@GustavinoBevilacqua

In truth, most stuff falls through pretty easily, and a quick stir by hand (think “Wax on/wax off”) sees to the rest. After years of sieving through small riddles, I need to have *some* involvement!

This week's contraption.

I do a LOT of soil sieving - in my work, large garden projects have soil removed/added by the lorry load, but with smaller ones, I'll bag it up and bring it home to be sieved, mixed with organic matter and then re-used elsewhere.

I'm also opening up the large 'compost' bins, which in reality are just aged cold piles of sticks, grass cuttings and chicken poo.

So it was a long overdue project to make a wheelbarrow frame for (much) quicker processing: the frame itself has a fixed one-inch mesh for initial sorting, and there's a removable half-inch mesh for finer grading afterwards.

Put about half a dumpy bag of waste soil through it yesterday, and will do about a cubic metre of compost today, mainly for throwing into the beds.

Should have done this AGES ago.

#Gardening
#Compost
#Chickens
#JoinIn

@Maker_of_Things @Beedazzled @NatureMC @xris

I have four, and just dug a couple of small ones up and put in pots.

In about six weeks' time, my garden will be full of heavenly scent. Come late summer, the freezer will be full of berries.

Public Service Announcement:

If you're followed by Lorraine from sigmoid social, probably either a Bot or a Spammer.

Usual pack drill - immediate personal message, followed by complete silence when queried. Somebody has taken some time to give this one a passably normal bio, though.

That is all.

(Boosts probably helpful, but if you like this kind of thing, and talking to wobots, fill your boots and be happy)

Also: there may be a completely normal human being called Lorraine, who followed 2.5k over the course of today, and who is greeting every single one as a friend. Seems a decent sort.

Usual daily dog walk by the sea, transformed by the unaccustomed sunshine. Blooming is happening, and the blackthorn and gorse flowers are being boosted by colour at ground level.

I'm fortunate in that I have huge confidence in naming plants - which is how I know that this specimen is called Pointdexterus Nerdii, or Common Lesser Mother's Shame. But I'm open to differing opinions, if you have any suggestions?

#BloomScrolling
#Gardening
#Nature

@GustavinoBevilacqua

I do still use an old bench vice, but I put the tube inside an old bicycle inner tube (works for wood also).

I do have a lot of copper sheet scrap, though, and that’s a good idea!

@dillyd

Urban camouflage for the terminally dull. In truth most climbing jackets, particularly for winter, come in a range of bright colours: not only do they pop on pictures, but they massively increase visibility for rescue services.

How are you finding Civilisation?

@GustavinoBevilacqua @dillyd

He says a similar thing about snow and ice, but in pictures, he just looks like a person-shaped black hole.

@dillyd

I always insist on my climbing partners wearing red, orange or yellow, for the photographising. One insists on black, and we don’t like it.

@GustavinoBevilacqua @rapitadaglialieni @Yaku

They're probably just better at growing things - I need all the help I can get.

@GustavinoBevilacqua

Thank you, that's kind.

It’s the weekend, so more odd contraptions.

A rack for seedling pots that I made for my wife. It’s designed to be propped vertically in the greenhouse, to make the most of space - but cobbled together so that whatever angle it’s at, the pots stay upright. Bit like the seats on a Ferris wheel.

The whole thing is on a pair of wheels, so that at hardening-off time (we’re still supposed to do that, right?), it can be trundled out and propped against a sunny wall, without everything falling out.

#gardening #seedlings #woodworking #maker #JoinIn

#SilentSunday

#Mountains #Climbing #Morocco

Mo The Magnificent, aka The World's Greatest Chicken, has passed. I felt you should know.

I'd been treating her for ascites for a couple of months. She was delighted by this, mainly because she was then allowed to wander round the kitchen and eat copious amounts of sweetcorn. She had taken to pecking at the back door to be allowed in (so naturally, we let her).

But it all got too much for her yesterday, and I had to step in. We are in mourning.

#chickens #gardening

The workshop I built for my wife after the first lockdown, mainly to stop her from taking over mine(!)

I’d always been intrigued by the idea of stitching a shed and greenhouse together, so knocked this up. The idea is that the greenhouse captures solar heat in the winter to help heat the workshop - it seems to work, and the shed is very heavily insulated with polystyrene collected off the local beach over a summer and put through a garden shredder.

With a small radiator, the temperature gets up to about 22C very quickly, even with outside temperatures around zero. When they’re about 8-10C and upwards, no heating required.

Built mainly out of free stuff (greenhouse, roof tiles, much of the frame, insulation, copper ridge, windows, door).

Please ignore the oil tank. We inherited it and can’t afford to change systems.

#shed #greenhouse #woodworking #workshop #gardening #maker #JoinIn #crafts