The more I see…

This week: This week’s project – the roof; When is a screw not a screw?; After deconstruction comes reconstruction; Insectivorous;

This week has been baking! I have recorded the hottest temperature of the summer, at 39.2°C. On the south side of the island at Zavala, it was over 40°C.

One morning I was working on dismantling the old roof, laboriously unscrewing the various screws which held the framework together, and thinking it was a little hot. I looked at the thermometer and was surprised it was reading 35.5°C, but with a relative humidity of only 28%, so it didn’t feel that warm.

No wonder I was thirsty and drinking a lot of water!

I have also been baking, in this case some Fig, Almond and Walnut flans, made with honey, kefir, and free range eggs from across the lane.

Picking grapes has been another job. This year I have my best crop ever.

With the heat and lack of rain it is counter intuitive that I have the most grapes and the largest grapes I have ever harvested. These will become grape juice, I don’t have enough for wine making.

I have also been harvesting Scotch Bonnet peppers this week. My bush has been extremely productive. These are small Habanero chili peppers with the shape of a Scottish Tam o’ shanter, hence the name.

They are also EXTREMELY hot, with a Scoville scale of between 350,000 and half a million. So just a little too hot to eat raw.

In fact it is recommended that you wear gloves when you are preparing them or burn your fingers! One good thing is that you do not need many bushes in the garden.

Besides the fiery heat, they have a sweet, smokey flavour. I am preserving them in apple cider vinegar, with red onion and garlic, to be used to “warm” winter soups.

Carefully picking them did remind me of Peter Piper and his Peck of Pickles Peppers alliterative rhyme.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

I do feel for Calvin and his mathematical tribulations. I have the vaguest memory of learning about Pecks and Bushels in Primary school, before the UK decided to almost go Metric!

Just for information, an Imperial Peck is 9 litres and no, I don’t have anywhere near that amount in my pantry…

Another job has been to move some bananas out of the Polytunnel and into the orchard. They are simply too tall a variety to be grown inside.

That is unless you have a hot house the same size as the ones the Royal Botanic Gardens have a Kew !

This week’s project – the roof

After a nice breakfast with friends in Stari Grad on Sunday morning, it was back home to continue the removal of the walkway roof.

I worked until 12:00 and removed all the polycarbonate sheeting. There was a small interruption when I discovered that some hornets had built a nest in a corner, out of immediate sight.

These are gardeners friends because they bring small leaf eating larvae to feed their young, so I carefully relocated the nest, still attached the the polycarbonate. There were only two egg cells, all the rest had hatched.

Next on the removal list was the wooden support structure.

When I built it, I remember using some cross head screws, because I had them and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Removing them is not as easy as with my preferred “SPAX” T-Star screws. By the time it was too hot do do any more, I had most screws undone, around ⅓ of the wood removed and the rest ready to just lift down.

While I was working, I was thinking about a plan so after lunch I started with a pen and paper.

It may well be one of my failings, or perhaps because my learning style is visual-spatial, but I find my best ideas come from drafting something on paper.

From my “training” role, I know that visual-spatial people think in pictures and often see the ‘big picture’, rather than detailed, sequential steps.

So drawing what I have in mind helps me to plan, what I need to do, and in what order. This is of course for when there are no instruction manuals!

I realised I need to use a long level to make sure I have the right fall between the two sides of th walkway and only then can I design the “bits” which fit between.

The minimum fall to make sure that rain runs quickly away is for the down hill end to be 15 cm, or more if possible, lower than the uphill end.

That is easy to measure.

Like everything in my home, the walkway is not square. So by the wall it is 2 meters in length, but at the patio end it is 2.7 meters in length. Nothing is easy, simple or straightforward in my Dol house.

When is a screw not a screw?

When it is rusty and bent out of shape!

If ones looks at the SPAX website, there are a simply unbelievable number of different screw threads for different purposes.

The chance of getting any of them here is in a minus quantity, so I will not even make an attempt.

Fortunately though, I have a very large number of different T-Star screws in stock.

They are a standard all-purpose thread, but in lengths from 25mm to 150mm and in diameter from 3 mm to 5 mm. Mostly they are stainless steel, so I will just use what I have and look longingly at the options available on the SPAX website .

Perhaps someday, in the far distant future, Croatia will catch up. Well you can dream….

In the meantime I have mounted a new angle bracket to the wall, to take a roof support beam and have started fixing the two outside edge support beams.

On Monday I will be at Volat in Stari Grad to get new four metre 8 x 5 lengths of timber. I will have everything in place by then, so I can quickly mount the beams and then start re-roofing.

With thunderstorms forecast for Thursday and Friday next week, I have a time and weather imperative to get on and finish the roof!

After deconstruction comes reconstruction

As the temperature cooled (slightly) on Wednesday afternoon, I started the process of reconstruction.

As I mentioned last week, I am not working from a fully developed plan because of the nature of the roof shape, an “Irregular quadrilateral”.

After moving the grape vine out of the way, I started by fixing the first cross piece to an upright.

I am using pieces of removed wood which have not warped or bowed wherever I can. A lot of the timber I have removed will be re-usable in this and other projects.

When I looked at my previous work, I was surprised how well the joints I made have stood up. I did do it right first time, even though some parts have failed.

It always feels good when I start to build or rebuild something.

As so often happens with my work, once I cleared some grape vines to get access to the wood work, I discovered that a fibreglass roof which was here when I came is breaking up. I have never seen fibreglass become brittle like this has and especially in the way that it has.

The breakup is just along the raised ridges of the roofing sheet. The valleys are intact, which is why I hadn’t noticed water coming through

Once again, I have been developing engineering solutions for this, because I really do not want to pay hundreds of €uros for a roof which will be replaced once I get my building permission.

Insectivorous

I am careful with most insects (mosquitoes and aphids apart). They have a place in the order of things and generally don’t do any or much harm.

Last year my Pistachio trees were ravaged by caterpillars from the Giant Peacock moth, Saturnia pyri.

I was checking this week and there is no sign of any eggs having been laid and no damage.

It was while I was examining the leaves that I realised that I have not seen a single Preying Mantis this year.

Often in the spring I see tiny newly hatched first and second instars. At this point in the year, I would have expected to have seen some adults. There are none and I don’t know why. Cone Headed grasshoppers are also absent this year.

The more I observe in the natural world around my home, the less I understand!

Over the winter I found some Mantis egg sacks, which when I found them I replaced. So I know that last year the females had laid eggs.

When I was working on the new roof supports, I was being “buzzed” by Thread Waisted Wasps and I realised that a female was reusing last years construction to lay a new brood.

These large, noisy and docile insects construct a complex, multi cell “nest” using damp soil.

They are another gardeners friend because once the nest has been constructed, they anaesthetise a caterpillar and bring it to the nest, placing it in a cell with an egg, before they seal the cell with mud.

Just a single wasp created this huge and heavy mud construction.

When the egg hatches next spring, they have their first meal ready and waiting for them.

I seem to have at least three species. One in particular constantly “flashes” white underwings when it is stationary, presumably a defence mechanism. Another is yellow, probably Sceliphron_ spirifex and the third is red.

They are all highly adept builders, using mud creating palm size constructions where they lay their eggs, pre-provisioned with food. They have their own genus, Sphecidae,

As always, in my gardens and orchards, it is “live and let live” NCG