Wood work

A fairly productive weekend, which is gratifying. On Saturday, I dismantled a few old pallets, and rebuilt them (with an old 6' fence panel) into most of a two-bay compost bin. Not quite finished, but back and sides, and the mechanism at the front for sliding in slats—but no slats prepared. I also finished the top wall of the C-shaped vegetable bed, which I hadn't managed last September before the weather turned. That's quite important: we've got another 6 cubic metres of soil arriving next Friday (to finish the beds, and ready for the next project), and that needs somewhere to go. While I was doing this, Liz got started on the huge pile of prunings and cotoneaster that we've accumulated over the past months.

Then, today, I've started moving the old compost bin's contents into a new bay; I haven't got far, though, as I was also helping with the chipping by disentangling branches and bringing them to the chipper (the extension cable won't quite reach the heap, annoyingly). The wire-mesh 'chippings bin' is now a bit more than twice as full, and the heap is reduced—somewhat. I also managed to (finally) put up the weather station's sensor array, which I've mounted on a six foot post that's been built into a corner of the raised beds. I modified it slightly, to allow the temperature/humidity/transmitter array to be lower than the wind/rain sensors, as I'm more interested in the temperature near the plants. I need to configure the data capturing on the base station, but it will soon start collecting analysable data.

We're starting to put some thought to a possible greenhouse (and shed): I think the available plot is going to be about 3.6m by 6.1m (or 12' by 20'), which opens up the possibility of an 8x20 greenhouse, and a long narrow shed alongside ('behind'). However, that's not going to come cheaply!

The bulbs are starting to come out: there's about three daffs out, and a handful of each of the scilla and puschkinia. I think they'll be properly out and glorious by next weekend, with a little luck.