Burra Maluca

I'm going to have to go for candy corn because I've never tried it and I think I'd regret it if I had a chance and didn't try it at least once.

Maggie Teller wrote:

I am truly disgusted and revolted by worms. ... I usually have to take breaks when doing any kind of digging just so I can get away from them for a moment.

Does anybody else have an issue like this? Any solutions? At least some commiseration?

Sounds like you need to research no-dig gardening! I pretty much never dig any more, unless I'm planting a tree.

Here are a few threads you might find interesting...

No Dig Organic Home & Garden by Charles Dowding

Growing no-dig potatoes

Benefits of No-Dig Gardening - Why Do No-Dig Gardening?

The problem, of course, as some of you have probably already guessed, was that Mochyn originally had TWO bugs. A crunchy one and a squishy one. And as he caught them one at a time, at random, he never knew if it was going to be a squishy one or a crunchy one until he bit down on it. And as his eyes were positioned on the top of his head he couldn't see what was going on when he tried to catch one, or which bug was still dangling on a bit of string outside of his voluminous mouth. So it was all a bit of a mystery to him. Only now he only had one bug, so for days and days every time he'd bitten down it had been on a crunchy bug. Which had left him feeling exceedingly frustrated as he only likes squishy ones.

And this, in turn, was why he'd taken it into his head to raid my Jerusalem artichoke patch. He was looking for squishy bugs but what he found was a load of knobbly little tubers that, admittedly, do look a little like bugs. But, again, every single one he tried was crunchy. But being a stubborn, pig-headed sort of creature he just carried on snuffling through my artichoke patch testing every 'bug' he could unearth searching for the elusive squishy one. Until I'd caught him. By which time he'd eaten half of my winter artichoke supply.

And now he was sitting on the foot of my bed deeply involved in a game of crunchy-or-slimy with that naughty raven of mine, who seemed to think the whole thing was hilarious.

Mercifully, the appalling smell was diminishing rapidly. Which meant that Spot and Rosa had managed to overcome their distaste for bad smells and had approached close enough to assess the situation and consider making friends with the new arrival.



"I don't think he's worked out that there's only one bug yet." Rosa observed. "And I do think that Nigredo is being terribly naughty because he knows very well that there's only one, so it's always going to be crunchy."

"That sort of bug is always crunchy," replied Spot, who, being a chameleon, knows a thing or two about eating bugs. "They have an exoskeleton, and if you crunch them they mostly taste nasty inside. Even I don't like them very much."

Rosa felt a bit sorry for the pig, and just a teeny bit cross with Nigredo for teasing him so much. Not that Mochyn seemed to mind. He just wanted to get his teeth into a squishy bug for once.

"You know," thought Rosa, "I think maybe Nigredo is secretly doing him a favour. He's let us know that Mochyn needs another bug. Mum said there were lots of cabbage white caterpillars in the garden yesterday eating all her galega cabbages. She was a bit cross, but not as cross as when Mochyn ate half her artichokes. But I think she's picked them all off now. I wonder if he would have liked them?"

"I should think he would. They're nice and squishy after all."

"Maybe I can make him one. I can use one of Alan's old T-shirts that mum keeps for making zokin from. And I have some fleece I could stuff it with..."

And so Rosa had a new mission, and went off to rummage in my box of scrap fabric to see if she could make a new squishy for Mochyn.

She's such a good little dragon...

Awesome ideas so far - please keep them coming!

Jay Angler wrote:What's the thickness, Burra?

According to little Linguista, who has a very long tongue which speaks both Metric and Imperial, the thickness is  1.8 cm, or 11/16 of an inch. Both staves are the same thickness and length, but different widths.

Is it just picture distortion, or are they still holding the barrel curvature. That would make them springy!

Yes, they are both holding the barrel curvature. And possibly more importantly the curvature is the same on each of them.

Is the length 3 ft?

A little under - 34", so 2 ft 10".

Or 86.6 cm

Now, to address the ideas and see which of them begin to take shape...

Signs - we don't really have much use for signs. It's just us, and about three visitors a year.

Dragon drawbride - the dragons love that idea, but I really have no idea where it would go. Plus half the dragons have wings and the others tend to use their bodies as bridges given half a chance. Our school motto was a fo ben bid bont which translates as if you would be a leader, be a bridge and they take it a bit literally sometimes. I've caught Serra in the washbasin before now attempting to rescue spiders who couldn't climb up the slippery sides. Excellent idea though, and the dragons are keen and threatening to build castles.

Cutting board - I think the curvature would kybosh this idea.

Serving tray - getting close I think!

Box for jewelry - forced to admit that I have more boxes than jewelry as my late husband developed a habit of making them for me, and then taught my son. I had to start buying things to put in them. And then every time a new dragon appears they raid the boxes and claim a bit to wear because dragons can't resist shiny things so the boxes are all emptying as the dragon population increases.

