Get a grip woman!

Suffolk_lass

I meant to mention that DH had the first of his dental appointments yesterday. He saw a Polish locum at our NHS dentist who had declined to remove his tooth last time, but instead booked for him to have root canal treatment instead. From the description DH gave, the surgical and electronic approach very much reflected the specialist treatment I had around 2018 for a recurring abscess - with the big difference that I had to go private and it cost £500. Talk about a stellar NHS experience - except when the mouth shield dislodged and he had to stop as DH was retching, having swallowed some of the antiseptic they were flushing his mouth with. He has two more appointments - in two weeks to clean out the temporary, check there is no infection and fill, and the third is to fill another tooth. Then they are going back to Poland, unfortunately.

beanielou

As you know I love courgettes. 

Suffolk_lass

I know you do @beanielou. If we lived closer, you would be on my list to share them with. I think by the time we visit my Mum in mid September it will be too late for them. Normally we cross to the west, where she is, south of you, in England, often on the A66, before trekking up on the M74 before going west to where she is. I can't even offer butternuts as an alternative as they are just not fruiting this year. A disaster for most of the own-produce growers I know.

Bees
Yesterday it precipitated down here. Biblical. Roads flooded and I had to go and collect my bulk bee feed (invertbee syrup) from my association team, about 20 miles away, and it was like driving across in winter. Admittedly the last two miles are on quiet lanes, so quiet single track, used by farmers, but it was like driving around a farm, with so much muddy residue everywhere, and potholes down the driving tracks. Anyway, I collected it, and all went well. We should have plenty, without having to buy more or make any up until the next bulk order. It's also about £6 cheaper for every 10L of syrup than if I bought it elsewhere.

Today, I was planning some winter preparatory bee manipulations today. When we looked mid-week, they had uncapped the honey we were planning to harvest and were consuming it. I want to get varroa treatments on and we might need to feed, if this weather continues. I need to check really.

House
With it raining we agreed to get the one wall of the double bedroom (was DS's) sorted out. There were various holes from teenage banging and pinning of posters and whatnot and DH filled these and sanded them down last night, ready to hang wallpaper in a panel, as though it were a headboard. At my suggestion, he gave the new handheld wire-free vacuum (Aldo's) an outing and when I went to bed he was sanding with one hand while vacuuming simultaneously! The paper is from JL, and matches the bedding I bought in their sale. The plan is to finish this before my friend comes on Wednesday, as she is staying over so we can both have a drink. The paper is a single roll of this and for the first time in 18 years, out came the old pasting table that is remarkably fine, except for an unhealthy amount of dust! We had the filler (the powder parrot stuffing) and the paste, in small packets to make up. I know we have not used wallpaper since leaving our last house, so I can confidently say the paste in at least 20 years old. I'm counting that as a money saving (there are precious few at the moment)

Other than that, we did not even manage to walk the dog. He will need lots of walking today! Up at my normal time (before 05.30) it is looking overcast and not what the forecasters said. Having said that, the sky is lightening. Fingers crossed for a decent day

Debsnewbudget

I love that wallpaper, when you say a panel, do you mean just the width of the bed? 

Suffolk_lass

Debsnewbudget said:

I love that wallpaper, when you say a panel, do you mean just the width of the bed? 

Just a little more than the bed - we are going for four drops as it means no trimming of the width, and not right up to the ceiling or down to the floor. It's an IKEA Malm bed frame with a double mattress so maybe 5' wide and it has a bedhead. We have a spotlight on the wall and will go up to that, but incorporating the light switch. It will have a painted pine border around the top and down the sides, partly overlapping the edge of the paper.

Debsnewbudget

Please can you put a picture on once its done, it sounds fabulous 

Watty1

I love this diary and the country ramblings and bee keeping. Fabulous.

EssexHebridean

What a great idea with the wallpaper SL - that sounds like it will look amazing once done! 

Suffolk_lass

The wallpaper is up but the surround (purchased) is not fitted and will wait for a rainy day as we need to make the bed, move some stuff and welcome a friend coming for an overnight catch-up. I will post a pic once it is complete... you might be waiting a while as it's a rainy day project!

