What have you done today in the Garden?

In another border i pulled up the cosmos and the pots of lillies, started weeding there but i ran out of time, maybe tomorrow.

 

@Logan your cosmos had a great run this season. Sometimes it’s hard to clean up our fall gardens. Especially the annuals that just can’t make it thru our winters, certainly served their purpose and bloomed their hearts out for us.

Today is spent racing out between the rain - on leaf duty.

 

Thank you @Pacnorwest , I've still got some cosmos in pots under the kitchen window, they're more sheltered there. I hope that you managed to collect leaves.

 

Too wet for gardening, but I've been busy. The new dishwasher packed up over the week-end after just a month's use. I phoned Bosch first thing and told them I wasn't well pleased. It must have embarrassed them, as they are sending an engineer first thing in the morning. I hope they can fix it, as at the moment, it is as dead as a dodo. If it has to be replaced, that could take a week.

Then I had to ring my car insurance company. Why do they always try it on, at renewal? They'd put it up by 25%. I was armed with several other quotes.
I settled for a 7% increase.

On Saturday I collected a tuner/amp I bought on eBay, it's just a spare and I'll use it in my "office" our box-bedroom. It's to replace my other spare, which is getting a bit tired. A Leak 2000.







It's younger but still over 40 years old. It's a Leak 3400.

Of course nothing for me ever seems easy. It's wider than the previous one, the speakers would not have fitted either side. So I had to by a new length of shelving and swop them over. Harder to do than some might think. Needed a bit of fettling to change them.







>

 

@Doghouse Riley Nice tuner..That tuner looks vagly familiar. I still have mine and use CD’s. This is the time for holiday music too since the stereo system is still set up with those huge speakers. The speakers that go BOOM…But I’ve out grown that stage.

 

Lucky you to have fresh flowers. I’d give anything for fresh flowers to brighten up these gloomy overcast days. Yeah, keeping them in a sheltered spot is a good idea.

I went out several times between the shower breaks and cleared the driveway of leaves and a few runs on my mulcher mower round the pastures. Keeping those leaves off the pastures helps to keep the worms and grubs from feeding on leaves in turn stops the moles from getting back into the pastures for worms and grubs. I really don’t want another whole season of mole wars . Trying to stay ahead of it this year so next year I won’t have another 500 hole golf course complements of the moles / gophers.

 

That looks exactly like one I had, but maybe with a Japanese name Sony? Panasonic? Kenwood? The buttons / knobs and arrangement are all identical. I really enjoyed that.

Edit: I found it. Not identical, but fairly similar. Kenwood 3400. This was my tuner.

 

Thank you @Pacnorwest, yes that's the only downside to leaving leaves over winter, i hope that it works for you.
Even though it was colder today i finished off the weeding, come the end of spring and I'll be doing the same thing, they always come back.

 

@Logan nice day for weeding. Haven’t to many weeds yet… but they will come . Next spring will be weed city out there. The annual spring occurrence. Bummer.

 

The Bosch engineer came at 8.00 am this morning. I explained that I'd checked the fuse and it was OK. He attempted to turn on the machine and of course nothing happened, no lights, nothing.

He pulled out the machine from under the counter top and noticed it was plugged in to a double 13amp socket, the second socket is for the washing machine. He un-plugged that and plugged in the dishwasher into the same socket. The machine came on!
He said the socket must have burned out.

This must be a common problem, for him to determine the fault so quickly.

Now this double socket has been there for well over a decade and we sometimes have the washing machine and the dishwasher on at the same time, as we did on Sunday. The only difference was that I usually have the dishwasher on "Express" a 1hr 35m programme. as we rinse off everything before it goes in. But on Sunday, I put it on "intensive" (2.5hrs) for the first time. It stopped working halfway through the programme. I guess the fact that the heaters in both machine would have both been on together and the "dishy" one for longer than usual.

He said that with heaters in both machines working, sometimes one of the sockets fail.
But it didn't blow the fuse nor trip the mini breaker that protects the kitchen power ring main. He was in the house for less than five minutes.

So I went out and bought a new double socket from my local electrical wholesaler.
I removed the old socket and could see no evidence of burning, discolouration, or melting of any of the wires where they enter the terminals at the back of the socket, or any tracking on the metal back box.
So I just fitted the new socket and plugged both machines in again. They were then "good to go."
To be safe, in future, we won't be using the dishwasher and washing machine at the same time.
The new double socket cost me less than £4.

 

Even though there is a difference in electrical wiring systems between England and the US we have similar problems. To much amps pulled on the same circuit should blow the fuse box. But it doesn’t so we installed new electrical outlets that have a small button on the elec plug itself that will turn off the circuit rather than risk a fire.
There are inside and outside models.

 

I spent two hours doing cleanup. I heavily pruned two of the four fig trees in the fig row. they added about six feet of growth this year.

I raked up about half of the fig leaves. I moved them to mulch an area that needed some weeding. I hope they kill everything under the leaves. They tend to get soggy and pack down, so it might work. Then I can cover with wood chips next Spring.

I did more clearing and cleaning up at the near-end of the border. About fifty square feet remaining to rehab. A fraction of what I did this summer and fall.

 

Nothing today in the garden even though it's a nice day, i did what i had to do yesterday, everything else can wait.
I've started cleaning the conservatory inside, done the frame and glass just got to do the sliding door.

 

Raining a lot today. There are lots of indoor chores to do.

I did let the ducks and hens out. The ducks ran straight to their pond and swam around in the rain.

I replanted lavender seeds. In a few weeks we'll know whether the problem was my spraying tender seedlings with BT (live and learn) vs. damping off. I tried to sterilize the peat based seedling mix in the microwave, The water is not sterile, it's from the rain barrel. I can't use indoor water because it's softened.

 

Managed to get 2 hours in the garden this morning (9-11 am ) before going out for lunch. We had been debating whether to go out or have the whole day in the garden so I am really pleased we got to do both on such a gloriously sunny day as it was way too nice not to be out .
Dug up 4 of the Dahlias that are tagged for moving next year, one had such a huge amount of tubers that naturally split into 7 separate new plants!!.....Now have even a bigger problem of trying to find them new homes as well.
Pulled up more spent annuals too.