Transplanting Sunday, 24-May-26 20:19:39 CEST

Sunday, 31-May-26 21:38:34 CEST

Canvas

This week, we got the canvas installed, and it worked marvelously.

Monday 25 May

It is Monday morning, and we have a compulsory day off. Last week, I wasn't very good at blogging. That’s not good. I need to do something about that. I notice that stories not written down are forgotten. I am making tea for DW and me.

The garden is calling for us. The birds singing and the seedlings, but what did I do? Blogging on last week's blog in bed with a cup of tea.

In the morning, Pawel called me, and we talked through the project. Then we accepted the offer. The activities will start in about three weeks! It sounds like Pawel was enthusiastic about the project. We are wondering if it is a bigger project for his company.

Today it was hot again, 27°C. We had a slow morning, and then we went to the PILs. They were in a good mood. Just like last time, I showed MIL a couple of tricks that AI can do. I took a picture of their living room and asked AI to transform the floor into a mirror. It did it very well.

I took a photo of a lovely MIL bag, then I let AI dress me in its fabric. I think she has something to talk about with the other people in the house.

When we came home, the sheep were hungry. There is plenty of grass to eat near the road, but they don't dare to go there. Instead, the escaped and munched on DS wheat from Utrecht, as I mentioned on 2 May.

This was not good. This wheat project was something DS and DW worked on. DS has not been very busy with gardening, and this is his very first attempt at sowing anything. As such, it feels emotionally devastating that the wheat has been eaten. Perhaps I am more taken by it than DS. We will see how it goes.

Tuesday 26 May

Good morning. This morning I heard Merida, our cat, cough at our atelier. I suppose cats do that sometimes. Anyway, I got it cleaned up, and I was happy it was not an epileptic seizure. When it was time to give her medication, she refused to get it from my left hand.

I told this story to DW, and I did not get the response I had expected. I thought she would think it was funny just like me, but she said Oh gross, did you wash your hands before making breakfast?

You really need a lot of stuff before you can bike to work on a Tuesday morning at the end of May. Extra shirts and an extra sweater. It will probably be 19°C in the office, so I might need gloves as well. Some colleagues are overheated just by looking out of the window. The rest of us are overheated when it’s warm.

Along the road where I originally wanted to create a flower garden, I found flowering alliums. I planted these on 17 October 2021. I later gave up on that garden.

Here are also the Morning Star flowers, also called Tragopogon porrifolius, that we unpacked on 9 May 2021.

This morning, DW discovered that two of her Japanese indigo plants had been bitten off by a snail. The zucchinis are doing fine. The first leaves of some of the runner beans have tiny perforations. I took a closer look at them and picked tiny slugs off these plants.

We found a new species of slug in the garden. Initially, we only had orange slugs. Seldom do we find a slug with a house. Then, last year, we discovered slugs with a sort of black-panther camouflage pattern. So this year, I discovered pointy, greyish slugs. They got some flap near their head. They are quicker than all the rest of the slugs. I made a joke to DW that I am happy they aren't screaming when we are killing them, but she finds that joke disgusting. I think it’s funny.

There were many at the office today. Ed celebrated his birthday today. He brought cakes. All the windows were open, and the AC was turned on, and I made good use of my sweater, but my hands were cold. I did not sit on my knees looking for any answers. That’s not completely true. I helped Rita with something at one moment, and then I was sitting on my knees looking for the answers. Her hair is getting long; she will become the Rapunzel of the office.

Now I’m biking home, it is warm but not unbearably warm, so that's good. I’ve got the special mission of picking up a package on the way. It is the canvas we ordered this weekend. Now we will see when we can put it up and how.

After dinner, I went straight ahead and mounted the canvas. I tried various methods to attach the canvas to the scaffold, but I concluded that the method I used for the rain-roof also works very well here. The difference is that I use steel wires for the rain roof, and here I use polyester rope. I got the canvas mostly mounted before it got too dark. It was sufficient for the night.

