HERE'S MOLEY

The little man in black is back!






We have had a few months with no incursions from our furry friends, but now he is well and truly back. I think he took advantage of the fact that I was distracted by the play offs to move in.






Since we have been over here permanently, I have kept an eye on any mole activity, clearing the hills away as soon as they appear, so that we can see where the mole is active. I have tried a number of different ways to get rid of him, mole traps, mole replant, smoke bombs and even bakers yeast ( expands in the moles stomach and ..... yuch!) but to no avail.

Finally I bought some Canadian poison. I'm not sure why the Canadians are such expert mole poisoners, I would have thought they have enough problems with bears, but there you go.

Applying the poison is a bit grizzly. You have to dig up worms from your garden. Then you have to cut both ends off of the worms, put all the bits in a jar with the poison, and shake it all around till the worms have a good coating. Now you have to try to find the mole runs, as this is more effective than sticking the poisoned worms under a mole hill. Drop some worms into the mole run, and hope for the best.

As you can see, there is a lot of bad karma in the whole poisoning process. Some much so, that I had to watch a couple of episodes of 'My Name Is Earl' to redress my karmic balance.

Check out the link below, to see what the hell I am on about.

http://www.nbc.com/My_Name_Is_Earl/about.shtml

The poison did the job, and we had a few months with no moles at all, until I foolishly boasted to my mate Pete that the moles had all gone. The very next day Moley was back.

I have tried to poison him again, this time using some shop bought worms, from Psycho Bunnies hunting and fishing emporium, but with no results. It seems that Moley likes his worms free range, none of this factory farming for him!

I HAD A WHEELBARROW, THE WHEEL FELL OFF ..

It is a bank holiday over here today, so we have downed tools, as we can't afford to pay ourselves double time, and day in lieu.

I have been turning my hand to things mechanical lately, starting with the wheelbarrow. When we were building up the vegetable patch, it ran over a nail and got a puncture. I managed to get the wheel off, and then got the tube out, using a crowbar as a tyre lever, and found the hole OK.

I managed to patch it using a boat repair kit that we had left over from repairing our old paddling pool. Then I tested it again, and found another smaller puncture close to the first. I patched this one as well and the next day, after the patches had dried, the wheelbarrow was up and running again.

A few days later, I noticed that the tyre had gone down again. It must have had a slow puncture, so I grabbed my crow bar, and levered the tube out again. Sure enough, one of the patches was not quite suck down at the sides. I re-glued it and the next morning put it back on the wheel and tried to blow it up. Nothing doing, so I levered the tyre off yet again, and retested the the tube once more. There were two more holes this time. I must have torn the tube with the end on the crowbar when I was levering the tyre back on.

Two more patches ( the ratio of tube to patch is about 50-50 now) and 24 hours later, the tube was finally OK and the wheel is back on.

I'm getting quite fast at getting the wheel on and off now. If the Renault F1 team need someone to look after their wheelbarrow, I could be their man!

With the wheelbarrow finally fixed, I turned my attention back to mowing. I opened up the shed, turned 'Hank Hill' the mower on and tried to reverse it out of the shed. No movement. For some reason, the drive belt had slipped off of a pulley. Five minutes off groping around later, the belt was back on I was ready to go.

I did the front patch quickly, but then I had to go and get some more petrol, as the Jerry can was empty. Twenty minutes later, I had refueled, and I started on the main patch. I had gone barely 50 yards when the blades stopped going round. I stopped it straight away and had a look under the hood. A large bolt that acts a spindle for one of the blade-drive pulleys had decided to give up the ghost after eight years, and it had sheered off.

Although I bought the mower in France, it is an American make ( Murray) and so all of it's bolts are imperial ( 5/8 th 's etc) . This makes it hard to get spares, as everything over here is metric, and 5/8th of an inch is between 8 and 9 mm. So, I took the broken bolt off to Chabanais, were I last got the mower repaired, and waited in line, as they were very busy. After a while, they took the bolt, but after much searching, they came back with a slightly bigger bolt, asked me to try it, but didn't charge me for it.

I drove back home and tried the bolt. but it was too big to go in the centre of the pulley. I then drove of, in a different direction to Chasseneiul, to the shop that sold me the mower years ago.

I explained to the mower counter that it was an American mower, and that the bolt was not metric, but was imperial ( as best as I could ) but they could not help me, so the sent me across the road to a different part of the shop. The guy there got out his gauge, measured it up and said that he didn't have anything, as it was not a metric bolt. I then went through the whole story of the mower being American, and the fact that I had bought it there in the first place. He then phoned up the mower counter and explained it to the once again. Back across the road, they did have one the right width, but it was longer. Knowing from past experience how long it takes to order anything. I took a chance.

Back home, I got the pulley back together and threaded it up, The long bolt fitted with a few millimetres to spare. Drama over.

It only took me an hour and a half to mow the hole garden, as dad had done such a good job on it when he was over, but it took an extra 3 hours getting petrol, fixing belts, getting bolts and making repairs.

So remember, a tractor mower is NOT A TOY! ( It is really) .

Nature Watch

The weather has been good lately, up to the last few days ( Bank Holidays mean rain, in any country) , so we have been out in the garden a bit more.

My parents were over for a week, and Dad is on a personal mission to turn an acre of French woodland into a suburban English garden, so work on the interior ground to a halt for a week.

We all built up a raised bed for our vegetable patch, but it was hard work filling it in. It looked much easier in "The Great Escape", when all you had to do was get a load of middle aged, middle class Englishmen called Roger to empty the contents of their trouser legs.

It is ready for planting now, although it may look a bit small to some, it is fine be me as I don't eat much veg anyway. We had thought about getting some chickens as well, but I don't think I would be able to slaughter one, unless it was called Harry, or Thatcher.

Henry, our kitten, has had his bits removed, and not before time, as he got chased by something big the week before ( cat/sheep/bear ? ) and he flew in the cat flap, spraying a lovely 'eau de Tom-Cat' as he went.

He seems OK after his op, as you can see above, he is enjoying the benefits of clean laundry.

Things are starting to blossom in the garden. We have a lot of grapes, some cherries and even some olives on Tina's potted tree ( none on me big tree in the garden) . We think that the walnut crop will be bad this year though, as the tree got a bit scorched when we did our latest bonfire.

The bonfire was a bit huge, what with the dead conifers that Tina had chopped down, and dad's hedge work. It was so tall that I thought I saw Edward Woodward on top when it went up.

Our summer visitors, the Hoo-poes are back. They nest every year in the back of the study, but this year some Starlings had got there first. However, they seem to have found somewhere else close by, close enough so they can wake us up every morning with their extra loud 'hoo-poe' bird call.