrepreneurial women and in quiet periods the marquee was almost like a study group or tutorial. The key topic of discussion was Twitter, some were old hands, some just starting (ie me - @Gilliganwood feel free to add me if you are that way inclined) and some were complete novices.  Whilst on the subject of e-marketing my website  www.gilliganwood.com is now open for business. I won't say the website is complete, the pages on the benefits of beeswax are looking very bare and the 'What we've been doing' page is also in need of updating (another candidate for a wet Monday) but should anyone have an urgent need for a beeswax based skin balm they can now buy online.

Secondly the poultry, so much has happened here that they will definitely need a post devoted to them. Una the quail has started laying! She now lives in a hutch with Goldie, Tim being separated, in another hutch, both hutches in urgent need of more females. I saved up Una's eggs and made mini scotch eggs for us to take on a beach picnic. They were very cute and had the huge advantage of not having as much egg as a normal scotch egg. Amelia turned broody so I bought in some fertilised eggs and let her sit on them. She (or I) timed the whole thing really badly as they were due to hatch in the middle of the Great Yorkshire Show, which led me to refuse the opportunity of going for a drink with the words 'No, I must rush home, my eggs are about to hatch', the ladies eyed my dubiously and agreed that they mustn't hinder me. Two out of the five eggs hatched, a black Orpington and a Brahma. If that isn't enough poultry excitement, last Sunday I collected three ex battery hens and brought them home to recuperate and provide me with eggs. More about all of them plus photos, tomorrow.

The bees, also have kept me busy, partly this was my fault as being occupied with the business I left them to their own devices, which inevitably led to swarms. One of the swarms decided to settle at the top of the hawthorn tree that I didn't prune last winter. Remembering how I felt when I was pruning in the winter I asked my neighbour, Dave who is a climber for help. He involved his son, Kris and then in the way of our street, my other neighbour, Nicky came out to offer advice and ended up filming it all on her mobile phone. If possible I shall put this too on the blog in days to come. The next step I have to tackle in beekeeping is harvesting the honey. Last year the weather was so bad that there wasn't any honey to harvest but this year I have at least one full super, undoubtedly there would have been more if I hadn't let them swarm. Although there are ways of extracting honey without using an extractor, my plan is to put my name down to borrow one from the Leeds BBKA.

I'm afraid I have neglected the garden a bit this summer, all the hopes I had for growing my own veg didn't really happen. I have a few potatoes and carrots, a handful of tomatoes and one courgette. There are some onions in the plot but I have neglected them so much that I don't know how they are doing. It has been a reasonable year for fruit though, I picked a pound of red currants and added it to a pound of rhubarb I'd stashed in the freezer earlier and two pounds of bought strawberries and made a surprisingly tasty jam. The gooseberries have reached their peak of ripeness this weekend. I have been watching them carefully as I adore gooseberries that are ripe enough to be sweet whilst still keeping their crunch. I think the only way to achieve this gooseberry perfection is to grow them yourself. Promisingly there are berries on the cranberry bush this year that are looking pretty big, although still green. Hopefully there will be enough for home grown cranberry sauce at Christmas.

There has been work done on the house, as I am totally fed up with how bad my internet connection is and I am going to seek a new provider. However, I have suspicions that although the loss of internet for 12 hours at a time, is the fault of the provider, the extreme slowness of the system is probably down to my wiring. If I am going to let a telephone engineer into my bedroom to sort this out, then I would rather that he did not have to pick his way over sewing machines, spare computers, soap ingredients, wool, clothes and everything thing else that has found a home on my bedroom floor. This tied in nicely with the Mortgage Free in Three's challenge to chuck 100 things in 10 days http://mortgagefreeinthree.com/forum/the-100-things-in-10-days-challenge/  After several days work I can now see vast expanses of floor, I reckon by next weekend I should have it all in shape. Rosie is also busy throwing things out as she is moving into a flat for part of the week from September and is in the process of reassessing her belongings in a what to take, what to leave and I wouldn't wear that again if you paid me mode. So far she has managed three bin bags of clothes to charity shops and several bin bags of rubbish. I think I will write more about Rosie's flat in future if she will let me as it is going to be an interesting challenge to take a  basement  student flat furnished with basic necessities and turn it into something homely and creative on next to nothing. Her eldest sister Maddie has already crocheted a blanket for her. Incidentally since I showed the WIRE ladies, some blue genitalia that Maddie had knitted for a friend, she was ever after referred to as 'your daughter, the obscene knitter'.

