Started on the second vegetable bed. Sunday, 17-Jul-22 21:23:07 CEST

We got the staircase fence and reeling Sunday, 31-Jul-22 23:00:00 CEST

Sunday, 24-Jul-22 22:18:44 CEST

Worked on the permanent fence

This week we continued on the permanent fence. We bought poles for the fence and built the fence along the road.

Monday 18 July

This was warm today, so I stayed inside. It was also a work-from-home day, so that combined really well. In the evening, I went outside to bring out the container and noticed that there was a beautiful sunset going on. I probably missed the most spectacular part, but here is my take on it.

Tuesday 19 July

This was the hottest day ever measured in the Netherlands. That is what I heard on the news on the way home from work. In this city, it was 35 degrees Celsius.

When I returned from work, I walked around to check on the flowers and noticed that the hawkweed (Hieracium) had started to flower. This is one of the plants that I migrated from the old garden. Here in this garden, I have given it its own area after I first had forgotten about it and even walked over it. It was so close that I had just removed it thinking it was weed.

The white mallow is doing fine as well. This is the last plant that migrated from the old garden on 18 June. It is something special with the white mallow flowers; they are so transparent.

The radish has sprouted! The first couple of seeds were sowed deeper in the ground, coming up slowly, but the rest of the seeds sprouted and are visible.

Wednesday 20 July

This was not that bad today regarding the heat, but buildings had absorbed a lot of the heat, and where I work, the building is black, so what can you expect? It was warm, but I tried to do my best in the situation. That succeeded rather well, and after lunch, I went home.

The task after work was to go buy poles for our fence project. We took the large trailer and drove to a wood product import company. We were looking for Robinia wood poles. They had the poles in crates, and we pointed out a crate from which we would like to buy poles.

We did not want to push our luck and put all the poles from one crate onto the carriage. It was warm weather and a bit tiring to load the poles. We loaded 60 poles onto the carriage. The salesperson suggested we load the poles by hand to avoid the carriage being damaged. I suppose he has seen various kinds of incidents throughout the years.

The smell at the site was a mix of wood glue and pig stable. There was a stable in the neighborhood. I preferred the wood smell over the pig stable.

We finished loading the poles and strapped them to the carriage so they would not fly off during transport. When we came home, we let the poles stay on the carriage. It was too hot to do any hard work in the afternoon. In the evening, we unloaded the carriage and moved the poles to their storage.

Now that we have poles, we can pick up the fence project and do a couple more sections.

Thursday 21 July

Today it rained 8 millimeters, and it was not hot anymore. More like my weather type. It was a work-from-home day, so I had to enjoy the weather behind glass.

After work, the rain subsided, which was very convenient. I walked around the garden to check on the plants. The courgette we bought at the garden center on 4 June. It is surprising, though, that the plant we bought is not having that much advantage compared with a courgette we sowed ourselves on 13 June.

The Lobelia has started to flower! This project started on 27 April. I think the batch from 27 April did not work so well. The second batch is from 26 May. The flowers now flowering are from that batch. The third batch did not work out well. The transplant is so delicate with Lobelia because the plant is so tiny, the root system so small.

We now got into the season of harvesting beans, peas, and courgettes.

Friday 22 July

This was a regular work-from-home day. In the evening we went to an outdoor party along the road. It is the third such party we go to. The first was on 15 January, then on 12 March. The theme for this party was disco, but we did not dress up in any disco outfit; we went in our regular clothing. We did not stay that late this time, which was good because we intended to work on the fencing this weekend.

Saturday 23 July

First, we picked up more of the fence that neighbors borrowed from us. We had to figure out how to work conveniently. The last time we worked on the ground, that was not good. Unfortunately, it is only possible to cut a fence in half when it is lying on the ground. But the rest of the tasks could be done when standing upright. That saves our backs a lot. It was sunny, though, a little too much for my liking.

We met a new neighbor from Sweden. So, now we could speak Swedish. That is really funny. They got a daughter two years old. We stood outside in the sun talking to our new Swedish friend. I wonder why we did not ask her to enter the shadow. She had her daughter sleeping in the stroller, and perhaps we felt the daughter would wake up. When we got inside, I felt I was exposed to too much sun for today.

When possible, we moved the workplace to the shadow of the house. In the morning, there is no shadow along the driveway, but in the afternoon, we can enjoy the shadow.

After dinner, homemade courgette soup, we continued working. It was about drilling holes for our poles and mounting the fence parts. The starter rope of the ground drill broke. This gave me "blasts from the past" when I struggled with our first power generator. The start rope also broke on that machine several times before the machine broke. This time I had a considerable struggle as well. I replaced the rope three times before it worked properly. Plus another couple of times again and again.

Sunday 24 July

This day was predicted to be unpleasantly hot but not until the afternoon. We could work on the fence project in the morning, and we had mounted fence parts all the way to the bush garden. It has not got a proper name until now. We got two unique gardens along the road, and the first garden I made into a flower garden. In the second garden, we have planted mainly bushes. The issue was that the fence section did not line up correctly with the bush garden. We decided on a bend.

It became hotter and hotter, which was inconvenient because we ran out of time. At least, that was the risk. The underlying plan was to move the sheep to a new area and use the new fence. There was an issue to be solved first; we still had a couple of trees inside the fenced area. It takes a hungry sheep three minutes to strip a little tree. The trees inside the fenced area required separate protection. How should we do that?

We went to a hardware store and bought a 25 meters net. On top of that, we bought a stapler that could shoot sturdy staples. Now we could make protection nets for the trees, staple the nets and go on with life. That was the theory. First, we also went to a garden center to buy another spit fork and seeds for the next seedbed that still needs to be finished. The garden center also had pots with plants for 99 cents each. I bought 6 plants!

Silene Maritima "Ice Cups"

Armeria Maritima "Abbey White"

Scabiosa Columbaria "Butterfly Blue"

Nepete Faassenii, Cat mint

Cap Marguerite

Agastache "Blue Fortune"

 

If I had more time to spend in the shop, perhaps I would have bought more of these. It is easy to buy plants, but you must also put them in the ground. The plants had to wait until late in the evening.

This concludes this week's efforts at the house!