Wednesday 27 May

This morning, I woke up to find it wasn't as hot as I'd expected, and I was slightly disappointed since I wanted to see how it was with a canvas. It would be sunny, so we would see if our thoughts on the shadow were correct.

Merida was hungry in the morning. She let me know by putting a paw on my foot. We had a low-intensity standoff on this matter. She has a paw on my foot, and I have a finger on her rear paw.

In three weeks, we will have people working on the driveway. We need to remove the car and the small trailer. Not only that, but we got a pile of building fence elements, wheelbarrows, and the temporary lawnmower ramp. We considered whether it would be possible to keep the car and the small trailer at the neighbors so we would need to talk to them. I suggested we invite them for coffee and cake. DW had to think about that.

In the late afternoon, the canvas is not working because the light comes in at too shallow an angle, but during the day, when the sun is high in the sky, the canvas does a great job of creating shade in the garden and in the house.

Before DW had a chance to finish her thinking on inviting the neighbors, they had invited us to come to them. That worked out nicely for DW. We talked about all sorts of small things, and when we told them about the driveway project, they offered to use their driveway during construction.

Thursday 28 May

It is a beautiful morning with blue sky and 17°C, and I am biking to work.

The canvas project has been really successful so far. DW got the idea, and it was a brilliant idea. Then she did the research on what to buy, bought it, and I built the scaffold. Less than a week later, we have a canvas in the garden that provides shade. Now the question is how strong it is, whether it will survive a storm, and how durable it is.

I’m listening to a podcast from Ezra Klein with the title Donald Trump’s core delusion. Ezra and Yuval Noah Harari discuss a wide range of topics. Can conflict only be solved by being stronger? At first, I thought the discussion was centered on Israel, and in a way it is, but they speak in general terms, which makes it interesting to me as well. They explain the three core values of the French Revolution. I mean, that is special. When was the last time you heard someone explain the French Revolution in a simple, understandable way?.

There are many complex problems in the world that we need to solve together, and humanity needs a common understanding of one another. It will be the only way the human species can survive. This is a very long podcast, so I’m not listening to it all in one go, but I will listen to it all.

In the French Revolution, Fraternité means brotherhood, and it relates to culture. That is the glue that should hold the nation together. If that is so, then culture might have a special position, and it appears it has in France. In many other countries, culture is "nonsense," not allowed to cost anything, yet what holds us together?

It was a special day at work. We began the day with all windows open. It was lovely. Then someone walks to the AC control unit and turns it on without saying anything. So now we are cooling the room and the surroundings. So after an hour, I started closing the windows and told all my colleagues that there are two ways to do it: either no AC with open windows, or closed windows with AC. Not a single person said you are completely right, Jens. That was a little disappointing, but it sparked a related yet entirely different discussion about how the room has different temperatures in various places and if it was possible to switch around so that warm people get the colder spots and vice versa. It is not that easy to get these things right, but I appreciate that we are trying.

Now I am biking home. I stopped at a trailer ramp for getting boats in and out of the canal. Here I took pictures of two Swans. It was one of those moments when I wished I had my tele lens camera with me, but I switched to 50 megabyte image quality and zoomed in a bit, and we will see if that produces an acceptable image.

This evening I transplanted four Hokus cucumbers. The Hokus has been slow to bring up from seeds. Now I am curious how they will do when transplanted into the garden. They do like warm soil, and I am guessing they will like it now. There are more Hokus cucumbers in the barn, and when they are ready, I will transplant them as well.

Friday 29 May

This was the last Friday I had off in a long series of Fridays. From here on, I will do regular work on Fridays. It has been useful for the barn project to have an extra day off each week.

Today it was overcast but really warm. It was about 30 degrees Celsius. In the morning, I transplanted butternut squash to the bed A5 on the west side. For these plants, I built new slug fortresses from PVC pipe. These fortresses are absolutely vital for the early growth of the plants. On the east side of A5, we got the runner beans. They are doing fine. They started climbing the threads that DW had mounted on the scaffold.

I transplanted the mangold plants to F4. These plants look squirrely and fragile.