Finally on the health front I remember mentioning in January that I needed to drop a size by summer so that I could fit into a wetsuit I'd bought in the sale. Frankly this never happened and by Bramham I had mysteriously gone up a size! I don't know how that happens, I take my eye off things and the weight just rushes on. So I have finally started dieting again and since Bramham have lost a stone. I don't want to say too much about this though, as other people's diets are not interesting. I will just say that having worked in an office where people were always counting points or on red days or green days or having complicated regimes where they couldn't mix carbohydrates and proteins, I am simply cutting back on my food. I do realise however that on a limited intake every calorie has to pull its weight so I am trying to go for healthy foods high in vitamins and minerals.

Phew! I think that is the end of the update. I bet you're glad I went for the brief version with no pictures or involved stories. I will save those for the next few days.

Seed Update

I realise, that you are probably all in suspense, wondering what happened to my seeds, planted three weeks ago.
Well, my first crop has come and gone in the shape of egg and cress sandwiches for three. I have planted some more this week and they are sprouting nicely.

 So far, only 5 of the carrot seeds have come up and they are so very, very small and the planter is so large that taking their photo didn't work. It looks like the sky at night on a particularly dark and moonlit night or possibly the inside of a coal cellar at night. Here it is anyway:

 
The carrot seeds have had a lot to put up with anyway as Oliver decided it was a good surface to race his cars on and Jess was leaping on the planter and then I probably shook them up when I tried to move them to safety. Funny that I thought growing them indoors would keep them safe from pests.

The winter lettuce has been disappointingly slow, probably due to the cold but if it is going to carry on at this rate I shall end up eating it as a microsalad (very fashionable at the moment I understand).

I have planted some more salad leaves out of a packet labelled mesclun which seems to be a mix of rocket and lambs lettuce and other random leaves.
The radishes seem to be doing nicely although I have doubts as to whether the margarine tub will be big enough. Still nothing venture, nothing gain.

I shall also sow some more onion seeds as the others have now germinated. It is not possible to have too many onions and if I don't have space to grow them on I shall eat them as spring onions.

The tomatoes and peppers I have a bit of a confession to make about, I failed to label the pots in the airing cupboard. I also failed to notice they had sprouted. Oops. Hence the legginess of the stalks as they tried desperately to grow towards the light. Most of them have sprouted but I don't know which. I shall know as soon as they get their proper leaves though although telling the upright tomatoes from the trailing variety my be more difficult.

 I should have known better at my age.

The Balanced Scorecard- 2013 to date

It is cold and grey and I have been feeling more than a little lethargic recently so I thought it was a good time to review the year to date and see what progress I'd made in the main headings.
The balanced scorecard is a concept from accountancy which means setting targets in areas of the business rather than just financial ie no good congratulating yourselves on record sales if your safety record is dire and customer service appalling. When I worked for a clinical waste company that tried to implement this, the drivers had to record if they had missed any collections and why (normally accidents or traffic holdups), it  then amused me to discover that they were allowed to input a code meaning tactical miss as if it could every be a part of a company's tactics not to service its customers. In practice these were occasions where to stop at a clinic to pick up one bin of waste would make the driver too late to pick up 20 from a hospital. Still no tactical misses allowed here.
So the headings on my scorecard in no particular order are:
  Poultry
  Bees
  Garden
  Frugal Living & Food
  Soap Business
  House & Garage
  Personal Development
  Crafts
  Wildlife

Possibly I should have one for health and wellbeing but I think the list is quite long enough so I will roll that in with personal development

