down and dirty

'Tis the season to get planting; which means weeding which means grappling with couch grass, dandelions and buttercups.  Evil, pure evil the lot of them.  Last year the garden didn't get a lot of love and it's hard and dirty getting control back.  I've spent hours, days, seems like years up to my elbows in mud and roots to get four beds cleared (four still to go).  The root vegetables have been sown: carrots (I don't have the soil for them but hope, and mishapen roots, spring eternal), beetroot and parsnip.  The five remaining artichoke plants have been wrapped against the cold and surrounded with spinach and salad.  Another five raspberry canes have been planted out.  Lettuce, leeks and tomatoes (see reference to hope above) are sprouting under glass and last year's grobag is planted out with cut price salad from Waitrose keeping the early slugs up to their slime in classy greens.

The spring sunshine is warming up the rest of Drumbuidhe as well: C is back and in residence with new plans and old grumpiness.  We got the diesel generator moving again simultaneously identifying the leak (the diesel return from the cylinders had frayed Lister-Petty fact fans) and so he's back to his carbon-hungry ways.  In December he lost the last of the diesel tank by leaving the tap for filling the landrover switched on; paid £1000 for another tankful and then lost most of that (the tank's now just 1/4 full) running the generator with the return leaking.

The new plans involve the building of a second wind turbine.  This will be installed in front of the fank and filmed with the film to be used as a promotional video for the selling of the Darrieus concept.  There are a number of potential problems with this (the current turbine doesn't generate net electricity; the plan is to install the second turbine without foundation; previous installations have tipped over dangerously; the new turbine blades are a new, untested, design) and there isn't enough money for another turbine.  Hence the grumpiness.

So far I've been shouted at a number of times for stuttering (the fact that I don't stutter isn't really relevant) and today when I pointed out that I couldn't "make sure" I brought up components for the turbine if A (who has the components) didn't reply to my phone messages, C told me that A wasn't replying because I was "difficult".  Crikey but I do wish he would take up stamp collecting.