peds

Ahh, I'd love some new toys, the problem is passing it through the budget with the wife. It's a small building, I'll be gutting it into the skip with sledge, pick, and elbow grease, then when it's ready we'll be getting a fella with a JCB to knock the walls, carry on with the lane, and prep the site for groundworks and foundations all at the same time. Wouldn't mind a wee loader in the future, but there's a few purchases in line before that.

The rules and regs are infuriating, we have to keep the new building footprint as much as possible on the old one, we asked to move it just a few meters to the north to protect a beautiful big bay tree and less beautiful but quite nice eucalyptus, but no, the footprint can't be moved and the trees have to go. Still, I'll be keeping the wood from the bay tree specifically for the pizza oven. Every cloud.

Agreed, and the original plan was to knock a hole in the back wall and build a glorified (and well insulated) cow shed behind it. Second plan was to build the new house elsewhere on the site and keep these as my shed and greenhouse. But the practicalities, the cost of bringing the building up to spec, and the local planning restrictions put a stop to that. Big shame, but we'd rather have a home than be looking at an old cottage crumble into dust over the next few decades. Also, to be honest, this 3 room cottage isn't even a very good version of the form, of which there are literally billions out here in Ireland. There are better examples to save.

Anyone ever knocked down a house? Any advice to offer? I'm turning this wee one into empty space over the next few months. I'm keeping the windows and putting them in a future shed, the roof tiles and internal timbers on the left extension are in good nick and will be kept for something. The roof metal on the main bit of it looks a bit flaky, but I'll probably keep the best bits of it to roof a chicken coop. Excitingly, there's a whole old turf roof under the metal. They just built the new roof on top of the old one without getting rid of it. I'm going to see if I can get away with scattering the old turf around the garden if I can, to save space in the skip. The mortar is just falling apart, it's completely sodden. I'm surprised the house is still upright, to be honest. We are going to lift out the biggest stones as we go and use them to build walls around the garden, hopefully the bulk of it we are going to bury under the new drive, we've got another 100m or so to go, after doing the first 150m this time last year. I've something special to show you later, too. Makes me wonder what else we might find as we take the house down...

Handsome fella! 😁

Can I offer you a friendly bit of advice there, Mandy? Just keep a little piece of tape over your webcam. You never know who's watching. Wanna see?

Ah well.

Same shit, different day. Par for the course in the Kremlin, where Putin's vicious quashing of any dissent has led to his closest (he he) advisors being fearful of giving him anything close to the real picture. "Of course Ukraine will welcome our forces with open arms, regime change will be accomplished in a matter of days, our top generals definitely haven't been embezzling the money meant to be spent on fuel, our army is in high morale and of steadfast motivation even though they haven't been told where they are going or what they are doing. The whole thing will be done and dusted in but a few months ah ha ha ha, I mean weeks, of course!"

Nothing too sinister, the left one opens a hatch in the floor to an incinerator under the guy on the left, the right one orders tea and biscuits. And incinerates the guy on the right.

Here he is meeting two terrified-looking uniforms the other day, when announcing the recent nuclear escalation. Says a lot, really.

There are various rumours of parkinsons, cancer, and general decent into senility. He's just at that stage of the life cycle of a malevolent dictator.

Thank god he did eh, otherwise you'd never reach the vinegar strokes.

I quite like it. Guessing what the angry thumb is going to screech about next.

I love how you manage to somehow twist the whole thing around and blame Ukraine for the situation... of being shot at... and assumed dead... Should they have been noisier... while in captivity?

From an unnecessary increase of co2 perspective, or what? I've heard wonderful things about it, but I'm yet convinced that it's worth any more effort than my current compost and wood ash setup. Seaweed is where the real gains are made, anyway.

Banging, nice one dude.

Local media in Russia has been warned over its coverage of the invasion, with threats to block access to their websites. Its communications regulator Roskomnadzor accused 10 outlets on Saturday of falsely depicting what Russia calls a special military operation in Ukraine, and publishing false information. It censured them for referring to it as a “attack, invasion, or a declaration of war”, and said the government will stop access if this continues. Fines of up to 5 million roubles are also possible.

Despite the politics you describe, that looks like a great growspace. I'm sure there's a lot of exciting things going on. Can I ask where it is, does it have a name?

They aren't windproof, even expertly-made ones. An effective wind barrier can mean the difference between a 10 year lifetime and squeezing 20 years out of the polythene. Seeing as we've spotted the tunnels in the background, here's another reason from an organic grower's perspective... a nice thick bit of vegetation between you and the neighbour can provide a buffer for catching spray from application of pesticides, herbicides, fertiliser, etc, and is occasionally necessary for organic certification, depending on the geography, topography, and of course, the neighbour.

It's been paraphrased a few times from the original Ukrainian, but the message is the same. Rejecting US evacuation offer, Zelensky says: I need anti-tank ammo, ‘not a ride’ Street fighting begins in Kyiv; people urged to seek shelter | AP News APNEWS.COM KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian troops stormed toward Ukraine’s capital... In his regular video updates from around the city, Zelenskiy looks pretty tired. But that's understandable really, given the size of the balls he's dragging around.

I find it disappointing that unjustified wars of the past can be used to legitimise future wars. A lot of people here really don't seem to understand how bad an idea war actually is. Having hung around here for a few years now, I'm not in the least bit surprised... but it's still a shame to see.

Territory taken by Russia by early this afternoon, no doubt more ground lost since. As for the discussion in this thread so far, I'm just glad that the advice and information on offer from these forums about tree work, chippers, axes, whatever... is of such a high quality.

Ukrainian airspace 3 hours ago.

https://liveuamap.com/ Aggregate live feed of the conflict from various sources.

Attacks reported against Ukraine as of 2 hours ago, give or take.