Poultry
This has been going well, there was the sad loss of Amelia (or was it Edna they looked very much alike) but to offset that Edna is laying well and I managed to partially roof the run and also get their wings clipped. In the incubator upstairs are the 11 little quail eggs, committing me, should they hatch to sorting out first a brooder box and then a cage for them. The brooder box would also be able to be used by chickens in due time.
Bees
I'm also satisfied with the bees. Truthfully there is little I can do in winter apart from ensure they have enough food and the hives are protected from mice and woodpeckers but to see all three hives were alive and active mid February was encouraging. I have also booked to attend the British Bee Keeping Association Spring Convention in April which I'm sure will fire my enthusiasm to learn more and there is my name down on the swarm collection list for summer.
Garden
Progress has been made, seeds have been sown, currant bushes pruned, larger trees cut back at risk to life and limb. As always there is much more to do, more seeds need sowing, the greenhouse needs cleaning, the prunings need chopping up and disposing of, the vegetable plot needs digging and preparing but I can take satisfaction from the fact that I haven't been ignoring the garden throughout the cold weather.
Frugal Living and Food
Here I think I may have been concentrating too much. I have done terrifically well on my frugal food challenge but possibly at the expense of other items on the scorecard. I have already posted that I seem to be baking everyday and as I write I do have a carrotcake in the oven (made with dried cranberries instead of raisins for a change and because I had them in the cupboard). Going forward the challenge will be to try and turn the efforts I have made since Christmas into normal routine but  to keep them in their place. I want to keep on making my own bread and cakes and biscuits but to make the freezer take the place of the convenience store. As Rosie has decided that she does like Chicken Korma, the Curry in a Hurry curry base will become a regular in it as will other dishes that allow me to concentrate on other things some days.
Soap Business
The other things will mainly be the soap business which I am ashamed to say has not made huge progress since Christmas despite being my hope for an income this year. I have attended a course at the Chamber of Commerce (run on a Wednesday which is why postings can be scarce on that day) and I have had regular meetings with a business mentor who has been helping me with my business plan and cashflow forecast to be submitted to a board who should approve me receiving Enterprise Allowance. I feel that all this guestimating future sales and doing market research on the natural cosmetic industry has distracted my attention from the important parts of the business namely making a good product with attractive packaging. Must try harder.
House and Garage
I haven't been doing too much in this category either, I have done some mild decluttering, bought a new freezer which will reduce my energy bills and we now have a working shower once more. There is much decluttering left to do and a list of DIY projects as long as my arm but I am relaxed over this, I am sure I will do more in the warmer weather.
Personal Development
Well this is quite a wide category, I include it, as it is part of the balanced life that I should keep learning and keep trying new things. Writing the blog has been very pleasurable and I would like to do more writing in future. Joining the reading group will also be good for me as it will make me read books I would not have chosen myself. I have also agreed to go on a dry stone wall building day, I can't see any immediate use for that knowledge but it will be interesting. I suspect that I am falling back on the health and exercise front since Jess left. The compulsory twice daily walks were getting me fitter and keeping the calories at bay. I shall have to do more about this before summer as I need to drop a dress size having bought a wet suit in a sale that was a size too small. Ho hum. I've also learned that I am not a dog person, although Jess left us because she was not getting on with Oliver, I didn't find enough compensation in having a dog for all the work and time involved. I may have liked the image of me strolling through the countryside with a dog at my heels but not the reality. Jess is now living with someone who finds having a dog all over you every time you sit down, enjoyable.
Crafts
I am a craft person, I enjoy almost everything that involves making things with your hands. Sadly I am not artistic, I can't paint or draw but I can sew and knit and embroider and hook rugs and generally have a go at anything which involves reading a set of instructions and visualising what they mean. In the last few years I have been extending this to try to tackle DIY projects ie plastering, fence building. Last summer shocked by the price of a new one, I attempted to build a bee hive which is basically a series of wooden boxes. I managed it but also discovered that I can't cut straight. As I need two more bee hives (or at least brood boxes) and a quail house and a broody house then I think I will be learning a lot more about woodworking this coming year. I was going to go on a course but had to cancel as I couldn't leave Jess alone in the house for two days. Likewise I couldn't do any knitting whilst she was with us, as she kept pouncing on the wool, but I have wool and the pattern for knitting Oliver a sweater.
Wildlife
The part of having a dog that I did really enjoy was being forced out for a walk and seeing wildlife. I really enjoyed seeing the small changes that happened almost daily. I can't do anything about this as the twice daily walks were taking up too much time and leading to other things being neglected, but I am going to make the effort to get out once a week at least. I have my tree spotting to continue and I am of course missing the kingfisher.

Apologies for the very long post but I have found it helpful, it has reassured me that really I have made progress since the start of the year and it has pointed out areas where I need to spend less time (food planning) and areas where I need to spend more (soap business).

