Sheep got cut Saturday, 11-Jun-22 22:26:45 CEST

Final preparations for the stairs Sunday, 26-Jun-22 21:11:27 CEST

Monday, 20-Jun-22 21:44:56 CEST

Finished moving out

We finished moving out of the old house this week.

Monday 13 June

In the morning before work, I had a walk in the garden to check up on the progress of things. The zucchini "Raven F1" emerged! We bought the seed in October 2021, and I sowed it on 2 June. Since it is a formula one variant, I suppose it will be quick in producing zucchinis.

I got a second chance to take a photo of the poppy, but this time, I managed to take a sharp photo!

I did regular office work from our new home for the rest of the day.

In the evening, we decided to expand the fenced area of the sheep into the property of our northeast neighbors. They asked us to bring the sheep to their property to do some maintenance. I.e., eat weeds. Last winter, the sheep were grazing there as well. Then they had to move out at the beginning of this year. That was a mistake because had they continued to graze there, the weed situation had been under control. We got the keys to the fence, so the first step was to open the fence.

DW cut a path with our brush cutter through the thistles where we could place the fence.

It was tricky because the weed had grown higher than ourselves. We made a path to the top of the plateau and put the fence around the neighbor's pear trees there. There were a lot of good calories at the top, so it was worth the effort.

Now the issue is that the sheep are not feeling safe in the new place. We need to walk them to the new place from time to time, and eventually, they will learn that it is safe to be there.

Tuesday 14 June

Before work on my morning tour through the garden, I noticed that one of the pumpkin plants got a baby pumpkin! It is the first baby pumpkin I get this year!

Today both DW and I worked at our employers' office. I brought her to the train station, and from there, she continued to her office. My office is near the train station. This arrangement works pretty conveniently for us. DW returned relatively early in the afternoon, but I decided to bring her to our new home and continue working from home.

In the evening, it finally happened. DW got time to cut my hair! My hair is perhaps over a month overdue, but we had such a busy time, so there was nothing to do about it.

Much better with short hair. We are getting warmer weather, so it is perfect to have shorter hair.

After the haircut, we had a walk to try to get our sheep to discover the new place and get used to it.

Wednesday 15 June

The pumpkin we got from a friend of DW now has the first flower. We got these on 18 May. It was initially ten plants. Now there are two left. As a bonus, another pumpkin or zucchini has sprouted next to the pumpkins. That can happen because this is a former compost heap, and now I am regularly giving the pumpkins water. Perhaps that creates the ideal situation for sprouting, giving us a spontaneous bonus plant.

Before going to work, I removed the temporary stairs so DW could work on the walls. Since the staircase will be delivered on Friday, the walls should be ready. She is painting the staircase walls, where we think the stairs will be. The rest of the wall will be done later.

Today I worked half day in the morning, and in the afternoon, I packed things from the shed at the old house.

I noticed we got an envelope for the road association at the old house. DW was secretary long ago, but apparently, her address is still in the register. In the evening, I let the things we brought home from the old shed stay in the car and the trailer.

Instead, we took a walk to the neighbors to give them the envelope and ask them to fix the address. Obviously, we had to look at the sheep on our walk; they were doing fine. Soon when we leave the old house, it will be highly inconvenient to get envelopes like that sent to the new owner.

We got an Levisticum officinale, Maggi plant, in return. It is supposed to taste delicious, but I have no idea. It will get big, and I don't know where to put it. We let it stand among our other plants that still need to be planted. Our neighbors had acquired chickens a couple of days ago! It was still three shy hens. Farming is starting to happen in the neighborhood.

On the way home, we got eggs from another neighbor. It is from his Indian running ducks. He got three of them, producing eggs and keeping his garden free from slugs. The eggs were green and a little dirty, no problems because I could wash them.

Thursday 16 June

This morning I discovered that our day lily Hemerocallis had opened its first flower. I moved this plant from our old home last year. It is a pity I did not make a note of when I planted the day lily in the new garden. It has taken the plant a fair amount of time to establish itself so well that it can produce flowers.

You would think we left large holes in the old garden, but that is not the case. It looks surprisingly beautiful. Many flowers are flowering right now. There is a considerable amount of weeding that we could look after, but that is for the new owner. I suppose they will remove it all and make a concrete garden, as you are "supposed to do." Most noobs are doing that to their garden because "it is easier to maintain," which is a lousy argument because:

1. The habitat for insects is removed. Due to the climate crisis, insects are going extinct, so they need all help they can get to have somewhere to live and flowers to pollinate from. A green garden is a requirement.
2. The excess rainwater has nowhere to go. It will rain more in a shorter time in the future, which is a challenge for cities. Concrete gardens are not a solution to that challenge.
3. Temperature increases by two to three degrees, so the house will also become warmer. The owner will need to install an air-co system to deal with that. The excess heat will warm other houses in the street, so now they also need to install an air-conditioner.
4. Larger animals such as the hedgehog (that is true, we got a hedgehog in the old garden) and birds will need to move out of the garden. This is a problem because animals are already under stress due to the climate crisis.

Today I noticed an Evening Primrose, Oenothera biennis, in our new garden! The plant is apparently eatable, but I will not eat it now. I will keep it like this.

This was a regular work-from-home day. For lunch, we tried the new eggs of the Indian running ducks of our neighbors. I had to clean them thoroughly. It is so nice to know where the eggs are coming from. We had tea with munt and shives for the bread.

