Garden architect Sunday, 17-May-26 21:59:01 CEST

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

Transplanting

Transplanted seedlings to the garden.

Monday 18 May

Today, DW went to the office, and I worked from home. The weather was beautiful, though it rained heavily at times. At this point, this rain is like gold falling from the sky, but more pleasant. This is only the emotional value; water costs much less than gold, but you get the drift.

For work, I continued working on the UI from last week. I made good progress.

After work, I expanded the grazing area so the sheep could go around the barn. The challenge now is that they can only arrive here by passing near the road. I also cleared a couple of items from the atelier.

The sun came through after dinner. It was a lovely evening. We had a walk with the sheep. They arrived in front of the barn! They munched on rapeseed and were happy. They were so happy that it was a challenge to get them back around the barn and the regular path to the rain roof.

Tuesday 19 May

Good morning! It is a slightly overcast morning, about 14°C, and I'm biking to work. The forecast says it will be dry this morning, but it will rain in the afternoon, so I packed my rain gear.

The 14-day forecast says the chance of freezing temperatures at night is now over. That means we could start transplanting our seedlings to the garden. Now that is exciting, but also an anxious moment because how will the slug community react to all that new food we are serving on the table? We have been out on slug-killing missions, but we slipped on that the last couple of evenings.

It is lovely weather, with nature freshly moisturized. All kinds of natural smells, the birds are chirping happily in the forest because insects love it too.

I passed another biker! This is the first time in two years.

I'm approaching work and thinking I'm looking forward to finishing the user interface project I started last week. It will be great. When I bike home, and it is raining, I will not be able to blog.

I notice the cows grazing in their field near work. Interestingly, there are cows near the city center. It is within the zone of black fat bikes, oversized black Bluetooth headphones, and black hoodies.

In the afternoon, it rained. Not soaking, but sufficiently for me not to blog on the way home. The new software with the improved user interface is live. There are still some small issues to resolve, but it all looks great. Franco, the business development manager, was whistling a tune as he left.

There was a discussion at work about whether you should repair the tires on your bike yourself or have someone else do it. My position was that if you are standing in the forest, you'd better be able to do it yourself, and it is also fun. I was in a clear minority. So much so that my position felt like I was part of some group of people who are soon to face extinction. Just the fact that I am propelling my bike with muscle power is a bit old-fashioned, too. I suppose the fact is that I am getting old.

I have only one requirement for bikes: the bike must not make any ticking sounds. Last summer, I discovered a trick for lubricating the saddle pin that helped reduce ticking. As you might imagine, the lubrication is eventually consumed, and then one has to add more. This year, I figured out that the best recipe is a mixture of WD-40 and a slightly thicker oil.

I notice a common buzzard on the ground. It flew into a tree. Had I brought my telephoto lens, I would have taken better photos.

Wednesday 20 May

This morning, I learned that last week, on 15 May, Ukraine liberated 23 square kilometers through a combined-arms maneuver, according to Ben Hodges, a retired United States Army Lieutenant General. When Ben speaks, you listen.

After work in the afternoon, I was really busy with tasks around the property. I moved the sheep to the other side of the area between the properties. So now the sheep are grazing in the northwest corner of the property, outside the dyke. The neighbor there had planted several bushes so close to the fence that the sheep would eat them completely, so I had to put up extra protection.

I could use the mesh parts from the fences to protect his berry bushes. I must say, if you have 2000 square meters of land like my neighbor and a perfect fence keeping the sheep out, why would you plant your bushes 10 centimeters from the fence? It says something about your state of mind: you probably wished you had three times as much land. So when you had a chance, why didn't you do it?

I feel sad for people who have 2,000 square meters and wish they had 60,000. So what are you doing in a situation like that? You plant your precious bush 10 centimeters from the fence, making it easy for the sheep to eat from the plant. When we don't have our sheep here, dog owners use the area and urinate on these bushes. The dogs, not the dog owners, obviously. Anyway, his bushes are now secure from the sheep, but I cannot do anything about the dogs. It is so stupid.

My experience with the temporary grazing area in front of the barn told me we need to get it ready for grazing next round, so I cut two sections of fence in the middle, leaving 4 sheep fences. And I arranged this to protect the grapevines that I replanted a couple of weeks ago. I will need to cut up another bunch of fences to prepare the area. But that is for another day.

Finally, I cleared out more from the atelier, and I moved another shelf to the barn. There isn't much left now.

This afternoon, DW cooked a special dinner because we had friends coming over—not just any friends, but SIL's son and his wife. We opened a bottle of sparkling wine and raised a toast to celebrate the great news that he'd received his green card. It was a lovely evening catching up on what had happened in our lives since we met last time.

