Monday, June 04, 2007
Coppers
Following the tip in yesterday's DT, have been trying to source some sheet copper. The local boiler people buy their cylinder shells in for fitting out so they can't help. None of the roofing people can help; from which we deduce that copper roofing is an expensive option with which not many roofers get to bother. Our bit of South West London/North East Surrey does not seem run to metal stockholders. Next stop Mr Google. On the other hand a chap at the allotments has been using copper wire - the sort of thing that would be the earth line in a 60 amp cooker cable - and he says that it is doing fine. He is just swinging a loop around his small lettuce bed or whatever - although to be fair he is also putting some pellets down. Should be a much cheaper option than 2 inch by 1 mm copper strips and something that I might be able to buy at an electrical store rather than having to strip down old cable.
As it happens the pumpkins put out yesterday with pellets are all OK despite the warm, muggy and one would have thought slug friendly weather. Dispatched a few slugs which were coming out of the allotment compost heap this evening, presumably en-route for vegetables. And cut the grass inside the deer exclosure - suprisingly damp considering it has not rained for some time. Must be very good at catching and holding dew - despite not having the nifty dew traps that the teazels go in for. Hopefully loss of habitat will translate into loss of slugs.
The Fuseli sickle earned its keep. Rather a heavy thing but provided neither one's palms nor wrist gives out, does a great job on the sort of two foot grass I had in the deer exclosure. With a bit of flourish - this being the bit that does the wrist in - it will cut suprisingly close to the ground. On this occasion disturbed neither frogs nor mice - but got lots of brown dust discharged from the grass flowers. Presumably not quite the thing for a hay fever sufferer.
And last but not least a modest senior moment. There was a small map of Central America in the DT, a simple black and white job with the sea one colour and the land the other - a positioning map inset inside a larger scale affair showing the now respectable tourist destination of Nicuragua. So I gazed at this thing and decided that it did not look like Central America at all - it taking me some minute or so to realise that I had mistaken the sea for the land - rather in the way of the candle stick illusion you get in lots of elementary shrink texts. Odd how once one has made the mistake, one seems to be locked into it. It takes quite a wrench to revers polarity as it were.
As it happens the pumpkins put out yesterday with pellets are all OK despite the warm, muggy and one would have thought slug friendly weather. Dispatched a few slugs which were coming out of the allotment compost heap this evening, presumably en-route for vegetables. And cut the grass inside the deer exclosure - suprisingly damp considering it has not rained for some time. Must be very good at catching and holding dew - despite not having the nifty dew traps that the teazels go in for. Hopefully loss of habitat will translate into loss of slugs.
The Fuseli sickle earned its keep. Rather a heavy thing but provided neither one's palms nor wrist gives out, does a great job on the sort of two foot grass I had in the deer exclosure. With a bit of flourish - this being the bit that does the wrist in - it will cut suprisingly close to the ground. On this occasion disturbed neither frogs nor mice - but got lots of brown dust discharged from the grass flowers. Presumably not quite the thing for a hay fever sufferer.
And last but not least a modest senior moment. There was a small map of Central America in the DT, a simple black and white job with the sea one colour and the land the other - a positioning map inset inside a larger scale affair showing the now respectable tourist destination of Nicuragua. So I gazed at this thing and decided that it did not look like Central America at all - it taking me some minute or so to realise that I had mistaken the sea for the land - rather in the way of the candle stick illusion you get in lots of elementary shrink texts. Odd how once one has made the mistake, one seems to be locked into it. It takes quite a wrench to revers polarity as it were.
# posted by Jim @ 12:38 PM 