Wanted One Nerve, Last Seen February 18th

So I lost my nerve yesterday, pruning the hawthorns.
When I left them on Sunday they were like this:

I was pruning the right hand tree, which was basically down to the two trunks, which had to come down by about fifteen feet. Without thinking too much about it, I cut through the left hand trunk and waited for it to fall. Nothing happened. As you can see from the photo, the upper branches had grown through the branches of the other trunk and the two were intertwined. I tied a rope round it as high up as I could and pulled. It made no difference. I was left with a tree trunk dangling in the air unattached. I couldn't leave it like that, it might blow down in a storm and hurt someone. I daredn't cut the other trunk down, as then both trunks may come crashing down on me at once.

I didn't know what to do. I felt like I had in childbirth and wished I had never started it, wished I was sitting comfortably inside with a book and a cup of tea. I rang the ex for help but he was hundreds of miles away. I considered who else  would be free at 3 o'clock on a Monday afternoon, that I could call on for help, but there really wasn't anyone.

 I dithered unhappily for a bit longer and then decided that I would just go ahead and cut the other trunk down. Gingerly I perched on the ladder, my nerve had long since departed for somewhere sunny and warm, and almost cut through the trunk. Then I scooted down the ladder, dropped the chainsaw and went to pull on the rope attached to the first trunk. The extra pressure on the almost severed trunk caused it to split and both trunks fell to earth.

 The split wasn't elegant, I should tidy it up today to stop the tree getting diseased, but the job was done and I was safe.

Here is a photo of Archie, the Killer Cat from next door, surveying the remains. He was no help at all.

I'm not sure what to do with the other hawthorn, it definitely needs lopping, both trees had grown far too tall and were keeping too much light out but when I inspected it this morning I saw three great tits singing their territorial challenges, followed by a blackbird and a long tailed tit and I felt mean at depriving them of a home. Added to that is a general disinclination to pick up a chainsaw or go up a ladder. 

We will see.

Timber!

So who let me loose with a chainsaw?
First I wanted to prune the apple tree of this long branch which overhangs the path:

Then I lopped 18 inches off a holly bush but the fun really started when I turned on the hawthorn trees. There are three of these and I expect they were planted as a bit of a hedge but left to there own devices they are now around 25 foot tall. We tackled one of them , two years ago so that just leaves two to go. Unless I decide to remodel the garden completely and plant fruit trees there, I don't mind keeping them, the blue tits are often in them, but I want to cut them down by about half.
After an hour or two, Rosie and Oliver came out to see what I had been doing:

I was nervous anyway of  using an electric chainsaw whilst being perched on an 8 ft stepladder balanced on soft ground but the possibilities of an accident seemed to increase tenfold with a fast moving toddler around.

Possibly fortunately, the chainsaw solved the problem for me by cutting out around then. It was rather annoying as I had not even finished one tree, I still had two (admittedly rather large) branches left.

This photo illustrates the problem quite neatly, in the middle of the picture about a centimetre from the bottom, you can just make out the top of the stepladder. I would be happy if I could get the tree down to this height.

Sowing seeds for summer sustenance

I expect with a title like the Wood Be Good Life you were expecting this blog to be all about growing things and gardening and you were probably wondering when I was going to get on with it.
Well, today is the answer to that.Today I went through my box of seeds, removed the Thomas the Tank Engine toddler sock (don't know how that got in there) and sorted out what I could use, what needed to be thrown out and what I needed to buy.
Then I got down to it and planted two types of tomato (normal and hanging basket), peppers, onions, basil, lettuce and cress.

The tomatoes and peppers are planted in carefully accumulated empty cream cartons not only as it makes it easy to throw them away after use but because the little clear plastic lids that come with cream cartons do a really good job at keeping the warmth and moisture in the soil whilst the seeds are germinating.
Now with the exception of the onions, lettuce and cress, these seeds are all going in the airing cupboard where they will sit on the bottom shelf of the electric clothes airer until they germinate, after which they will go on the south facing windowsill of Rosie's bedroom.
I need to buy sweet pea and nasturtium seeds as I want to mix flowers and peas and beans climbing up all the fences. Also I am wondering of the practicality of starting parsnips off in bigger cream tubs and then cutting the base out when I come to plant them out. Or cut the base out now maybe?