Eatable flowers were transplanted to H2. Here we already had a flower of indian cress. I like the combination of usefulness and beauty. A couple of years ago, I tried to start a flower garden, but it was a little too much effort for the result.

We got an Alcea Rosea in the zucchini bed, and I have great hopes it will be grand.

I ran an experiment to make a photo that looked really old. You can do anything with photos, so why not experiment?

As the temperature rose, it became more overcast. At some point, being outside was not fun. The new canvas is holding a lot of heat outside the house; it was fantastic. You would think it would not matter when it is overcast, but it worked out really well today. It stayed around 24 degrees Celsius inside while it was 30 degrees Celsius outside.

In the afternoon, I cleared out the last items from the atelier and started mounting the metal corners on the windows and doors.

It rained and thundered in the afternoon. It was good to have an indoor activity. It did not feel like the grand finale of my Fridays off, but I was glad I had worked in the garden and also in the atelier. Progress is key! After the rain, the temperature had dropped to 24 degrees Celsius.

In the evening, we had a lot to do with the slugs. They were trying to get to our plants. Our ongoing slug war holds the population back. This year, we had a less dry autumn, and under those conditions, the slugs are thriving.

Saturday 30 May

Today it was not as hot as yesterday. Both DW and I wanted to do projects in the garden. There are more chilies to transplant. The berry bushes need their tops pruned in case they are infested with lice. I built a slug fortress for the carrot seedlings. It is made from leftover PVC vinyl flooring from the first floor of our house. First, I built a box, then I taped two strips of aluminum foil and connected them to a 9-volt battery. Now, when the slugs want to enter the box, they need to cross from one stripe to the other, closing the circuit, which is really uncomfortable for them. I have tried this before and have seen the slugs back off after a couple of attempts.

The reason I don't use the copper tape for this is that it would be rather expensive. Alu tape is cheaper. Also, copper tape works for some slugs. The die-hard slugs are not impressed by copper. Electric fencing, though, works for all slugs.

Here is the slug fortress with the carrots in place. I put copper tape around the water hose right outside the fortress (after I took the photo).

We went to the garden and animal shop to buy more pots for the chili pepper. We will try to keep them in pots this season, although we planned to put them in beds. Perhaps we can get the plants to survive in the barn over the winter. It is an experiment.

Then we went to the second-hand shop. There I found portrait photo equipment. That was interesting. The clothing department had a headless mannequin with a hat on top, and I thought that looked really funny.

How would it look with a mannequin that looked like that? I think that is funny!

Sunday 31 May

We had a slow morning, with time for tea in bed, blogging, and contemplating the week. I was much better at blogging this week. It fluctuates.

I cut a couple more building fence parts to create a new area for the sheep on the northeast side of the property. This includes DS's tiny house and the area north of the barn between the barn and the house. For this section, I could use the gate I made last week. Not only that, I opened up the southwest field for the sheep to graze. This area will keep the sheep busy for at least a week.

Then it was time to go to Amsterdam. We went to visit DD and her friends. I suggested we invite ourselves to theirs by going to a café. That plan worked out very well. We went to the fruit gardens on the west side of Amsterdam. We brought a present with us: a chili plant in a pot. That was highly appreciated. We all had something to eat and drink, and we chatted about what was going on in our lives. It was nice. After eating, we bought a couple of things from the farm shop.

Then we went home again.

I continued on the sheep-moving action. I moved the previous area on the northwest side of the property outside the dyke. When that was done, I had to clear the cutting bed. For that, I made a ramp for the lawn mower. I need to find a way to do this more easily. It was dry grass, so not much had accumulated in the cutting bed.

I made a photo of the view from the workshop of the barn. It is hard to imagine that in a while it is possible to drive the lawn mower in and out of the barn without a ramp of pallets and old OSB boards.

Hannah wanted to come and get her portrait photo. She managed to hide her feet, so she became like a ball.

I thought it would be nice to put a flower wreath on her head. So here it is.

This concludes this week's blog. I had a great time blogging this week, and I wrote 2826 words. The canvas project was successful.