During the dinner, I discovered that my website had an issue with the security certificate. I could solve that when the guests went home.

Thursday 21 May

It's currently 14 °C. The sky is blue, and I'm biking to work! Here, I came across a whole school class on bikes, showing the unruliness of Dutch kids. It is so much fun with the kids in the Netherlands. They are the rulers; the rest of us are the sufferers. The teacher biking at the end of the column made her excuses, which were so kind of her.

You know what's typical about the fat bike riders with our black hoodies and black Bluetooth telephones? They don't have their tires properly inflated. The fat bikes' underinflated tires are draining the batteries, but they don't know it. Who am I to tell that old guy with a muscle bike?

At work, in the parking lot, on the way home, I discovered boxes of rhododendron flowers. I was not aware it was a rhododendron until today, when I noticed the flowers! It is so lovely when a neglected place suddenly displays an overwhelming beauty. There were bees collecting nectar from flowers, including those of different colors.

 

In the forest, birds were singing. I heard the common chiff-chaff, the Eurasian blue tit, and the Blackbird. Somehow, this nature experience on my commute to work fills me with energy; it is so lovely.

Today we received the offer for the pavement project. It was a pricey offer. We had to absorb this over a couple of days and talk about it.

In the evening, I went out searching for slugs. The slugs were shockingly present in the garden.

Friday 22 May

DW worked from home, and I had a day off. I fetched the medication for Merida from the veterinarian. I went to the hardware store to get metal corner beams for the atelier. I transplanted the zucchini and the corn. It was a busy day.

Somehow, this day, my blogging voice was silent. I worked on the tasks, and DW worked on hers in her home office. It appears I was not blogging that actively this week.

It was lovely weather today. Not too hot. In the evening, we eliminated slugs again. It is important to keep the population low at the start of the garden season, especially as we begin transplanting new plants into the garden.

Saturday 23 May

It was a beautiful sunrise this morning.

Today I planted the Marketmore cucumber. DW planted the Fytophtera-resistant tomatoes we ordered online. DW hung threads for the runner beans. Now the runner beans can climb along these threads.

It was especially warm today, and we pondered how it would be to stretch a canvas for shade in the garden. We found one online, a white 3-by-4-meter cotton-polyester tarp that suited us. We can create a holder for the canvas using our scaffold.

Despite the temperature, I decided to build a gate from a section of the building fence. If you look closely (click on the image), you can see the hinges. It is the hinges that make a gate. I will continue building the sheep fence so the sheep can graze safely around the barn.

I started collecting the materials necessary to build the scaffold.

We had not finished for the evening when we noticed that one of the newly transplanted tomatoes had been bitten off by a slug. When we noticed this crime, we provided all the remaining tomato plants with slug fortresses. It feels sad, but we have more tomato plants coming up in the barn, so that we will be fine. I am sure.

The zucchini has been bitten on the cotyledons (the seed leaves), but the true leaves have been spared so far. The cotyledon leaves are the most delicious for the slugs. It is better to wait until the seedlings have true leaves before transplanting, as the true leaves are less palatable to slugs. This does not hold if the stem is bitten off; I usually do not see that.

Sunday 24 May

Today, DW planted the Japanese indigo. I put the scaffold together. It was not supposed to be that hot today, but unfortunately, it was really warm. I had to wear gloves because the scaffold metal was almost too hot to touch. I am so excited about this project. We designed the house to be warm, but on sunny days, it is a little too warm. The cooling system is doing a great job, but the large windows are adding more heat to the building. We will see how this goes.

I dropped one scaffold tube into the potato bed, and we got a dent in the wall. That was not good. After that incident, we figured out better ways to get the tubes in place.

We discovered that wasps are building a nest above the large doors. We cannot have that. I will need to remove that wasp nest. At a good moment, I will get my wasp gear and fix that issue. Perhaps next Wednesday. It would be good to have the wasps removed before we mount the canvas. We expect the canvas package to arrive early next week.

I also had time to look after the apple trees. They have an infection of larvae. I put on blue gloves, pick the larvae, and put them in bags that I can seal. I put the bags in the garbage bin. It is not that difficult. After a couple of sessions, most of the problem is removed.

Here ends this week's blog. I still need to empty the atelier, but outdoor tasks took over my agenda. We transplanted a majority of the seedlings into the garden. We got an offer for the driveway project, and we ordered and prepared a canvas for the garden to provide shade. I wrote 2035 words this week. Welcome back next week!