You notice that that egg is larger than a regular chicken egg. The yolk is much larger. The neighbor told us you must boil the egg for 12 minutes to get it hard-boiled.

We also had a couple of leaves from our salad bed. It was delicious.

The first strawberry starts to get red! Just to be sure you can recognize it, I placed the berry on a bed of straw. That way, the berries will not get rotten.

Today we got a message from the staircase builder that they would not come and deliver the stairs tomorrow. Instead, they will come on 29 June. I had to move my planned holidays. It was good I had not started breaking down the staircase scaffold. Now I can just put back the temporary stairs. But first, DW wants to paint another layer.

Friday 17 June

This was regular work from the new home day. I did not discover any new remarkable developments in the garden this morning.

After work, I put back the temporary stairs. That way, we can walk a little more straight up and down.

It was warm today. The cooling system of the floors was activated. It worked very well. Outside it was 32 degrees Celsius, and inside, it was 25 degrees. The heat stayed outside long into the evening. We pottered around in the garden. DW put up a roaster for her beans to climb on, and I planted plants.

The last plant we bought at the garden center a couple of weeks ago was Lavendula Augustifolia "Hidcote." Then I planted the Alyssum Violet queen I brought up from seeds and the Spirea Japonica Froebelii we got from the old garden. I also planted the Lobelia that I sowed from seeds on 26 May. A couple of them I placed in a new tray to see if I could grow them bigger indoors. I was busy until really late in the evening. Who says you cannot work in the garden during the night? At 23:00 (11PM), it was still 27 degrees Celsius outside (80F) which is really warm for me. Inside the new house, it was okay because of the cooling system.

Saturday 18 June

The heat from yesterday had resolved in the morning. We went to the old house via a detour. First, we went to the recycling center to get rid of the leftovers from the previous. Then we continued to the second-hand shop with more worthy items. We also went inside the shop. I found four roughneck glue clamps at a reasonable price.

Our detour took so long that when we got to the old house, it was already time for lunch, but we had no furniture to sit on during lunch. We sat on the floor with the doors open to the garden. It felt like going to the beach, but DW was not overly enthusiastic about this minimalistic situation.

I think the garden is showing off at its very best at the moment. If we still lived here, we would have been worried about the grass not being cut, but not anymore. The acacia tree is picking up quickly after I pruned it. The light green in front of the dark green elm tree background looks fantastic. These two greens contrast very well with the cherry tree to the left. Behind the cherry tree, there is a birch.

DW vacuum cleaned the first and second floors. My task for today was to remove the compost barrel. I kept the compost's content and brought it to the new compost heap at the new house. The barrel itself I brought to the recycling center. I had a stack of bricks and a couple of glass plates behind the shed that fit into the small trailer.

Outside the old garden, I found white mallow, and in the garden too. I dug out these two plants to bring them to the new garden. I made sure I left no holes in the ground. The white mallow is not that common, so we like it very much. It is a bit finicky in what places it likes to grow in, and usually, it emerges where you least want it, between two tiles in the middle of the path in the garden, places like that.

We drove to our new home with the stuff we collected today. We are almost done now with moving the things. It fills me with joy that this part of the journey is almost over. After another day, we probably cleaned and removed the last stuff from the old house.

In the evening, it had got almost chilly. I created a place in the flower garden for the white mallow, and while I worked on that, I discovered we already had mallow growing in the garden. Perhaps it is white mallow? I had not put any stick with the plant's name, so I don't know what it was, but it looked like mallow. When I worked on this, the garden fork started to misbehave again. I decided it was time to retire the garden fork for good. Tomorrow we will get two new garden forks.

Sunday 19 June

This morning I noticed more pumpkin flowers and at least five baby pumpkins! It is so lovely that many things in the garden are doing fine!

	The runner beans got red flowers.
	The french beans got white flowers. Sowed them on 27 April and transplanted them on 9 May.
	The Coreopsis Grandiflora 'Early Sunrise' also got a flower! This is a plant we bought at the garden center on 4 June.

 

We took a detour to the old house via a garden center. I bought new garden forks because I cannot have the pins bent.

Today we finished moving out and cleaning the old house. That is correct; it is finally done! It started to feel like it was never going to end; every time one task was finished, another was discovered. It went on and on. In the afternoon, we found that we were done with the house. We feel that we left the house in pretty good condition, not that it matters much because much will probably be removed by the new owner. It is our feeling, I suppose.

We went to our new home with the last things from the old house. Cleaning tools, a ladder, things we had forgotten to pack until now. It was a bit rainy and drizzly weather. Now what is left is to find the books on the appliances in the kitchen. On 1 July, we will meet the new owner, go to the notary, and register the change of ownership of the property.

In the evening, I tried out the new garden tools. I got an unpleasant surprise. When I bought it, I thought it was made of steel. When I tried it out, I noticed the shank was welded to the fork. Thus the shank is of the same material as the fork? But if it is all steel, then it is not that heavy, then it should be heavier? A little sticker said "Alu," and I thought I had no clue how they welded a steel fork to an aluminum shank. An aluminum fork will not work, but who am I to judge? No less than twenty minutes later, I discovered I was correct. You cannot weld steel to aluminum; aluminum is not a good choice for a garden fork.

Here end the activities of this week. We finished moving out of the old house. We are not done moving into the new house, though. There is stuff piled in boxes, and it would be nice to get rid of a bunch of things. Work in progress.