Just one of 5 reasons

This week: An awful eyesore; Dismantling not demolition; Just one of 5 reasons; Cool winter nights;

Here we are once again on Saturday afternoon! They seem to come around with frightful regularity…

My oldest feline Callie, who is 13½, so the equivalent of 70 human years, has been of colour this week. She has been eating and drinking, which are red flags when felines stop, but has spent a lot of time in the litter tray.

Older cats are known to suffer from Kidney problems, so I suspected it might be urinary issue. On Thursday at 07:45 I was at the Lota Vets in Stari Grad with Callie, and just for good measure Živa as well, because all the felines annual vaccinations are due.

After a thorough examination, Bruno, one of the two Vets, said he wasn’t sure because she had no temperature, but would start her on antibiotics and anti imflamatories. By the time we got home she was MUCH better.

I was back with her on Friday for more of the same injections, but Bruno needed a urine sample. No easy task with a feline… There were 5 days or oral antibiotics to administer too.

Having obtained a sample (don’t ask), I was back at the clinic again on Saturday. This time with Pongo for his annual vaccinations and to deliver said sample.

I received a phone call after lunch to say that there were no signs of kidney stones but she had very low proteen levels, which can indicate early kidney failure, and also a very high infection indicator, suggesting she may have a UTI.

I’ll have to take her back next week after the current antibiotic course when they will do another test and maybe change the antibiotics… She is eating well and seems happy enough now.

Autum is well and truly with us now, as our leaves all change colour. I have this beautiful colourscape oputside my diningroom door.

Elsewhere the yellow Virginia Creeper is at its best.

The Pomegranate trees are turning yellow too.

There is a heavy dew each morning and I caught this spectrum as the sun shone through a dew drops on one of the citrus tree frames.

]In the Top Orchard, the Loquat trees are in full blossom. They are six weeks early.

Bees are busy pollinating and gathering food for their winter survival.

In the same orchard a Forsythia bush has come into flower for the second time this year.

This has never happened before and once again emphasises the enormous climate changes we are experiencing.

Forsythia normally only flowers in the early spring, before the leaves appear. This time there are new leaves and flowers. It is clearly confused about the time of year.

An awful eyesore

Ever since I bought my Dol house, the main entrance has been an eyesore and I hate it.

I wish I could find some pre WWII photographs of what it looked like, although my head tells me it is very unlikely because any that there were would have been destroyed in the fires of 1943.

A theme around here is that almost every building has a date on it. So I know that one Luka Roić built my main buildings in 1890.

However the archaeological evidence is also clear. My Konoba is the third iteration. The current building is built on the foundations of at least two previous buildings.

Then there is an inscription in a wall with the initials KR and the date 1912. This was when the current rain water cistern was constructed. The Cadaster records show that Krunoslav Roić was a son of the builder. I’m not sure who PL was though.

Krunoslav etched his initials into the lime mortar and they are just visible when the light is right. Here I have coloured the image in to make the etching easier to see.

On the 3rd January 1943, my home along with every other building in the village was set on fire by Italian fascist Black Shirts, ‘Camicie Nere’, whose role in occupied territories was partisan suppression. I wrote about the Burning of Dol in Blog 2121.

All my buildings were gutted and in the terrace end, part of the wall of the upper floor collapsed.

There is a new concrete floor, to replace the destroyed wooden floor and it is dated 1943-1944.

This concrete, mixed at a time when there were few resources, is breaking up and the few thin strands of reinforcing are corroding away as rain penetrates the cracks in the floor.

Whether there was a nice arch over the entrance is a moot point. However because arches were a normal feature of buildings here and there being a substantial buttress, I suspect there was once a nice entrance.

The buttress encroaches almost 25cm into the entrance. This means there is less than 3cm clearance on either side of my car.

I need to replace the concrete before it completely breaks up and rebuild the 1912 wall because it has cracked from top to bottom.

Dismantling not demolition

I started on Monday morning using my small breaking hammer to remove the mortar around the small stones so I could lever them out.

There is no cement in these walls, just the traditional lime mortar which is a feature of the old buildings.

Most of the small stones came away without too much difficulty. The big stones were not so easy.

I realised that I needed to support the length of old railway track, which seems to support the 1944 concrete terrace above, with a screw jack.

With that in place, I started removing the ever bigger and heavier stones.

Underneath I used an old car tyre so than when a stone fell, they had a soft landing. This is a dismantling operation, not a demolition. I only broke one stone.

The huge stones were too heavy to lift, so once again my sack barrow came in useful to move them to a storage area.

Next it was clean-up time, but with the rubble out of the way, I realised I needed another screw jack to put under the end of the railway track so I can get the car in and out. That after all, was the idea in the first place!

Once the new jack was in position, I painted it white and applied high visibility tape to make it more visible when I am coming and going, especially at night.

There is much more dismantling to do before rebuilding starts, but I have made a good start!

Just one of 5 reasons

One of the perennial plants which seem to love my soil conditions is the Passiflora caerulea. I let it ramble, rather as I would do with a Rose in the temperate north.

It readily seeds its self and spreads, climbing up and over everything it comes into contact with.

Hanging on using tendrils, it is not invasive like Ivy, so I don’t worry too much. I have let it cover a roof, so it is my own “green roof”.

As the sun drops low in the sky, I realised it had spread over the mosquito cover on one of the Velux windows. I didn’t notice the drop in light levels inside in the summer. However it is very apparent now.

So up on the roof I went to cut back the Passiflora to let more light in.

I immediately saw that some of the wooden frame has gone rotten, but also the mosquito netting was sagging. I knew exactly the reason for this!

The frame is held in place because it fits in a groove around the Velux, so it was easy to lift out and lower to the terrace. This is where I will effect the necessary repairs.

I had not been on the ground for 1 minute before one of the five reasons for the sagging netting had climbed into his hammock.

A few minutes later the netting was sagging even more.

But it is a great place to play and enjoy the early winter sunshine.

Cool winter nights

Suddenly in the last seven days it has started getting cooler. Last bight when the outside temperature was 11°C and it was just 17°C inside, I was thinking I needed to light the wood stove so I could get hot water for central heating.

Just a week ago I was wearing a tee shirt from getting up to going to bed. However as the sun is lower in the sky every day and because of the hills behind my home, I now only have sun from 07:30 to 14:00.

At the beginning of the week I started wearing a light jacket in the afternoon and evening. By today, I am wearing it in the morning too.

Outside in the sunshine it is beautiful. In the shade it is decidedly cool and in the afternoon there is the cool air flowing down from the Karst plateau in the centre of the island.

In a week the average daily temperature has fallen from 17.4°C last week to 14.5°C this week.

We have gone from three degrees above the average last week, to two degrees below this week, which is why I noticed the change.

When I was checking the central heating system, I noticed that the two 12v 24Ah UPS batteries were failing, so I ordered replacements and they arrived this week. I was a little surprised because they have only lasted three years and the machine is turned from March to November.

My central heating water is circulated by a 220v electric water pump. However the problem is our unstable power supply.

If there is a powercut when my wood stove is running, then there is no means of circulating the hot water.

This can lead to the water boiling in the stove boiler and a potential explosion caused by the build up of pressure.

With a UPS, which cuts in when the power fails, the pump keeps working and I can safely reduce the fire in the stove until power is restablished.

I dismantled the UPS, removed the old batteries and replaced them. Then I reinstalled the UPS in its home, near the water pump.

A quick test confirmed it was working as it should. The UPS is on its side so the batteries are vertical – not a good design layout inside!

So now I am ready to light the wood stove, for the first time this winter.

I usually need to light the stove around the 14th of November, so this is just about right. NCG