The last snow of winter?

This week: Woodworking; More cardboard needed;

I was out early on Tuesday morning to visit the shops and builders merchants.

Looking across to the Dinaric Alps on the mainland, some 70 kilometres distant, the top of Svete Jure, the highest point in Dalmatia at 1,762 meters, had a light covering of snow.

I usually report on the first time the peak has snow, but generally by this point in the year, the snow has gone. This is new snow, which I presume fell during the storm at the end of last week.

Svete Jure is in the Biokovo National Park and is a tourist attracting in the summer, because of the views to be had from the top. By Friday it had melted.

That said, we have had a really cold week with the lowest night time temperatures of the winter. It has been colder than early January, which is usually our coldest week of the year.

You can see in this chart from my weather station that we are well below the ten year average.

The reason has been a breakdown of the jet stream over the Arctic leading to low pressure over the North Atlantic and high pressure over Belarus. This has brought frigid Arctic air much further south than usual for this time of year.

So the week has been cold but sunny with clear blue skies. Those clear skies have allowed night-time temperatures to fall to around 0°C.

That said, today the wind has now moved to an easterly, which will bring cloud and rain for the next week.

Around the orchards and olive groves, the wild Anemones, Anemone hortensis are in flower and their deep colours always look stunning in the sunshine.

Meanwhile my Almond trees are in full blossom at the moment. The scent from the flowers wafts across the orchard in the light wind, while honey bees zip from flower to flower gathering nectar and pollinating as they go.

Woodworking

I have spent more time this week doing DiY tasks.

I’m a “hoarder”. I hate to throw things away which may come in useful later.

This means that I have a store full of odds and ends. However those “odds and ends” do come in useful.

I needed a 2 metre long board for the motorcycle platform. Digging into the store I found a 1.75 metre length of staging board which I had used as a temporary door.

I had used this as weatherproofing for the cottage while I was waiting for the double glazing to be delivered.

A little further into the store I found the 25 cm piece which I had cut off, when I was making the temporary door.

The next job was to use wooden dowels to join the two pieces back together. This end is not going to be weight bearing, so dowels and wood glue will suffice.

I used a Wolfcraft cutting jig to accurately bore the holes, then I glued the dowels into place.

Once the wood glue was dry, I fitted the short end, gluing again and clamping everything in place overnight. I like it when I can leave projects outside without fear of damp or rain!

The next job was fixing an electrical junction box to the staging. I need some lights on the platform and have bought the LED lights for the purpose.

Drilling holes for the cables was easy, then I fixed the bakelite 30A junction box. It was as I screwed the junction box to the staging that it broke into three pieces.

I was fixing by hand, not with an electric screwdriver, so this wasn’t over torqueing, it just broke.

Fortunately I have several more in stock, so it was easily replaced it.

Bakelite is a strange material. It was one of the first plastic compounds developed in 1907. More than 120 years later it is still in use, but it can be brittle.

On the other hand, I finished the job. I have more work to do before I connect the electrics up though…

More cardboard needed

On Friday lunchtime I was working in the Top Orchard removing brambles which had spread from next door. The sun was hot and for the first time in 2025, I was comfortable working without a sweater.

This is a neglected area of the orchard and I hadn’t realised how much bramble growth there had been last year. It’s all now gone…

The grass is growing everywhere and the bottom orchard really needs to be mown. Preferably before the grass grows too tall and a strimmer will be needed.

Another job has been protecting my Pistachio and Pecan trees with cardboard weed suppressant.

I will have to get some more thick cardboard though, as I am running out.

After cutting holes for the tree trunks, I fitted the carboard then weighed it down with stones. I was helped throughout by Tigger who seemed to enjoy just sitting in the sunshine and watching…

There are more brambles to be cleared together with my table olives which need pruning.

During February in one previous year, I had just burned the dead bramble stems.

However that also incinerates insect eggs and invertebrates, so now I put everything through the shredder and then use the resulting mulch around plants.

As the weather warms and we get deeper into spring, so my list of outside jobs lengthens… NCG