Wheelbarrow

The end of the month of April brought lots of weeding, as usual, and a delivery from Sooke Soils of some alder mulch, a dark, almost black mulch that we lay an inch or two on top of our weeded areas, it has been a fun week and of course, the old wheelbarrow was dusted down again, the tire was inflated and another year in the long life was to be started.

It was today that I was moving the last of the first lot of mulch about that I felt the inner tube go, I found that out afterwards, when it happened I just thought I had hit a bump. It was another issue in the life of a garden object, originally bought from Gibsons Building Supply, and I considered I would repair it again, so taking it apart I noticed that indeed, the inner tube was breached at the root of the valve, the tire and wheel seemed good except for the rusted out bearing, time to consider options.

Usually, taking my time and repairing things, while saving money, is the approved approach but at the moment, we are on a timetable with the mulching and need to finish phase one (more mulch arriving soon) so I replaced the old wheel with an "in stock" smaller diameter one which was sufficient but made the wheelbarrow a little more unstable and difficult to tip up over the larger rocks. In addition, overall the entire thing was in need of triage as the old bed of the barrow had previously split in four places, the handles needed attention and of course, now the tiny wheel, so perhaps it was time to replace the whole thing, although of course, logically I would keep the old one for a future repair or even if it is destined to be a planter.

The research online took no time, a new inner tube would be $20, a new wheel would be $30 which included an inner tube, no contest there, and then a whole new wheelbarrow, with two pneumatic tires would be $80 and after a little thought we had a trip to Home Hardware and that new sparkling one was bought and assembled.

It is always a strange thing to move on from something so familiar, as I have said, the old wheelbarrow will not be discarded, I will bide my time and take it apart, repair the split bed, repaint the handles and brackets and keep my eye out for a full size replacement wheel or inner tube.

After all, storing useless stuff, that's what garden sheds are for. 

Nine Years, give or take.

There are almost nine years between these two photos, the one with the deer was taken around the 24th November, 2016 and we had been in Sooke for about a month. I think we had just got into the car to go to the Prestige Hotel for happy hour, nine years today.

This second one was taken about June this year, quite amazing how the trees and shrubs have grown. Well, the only one that was planted then is the town maple tree, looks to be perhaps seven foot tall in the first photo and now probably five times as tall. A great proportion of the shrubs planted were obtained from Russell Nursery, up in Sidney, bought with a gift card from the mother in law. 

The garden is quite a tracker of time going by, many planning jobs, the delivery of rocks for borders, multiple loads of mulch and gravel, stepping stones and, along the way, some plants failed, or were eaten, or as with the douglas Fir tree, broken at the header by another roving bunch of deer when it was just three foot tall.

It too has become a little monster.

Vittles

The years go by and the Panasonic breadmaker still does a great job of banging out a whole wheat loaf while we are outside in the garden. 

Here we are a decade or more later and the price of a seven hundred gram loaf is still about fifty cents to make at home, but in the supermarkets, despite all the outcry about "bread price fixing" between the big companies, bread is more expensive than it ever has been, yet strangely, the cost of bulk flour is only about ten percent more than it was back when we lived in Gibsons.

The jar is a rescue effort for some mixed peppers that were in the fridge, we do our utmost to conserve all types of food and the bell peppers were chopped and blanched in our proprietary pickle juice (water, vinegar, sugar) and they will now be fine to be consumed over the next few weeks.  

The appliance in the background is the new air fryer which, despite doubts, has become an excellent alternative to heating up the big oven and actually makes food tastier by not stripping all the moisture out.

We have been converted, resistance is futile.

The yearly pilgrimage

This year we took a two night break up to Sidney, which is about an hours drive from where we live, usually we just go for a single night, but we wanted to enjoy Sidney more this time and explore the area.

The reason we go there in September, usually after labour day, is to visit Russell Nursery for more plants and shrubs, financed by Karen's mum and brother, it is a tradition, a yearly pilgrimage and we attempt to maximise the bang for the buck by saving some "orphans" along the way.

All mixed up, we bought a total of 18 plants at the nursery, which are going to keep us busy over the next week in the garden, in the photo above there are also 5 other orphans from Canadian Tire, so I believe we have 23 plants to find spots for.

The trip to Sidney was quite wonderful, we went to see the second location of "The West Coast Grill" and chatted to the owner, Val, who bought us a pint, we had a great long walk along the coastline and visited several pubs (of course) and on the Thursday evening it was the street market which was interesting, as usual, nothing to buy but plenty of happy dogs to distract us from the overpriced scones.

Half an Hour

The pair of us came up with a cunning plan this year, it is so simple, Monday to Friday we go out in the garden at 10.00am and do thirty minutes of gardening each, which we have found gives us focus, plus by the time the half hour is done we have a quick review and then go back to our day and have not tired ourselves out.

The front yard had a lot of this attention before we went on a trip, weeds of course love this environment and once we had removed most of them, we laid the path of stepping stones at the side and then our attention shifted to the long neglected back yard and of course the first order of business were the weeds again and that wobbly post at the start of August, however, we never expected to do this :

We always say this, we wish we had taken a before photo, although taking one would have brought shame upon us because the back yard was in a terrible state, three or four years of neglect, however, all that has been reversed in the last four weeks and also enhanced with the removal of a ton of wild grass, an old tarp that had been grown through, rocks and weeds everywhere, all gone during our thirty minute shifts.

