peds

You might find it a little depressing to look into the techniques and systems used to propagate trees (and, for that matter, 99% of all plants grown commercially) in modern horticulture. God hasn't lifted a finger for hundreds of years.

Make as long a list as you possibly can of all the decisions Putin has made over the last 7 months that make any kind of sense. Turn over the paper and use the other side as well if you need to.

Why not just rappel straight down from the top of the tree instead? It'd be loads quicker. Anyway, Petzl ID is a great bit of kit for all sorts of things, but there's no way on Earth that I'd choose it for moving around in a tree unless it was the only thing available. Spend the money on something else... like a prusik...

Rots easily, great in a hugelkulture or to fill raised beds.

Okay, how's this for a joke... Having your own funeral or medical procedure postponed because of the state funeral. Wait... that's not funny either.

I don't know about Twitter because I'm not a part of it, but there's some pretty spicy memes going around the other corners of the internet. Right now I'm very much enjoying the official news blackout to preserve OpSec, only to hear about the ridiculous gains made when information gets released.

My yard? That's quarry dust not tarmac, blindings before a raft goes on. The car park is over there, with a big pile of 804 in the middle of it that the digger forgot to move. Oh well.

I have a little patio cherry in a big pot that the cats were using as a scratching post, but she's fine now too. I suspect you're thinking of someone else's cherry tree though. Another 9 ash to knock over on this side too, hope their still worth the time and effort as firewood at this stage...

Mine's all right, the eucalyptus on the ground next to it isn't feeling very well though. I moved the trees a bit closer for better birdwatching. Yeah, there's around 7 trees in a line to come down there, including the big one, which looks like an old giant that was coppiced once upon a time. Shame, but it'll improve the view. Two poplar that I'm not keen on as well, they've got a future in a hugelkulture bed.

Yep, we are getting there! I've heard it said that getting out of the ground is the hardest part, and I hope to God that's true. Buried a few wastewater pipes and a radon sump the other day, I'm just ironing it flat again now.

You are farming livestock on the total area of land required to keep them alive, instead of using someone else's land in Ukraine or Brazil or wherever. The land required (and crucially, when chemical fertilisers are used, the carbon footprint) doesn't just disappear.

My goal is gorse and primrose flowers, but you'd have to gather an absolute shed load to flavour a gallon of sap. I think you need to boil it down to concentrate it a bit before you get any worthwhile strength or flavour, without adding any extra sugar. But yeah, I've never found it near the top of my to do list at the appropriate time, so I'm yet to try it myself.

Every year I find myself without the time to harvest any birch or sycamore sap, but when I do get around to it, I've heard it's worthwhile adding a few freezer fruits or seasonal flowers to the brew. Same as mead... it's nice, but it's better if you add something extra to help it along.

... for ever?

Just poke it down inside the hedge for the next poor sod to find 👀

At end of 150m laneway, space to turn up at the end. Call to arrange.

Meaning that it hasn't been tested by squirting it into the eyes of the poor lickle bunny rabbits, like most bubble baths. Without checking, and I could well be wrong here, I definitely wouldn't be surprised if there were ingredients of animal origin in bubble bath. They really do turn up in the strangest of places. With regards to the firewood though... yeah, not sure what that's all about. I do insist on my firewood being free-range, however.

Put apples, both perfect or bruised and blemished, chopped or whole, unpeeled, in a big pan with a bit of water. Boil until soft, then mash through a colander, or press through a food mill or moulin. Boil until a bit drier, then mix with about the same quantity, or a bit less, of sugar, and any spices you might want... cinnamon, clove, dry ginger, you know the story. Boil until it looks like it'll set, or Google the correct temperature to bring it to. 105° or something, probably. Look for recipes for apple cheese, apple jam, black butter, or something like that, if you need to follow something more specific.

It was probably a very small tree when it was planted.

You've just got... like... zero positive attributes as a human being, have you? You're just... a big leaking sack of hatred. It must be exhausting.

High-brow comedy right here. Real top-drawer wit.

Poor cottage. 75 euro of scrap metal in the roof and pipes. Big pile of stone stacked up in a corner for landscaping. Spare soil spread out over the future growspace, lots of mineral-rich dab. I'll scatter some green manure seeds over it a little later in the year, and the polytunnels can go up next spring. With most of the lumps ironed out, we decided to camp out among the stones and bones of the old building. A few decent bits of wood from the roof were saved from destruction. Some newer lengths, still with a practical application in the shipping container shed roof, and some ancient pieces that just spoke to me. Square nails, that sort of thing. They might end up as garden paperweights, or they might find some noble purpose in the future. Managed to nudge a shipping container 5 metres to the left (the delivery crane couldn't reach the intended location, the digger helped out), and dropped a layer of stone between the two. Just need to get a roof over them and a smooth floor, and it'll be a decent space. And now, with 360 tons of stone down and another 100 or so coming tomorrow, we can almost start thinking about getting the raft out. Long days at the moment, working 7-3 and heading straight to the site when I'm done, and spending the whole day here on my days off. But I suppose I can rest when the roof is on it.

Personally I'll be putting in around 60% effort today and having ice lollies for lunch. Anyway, now that it's been decided that really manly men can easily work away in 40° heat, and everyone else is a big girl's blouse, I wonder what will happen next year when we get to 41°, or the year after that... How hot is too hot, for all the rugged, masculine types out there? Mid-60s?

Yeah, loads of them died in the heat and all. What's your point?

I'm fairly sure "we" adjusted our work methods when building "our" empire by working hundreds of thousands of brown, black, or yellow-skinned locals into the ground, when we, delicate white folk as we are, were unaccustomed to the heat, the humidity, the malaria. Are you suggesting people do the same thing now? Can you recommend a temp agency with access to thousands of shackled savages? They all keep hanging up on me when I ask.