Late Winter Bits and Bobs - 2018

[peter]

I are mostly been fiddling with sheds!

Extending my lined, insulated and electrically connected shed at the expense of a wood store and a bodged up shed.
The bodge was a 5x7 cheapo that was here when we moved in 28 years ago, in a different part of the garden, moved to a nice level concrete platform and a few years ago it succumbed to rot. I had a 4x6 metal shed off freecycle on the allotment and it's roof had succumbed to rust.
So a vacated plot yielded a shed I'd procured and installed for the old boy who was site agent before me. A fantastic thing mostly corrugated aluminium, I think it was either a workman/nightwatchmans shed or a covered top for a flatbed van. Anyway that went from sitting on the ground to sitting on a wooden floor on bricks and took over allotment duties.
The leaky roof metal one was combined with the salvageable bits of the ancient shed and sat down the garden, the matal bit at right angles to how the original had sat and the wooden bits made an open fronted porch it it. A builder neighbour gifted me some third hand (site fence to drive protection, to me) plywood sheets and with some trimming and felt they made a new watertight roof.

My other half acquired a cross trainer to go with her indoor execise bicycle and I ran out of room in my good shed.

Moved the wood store that leant against the end away from the house, cleared the three shrubs from the gap between that and the bodged shed and started to make plinths (on a slope) to sit a new floor frame on. Did the first bit, had to buy some 4"x4" fence posts to continue and today have finished the floor frame for the entire length and started on the uprights.

Thoroughly enjoyable, but hard work and I won't win any prizes for the quality of my construction, I'm a bit cack-handed, but I'm happy with it so far and my other half is happy as she's getting a mini gym at one end.

[robo]

There is a real bite in the wind this morning ,time to get the big coat out

[tigerburnie]

We've had slight snow flurries and the gritters been down the close, but the suns out just now, cold wind mind.

[peter]

Flurries all day since 7am, all were like polystyrene beads until around 2pm, when it went heavy fall and morphed into proper flakes around half two. Still flurries, but longer and with flakes in.

Had to give up on shed construction and retreat to in front of the log burner, where the dog has decided life is sweet.

[Pa Snip]

Weather, and less so other issues , has resulted in my spending no more than about an hour on the lot since before Christmas. The raised beds were still workable when I had a look last week, although the main ground was not so workable. Ths week I suspect all will be frozen

[Monika]

It's a white, white world here this morning and now beautifully illuminated by the sun! Spring has been postponed.

[tigerburnie]

Just swept half an inch of snow off the greenhouse roof, looks like we might get some more later

[PLUMPUDDING]

What is all the hysteria about snow? It is winter and we almost always have snow on the ground at the end of February. It's my birthday on 26th and the tradition is some snow either falling or lingering from earlier. I used to be a postwoman and remember walking through thigh deep snow one Saturday morning in about 1978 and you couldn't get to the farms for days because the snow was above the walls.

When I was small I remember Mum helping me to climb over snow drifts like huge waves to go to school. The schools never closed because of the weather and teachers and pupils walked there. It was a matter of pride by council workers to snow plough and grit all the roads, working through the night standing in the back of a lorry shovelling the grit by hand.

Everything worked because it was run locally and people lived and worked in the area. Now people have to travel miles to school and work and the town council has been taken over by Sheffield City Council 12 miles away and services have gone downhill ever since.

Do I have a bee in my bonnet? Not half.

[robo]

Plumpudding , I have to agree ,yesterday morning virgin was cancelling trains on the east coast line for last night ,cancelling before it snows has to be the first, all the schools are closed in our town we have had less than one inch of snow or 25mm in New money

[Pa Snip]

[

Do I have a bee in my bonnet? Not half.

Go on Plum, you tell 'em . Isn't it a bit unusual to have bees around when there's snow though

[PLUMPUDDING]

Yes Pa but I'm a bit of a hot head sometimes☺

[Primrose]

We’re breeding a nation of softies ! I can remember my parents having to crack the ice in the toilet pedestal in the fiercesome winter of 1947 but somehow most life still went on as normal, even if they had to use pneumatic drills to dig the swedes up out of the fields.

[tigerburnie]

Most of the trains have stopped, they ran alright when steam engines pulled them.

[Westi]

I am a softie for sure when it comes to snow - make it nice & hot for me & I'm a happy bunny! Down here this snow lark is all a bit foreign & subsequent council management of it akin to a cheap holiday nightmare! I may have to have a PP hot head moment if it actually hits us as it will be chaos!

[Monika]

I think it's the lack of severe winters lately which has 'soften' everybody and I agree with PP and Primrose, when we had real winters, you had to keep going and learnt to cope. Nowadays most people rely on car transport, to school, work, leisure etc and when that is disrupted, everything stops. Our village school was shut today, not because the children couldn't get to school (most live within walking distance), but the staff couldn't get there because they live miles away. In the past, they lived in the village just like the children.