The little blighters!
This week: Multitasking Tuesday; Wheel cleaning in progress; The little blighters!;
Here we are again on Saturday afternoon, at the end of week 39 of 2025.
So that means there are just 12 weeks until the last week of the year. A horrible thought! So much to do and so little time…
The end of September is when the next quarterly edition of the police history magazine I edit is published, so the start of the week was all about proof reading and getting ready for publication.
That happened on Friday night. However I had a lot of additional work because my Monograph on the police stations, pillars, boxes of Plymouth was also going to be published at the same time.
The PDF runs to 120 pages and as well as the final proof reading, I was sent a previously unseen photo which I needed to slip into the book. If anyone is interested, the Monograph can be downloaded using this link.
I am already working on the next one!
We had a little bit of rain, just 2mm on Wednesday. However this was nothing like the quantity received at the eastern end of the island.
In Sućuraj and on the nearby mainland, weather stations recorded between 70 mm and 130 mm as two thunderstorms passed in quick succession.
Every drop of rain is good, however the ground is so dry that I am still irrigating my newly planted vegetables.
The days are definately cooler as we pass the northern Autumn Equinox, however there is still no sign of an sustained rainfall coming.
Monday morning was clear and I watched the sun rise over the hills to the east. It rises later, sets earlier and the nights are rapidly lengthening.
This dearth of rainfall means that next week I will be back to a full irrigation routine, just to keep things alive. The citrus once again have all their leaves curled up due to water stress.
Multitasking Tuesday
I am always looking ahead at the weather. Summer is no problem because most days are hot, or very hot. It is light early and gets dark late, so I plan work around the cool hours of the day.
This time of year, when the ground is still very dry, but rain comes and goes, means I look ahead and do jobs which need dry conditions ahead of the rain fronts arriving.
So when I saw that Wednesday was forecast to be stormy with heavy rain and thunder, I knew I needed to cut firewood. The wood has been drying since the spring.
These are small branches, up to the thickness of your wrist.
They are “weed trees” that I cut down earlier in the year, species like the Nettle tree, Celtis australis, which self seed everywhere, grow quickly and don’t even look pretty!
I spent time on Monday pulling the branches out of the pile and stacking them neatly ready for cutting. I removed the small branches, with a diameter of less than three centimetres, because they will go through the mulching machine.
Anything larger than that size will not fit.
I used a table saw with an old blade to cut up to 12cm branches. Larger than that are really logs and needs a chain saw.
I realised in the past that whilst chain saw’s are very useful, even small ones are a bit of “overkill” on branches and are too small.
So a portable table saw is the ideal tool.
Plus chain saws need regular sharpening whereas the old “ripsaw” blade easily slices through the branches and doesn’t seem to get damaged.
With the branches piled ready, on Tuesday afternoon I had everything set up ready.
By 5pm I had a nice pile of cut dry timber and just after 6, all the timber was stacked ready for burning, and all the tools had been put away.
There was just time to plant onion sets in rows I prepared on Sunday, before sunset.
All I had to do then was sit back and wait for the rain on Wednesday… Which when it came was not as intensive as the forecast had suggested.
Wheel cleaning in progress
As winter is approaching, I decided I would do something about changing the tyres on a set of my car’s wheels.
Although we don’t get much cold weather, in winter icy patches on roads are possible. especially on the Stari Grad Plain, which is a “cold sink“.
From home I can often see see the result of a temperature inversion on the plain in winter. That said I don’t take the car out when the weather is bad!
There is a legal requirement throughout the whole of Croatia, for all vehicles to have winter tyres, between the 15th November and 15th April.
Parts of the country are mountainous and whilst the islands in the south are mostly completely frost and snow free. Once you get in the north of the country, road verges are marked with snow poles.
In the mountainous areas and the high plains, quite significant snowfall is normal.
So the requirement is for the whole of the country.
Because of this, cars, especially the older vehicles, usually have two sets of wheels. One has summer tyres and the other, a set of winter tyres.
Winter tyres should not be used in hot summers because the rubber compounds are softer, so tyres wear faster in high heat.
All year tyres, coded 4S or “All Season” can be fitted and used all year round. This is what I am going to get to replace the worn tyres on the second set of wheels.
The alloy rims have never had a good clean, so I bought some specialist cleaner and while the sun was shining this week, I gave them a good service.
Two of the tyres were down to the wear bars, which is why I changed them over.
After cleaning, I left them out in the sun to dry, then put them in the back of my car so I can take them next week to be changed.
The little blighters!
Early in the week I saw that some of the new leaves on my Brassicas in the eastern orchard, had been eaten. I have seen a lot of snails and I presumed that they were the culprets.
On Friday morning, while I was watering the plants I found the culprets: caterpillars. Lots and lots of green and black caterpillars.
More leaves had been stripped to the stems and there were caterpillars on several of my plants.
I recognised them immediately. They are the offspring of Large Cabbage White butterflies, Pieris brassicae.
They are a Mediterranean native which has spread around the world. The butterflies are easily recognisable because of their size. They also have black spots and a dark leading edge on their forewings.
They seemed to favour the newly planted Broccoli and a few of the Cauliflowers. The Brussel Sprouts do not seem to have been touched (yet).
I removed all the leaves I could see with caterpillars on them. I do not spray insecticides anywhere, so hand removal is the only option.
54 mouths on a single leaf will quickly remove every bit of greenery.
These butterflies fly almost continuously throughout the year, with three broods in a season. Here in the southern Adriatic where winters a mild, they hibernate when it is cold, coming out to feed on warm winter days.
I have to admit that when I planted all the Brassica plants, I had not really thought of these pests. Not that I could do much about them even if I had!
This is the first year that I have extensively planted Brassicas and I was looking forward to harve sting some young tender leaves, to use in stir fry’s. It seems that, certainly at the moment, I am going to have to share the leaves. NCG