Suffolk_lass

An update this morning

Money - the big JL credit card bill is visible for Monday and so is the Sc Pwr one. That reminds me I must look again ahead of my electricity fix ending on 31st, and I want to keep tracking heating oil prices too. I Tilly tidied the residue down to the next hundred so that will just sit there until the 1st September payments hit in the week before my pension.

Garden, the climbing (French and runner) beans are producing and the green courgettes. Borlotti will be miserable this year along with the weather - they need better weather to flourish. Not sure what has happened to the yellow courgettes, they seem to be producing thin spindly things on the male flowers and no female flowers. I haven't had that before but two varieties, four plants are doing this. I need to see if this is a virus.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse have the windows open and both doors to ensure there is good ventilation, that insects can get out, and most importantly, that the risk of blight is reduced. I've just been reading about the increased prevalence this year. Very few raspberries so far but all in due course. I have let the sweet peas go to seed and I want to collect some seed this year. They came from Kings Seeds as plug plants and although only 1 metre tall, they have been very colourful and of course, they smell great. 

Tromboncino and yellow cucumbers are tiny, one, possibly two pumpkins and almost no butternut squash so far. Rhubarb is quietly finishing. There are brambles that I letgo so I am picking blackberries in the garden, but they are just the thorniest meanest things, with thorns under the leaves too. They are all going strainght in a bag in the freezer and I will get them out to combine in jars of blackberry and apple. We have too many Bramleys on the tree and it is in danger of losing fruit if branches snap.

The wasps are feasting on the greengages and starting on the Victorias. We need to get picking the latter. The gages are too far up and you can't see the wasps easily enough to avoid them. My traps are displaying an inch of wasps now - I may need to empty and refresh them. I use a 2l lemonade bottle, cut in half round the waist, then invert the top, pouring in full fat fizzy pop (lemonade not as popular as Cola, I now know), a spoonful of jam (plum is good), and a bit of meat, I forgot to save mince yesterday when I made ragu. The meat smell attracts wasps and deters bees, which is important to me.

Bees
My new Queen arrived on Tuesday and I put her cage in the nucleus that is her destination home. They had drawn about three emergency queen cells that I destroyed, I did this so they would accept her. They were making a roaring sound, which often happens when they are queenless.

I went in again yesterday and about fifteen bees were crawling over the queen cage that our new girl is confined to, along with about half a dozen attendants in the cage who feed her. That is a good sign as it means she already has a team of young bees to support her. I went over the frames of brood and destroyed all the new emergency queen cells. They were all on the second frame of brood, suggesting her pheromone had not spread all the way yet. With a bit of a struggle, I managed to cut the tab at the bottom of the queen cell so when the bees have eaten through the plug of fondant that she has been fed with, she will be able to get out and hopefully start laying.

It is our first ever bought queen, as something of an experiment and to try to use calmer bees to spread gentle bees around our colonies as they seem to get quite nasty when their queens are being replaced. In principle I would rather use our local bees but after four years with a hostile colony I am not putting up with it forever so I am trying this. If the bees kill her, I will reunite them with the hive I removed them from and we can try again next year.

The other thing we did this week was to remove the honey from the freezer that has a too high moisture content (23.5% when the maximum should be 20%) and we put it back on top of the hive it came from, in a feeder. Ideally they will finish it by reducing the moisture and capping it, but if not they will use it or store it in the brood chamber for winter. I want to check on this, to ensure they have taken it, because really I need to get the supers off so we can treat for Varroa. I am using strips this year (gel trays last year) that need to be between the frames for six weeks (no longer or they start to diminish in strength and the varroa will be more likely to develop resistance to the chemicals). With us going away in September we need to be savvy about putting them in. And then the weather needs to be mild enough to get them out again, too. 

I can hear the timer calling me as I have a sourdough loaf proving

Oh yes, I took a couple of pics of the wall and bedding I might add (before the border, which we will add in due course)