Archive for February 2010
I live in a wooden house. Completely wood, roof to floor. This morning I was cutting up some wood for the kuzina (baby Aga) and came across a wood boring grub. I’m glad to see them, it means I can keep the wood twenty or thirty yards away from the house until I need it, I always kill them though, no need to give them the opportunity to have a go at the house, but you never know how many of them are lurking in a piece of wood. I get a quiet sense of satisfaction when I put some infested wood on the fire, I imagine I can hear them cooking.
This morning though I came across more than usual, and they put me in mind of the Australian Aborigines who eat a species called the witchetty grub as part of their bush tucker. I didn’t fancy eating these but I guess a few this size would keep you going until dinner time eh?
Yes that’s MY size nine workboot next to them, they’re bigger than my big toe! Wilf, my white dog had a sniff and proceeded to eat them! I won’t put the photo here for decency’s sake, it’s disgusting and judging by the face he pulled I should think he was glad when he’d finished them!
Some days I question the wisdom of having a wooden house, but at least the wood is kiln dried and treated against this sort of thing, thanks be to Allah.
Hi, I hope you found this place easily, I think it’s going to be better than previously because it seems to be easier to enter text and have it displayed as I want. Also the method of displaying photographs is far more sensible, this was the main reason for the move.
To those who followed me here, thank you for your loyalty, I shall do my best to post more and make the posts more interesting. I must get out more with my camera.
All the best for now, see you again soon.
I had a trip over to Fethiye last week when Rob took his dog Pancho to see the vet there and I ended up buying a strimmer. For those who don’t know the name it is a motorised weed cutter with a rotating head that cuts weeds with a plastic line. I think some places call them ‘weed whackers’ which is a bit more of a descriptive name. Well the one that I bought is driven by a 32cc petrol engine and works very well. I’ve laid waste to most of the weeds in the garden with it but it does have a drawback, well several particular to my garden actually. The first is that the plastic line that does the cutting gets broken easily by all the rock in the garden. I had used up the original line in the space of about twenty minutes, not a good start. My first modification was to get some plastic coated wire, similar to motorcycle brake or clutch cable. Far more durable and, with a bit more weight in it, it cut more effectively too.
The second drawback is that the guard on the cutting head doesn’t stop the bits of grass and weed being thrown all over your legs and even up to your shoulders and face when cutting. Well that would be ok if it was just bits of grass and weed but I have three dogs and they don’t always worry about where they have a poo. I realised after finishing one session that I needed to go and have a good shower and put my clothes in the washing machine, that’s a drawback that I have yet to solve, apart from wearing some safety spectacles, or maybe even my full-face motorcycle helmet with the visor lowered.
The third drawback that I found is that using it is addictive. Well I can live with that, I always like using powered tools so rather than gardening it is more like fun. The strong ‘woody’ bits have been left sticking out of a sea of weed bits so I’ll have to get them out with a pickaxe, not too pleased about that.
We’ve had a bit of bad weather recently so I’ll have to wait a while before I get out there with any other gardening chores. Nothing else much has been happening. Winter (cold and wet) seems to bring a halt to most other things I want to do in the garden.
Cukurbagli's Blog 
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