The place where humans fear to tread!
This week: Where humans fear to tread!; Doing other jobs; The weather is decidedly chilly!; The seasons are a mess;
The wood stove has been lit for over a week now and as I write this at tea time on Saturday, I have three felines around it. One in a box, one lying in front as close as possible without getting his whiskers singed and a this on a chair. But then it is cold outside!
After lighting the fire one afternoon, I looked at the outside flue fan and saw the smoke descending as it came out of the flue.
The fan wasn’t running at the time, but this is why I have an extractor fan. This is the constant Katabatic flow of cold air down from the karst plateau in the centre of the island
Without the fan, I would have smoke in the dining room every time I open the door of the wood stove to add more fuel.
Last week it was the final super moon of the year.
A “super moon” is when the full moon coincides with the moon being at its closest point to earth in its orbit. The moon appears 10% larger than a normal full moon.
I’ve spent a lot of time this week on the computer.
The first job was to sort out the problem with the website. Once again this was about the security certificate. I had updated the certificate and it appeared to work, but then last Saturday, I saw it was not working.
Once again because the server hosts of the blog only have technical support between 9 and 5, Monday to Friday, there was nothing I could do.
I’m going to change next summer when my contract with them expires! I’m fed up of not having tec support when you need it most – at weekends.
Friday was a fowl day with wind, heavy rain and cold weather. The wood stove had stayed in overnight and I kept it going all day.
I spent the day trying to get to grips with the specialist software I have for scanning colour slides and negative strips.
Each scan of a slide takes five minutes (for a high resolution image), but try as I might, I could only get the software to save a single image instead of the four slides the scanner takes.
Eventually I emailed the software writer who replied almost immediately, saying he couldn’t reproduce the problem and asking me to do some specific tests. I’ll may be do them tomorrow so he has them for Monday morning…
Where humans fear to tread!
Last week I was in the place that every home has, but few people dare to tread!
Confused? I’m talking about the cupboard under the kitchen sink.
You know the place, where everything goes that doesn’t have another place to live.
Under my sink the cupboard is CFFTB – chock full fit to burst. But not for the reason you might think.
The water here on the island, all drinking water, comes in an undersea pipeline from the mainland. It is also as hard as nails.
Our tap water is completely drinkable. However the levels of dissolved minerals, especially calcium, is high. This is the problem I have with my solar water tank. When it boils and the safety valve lifts, the evaporating water quickly evaporates and leaves behind limescale.
The limescale also coats sinks, taps and showers, in fact everything it touches.
Personally I drink tap water. To me it doesn’t have any taste, however I know folk who complain loudly about the taste and smell.
This does mean that spring water is prominently for sale in supermarkets.
I bought a 7 stage filtration system and it takes up most of the space under the sink.
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed he flow rate from the filtered water outlet on the kitchen sink, had slowed.
I emptied the washing up liquid, windowlene, dishwasher tablets, dusters and leathers out onto the floor, then disconnected the filtration system.
It took a while and I needed a mallet to open some of the filter containers.
With water all over the place, I changed the filters and reconnected the flow lines.
Turning the water back on, I immediately had water spraying around inside the cupboard. I turned the water off again and tightened the leaking joints. With the water back on, Everything seemed OK.
Doing other jobs
I shut the door, but didn’t put the stuff back inside, in case I needed to remove the system again.
The flow rate improved markedly. That is until after about 8 seconds, when the flow almost stopped when the pump cuts in.
There is a five litre tank which holds filtered water so that after the first few glasses have emerged from the filters, the pump continues the flow, but using the water in the storage tank.
I’m fairly certain that the problem is with the 12v electric pump, so I’m going to have to pull the whole system out to see if the pump has any user serviceable parts.
I have no plans of how the system works, so I contacted the makers and the company who I bought it from
But surprise, surprise: neither of them have replied to me. Looks like another job for this week.
The weather is decidedly chilly!
Like much of Europe, we are in the middle of a cold snap. Cold is of course relative and I mean cold for Dol.
The cause is high barometric pressure over the North Atlantic and an intense low pressure system over finland.
This is drawing cold Arctic air down the gap between the two systems, bringing snow and cold across the UK, France and the Alps.
The air is still cold when it reaches the Adriatic, not as cold as further north, but still below the average for November.
I started this week to put the winter protection on my Citrus trees. I learned from experience in 2017, that when cold combines with a strong Bura wind from the north, most citrus are adversley affected.
When I started checking the hoops which support the protective netting, I saw I needed to replace some of the wire.
In an ideal world, the hoops would be welded to the uprights. However, I don’t have a welding set, so have used plastic coated wire to keep everything in place. Of course steel wire corrodes and fails.
The sun is approaching the winter solar minimum. Dol is almost exactly on solar time in the winter. So at 12:00, the sun is at it’s highest point in the sky.
That said, almost the whole orchard is in the shade because of the trees on the hill behind my home.
It takes me around 45 minutes to fit each piece of netting to the frames around the trees.
There are 15 citrus trees in the orchard, so there is a lot of work involved.
Each length of netting is specific to a tree and has a number on the outside to indicate which goes where.
First I spread a fork load of compost around the base of each tree, for the winter rains to wash in. I’ve found that some of the netting is starting to fall apart. It’s made of plastic and after six winters, the material is perishing.
The material is good quality though. Evidenced by how much my felines like to curl up inside the material to keep warm, even when the sun doesn’t reach the orchard floor.
They all like “helping”, although a feline clawing its way up the sidewalls to get to a “hammock” may also be speeding the breakdown of the material.
I have tried and failed to teach them how to tie reef knots, which I use to hang the material, but they seem understand exactly how to untie them.
Citrus have blossom, small fruit and ripe fruit on the plant at the same time.
I have a good crop of oranges and lemons, but no mandarins or grapefruit and just a couple of clementine’s.
There is still a lot of work to do this next week, but it should be warmer.
The seasons are a mess
I came across this photograph that I took on the 28th October 2023 from my terrace.
When I took the same photograph this week, there is a noticable difference in leaf cover, with Autumn being a full month later than last year.
Whether is is because of more rain or a cooler autumn that has kep the leaves longer, I do not know.
In the garden I still have a lot of colour. My Alstromeria is especially colourful in the low winter sunshine.
I have several Salvias, including this red variety, which remain in flower, even at the end of November.
On the lane where I live there is a beautiful, old Linden tree, which at this time of year always looks fantastic in the low sunshine.
As the week ends, please spare a thought for my felines, who are struggling to find places to doze in the limited sunshine my side of Dol receives in winter! NCG