Wall shelves for small knick knacks - again, forced to admit that I've been using shelving as an excuse to buy any nice piece of stone topped scrap furniture I can lay my hands on for quite some time so I can use all the pretty stones for shelves. In my house 'run out of shelf space' means I've run out of space to put more shelves. I do have a nice collection of interesting stone shelves though!

Coffee table - aaaaand again I've been collecting stone topped ones. Have a lovely one right by the bed with scaly marble that looks like a dragon, with sea-dragon feet. Even the garden is filling up with stone tables.

Bench - if I had more this would be high on the list. But I only have two so unless a load more appear tomorrow...

"The dragons want snow skis!!" - oh dear, I see you can speak dragon... They are planning a trip to go and visit their Auntie Estrela if it snows later this year. She has a bigger mountain than ours and there is a ski resort there.

OK, current ideas involve something like this...



...which is taken from this site.

We can cut the staves in half, lay them side by side possibly with the wider bits in the middle and the narrower ones to the outside, and have the shaped ends all at one end because it seems a shame to hide them from view as they are so interesting, and instead of metal handles we can use rope ones. Then it can be a serving platter, a fruit bowl, and a dragon-sledge for when they go visiting the Serra da Estrela. And knowing those dragons they can press it into service as a drawbridge too when they can find an excuse to use one.

Keep the ideas coming though, just in case more turn up!

My other half rescued two old oak (I think) barrel staves from a scrap heap this evening and brought them home.

They seem far too good to be burned on the fire, but there are only two of them, so I need ideas!









Ideally something useful.  

All suggestions welcome!

Bit of an experiment today. I still had half a sack of golden linseed from when I had to eat keto and wondered if I could mix it half-and-half with wheat flour to make biscuits. And then I thought I'd also see how it cooked up in the microwave so I don't always have to use stove-top oven.

It worked just fine! Not the same but quite good enough, and with more nutrition, more fibre, and it uses up the seemingly never-ending linseed supply that I bought just before lockdown to move house with us, in case the lockdown hit us harder than expected. Turns out whole linseed stores very well. I grind it up in the vitamix, about half a kilo at a time, so I have some on hand for biscuits and muffins and things but I've got out of the habit of using it since I had to give up keto.



So, linseedy-biscuits and gravy, with galega cabbage and parsley.

I tend to interpret it as an alarm sound. Sheep do a similar one, but more sneezy and less farty. And often with a front leg stomp.~

I've failed to find a video of one though. Still looking...

By the next morning I'd had enough.

Nigredo the raven had spent all night under the bed making farty noises, even though his sister Branwen had declared categorically that birds don't fart, and the AI search assistant on the laptop seemed to agree with her. The smells had gotten worse and worse all night long. My son had appeared with a bright blue plastic slinky for Rosa who had run off with it and was apparently preparing to paint at least some of it red for some unknown reason.



Iggy had been asking Austin if he knew what colour light would be if it had the same wavelength as the one on his drawing, but Austin had said that he thought it wouldn't have a colour as that wavelength was likely a microwave, not in the visible spectrum. But when Iggy asked the AI thing how long a microwave was it said that they were usually around 21 to 25 inches in width, 12 to 15 inches in height, and 16 to 20 inches in depth. So Iggy has now lost all faith in the thing.  And judging by the noises and smells coming from under the bed I suspected he was right to.



So when day broke, I opened the window and took myself off for a walk up the mountain to clear my head. It had been raining, and maybe there were puffballs to collect, or stranded fire salamanders to rescue, or Iberian ribbed newts that had lost their way and needed a safe haven, or toads that needing kissing or something...

But when I returned home, this was the sight that greeted me - Nigredo sitting on the foot of the bed deep in conversation with that smelly pig, Mochyn!



To be fair, the smell seemed to be diminishing somewhat, as did the number of farty noises. Though I now suspected that the raven was not, in fact, to blame for either of them. The two of them seemed to be deeply engrossed in a game of crunchy or slimy with a plushy ladybird that Mochyn had attached to him with a bit of string.  Mochyn's eyes are set very high on his head and he can't see the bug when it's dangling out of his mouth but Mochyn is very adept at tossing his head in such a way that it flips into his mouth and then he takes bets with the raven about whether it will be crunchy or slimy when he bites it. Nigredo always says crunchy, and he is always right, so Mochyn spits the bug out and tries again. Because he only likes slimy ones.

At this point I gave up in despair and made myself breakfast and nice big mug of cocoa instead of dealing with their nonsense...

I'm actually wondering if the 'fart' in question was more of a snort, like this one...

Puffball season has begun!

I picked the first one this morning from just below the house, then we went up to the top terrace to clear two fallen trees that were blocking the path.



When it was clear, he went to see what was happening further along and found another one. When we got back home I picked some galega cabbage leaves to go with them.



And we had an exceedingly frugal meal of rice, lentils, meaty bits, puffball and galega. All supervised and approved of by the new forest-spirit dragon who showed up a couple of nights ago.