This morning LSS visited the aged FIL again. He’s now being looked after three times a day, which has eased the burden on us tremendously. She managed to get him to walk from the bed to the kitchen; a distance of about 5 metres. Still, I suppose it’s progress.
Two days ago he decided that his diet should consist mainly of prunes, so unfortunately one of the carers had to deal with the inevitable result.
I analysed the soil from the garden and was fairly pleased to discover that the pH was 6.5 – slightly acidic, but nothing too serious. In fact potatoes prefer a slightly more acidic soil, so we’ll see how they do. Potassium levels are low, and so is the nitrogen level, so I think we need to dig a lot more rabbit poo into the garden, as well as planting some of the Leguminosae family (beans and peas – these add nitrogen to the soil). Phosphorous levels are in the high range, probably due to the aged FIL’s penchant for buying superphosphate in large quantities. See, that’s the thing I don’t understand. The farmers/smallholders of a certain generation planted vegetable gardens in profusion. But they were told that in order to get decent crops, they needed to buy lots of chemical products from the agricultural suppliers. If you added up the cost of all this stuff, and included the labour, it would actually have been cheaper for them to have bought all their vegetables from the supermarket in the first place!
Due to the rain this afternoon, we once again had a bath in the kitchen. So much for having a barbecue tonight.
Wildlife diary: The frogs are now out in force around the pond. Not much big game around today. I have noticed that when the sun is shining, the lizards frolic up and down the south-facing walls of the house. Most of them are tail-less, having no doubt had a close encounter with the cat.
We took advantage of a gap in between rain showers to examine a couple of large wooden barrels, which were originally used for storing cider many, many years ago. I removed one end of each of them by the simple method of tapping the wood gently with an axe, and we rolled them closer to the pond where they will probably fill up with rainwater in a very short time. The idea is that one of them will be used by LSS to brew some concoction of nettle soup (not for consumption, but as an insecticide/fertilizer for the garden). The other barrel will be used for holding any carp we catch once the weather has improved enough to go fishing. (I’m not that keen on eating carp straight from the pond as they taste somewhat muddy; hopefully if we put the freshly-caught fish into a barrel of clean rainwater for a few days this will help to get rid of the muddy taste. I think it’s worth a try.)