The Spring has sprung

This week: The Spring has sprung; Wood working;

The sun has mostly shone this week and I have been weeding in the citrus orchard.

There is a particular type of grass that I have which has thick, upright stems but shallow roots. When the soil is moist, it is not too difficult to pull these clumps out by the roots.

In one area my Spanish Bluebells are in full bloom in the sunshine this week. This is my own tiny “Bluebell Wood”.

In the sunshine, they look lovely and slowly they are increasing in number.

The Swallows are back, with flocks swooping and diving above my roof tops. Also in the air above are a pair of Kestrel hawks, Falco tinnunculus.

These are year round raptors here, but this pair are going through the mating rituals and are perching on the very top of the pine trees behind my home.

They then lauch and swoop overhead calling as they tumble over each other in the blue sky.

As they are here every day, I hope they will nest nearby. They nest in trees, rocky crevice’s and old buildings. I hope to see a lot more of them during the year.

This week my Lilac bushes are in flower too. Their heady scent spreads with the wind.

Lilac are part of the Syringa genus and are in the same family as Olives and Oleanders, which is probably why they like growing here.

Sadly their pyramid blooms do not last for much more than a week in spring, but while they are there, they are a magnet for butterflies.

Another insect I have seen a lot of this week are Dragonflies. However with no standing water anywhere near me, I have no idea where they appear from…

The Spring has sprung

I have Bag Worms everywhere I look at the moment.

Bagworm Moths or leaf case moths can be found on every continent and they have a most unusual lifecycle. At the moment they are all over the place around my home. They are climbing walls and doors, and up twigs and shrub stems.

Mostly they go unnoticed because they carry their home with them. It is made of tiny twigs, bits of leaves, grains of sand and other natural materials, all held together with spun silk.

This makes the inside a cosy home for the moth caterpillar. Mine have tiny door flaps at one end and if alarmed, the moth retreats inside in the blink of an eye and slams the flap shut.

There is one of the Bagworm’s which is known as the Log Cabin Moth because of the home it builds. The Indian sub continent Bagworm Clania Eumeta builds small pyramids out of sticks and like all the Bagworms, as the caterpillar grows, it just keeps adding more material to make its home bigger.

The female moths have no wings and never leave their stick home. Once mature, they release a pheromone to attract a male. The males have wings and once pupated into a moth go hunting for a female.

After mating the female’s eggs develop insider her and she leaves the comfy home, looking like a fat, white grub or maggot and falls to the ground.

There she hopes to be eaten by a bird. It is the end for her, but the eggs are impervious to the bird’s digestive system and are broadcast in the droppings.

Thus the life cycle starts again, with the eggs spread to the four winds.

There are places where Bagworms are so numerous that they can strip leaves from young trees. At my home I could probably find a dozen or so if I looked really hard.

But certainly they do not cause me any problems.

Wood working

Another job this week has been cutting and finishing some more wood.

I’m building a storage unit because, well you know, you can never have too much storage space. I just think of Newton’s fifth law, that people always expand to fill the available space!

The initial cutting and treating of the timber went well. I have to say that I do like working outside in the sunshine.

Plus, the warm sun dries varnish and Sadolin quickly.

After partial assembly, everything is looking good.

Then I ran into a problem.

I am using what are called “knockdown” connectors. There are an alloy shaft with a wood screw thread at one end and a catching lug at the other. These go into a “twist-lock” connector and hold everything together.

After fitting the twist-locks, I carefully measured each location multiple times, then drilled the cover board/seat and fitted the screw fitting.

However when I came to mate the two parts together, each screw fitting is about 12 mm out of place.

How I introduced the error, I don’t know. However the good thing is that because there is a big gap, I can easily re-measure, mark and drill new holes.

If I had been only one or two millimeters out, it would have taken a lot more work plugging the incorrect holes and drilling new ones.

For once I am happy with a big inaccuracy, but I would still like to know how I did it? NCG