Dec. 14, 2024

It’s definitely winter now, this week was very gloomy, the right weather for that eerie, overcast, colourless winter scene. It can be quite enchanting in a park or outdoors, but mostly depressing in the city.

My brother came round on Monday to do some woodworking. Now that I have a finished tool cupboard and a large number of tools (some borrowed from him), I have a practical workshop. He has a vision of making a corded oak lounge chair, designed by him. The oak arrived by delivery (very expensive) and we were ready to start on Monday. I was mostly just an onlooker, learning a few more techniques like the half burlap join, which looks really nice. He brought over his mitre saw, which worked great. There was a lot of router work to make the burlap joins, which produced alot of dust. He’s fully transitioned onto machine tools over hand tools, saying they are much more accurate. I might come to that conclusion soon (probably already have with any cutting work), but for now, I’m clinging onto the use of hand planers, hand routers and chisel for joinery work.

Anyway, after a full day of woodworking on Monday, we were about halfway done. He returned on Saturday to continue, but the chair won’t be done until a third day.

Wednesday was the long-awaited and multiple times delayed delivery day of my 350 hedge plants. I arrived just in time for the delivery it came in just one box; quite surprising how small it all packed. Each plant is a mere stick with roots, maximum the width of a finger, but mostly smaller. So I set to work, digging each plant into the trench. Whether I chose the most efficient way to do this… I still don’t know. I definitely saved a lot of work having done the 60cm wide trench with a digger, but putting all that soil back into the trench by hand was a lot of soil… Much more than necessary for the skinny sticks. They take up about 2% of the surface area of the trench that was dug up. Anyways digging in is easier than digging out. 

I got 75 hedge plants done on Wednesday. I came back the next day and did another 100. Each time I did about 3 hours of digging. Any more and I get a bit too tired and achey. There are a few restrictions to me staying out there for longer; being dark at 4pm, driving back before rush hour, getting back to take my work calls, and the fact that I can only rest about 20 minutes before I get too cold and need to start moving again. If I had a space and the time to chill for an hour comfortably, then the longer break would give me enough recuperation to maybe go another 2 hours. In any case, 3 hours of work is good enough for now.

I took a break on Friday, my body was feeling a bit tired, and did another 100 on Saturday. As of now, I have 85 more plants to dig in, followed by a bit of tidying up etc. It will have taken a total of 4 days / 12 hours of digging. Decent. Next time… making two thin trenches may be better, so I need to dig in less. Though the rocks and grass roots make it more difficult to plant back in with the same volume. I might need to fill in with other soft soil or compost, which would get more expensive… Or, someone recommended to hammer in a hole with a metal pole, just big enough to fit the plant and bamboo stake, then back-fill with compost. I honestly don’t know what’s best. 

Progress made on knitting, at the body section now, going well.

Total Likes: 0

Comments

---

No comments yet.

---