This morning we waited around for the nurse to visit the aged FIL for his weekly blood test, then went into town to get his prescription filled at the chemist. Although the aged FIL pays nothing for his medication (as it’s all covered by his health insurance), I’m sure his prescriptions are making a substantial contribution to the balance sheet of the local pharmacy. All I know is, my arms are getting tired from carrying the sundry bags of medicines from the pharmacy to the car each week.
Whilst we were in town, we did some food shopping; LSS posted off a cheque to Hyundai France for the Certificate de Conformité for her car, and I bought a 35kg bag of cement. Not lime mortar this time, but ordinary grey cement. Oh how excited I was with my purchase! I couldn’t wait to unwrap it when I got home. No, not really. That was a joke.
I need to make some concrete foundations for our rainwater recovery system, which will consist of 6 x 510 litre barrels. These will be connected together, but also need to be raised off the ground by about half a metre in order to make it easier to fill a watering can from the tap, or connect a hosepipe. I’ve decided that the barrels will rest on a platform of wooden planks – well, I say planks; they’re actually left-over roof trusses which I spotted in one of the aged FIL’s sheds. The platform will have three brick support columns, which means these columns will each need a concrete foundation because the soil is very soft and sandy. I calculate the total weight of the rainwater storage system to be in the region of 3.5 tonnes.
After a grey start to the day the sun emerged, so in the bright sunny afternoon we planted the elder trees we were given yesterday, and then LSS started the garden; sowing a line of lettuces and one of radishes. We’ve already encountered two of the pests with which we will have to deal; a cutworm (which I put in a plastic tray and left on top of a wooden barrel in the hope that a passing bird will find it an attractive snack), and a Colorado beetle. I was fairly sure it was a Colorado beetle, and doing a quick Internet search for photographs of said beetle revealed that it was, in fact, a Colorado beetle. They love potatoes even more than we do.
So we’ll need to keep an eye out for these little critters. Apparently you can buy a special preparation to get rid of cutworms; it consists of the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis. Not that we’re actually going to be able to find it here though. There doesn’t seem to be an effective control for the Colorado beetle; we’re hoping that planting rows of marigolds between the potatoes will encourage natural predators like ladybirds – although whether a ladybird larva will tackle a Colorado beetle is a matter which is still up for discussion. I suppose it all depends on how much roadwork and sparring practice it’s done.