The path to the left with the island is new and we just had enough screenings left to complete it, the two shrubs in the foreground were saved from the Canadian Tire garden centre at the end of the season, little bargains here and there and in a few days time we will be visiting Russel Nursery with our gift card from Karen's mum, Pat, and will buy more plants for the front and back yards.

It is approaching that time of the year when we start thinking about the next season, we have those loose ideas of what we will be doing and then of course, we will surprise ourselves with stuff like this that we did not intend to do, all sparked off by a wobbly fence post repair, that is the fun of gardening.

Holiday Monday Fun, mixing concrete

During the winter we noticed another of our fenceposts had gone wiggly with the base probably rotten, this at the side between our back garden and the neighbours. It was staked up on a temporary basis just to stabilise it through the winter and spring winds but I suspect that would not last another November. Today it was time to complete a longer term fix to see if we can achieve another three years of not costing much to keep the garden enclosed.  I was expecting to be thwarted by existing concrete footings, but this was one of the posts that was simply compacted into the soil, hence the rot. That was a mixed feeling surprise as I dug the hole with a lot less resistance, but also realised that a lot of the other posts would be in the same condition.

I managed to dig a good hole about seventeen inches deep last week, scrounged a two by four off one of my buddies, well it was more a barter type situation, I swapped some home made hot sauce for the piece of wood. This was then cut to length and I attached a six inch piece at ninety degrees about six inches from the bottom for more concrete contact and fore/aft stability, then I made a frame to add another two inches of depth to cater for a couple of bags of Quikrete. Last week Quikrete was $8.49 for a 30kg bag at Canadian Tire, which seemed like a deal, so I bought a couple and we managed to get them into the back of the car without dropping anything or turning each other into grey powder covered ghosts. This morning starting at about 9.30am with great help with the heavy lifting from the forewoman, everything came together in less than an hour, including full cleanup, it feels like a weight off my sore shoulders.

As you can see, the post is close to the California Lilac bush which delivered many insects and bits of stuff onto my head while digging the hole, two bags of ready mix, a bit of tamping down and the job is done. I'll go and check later this afternoon to see if the fascinating process of concrete setting has taken place. 

The job will be finished off later in the week with a lick of paint, but for now, it must be time for lunch.

Memory Box One : J.F. O'Neil and Phoenix

In the first year of going out with this young lady from Wigan who became my wife, I had some bad luck with cars in general, wrote one off, had one stolen, made silly mistakes with other cars and needed to change the engine on a Hillman Imp, so as a stop gap measure, I bought a moped.

Karen had just started working at Phoenix Video in Wigan Town Centre and once a week I would meet her there on her evening shift and keep her company, we would have a meal that she had bought, sometimes goodies from Marks and Spencer, Scotch eggs or something else yummy. I would usually give her a lift home or walk her to the bus stop after she locked up and made sure she was home safely.

I strolled in one night after parking my new acquisition and delivered the news that I was back on the road, well, she gave me the trademark 'what a daft bugger' look. Karen was right, the pressure of the Hillman Imp being off the road and the long train journeys to my job at APPH in Speke had finally made me snap, I bought this thing without thinking it through, I should have just had the car fixed or replaced, but as we know, we do what we do.

The Honda Melody, with 50cc of raw power, would be my curse over those winter months, probably the worst decision I have ever made with a vehicle (and I have made a few terrible choices) and it soon became clear that this exact replica of Steve Zodiacs Fireball XL5 Hovertron would be my undoing.

J.F. O'Neil was a small electronics-related business in two locations, 78 Market Street in Wigan and eventually Smithy Green in Ince and there is almost zero information online about the store. There is nothing about Phoenix either, which occupied the same property on Market Street, but today, accidently after being triggered by another Wigan memory, I searched for Market Square and found this gem.

There it is, large as life. I bought the moped in November of 1982 and that puts a press pin into the corkboard about when this photo was taken. I recall like it was yesterday, proudly parking the hovertron in the market square car park, in front of the store.

I will add some more information about the two companies, J.F. O'Neil rented and sold TVs and Video Cassette Recorders, what we called VCRs and in both formats at the time, VHS and BetaMax. The rental and repair business was also in full flight around that timeline, a large proportion of British people did not own their TV sets and some would rent for decades, even refusing free upgrades to colour TV sets when their ancient black and white sets needed constant repair, refusing because they did not want to pay extra for the colour licence or just liked black and white.

Phoenix Video, the Video Centre, shared the premises and stocked a broad range of VHS and a limited stock of Betamax, plus the usual adult section of videos, although in the UK at that time, adult videos were pretty tame (if my memory serves me well) and the main video store was in the back room with a stockroom upstairs. The shop was run by a chap called Steve and his wife, Jennifer who saw an opportunity when the video industry was really taking off.

It was a weekly event at Karen's house, video night, watching the latest releases, the perks of working at a video rental store, my particular perk was going out with someone who worked at a video rental store, I was never that interested in the movies, just liked sharing a couch with the young lady.

When the VHS business faded, just within a few years really, either from dwindling demand or just plain old bad management, Karen would move jobs to the J.F. O'Neil location in Ince and when she moved in with me in early 1987 we would rent a lovely Tatung TV and VCR and cuddle up on our own couch on movie nights until we left for Canada. 

“I wish I was a spaceman, the fastest guy alive, I’d fly around the Universe, on Fireball XL5"