Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Now this is astonishing.

You are probably wondering what this photo is.

Anyway, Rosemarie came round today to help in the garden and as I had no tinned potatoes for the salad I asked her to pick up a tin or two, but she came with a bag of new potatoes that needed cooking.

It was a glorious day - probably one of the best I have ever had as far as solar energy goes (and doesn't that make a change just recently?) and as the question of cooking the potatoes arose, I remembered that ages ago I had bought a 400-watt electric steamer - cooker. I'd never used it but with all of this solar energy there was no time like the present.

Result - 15 minutes later one perfectly-steamed pile of spuds.

I'm well-impressed with this. This really is Progress with a capital P. I remember one of my best friends (an ex-best friend now as it happens) taking the p155 out of me behind my back with all of his friends on the Land Rover forum about my plans to try a microwave oven here, calling me a few choice names and so on. And while an electric steam-cooker is hardly a microwave, it's still up there with the coffee machine and the electric fire as signs that home comforts are perfectly achievable with my set-up. As you also know, I'm running a 12-volt TV-cum-video player up here as well.  

Yes, I absolutely hate being surrounded by negativity - it drags me right downhill.

So Rosemarie and I spent a few hours weeding and I've never seen the garden looking as good as this, that's for sure. We even started to pull up the new spuds but that was a waste of effort - seems like my crop has disappeared.

Afte Rosemarie left, I carried on with the wall of the lean-to. You can tell how much I did by looking at where the mortar is still grey and not white.I've accomplished quite a lot there but there's still plenty to go and I'm wondering if I'll have enough stones. If not, I'll have to go on the scavenge and see what I can find.

But the wall underneath is in a bad way - there are three large cracks running down it. It was a good idea to put that strip of reinforced concrete in underneath where the breeze blocks are. That's embedding the horizontal beams of the floor and thus tieing all of the thing together. But once the new bit is finished I can repoint all of the cracks.

I've also been attacking the hole that I'm trying to drill out, what with all of this electricity we had today, and I've grounded out with the circular drill bit. Of course, I lent out my other extension to Rob, didn't I.

We finished the day with the hottest shower I have had for a long time, and it was gorgeous.

But as for starting the day - how about 06:35 for breakfast? When has that ever happened?


2 comments:

  1. And there's me thinking this was Progress: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_(spacecraft)

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  2. You can cook steamed fruit and sponge puds and lots of other stuff in the steamer too. Ask Liz, she may have some recipes.

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