Growing Kangaroos from seed
This week: Killed with kindness; Am I being stupid?; I’m a good dictator;
This week has been another scorcher!
I recorded 37°C one afternoon, far too hot to do anything productive outside. Today it is “only” 36°C!
As the World Meteorological Organisation announced this week, that the current El Nino in the Pacific Ocean is likely to peak after February 2027, rather than the more normal November, and it will be the strongest ever, I created a graphic for my local weather forecast group, with the likely El Nino effects.
How does an El Niño in the Pacific, affect us in southern Europe?
The whole of the planet’s weather is interconnected. An El Niño affects the Atlantic, by reducing the number and strength of hurricanes.
Hurricanes, after wreaking havoc in the Caribbean, will often loop up the east coast of North America, then across the Atlantic as areas of low pressure, to affect European weather.
But a more insidious affect is how an El Niño directly affects the Jet Stream. The Jet Stream circumnavigates the polar region and it affects our weather when it breaks down, or it loops south.
In short, this is how an El Niño in the past has affected Europe, and by extension, how we may be affected this autumn, winter and into next summer:
Winters are:
Less cold
Wetter, with more intense rainfall
Fewer cold spells
Less rain than usual in southern Europe
Spring/Summer 2027:
Heat or extreme heat
Less precipitation that usual
Increased Jet Stream disruption
Greater chance of heat waves
We are watching climate breakdown in real time…
There may be some rain towards the end of next week, so my plans this week and into next are to do some jobs in the courtyard, which need fine weather.
One of those is to run timber through my thicknesser, because I need to build a couple of windows. To do that I need some PSE or planed, straight edge wood.
The Makita thicknesser I have is a brilliant little machine, however in enclosed spaces, the amount of dust and wood shavings it produces is considerable. So naturally I like to do the work out in the open air.
While I have the Workmate out, to hold the thicknesser, I also want to cut some dry boards I was given earlier in the year. These I will use as starter firewood for the stove this winter.
The boards have been outside all summer because they are 4 metres long and I now need to reduce them to 30cm, while they are still dry.
As with everything “weather” related, there is no certainty that we will see rain this week. The forecast is for thunderstorms, and they often miss the island completely.
However, using Murphy’s Third Law of Problems – if things can go wrong, they will – if I cut and store the wood, there will be no rain, but if I leave it outside, the wood will get wet!
Sometimes, you just cannot win…
Irrigation continues, just as the heat continues. In the citrus orchard, my orange, lemon and mandarin trees look ever sicker, but with three exceptions.
One Mandarin, which replaced a very old Mandarin tree, is actually green and is putting out new, green shoots. There are two others which also remain green.
I suspect that the roots of these trees have found their way into some underground moisture. It is the only explanation I can think of, for why they appear to be surviving when everything else is dying…
This week the leaves on my Virginia Creeper, Parthenocissus, have started to take on their rich, red autumnal colours. It is a little early, but a sure sign that Autumn is just around the corner.
My Hibiscus has been in flower this week. Despite being irrigated, it can only manage to put one flower out at a time. It does not enjoy the climate here, despite being a tropical plant.
Your weekly dose of cats
The felines hate the heat as much as I do, trying to find somewhere cool to sleep.
The workshop is one area which is relatively cool, so I often find one of the felines asleep under the workbench, next to the cool inside stone wall.
I do have to be careful though, to make sure that I don’t lock one inside when I close up for the night.
Živa, which means Quicksilver in Croatian, because of her colour and speed of movement, has been especially helpful this week, supervising me to make sure no corner was missed when I was tidying up.
Killed with kindness
At Easter, which now seems an eternity ago, I bought a lovely Lavender plant, which I found for sale in my local garden centre.
It flowered well until the heat of summer hit at the end of July.
As the plant began to wilt, I increased its water. It is in a large pot, so I just added it to my watering can schedule.
Over the last six weeks, it had looked more and more sickly until I realised this week that it has died.
It was at that point that I looked up its “care and maintenance” plan online.
That was the point when I discovered I have been treating it badly and I have killed it with kindness, by over watering!
My first mistake was putting it in a pot with too rich a soil. The plant apparently thrives in stony, high pH, calcareous soil.
Instead of using premium potting compost, I should have just dumped some of my garden soil into the pot. My garden is exactly the conditions it craves.
Secondly, using a rich potting compost, as I increased the water, so it became waterlogged. This is what has killed the plant.
What I also noticed was that there are a large number of seed heads, where all the flowers were.
Referring to my online resource, the seeds need some cold stratification in the fridge, to help them break dormancy and then you plant them.
So this week you could find me on my knees, carefully cutting seed heads off the plant and saving the seeds.
Next time I go to the supermarket, I’ll get some ziplock bags and will try putting some seeds into my fridge.
It would be nice to have some plants for next year, but this time, I know what soil I need to use…
Am I being stupid?
As well as the seeds from the Lavandula stoechas, I have also been saving other seeds this week.
However, the more I think about the practice, the more I wonder if I am being completely stupid?
Everywhere I look, trees and plants are dying because of the lack of rainfall. I have also made the decision that at the moment I will not plant any winter vegetables, because there is no moisture in the soil.
So if I am not planting, why on earth am I saving seeds? Well one half of my brain says it is the sensible thing to do.
Two other plants which came home with me from the garden centre were Kangaroo Paws, Anigozanthos .
The plants seem very happy in their pots, but the flower spikes have died back. When I looked at one of the flowers, in the bulbous base of each flower tube there are small, hard, black seeds.
They are apparently easy to grow from seeds, so I also put all the dry flowers in separate envelopes, at the same time.
The Kangaroo Paws seem to have enjoyed their summer, but then coming originally from Australia, they are used to heat.
To break seed dormancy, the seeds need to be soaked in hot water for a few hours, so as I say, they do like it hot.
But I do come back to the central tenet of this conversation, should I really be saving seeds?
I’m a good Dictator!
My handwriting is not especially good, even with a nice Sheaffer fountain pen (21st Birthday present) my writing appeared to have been done by an inebriated spider, or by a doctor… So I have always, where possible, used dictating machines for statements and reports.
Later as a traffic division supervisor, I carried a small battery powered analogue dictating machine everywhere. I would park somewhere prominent, often in a Range Rover, just to be seen by the motoring public, and I would dictate away.
The typing pool supervisor once told me that I was a “Good dictator”. I think it was meant as a compliment?
Later still I would record meeting because it made producing Minutes so much easier. Now I have a small Sony digital recorder, which I use for recording the natural world around my home, and for making notes about projects I am working on.
This week I was looking for a rebater drill bit in my workshop. I have several, of different sizes, but I couldn’t find them.
This makes it sound as though my workshop is untidy. It isn’t untidy, but perhaps could be tidier. I have a series of plastic IKEA SAMLA “home organisation” boxes with lids.
They are all on shelving and I labelled them, so I can see what is in each box, even though they are made of clear plastic.
I don’t loose things, it is just that I don’t always know where something is. A technical distinction there…
I have a filing system of sorts, where the boxes I use most, for example “screwdrivers” is closest to my work area. However I realised that I have no list of the boxes’ contents and only a vague idea of which shelf some are on.
As the temperature rose on yet another scorching hot day, I used my Sony dictator to record the boxes location and the contents. Then it was up to the study to create a list in Microsoft Word, which can be alphabetised and printed. I also found the rebater bits, in a box marked “Woodworking tools”.
As Book of Isaish says, “there is no rest for the wicked”.
Sometimes, you just have to know where to look! NCG
PS. Živa has just come in and say’s “Hi”…. Those who know, know 😸 .