bountiful garden

12:16 PM No Comments

The garden has been going "gangbusters" during Spring and Summer.  We've had enough rain to hardly have to water at all, a little loving attention from Toni and we've been rewarded with a bountiful harvest.  As they say pictures are worth a thousand words, and plenty of previous pictures have shown that but the garden doesn't stop, so here's a few more !

All the fixin's for Gaspaticho !

Tomato Sauce, garden produce and home made bread

Lunch
Some of the beetroot has been pickled, the prolific tomatoes mean plenty of tomato sauce for pastas and cooking etc  Go pick a couple carrots, a tomatoes, a Golden Dorset apple, a slice of home cooked onion and cheese bread and voila... lunch !

Maintenance
It's not all gardens and flowers, as anyone on a property knows there is nearly always something needing fixing or maintaining.  The tank on the hill (fed from the Dam at the front of the cottage)

Dam at front of cottage

has a system with a full sensor in it, the electric pump (using solar !) turns off when the float is full, we have a petrol pump for backup but who wants to burn petrol unless they really have to (well lots of people apparently, some people just like to go for "a drive" in their car but that's another discussion entirely)  So I wandered up the hill to have a look, which is no chore really, as a walk in the bush is a wonderful curative, just ask Henry David Thoreau (or read even !).  Take the tank sensor from the tank,

Dismantling the tank sensor

which is simply a toilet cistern float with a tilt switch shoved in the end ! and what do I find

Damaged tilt switch and bits on LHS, new tilt switch on RHS

it had simply corroded over the years and "disintegrated" by the looks of it, bit like me actually ! So I soldered the new tilt switch and a couple plugs to replace the joiners and away it went again !  While the concept of the sensor in the tank is quite nifty, the previous owners unfortunately ran the sensor wire in the main pipe, presumably to save costs, unfortunately this means every time there's a need to do pipe repairs, you have to pull the sensor wire out, which can be quite a pain ! ! Luckily this doesn't happen often (only once in two years so far)